Silicon Valley’s Wine Families Pass the Baton
Perhaps “passing the bottle” is a more apt metaphor for what we’re talking about here. Beginning 50 years ago, the 20th century’s big wine boom began in California. It was the second such boom, the first following the end of the Gold Rush and the establishment of coast-to-coast rail lines.
In the Santa Clara Valley, along the Peninsula and in the Saratoga foothills, the wine industry absolutely flourished. By the end of the 1880s, there were upwards of 15,000 acres of grapes and over 100 wineries in the region. Notable establishments included Paul Masson’s The Mountain winery and Charles Baldwin’s Millefleurs Winery on the campus of present day De Anza College. Ship captains installed vineyards and grand houses, and Italian immigrants including the Gemellos and Pichettis put down roots on Montebello Road.
With Prohibition, it all went underground. Orchards supplanted vineyards, and the dried fruit industry took over. Wineries with ties to the Catholic Church thrived by providing sacramental wines, while others saw to their own interpretation of “holy water.” But many small wineries simply disappeared.
By the late 1960s and early ’70s, though, a wine renaissance began, as the region slowly shifted from dried prunes and apricots to a different crop: silicon wafers. These didn’t taste any better than your average communion type, but the Valley’s new captains of industry had a love for the other half of the Sunday sacrament and began reviving vineyards once more.
Garrod Farms, a well-known equestrian stable with vast fruit orchards dating from 1893, replaced apricots and prunes with vines in 1972, using cuttings from the Mountain Winery. Winemaker George Cooper, a NASA test pilot, made wine under the Cooper-Garrod label, eventually handing over the reins to son Bill Cooper, who currently serves as winemaker. His wife, Doris, manages sales and marketing, while Jan Garrod oversees all farm operations. Jan’s son, Trevor, is cellar master, while Vicky Garrod Bosworth manages the equestrian and summer day camp programs. Her daughter, Cory Bosworth, manages the tasting room and wine club. A family operation, to be sure.
A Saratoga resident since 1958, Jerry Lohr left South Dakota for graduate school at Stanford and ended up building what has become the 20th-largest winery in the United States, J. Lohr Vineyards & Winery. Eager to indulge his farming roots in grape-growing, he purchased land in Arroyo Seco and started the winery in 1974. J. Lohr has had a tasting room on Lenzen Avenue in San Jose from the time it was founded. They later expanded to add a white wine winery in Greenfield (Arroyo Seco) and a red wine facility and visitor center in Paso Robles. His children were destined to be part of the vertically integrated 1.6 million case company, whose formula for consistently excellent wines at affordable prices from the best vineyards on the Central Coast has established them as a beloved mainstream brand. Celebrating 50 years in 2024, they remain innovators.
“We developed an alcohol-free wine, Ariel, back 40 years ago,” says Jerry. “It was named after a light, airy sprite in The Tempest.” It’s in big demand, due to the “low and no” movement, and son Steve, who serves as CEO and president of J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, says they are selling quite a bit of it.
“We have two patents on spinning cone technology,” he says. “We were only the second dealcoholized wine producer. Our Ariel Cabernet and Chardonnay taste better than ever, because the wine going into it is better than ever.” His sister, Cindy Lohr, is chief brand officer and Lawrence Lohr is president and COO of J. Lohr Vineyards, Inc. The family owns and leases vineyards in Monterey, Paso Robles and Napa, farmed to the exacting standards of their winemaking team.
Manifest destiny was not on the agenda of Reid and Sophie Patterson, children of Ellie and Jeffrey Patterson of Mount Eden Vineyards. They grew up on the isolated mountaintop that vintner Paul Masson had encouraged his young disciple, Martin Ray, to purchase. Ray planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir there back in 1943, using cuttings from Masson’s La Cresta Vineyard. As depicted in the documentary film Eden by Chris McGilvray, released at Cinequest San Jose earlier this year, Reid and Sophie left the property to attend college, not intending to return. Pursuing their own passions, Reid, who graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in chemistry, turned his attention to coffee. Sophie, having participated in the at-home birth of her younger brother, chose a career in fertility, an occupation she still pursues through her in-home fertility business, Gentle Touch.
Seriously concerned for the future of the brand they’d poured their souls into, Ellie and Jeffrey Patterson put the property up for sale. “We wanted to sell it while we still had our wits about us,” says Jeffrey. “One person came to check it out, and the same day, Ellie and I looked at each other, and asked, ‘Do we really want to do this?’ She said ‘no,’ and I said ‘no, I don’t want to do it either!’”
Reid returned in 2017, and lives at Mount Eden, where he makes wine for both the Mount Eden and Domaine Eden brands, collaborating with his father and assistant winemaker Austin Chin, a Bay Area native who Ellie hired in 2016.
Says Jeffrey, “Reid had to find his own way. Once you get out of college, you ask existential questions: ‘What am I gonna do? How will I live my life?’ It’s a very formative time.”
For her part, Sophie Patterson Sharabi returned in 2019, moving with her family to Los Gatos. “As a new mom, I wanted to return to my roots,” says Sophie, who serves as director of hospitality, for both the new tasting room operation at Domaine Eden, which opened earlier this year, and for the Mount Eden tasting room. In a testament to the power of place, she named her daughter Eden.
When heart surgeon Dr. Thomas Fogarty began planting what is now the Damiana Vineyard in 1976, on a 360-acre Skyline ridge with a view to the Golden Gate, little did he know it would be the genesis of Fogarty Vineyards & Winery. At the time, he installed vines to preserve the land under the Williamson Act, not to make wine. Scarcely could he imagine that it would turn into one of the region’s top destinations for corporate and charitable events and spectacular weddings.
Soon, he was clearing other legendary sites to plant more vines, among them Langley Hill and Portola Springs. In 1981, Fogarty hired young Michael Martella to make wine. He had his hands full adjusting to farming on the knife-edge of the ocean’s influence, as most California vineyards at the time were in temperate inland areas well suited to an opulent, oaky style of Chardonnay, which was popular at the time. Martella soon realized he could not make wines like that from this property, ever. Instead, he learned the voice and personality of each site, expressing each in wines of purity and nuance. Every year was a challenge, but that is farming.
Martella transitioned to winemaker emeritus six years ago, passing the baton of head winemaker to Nathan Kandler, who has been with Fogarty since 2004. Dr. Fogarty’s son, Tom Jr. (aka Tommy), took over the operation in 2010, with a commitment to impeccably farmed, handcrafted, Burgundian-style Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the original estate plantings. He also added the new “Lexington” line of Bordeaux varieties, grown at the Gist Vineyard on Skyline above the Lexington Reservoir. It may be the only vineyard on the Pacific Plate planted entirely to Bordeaux varieties.Fogarty says the wines made from this vineyard do not hew to the California style of fruit-forward ripeness. Instead, energetic, complex and reflective of their heritage, they are built with the future in mind. Like the brand, they will evolve, grow and blossom, all the while preserving a precious drop of history in every bottle.
VISIT THE WINERIES’ TASTING ROOMS
Garrod Farms Estate Winery & Stables
garrodfarms.com
Domaine Eden
domaineeden.com
J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines
jlohr.com
Fogarty Vineyards & Winery
Thomas Fogarty Winery
fogartywinery.com
Laura Ness, aka “Her VineNess,” is a wine journalist and wine competition judge who covers every aspect of the wine business—the good, the bad and the verboten. She pens wine columns for many local journals, including several Edible Communities publications. She carries a corkscrew in every purse, but wishes all winemakers would use screw caps.
