Premiere Napa Valley Live Auction

Sean McBride

Winemaker, Crosby Roamann

Sean Walker McBride
Founder & Chief Winemaker


Winemaker Sean McBride believes that wine is a living thing that has transformative power – it is a bridge to the future, to the past, between people to share love, or to reminisce. His own experiences are suitably proof in point, creating a winding path to winemaking that he never saw coming, and is eminently thankful for.

Sean grew up in New York City with a documentary filmmaker father, and a mother who worked in financial communications. Both understood the power of informative storytelling and shared that with their son, who ended up studying Philosophy and Latin at university. It was during this time that Sean was first exposed to fine wine. Growing up, his family would occasionally have wine on the table - Franzia for his grandfather, or a bottle of inexpensive Montepulciano for family pizza night. In college, his true education began while working as a stockboy at a wine and cheese store in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As he relays, “I wanted to find an American wine that tasted like the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo I grew up with, only to learn that it didn’t exist. This perhaps was the seed that would become my fascination and obsession with the world of fine wine.”

After college, he took his first trip to Italy, ending up visiting areas which produced the wines he had explored. It nurtured the seed that would grow into his love for fine wine and food. Upon returning home, while working at his mother’s communications firm, Sean decided to study English Literature at Columbia University. He aimed to be a writer but ended up working as a production assistant on shows like Sex & The City and MTV Cribs, which ultimately left him feeling hollow, and searching for his own story to tell. Still unfulfilled, after landing a job at Twentieth Century Fox, he decided to start in a new direction - studying at Brooklyn Law School.

It was during law school that Sean and his wife Juliana took a trip that changed the course of their lives. On route from San Francisco for a wedding, they drove up Highway 1 along the coast through Stinson Beach through the Marin Headlands, crossed the Petaluma Gap and Sonoma Mountain and made their way to the Napa Valley. They saw themselves in paradise, and were determined to return.

As they began raising their twin daughters in Brooklyn, Sean joined a tasting group, and they produced their first barrel of Napa Cabernet in 2007. They returned to Northern California and began scouting custom crush locations in Napa for the 2009 vintage and settled on a small family run estate called White Rock Vineyards. Sean spent most of harvest 2009 in Napa, learning the craft of winemaking from Christopher Vandendriessche. By mid 2010, Sean and Juliana sold their apartment, and drove west to California with their daughters. Intent on learning the craft, Sean made wine at White Rock for five years, and simultaneously made wine at Michael Mondavi’s FOLIO winery for three years, before the couple opened their own winery in the Crusher District in 2015.

For Sean, family comes first, but his goal as a winemaker is to make delicious wine that everyone can enjoy. For this avid home gardener and cook, sharing wines and the fruits of all their labor with friends and family is the greatest gift.

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Country born: USA

Education: Autodidact with working experience at White Rock Vineyards, FOLIO, Punk Dog Wines, and U.C. Davis.

Years in the wine industry: 15-20 years

Winemaking Philosophy:
We believe at Crosby Roamann that every vineyard is special, each vintage is unique, and every wine is distinct. The process is not easy. It starts with careful vineyard selection and management, a vigilant crush, and traditional winemaking practices. It’s this hands-on, labor-intensive process that ultimately creates a wine with character and complexity.