Issue No. 1

Wine as Passport

There is a specific kind of person this was built for. They have been to Napa. They have done Tuscany. They know the difference between a Priorat and a Ribera del Duero, and they have opinions about both. What they have not found — anywhere — is a place that treats wine not as a product to be purchased, but as a language to be spoken. A way of arriving somewhere and already belonging.

Vin Azul Collective was built around a single idea: wine as passport. Not a wine club. Not a travel company. Not a private members club, though it carries the spirit of all three. What we are building is infrastructure — the kind that makes a winemaker in Fallbrook, a sommelier in Provence, and a hotel in Baja California all part of the same conversation. The kind that makes you, the member, feel expected everywhere you arrive.

We launched in California because this is where we live and where the story begins. But Fallbrook — a small town in the hills of northern San Diego County — is not an obvious starting point for a global wine collective. That is precisely why we chose it. The San Luis Rey AVA, established in 2024, is one of the newest and most exciting wine appellations in the United States. The land here has been growing wine since Franciscan monks at Mission San Luis Rey wrote in 1827 that the valley produced "the best olives and the best wine in all California." We are not building something new in Fallbrook. We are continuing something very old.

From here, the map expands. Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California is producing some of the most exciting wine in the Americas right now — and it is forty-five minutes from San Diego. Provence. Priorat. Tuscany. The Douro Valley. Central Otago. These are not aspirations. They are the next stamps in the passport. And the founding members who join now will be the first through every door we open.

The Authority Behind the Glass

Every curated experience in the world is only as good as the person doing the curating. At Vin Azul, that person is Lisa Redwine — and her credentials are not a list of titles. They are a life spent in relentless pursuit of understanding wine at its deepest level, and a genuine gift for making others feel that depth too.

Reserve members have something remarkable available to them: direct access to Lisa as their personal sommelier concierge. Not a chatbot. Not a curated list. Lisa herself — to answer questions about what to order, what to cellar, what to bring to a dinner, and where in the world is worth going next for the glass you've been dreaming about. That is a rare thing. We do not take it lightly.

The Evening That Begins Everything

On the fourth of June, in the hills of Fallbrook, California, a group of the most influential voices in wine, hospitality, and the table will gather for the first time under the Vin Azul name. There will be no speeches about the company. There will be no presentations. There will be wine, a table, a view of the Gird Valley at golden hour, and a conversation worth having.

The Founding Table is exactly what its name promises — the first gathering of the people who will shape what Vin Azul becomes. It is intimate by design. The evening begins with arrival on the estate grounds, a welcome glass in hand, followed by a guided tour of the vineyards and a four-course dinner paired with Monserate's cellar selections, led by their sommelier team. It ends at nine, when the valley has gone dark and the oaks are silhouettes against whatever sky June offers.

This evening will not repeat. The founding table happens once. What it produces — the relationships, the conversations, the sense that something real is beginning — that is what every Vin Azul experience from here forward will aspire to.

Monserate Winery — A Family That Earned It

We did not choose Monserate Winery because it was the most famous winery in Southern California. We chose it because of who built it, why they built it, and how they treat everyone who walks through the gate.

In 2016, a Beverly Hills developer had plans to purchase the shuttered Fallbrook Golf Course — a beloved 116-acre property in the Gird Valley that had served the community for fifty-six years — and rezone it for housing. The community was vocal. The land, dotted with hundred-year-old oaks and towering sycamores, running with a creek through the center of the valley, was not a place for a subdivision. It was a place that deserved to be saved.

Jade and Julie Work heard that call. Jade, a lifelong Fallbrook resident who had made his career in golf course construction through his company Integrity Golf, recognized what the land actually was — not a golf course waiting to be reborn, but a winery waiting to be discovered. In late 2016, the Works purchased the property for over four million dollars with a single intention: to preserve it, honor it, and build something extraordinary on it.

What followed was five years of permits, planning, planting, and building. The Works established a conservation easement to guarantee the land can never be developed. They planted fifteen Italian varietals — Montepulciano, Sagrantino, Aglianico, Falanghina, Fiano, Vermentino, and more — chosen because Fallbrook's temperate coastal climate mirrors the wine provinces of northern Italy in ways that continue to surprise even seasoned sommeliers. They brought in winemaker Justin Mund, a Cal Poly viticulture graduate and former Sonoma winemaker, to tend the estate. And they built not just a winery, but a destination — a Tuscan-style barrel room, an Italian restaurant called Monti's Ristorante, three event venues, a stunning courtyard, a lake, and grounds that feel like they have been there for centuries.

But what none of that describes is the family itself. Jade and Julie Work run Monserate as a true family enterprise — their three sons Joel, Josh, and Jake are all part of the operation, each deeply involved in the day-to-day life of the estate. Josh serves as Vice President. Joel leads the tasting room. Jake is present in the vineyard and the work of the property. When you visit Monserate, you are not visiting a corporate hospitality operation. You are a guest of a family who genuinely loves what they have built and who will make you feel that.

In 2024, Monserate was named Winery of the Year at the 43rd Annual San Diego International Wine Festival. It is hard to overstate what that recognition means for a winery that planted its first vines in 2016 and bottled its first vintage in 2021. The wine world took notice because the wine is genuinely exceptional — and because the story behind it is one that the industry rarely gets to tell.

Monserate is Vin Azul's founding partner and home base — and that relationship is built to grow. As Vin Azul expands into boutique hotel partnerships, hospitality activations, and destination experiences across California and beyond, the Works will be with us. The same spirit that rescued a golf course from developers and turned it into one of the finest wine estates in Southern California — that spirit is the spirit of what we are building together.

The Founding Table on June 4th takes place on their estate because there is no better setting to begin this story. And because when the most influential voices in wine and hospitality gather on that property, we want them to feel exactly what we felt the first time we walked those grounds — that this place is something rare, something worth protecting, and something worth building around.