M Vineyards at Montaluce has hired Paul White as its general manager. The winery is currently under construction and will host its first crush in October.
A former San Francisco attorney, ten years ago Mr. White "traded one bar for another" - to devote full attention to learning about the California wine industry and managing vineyard projects.
"My wife is from Georgia and I wanted to bring my kids back to be closer to family - and to discover this project in my wife's home state is an unbelievable dream. I am excited to have the opportunity to work at such an extraordinary facility and I can not wait to create world class wines in Georgia." White said.
M Vineyards is a state of the art gravity flow winery located at Montaluce, a Tuscan inspired community with homes overlooking 15 acres of vineyards, the Etowah River and the Chattahoochee National Forest.
The winery includes 9,500 sq. ft. of production facilities and a restaurant designed with foodies in mind, which will host wine tastings, wine and cooking classes, chef demonstrations and jazz brunches. It is located on Hightower Church Road, a 10-minute drive from Dahlonega's historic town square.
Paul White was born in New York forty-five years ago. He earned a degree from Boston University's School of Management in 1986, and continued his education in San Francisco graduating with a Juris Doctor degree.
His experience and knowledge of the food & beverage industry spans over thirty years - and he has worked at one time or another in just about every position in a restaurant - from "busboy to bartender". Paul also served a stint as the beverage manager of the prestigious Harvard Club in Boston where he received formal sommelier training.
Just prior to joining M Vineyards at Montaluce, Paul was the general manager at Coturri Winery in Sonoma Valley. He lives in Dahlonega with his wife, a native of Newnan, and their two young daughters.
In Italy, the proportions and technique that create a dish are only as important as the heart that goes into it. Italian cookery is an exquisite alchemy, the measure of which is not knowledge so much as it is experience. It can be compared, perhaps, to learning how to park in New York. A driver learns by feel, perhaps bumping a car or three in the process, much as an Italian chef learns how to precisely slice vegetables straight into a pot or blend spices perfectly by taste not from formulas, but from practice.
In other words, unlike many other cuisines, the quality Italian food is as dependent upon the heart of the chef as it is on his skill.
That's a handy thing for Le Vigne at Montaluce Vineyards in Dahlonega. The way anointed Executive Chef Steve Hewins sees it, heart is everything.
"It all comes down to passion for great food and great wine," Hewins observes, "and the people I work with have that in spades."
The Beecham family behind the Montaluce winery and development sought a chef with skill, knowledge and love of Italian food and culture and, most importantly, one who loves what he does as much as they do. So when they found Hewins, they knew they had the right chef to make their restaurant as big as their dreams.
Hewins has the skill. He's a graduate of the world-famous Culinary Institute of America in New York and has sharpened his craft in kitchens all over the U.S., the Caribbean and Europe with a wide variety of cuisines and working alongside top chefs. He certainly has the Italian connection, too. His wife, Nunzia, and son, Jordan, are Italian nationals and he lived in Italy with them for the better part of a decade running their family restaurant on the Tyrrhenian coast.
And while the whole crew shares the passion for food and wine, it goes beyond that.
"The Beecham family is more than people who share a last name," Hewins explains. "Family is the most important thing in the world to me and we all share the same vision for Le Vigne being a place where family and friends are the same thing—where we can all celebrate one another. What drew me to Italy was the people and their attitude toward family. Twice a day, three generations of a family will sit down together and have a meal and it's really important to them. That's what we want to do here."
Hewins is an Atlanta native who cut his baby teeth at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead under Chef Gunther Seeger. After his time there, he found himself hungry for more knowledge and enrolled at CIA (the culinary school, not the Agency, mind).
After graduating from CIA, Hewins landed a job in San Francisco at the renowned Stars Restaurant, working under James Beard Award-winner Jeremiah Tower (who, along with Alice Waters, is credited with creating "California cuisine"), where he spent his four most formative years. Tower's passion for fresh, locally grown ingredients stayed with him even as he moved on to Europe.
That journey began as Hewins was recruited to serve as executive chef at the Hotel Stephanie Bristol in Brussels. His career and reputation truly took off from launch pad Brussels, where he was voted one of the city's 25 best chefs by Paris Match Magazine and often had the honor of cooking for Queen Paola of Belgium.
Hewins' experience in hotel restaurants provided him a windfall when he was hired by a German hotel firm to serve as their corporate executive chef. The firm sent him to Cornell University in New York to study kitchen and restaurant design to help on a project to build a restaurant for a $70M hotel in Bavaria.
But Hewins felt a strong need to strike out on his own, and so he and Nunzia headed for their beloved Italy, the country that had enchanted Steve's imagination and that Nunzia called home. They opened their own restaurant, La Piazza, on the seacoast south of Rome. The many years they spent there cemented Steve's deep love of the Italian way of life, which remains with him to this day.
But after the birth of their son, Steve and Nunzia felt it was important for him to grow up closer to his Georgia family. Steve took a job in Ponce, Puerto Rico, developing a dining concept for Costa Caribe Golf and Country Club, a new project for a golf management company owned by the owner of Reebok. Hewins was part of the team that designed and opened Acqua Pazza, Costa Caribe's flagship Italian restaurant. Within a year, Acqua Pazza was rated the number-two restaurant on the whole island and Hewins was featured in Great Chefs of Puerto Rico.
The Hewins family finally found their way back to Georgia when Steve landed the Montaluce job.
"It was an amazing compromise," Steve says of the decision to seek the position at Montaluce. "My wife really wanted to raise our son in the States and have him closer to his Georgia family, but I really missed Italy. But when I looked out at the breathtaking view of the vine-filled rolling hills of Montaluce, I felt like I was back in Italy."
Chef Hewins and his family live in Dahlonega. Steve enjoys spending time with his family, playing golf, and entertaining for friends.
