When your family has been in the business of making wine since 1901, and your name is Sebastiani, how do you carve out your own niche? Mia Sebastiani’s father and brothers, Donny and August, started with the company Don Sebastiani & Sons, her and her brothers now have another wine company called The Other Guys.
“Having two older brothers was like having three dads,” she laughs. “They included me in their wine companies by naming a wine they made “Mia’s Playground. Then three years ago we came up with the concept of Mia’s Kitchen.”
The first products were, naturally enough, two Wine Reductions, using Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and Chardonnay grapes. They have since added a Balsamic Reduction (not be confused with vinegar) and Olive Oil.
After graduating from Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles, Mia traveled. “In Thailand I did a project with Habitat for Humanity, I did a Jack-Kerouac drive around the US, and moved to South Africa to work in a winery for a few months.”
Back in Sonoma County, California, Mia began working with the company named for her, joining Holly Bast, who had given it a great start.
“Our family is very Italian,” says Mia. “The whole bunch gets together for dinner at Mom’s on Sunday nights. She starts cooking early in the morning. One of my fondest memories from my childhood is waking up with the aroma of onions and garlic cooking in olive oil.”
“The kitchen in our family home is the biggest room, and in the middle of my Mom’s kitchen is a big butcher block table. We need that big surface to roll out the pasta dough. For dinner everyone stands around talking, helping, drinking wine. Then dinner is time for enjoying fine food and wine and good conversation.”
Mia learned to cook by just being in the kitchen and cooking with her mother. “She might look at a recipe once, but the second time she makes it, the dish is completely her own. She doesn’t write anything down, so I just had to observe carefully.” The sauces that Mia wants to add to the Mia’s Kitchen product line are recipes handed down from generations.
“What turns me on about a dish is the sauce, or the roux. So much of the flavor is there,” Mia explains. “I want to demonstrate how the flavor of an olive oil or sauce can change the entire meal. Each course can be transformed.”
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