Nichelini Family Winery

We worked on a project with Nichelini Family Winery, the oldest family-owned vineyard in Napa Valley. The vineyard was founded in 1884 by Anton Nichelini who was the first Swiss settler in the area. He married Caterina, who was also an Italian-Swiss immigrant, and had twelve children. The original winery he built is still around today and has been passed down 5 generations. Their motto is “Generation to Generation.”

When we arrived at the vineyard, the Glass Fire had gone through much of the area. Luckily, their vineyard hadn’t been hit by the fires. While we were there, we got sunrise and sunset footage. In order to maximize media content, we split up the team to divide and conquer. On the ground, some of our team captured video and still photography. Meanwhile, in the air, we flew a drone to get some overhead footage. At the end, our team came together and combined all the media on an external hard drive.

We had this really fun project last year with Nichelini Family Vineyards, which is located in the Napa valley. So from where we are, it was about a three hour drive south. The team and I went down and we spent the night. We got sunrise footage, we got sunset footage, both on the ground and in the air. Another piece that was interesting about that project was that a recent fire went through, and the fire was very close to their property, but did not damage any of their buildings or their vineyards, luckily. I think that a vintage of grapes was thrown out because it’s smoke that gets into the grapes, but we were able to capture the unburned side of the vineyard, which was their property.

 

It was one of those moments where I thought this doesn’t feel like work. I love what I do, because I get to help this vineyard communicate the quality of the land that the grapes are grown in, and wine’s just, everybody loves wine. We got to be a part of communicating the quality that is put into the wine making process at the Nichelini Family Vineyards, and at New Clairvaux, because I think that the vintage is shared between those two wineries, I believe.

 

As part of that project, some on the team shot video and some shot photo. So in that instance, I will fly the drone because I’ve got the Part 107 certification, and Quinn and Tava on the team, both were shooting on the ground video or still photography. At the end of the day, we put all that media together on an external hard drive and we see how much content we actually shot, and we make best use of golden hour by dividing and conquering during those times, but coming together as a team at the end of it.