Maria Navarro-Gerard is a consultant winemaker based in Santa Rosa providing support to small wineries in vineyard management, winemaking processes, quality control and compliance.
Before creating her own consulting firm she served as the winemaker at Bell Wine Cellars and Langtry Estate Vineyards where she helped develop the strategy for the production of high end wines, including setting standards for vineyard management and barrel selection. As an assistant winemaker at Frank Family, she managed the day to day production and helped the company transition to a Napa Green certification as well as improving their quality control. She has worked with premium, small lot wine production, focusing on vineyard specific wines but has also supported and advised on large scale production of wines around the world as the Winemaker technical adviser for Enartis, where she helped develop processes for wine stability testing and smoke taint treatment and assessment.
Her background in food science and her engineering degree with an emphasis in quality control opened the doors to a harvest experience in Napa Valley working in the laboratory of Charles Krug Winery; that experience has led to a 20 year career in the wine industry.
Navarro holds a master’s degree in Viticulture and Enology from the prestigious school École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique
de Montpellier and an engineering degree in Ago-industrial processes from the University of Guadalajara.