Winemaker

Winemaker, Tim Nodland started out as a self-taught rock and roll guitarist, toured extensively with professional hard rock bands and worked as a talent agent and concert promoter. Although he no longer earns a living in music, he still occasionally performs in jazz combos and in his heart he will always be a musician. His education is in the law and he still puts on a suit and tie and represents clients in court and maintains a downtown law office in his name, however, once he discovered the art of wine, fermenting the grape became his ultimate passion and he approaches each vintage as a new performance and each wine as a new song.

Inspired by the movie “Good Will Hunting”, where “Will” educated himself with only a library card, Tim started out in winemaking by buying the textbooks from the UC Davis Enology School Bookstore with the intent of teaching himself to make wine. He created a “laboratory” by converting his garage to a temperature controlled, insulated, heated and air conditioned fermentation room with the driveway as the crush pad and the basement as the barrel cellar. He quickly discovered that there were two schools of thought in winemaking…some viewed it as an art, others as a science. Having no interest in science, he threw aside the books on chemistry and found that wine had been made by humans for thousands of years without the benefit of scientific knowledge.

The wines of Nodland Cellars are made in traditional methods used for centuries with open top fermenters, hand punch downs and natural yeasts. The wines have earned numerous national and international awards. Since his first vintage in 1999 in his garage to the current vintages made in a modern facility, Tim relies on time tested methods of natural winemaking using only the best grapes and the best barrels. A sort of renaissance man, the musician-lawyer-winemaker puts his unique background and approach and his entire soul into each new wine.

Read inspiring articles and stay in touch with Tim at www.nodlandwine.com.

Vintner Tim Nodland approaches blending his wines like arranging a song, which makes sense, because as a professional musician who loves jazz guitar music and plays in the neo-swing band “Timmy Swift and the Swingin’ Vinos”. He possesses an astute sense of creativity and balance. He describes his winery as being “more like a musician’s studio” and his wines as “liquid art.” Nodland’s musical background inspires the names of wines such as “Bebop” and earned his winery a mention in Wine and Jazz Magazine.

Nodland started out as a starving rock and roll guitarist touring the western United States in the “hair band” days. Later, he took a position at a talent agency managing 18 metal bands. To further his music business career he attended law school and took an interest in promoting concerts and club dates for national and international jazz guitarists. Currently, Tim devotes most of his time to the winery and plays occasionally in jazz combos. You may see Tim playing a surprise appearance with his jazz combo in the winery tasting room!

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