In our search for small-scale wine producers to visit in our nearby wine regions, we're always glad to find start-up wineries making excellent wines to a small, devoted audience. Astrale e Terra on the Silverado Trail is one of those wineries. The name translates as "heaven and earth," and we encountered their wines at an event in San Francisco a month or two back, and thought they were on to something special.

The winery is owned by a group of friends led by Paul Johnson, a one-time Air Force fighter pilot who owned a resort in Jamaica and did a turn as a Chicago banker before settling in the Napa Valley in the 90s. Their consulting winemaker is Scott Harvey, who sold his successful brand Folie a Deux in 2004, and who also now makes his own delicious, complex wines under the Scott Harvey Wines label and has his own tasting room in Gold Country, on Main Street in Sutter Creek.