Chris Dearden of Sleeping Giant Winery

This is from an in-person wine tasting with Chris Dearden

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys host Chris Dearden, owner-winemaker of Sleeping Giant Winery of Los Carneros. The Guys and Chris hosted a wine tasting so guests could hear the genesis and explore the wines from this artisanal winery. Learn more about the legend and wines of this region from someone who has lived and worked there all his life. 

The Inside Track

The Guys were better acquainted with Chris when they took their staff to Robert Biale Vineyards in 2021 where Chris worked at the time. They found common interests in Chris’ admirable sustainability practices.

“I did want to build something that was a state of the art production facility and environmentally sensitive…We really wanted to do the right thing for the property. [I wanted to] show what our winery is doing to try to be good stewards to the land,” Chris Dearden on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2025

Bio

Chris Dearden attended UC Davis for his bachelors in science, writing his own major as Viticulture, Enology and Winery Operations. He would continue on to UC Berkeley Haas School of Business to earn his Masters in Business Administration. 

He has held several winemaking positions over the years including for Hublein, Benessere and consulted for several small, premium, Napa Valley-based brands. He worked for Seguin Moreau Cooperage in the early 1990s which was an integral part of his winemaking education. 

He began a fourteen-year journey developing a Napa Valley winery from the ground up. He established the vineyard, brand, wine style and identity. He also developed luxury wine brands Chanticleer and Sleeping Giant, and a premium pinot noir vineyard estate in the Carneros district of Napa Valley. In 2010 he established the Dearden Wines Portfolio achieving his lifelong goal of owning his own vineyard and winery. The cornerstone of the brand is Dearden’s Carneros vineyard property which houses Sleeping Giant Winery. 

Info

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