Meet the wine witch

Clair Stover
Winemaker & Head Witch in Charge

She didn't grow up around vineyards. Clair grew up in Tennessee, about as far from wine country as you can get in this business, with no particular reason to think she'd end up making wine for a living. But in 2015 she landed at Truckee River Winery — in Truckee, California, a mountain town known for skiing, not grapes — and somehow that's where it started. It was there that legendary winemaker Russ Jones took Clair under his wing, and his mentorship gave her the confidence to believe this could actually be a career, not just a curious detour.

There was no roadmap for someone starting out in a place like that, so she built her own: cellar rat work, one harvest at a time. Marlborough, New Zealand. Dry Creek Valley. Clare Valley, Australia. Each stop meant learning a different climate, a different set of hands, a different way of coaxing something good out of fruit — long nights, cold cellars, and no shortcuts.

Eventually the road brought Clair to Hopland, California, and something about Mendocino County made her want to stop chasing harvests and actually put down roots. So she went back to school for a degree in enology, trading the nomadic cellar-rat life for real, formal training in the science behind the work she'd already fallen in love with. That degree led to a job as an Enologist at Parducci, and from there to her current role as Assistant Winemaker at Saracina Vineyards.

What was long just a dream of starting her own brand began to fall into place through the support of her employers at Saracina and the mentorship of rockstar winemaker Alex MacGregor. Clair wanted to use everything she'd learned to build something that was entirely her own, on her own terms. That's what Bad Witch is about: finding the thing that ignites your passion and brings you joy, and finding the power within yourself to become fearless in pursuing your dreams. That's the real magic. And that's what winemaking is for this witchy woman.