Sonoma County Vintners Foundation Funnels $1.2 Million into Community Aid Programs - Wine & Spirits Magazine

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Sonoma County Vintners Foundation Funnels $1.2 Million into Community Aid Programs

by the W&S Team • April 13, 2020

Sonoma County Vintners Foundation (SCVF), based in Santa Rosa, has tapped into its emergency relief fund in addition to its annual community grants to assist the local community amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The foundation released an initial $145,000 to aid Sonoma organizations including Corazón Healdsburg and its Unity and Community COVID-19 Relief Fund. Corazón Healdsburg’s Relief Fund aims to assist anyone who is financially at risk due to COVID-19 and lives or works in Northern Sonoma County (from Windsor to Cloverdale), as well as furloughed winery and restaurant employees throughout the rest of the county. According to the Relief Fund’s web page, the organization is “committed to a thoughtful, rapid, and transparent process to disperse the funds collected […] focused on three areas: food, housing and homelessness, and economic security.”

With help from the Community Foundation Sonoma County, Sonoma County Vintners Foundation selects an extensive list of Sonoma County nonprofits each year as recipients of community grants. The current recipients list spans over 80 nonprofits, all receiving a portion of $1,060,000 in funding pooled from the wine community, donors and the annual Sonoma County Wine Auction. Those funds were distributed earlier than in previous years, and with more flexible spending, now that many nonprofits are in immediate need due to the Coronavirus.

Click here to make a donation or apply to Corazón Healdsburg’s relief fund.

Click here to make a donation to the SCVF emergency relief fund.

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TAGS Coronavirus Coronavirus Crisis COVID-19 Sonoma County Sonoma County Vintners Foundation

David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

Corey Warren
Tastings Editor

Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

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Since Tara Q. Thomas joined Wine & Spirits in 1997, she’s traveled the wine world from Argentina to Australia. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, with more than 20 years of experience in the food and wine world, Tara puts her culinary knowledge to use as W&S’s resident food critic, and is the critic for the wines of Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Argentina, and the Mediterranean. She’s particularly enthusiastic about the wines of Greece, where she once lived and cooked. Outside of W&S, Tara has authored two books, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine Basics and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wine; contributed to the Oxford Companion to Cheese as well as Oxford’s forthcoming volume on spirits; and writes a wine column for Culture: The Word on Cheese.

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Editor and Publisher of Wine & Spirits since 1986, Joshua Greene began drinking wine with meals during a summer in Galicia, Spain, at the age of 13. In later years, he worked in wine shops in western Massachusetts and served as wine captain at Wheatleigh, a small inn in Lenox. After graduating from Princeton University in 1981, Greene pursued a career in magazines, focusing on the management of special-interest publications. His work with Wine & Spirits began on a consulting basis, eventually leading to his purchase of the magazine in 1989.

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Patricio Tapia
Senior Correspondent

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.