A Very Riboli New Year

It’s going to be a very Riboli New Year for the local winemaking family, who, as owners of the San Antonio Winery, has long supplied wine for local New Year’s celebrations. This year, for the first time, the family is riding in the parade itself.

As winery owner Steve Riboli describes it, “We went to the Tournament of Roses back in February with an exciting idea to bring entertainment as well as branding of our wines to the Rose Parade. So our goal was to create a very unique float.” The “Stella Rosa” float (named for a San Antonio semi-sparkling variety) design is a double-decker bus with 70s dance icons KC and the Sunshine Band, all sixteen pieces.

Stella Rosa, the float’s namesake, Riboli explains, is “a brand of ours that was created 12 years ago. We created Stella Rosa because of the unique profile of the wine. It’s fun and fizzy, and it caters to a more youthful wine drinker. It comes in a variety of flavors.”

Riboli is naturally excited about the float’s selection to participate, saying, “We are the first wine float ever in the 125-year history of the Tournament of Roses, so it’s quite an honor. The float itself is 55 feet long and about 30 feet tall, and about 25 feet wide. It’s a beautiful display of roses and pageantry, but what’s cool about it is it’s got a live band on it — very few floats have full live bands. Our goal is to ‘stellabrate’ good times.”

The Riboli Family has been a fixture of Pasadena and Los Angeles life for close to a century now. Their San Antonio Winery sits in its original location in nearby Northeast Los Angeles, offering its own family of wines plus a curated selection from around the world–as well as tastings, tours, fine dining and a unique location for celebrations.

And the whole New Year’s Eve/ New Year’s Day thing is only 24 hours. Where else do you take Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bernie? The Ribolis have a natural suggestion: “You know, they can only go to Disneyland and Universal so many times, so we’re a wonderful place because we have tours of the winery daily and it’s just a fun place to go. We’ve got tours, we’ve got a great restaurant, we got a beautiful wine store and you can actually see a working winery. Folks are coming in from the Midwest and from the East Coast. That’s a huge treat for them because it’s rare for them to do it.

The Riboli family has long been active in the Pasadena community, and has been generous with their time in local nonprofits for years. (Steve and his wife, Sindee, were last year’s honorees at the annual Pasadena Ronald McDonald House Shine Gala.)

And this year, the celebration of wine, the family’s involvement with the Tournament of Roses, and theirlong community involvement will all come together, as “Stella Rosa”–the first wine-related float in the parade ever–dances down Colorado Boulevard.

The San Antonio Winery can be found (where it has been found since 1917) at 737 Lamar Street in Los Angeles. The winery is open daily. For more information call (323) 223-1401 or visit www.SanAntonioWinery.com