CALISTOGA: Matthew Crafton has had a year of firsts at Chateau Montelena, and on Thursday, Oct. 15, it gained a national honor. Crafton, the estate's president and winemaker, was named Wine Professional of the Year in VinePair's 2026 Next Wave Awards, selected from a national field of finalists that also included Lina Goujjane and Katie Morton, according to VinePair's finalist list.
The Next Wave Awards, launched in 2021, recognize wine, beer and spirits professionals who are moving the drinks industry forward, and the 2026 honorees were revealed in VinePair's full awards package published Oct. 15. VinePair's own profile of Crafton traces his start in wine to 2003, the year he earned an economics degree at the University of Virginia and turned away from a career in finance toward hands-on cellar work.
In naming him, VinePair writer Stephen Bradley said Crafton was not resting on Montelena's storied past, writing that "he is nimble and ready to usher Chateau Montelena into the future."
No one makes wine at Montelena alone.
The first president from outside the family
In January, Crafton was named president of Montelena, expanding his winemaker role to include long-term strategy and day-to-day operations. The announcement described it as the first time in the winery's modern history that the position has been extended beyond the Barrett family. Bo Barrett remains the winery's chief executive.
Crafton joined Montelena as enologist in 2008, after earning his degree in viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis, and was promoted to winemaker in 2014, a path his Montelena biography records in the same terms. VinePair has been a recurring voice in that story: its profile notes his path from a Virginia cellar start to the top job in Calistoga.
Accepting the honor, Crafton shared it with the estate's crew. "No one makes wine at Montelena alone," he said, crediting the cellar and vineyard team and the Barrett family. The timing carries its own weight: the award arrived in the year Montelena and the valley mark fifty years since the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the blind tasting in Paris where the estate's 1973 Chardonnay finished first and rearranged the world's map of fine wine.
