Jeff Cohn has racked up more points, scores, odometer miles, and friendly relationships perhaps than any other winemaker in California. Period. This affable, popular, highly-connected, and ubiquitous Zinfandel maestro’s success story actually begins as an intern at a winery near his family home in Bowie, Maryland. His culinary interest took him to Johnson and Wales, then to Florida – earning a degree in hospitality management. It was his experience with wines that flipped the switch for his interest in pursuing winemaking in California, and his studies in agricultural chemistry and enology landed him a job at Rosenblum Cellars in Alameda. At the time, Rosenblum was something of a vortex of Zinfandel where founder Kent Rosenblum sourced and produced wines from dozens of Zinfandel vineyards from all over California. Six years after his rapid rise to Winemaker at Rosenblum and an amazing track record of loftyscoring wines, Jeff and his wife Alexandra, a hospitality business and accounting whiz who Jeff met in Florida, struck out on their own in pursuit of expanding their own fledgling wine business. Jeff lives and breathes wine but Zinfandel and Rhône wines are his bailiwicks. Not only an expert on all things Zinfandel, Jeff has even collaborated with several French winemakers on special Rhône varietal projects in France and California.
The Cohn family recently relocated their home operations to Sonoma County where they source over 80% of their grapes. The new Jeff Cohn Cellars tasting room is on North Ave. in the heart of hospitality hotspot – Healdsburg – where visitors can by appointment, indoors or outdoors, enjoy select flights of Jeff’s wines or even arrange for a special private group tasting.