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Ovene Winery, Inc. was founded by Jeff & Genni White in March 2004. The winery is a culmination of 18 years of home winemaking preceded by 5 years of sales management in the wine business. Jeff got his start in the wine industry with Italian Swiss Colony winery in 1983 as divisional sales manager for the Southern California market. After 2 years Jeff was recruited by the Seagram Wine Company and became district manager for Southern California in charge of Taylor California Cellars. Jeff was also responsible for the roll out of Seagram’s Wine Cooler in Southern California and Southern Nevada. In 1986 Jeff became southwest regional manager for Rodney Strong Vineyards where he covered chains, on and off sale accounts throughout Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. Jeff managed distributors such as Southern Wine & Spirits, Bohemian & NDC.

Jeff and Genni White started making wine in their garage in 1986 after befriending Dwayne Helmuth former VP of Callaway winery in Temecula. The early years included great memories of having 5 gallon glass carboys exploding in the Jacuzzi and finished bottles of wine blowing corks off in the garage after hot summer days. For 18 years we dragged all of our friends, the neighbor kids and whoever would go with us to harvest, to pick grapes early in the morning. We would fill trash cans, pickup trucks and garbage bags full and take the grapes back to our home in Yorba Linda where we would crush the grapes with a hand cranked Italian crusher/destemmer. We would always save a few hundred pounds of grapes to be crushed “Lucy style”. All the kids and any newbie’s would be obliged to wash off their feet and squish grapes until their feet turned purple. What fond memories we had, needless to say we were hooked on winemaking a long time ago. In fact, each of our 3 girls have been picking and stomping grapes since they were in the womb!!! Well needless to say we continued to grow and try new varietals over the years. We moved to a 1600 sq ft warehouse in Anaheim in 1999 where we installed 2 walk in refrigerators and the fine winemaking just got better.

After the fall harvest of 2003 we decided that we were ready to take the plunge, and by March of 2004 Ovene Winery, Inc. was founded. The winery name was in honor of Jeff’s grandmother Merthel “Ovene” McConnel who blessed us with her contagious enthusiasm and constant encouragement. We researched several locations and opted to set up at Central Coast Wine Services in Santa Maria, California. CCWS as it is called is the largest co-op winery for alternating proprietors in Central California. The Ovene Winery occupies 1000 sq ft of lease space which houses some 200 French and American Oak barrels, 5 stainless steel tanks totaling some 3200 gallons of cooperage and 16 open top fermentors. We produced 2000 cases of wine in 2004 and almost 5000 cases in 2005 consisting of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viogner, Muscat, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.  Ovene Winery shares a tasting room in downtown Paso Robles at “Wines on Pine” 1244 Pine St Paso Robles, CA. Come by and try some of our award winning wines or visit us on the web at www.ovenewinery.com Our puzzle is now complete. The only piece missing is you!!