Old Time Family Wineries of Sonoma County

Sonoma County has an interesting wine history with the first grapes actually planted by Russians(!) in 1812 near the Pacific Coast. The wine biz in Sonoma County goes back to the mid-19th century just after the start of the Gold Rush. That's not really very long by European standards, but there were only about 500 settlers in the entire county when California became a state in 1850. 

There are a few wine families that have been around a long time. Others sold out in the past few decades, such as Sebastiani (founded 1904), Seghesio (1895), and Simi (1876). Buena Vista (1857) is the oldest winery in the state and has been through multiple owners.

There are also families that have been farming grapes for multiple generations. Many of these grape farmers started with some other crop like prunes or apples. Others, such as Mauritson, have been farming grapes for over 150 years, but just recently started selling wines under their own label. The Rafanelli family has been in the business for over 100 years, but the family A Rafanelli wine label is "only" 50 years old.

Foppiano

Giovanni Foppiano emigrated from Italy to San Francisco seeking a fortune in gold. As with most fortune seekers he didn't succeed. He founded Foppiano Vineyards near Healdsburg in 1896. The family has run  the business ever since even surviving Prohibition when most wineries did not. They did have some troubles, however, with making wine illegally during that time. The "highlight" being in 1926 when the feds dumped 100,000 gallons of their wine into the local creek. Once the locals found out they showed up with buckets and even cups to drink from the creek. Louis J. Foppiano, grandson of the founder, brought the winery into the modern age of California wines. Through hard work and good wine he lived to 101.

Louis J. Foppiano

Gundlach Bundschu

GB has operated their Rhinefarm Vineyard in Sonoma Valley since 1858. The winery started up at the same time and flourished until 1906 when all of its wine stored in San Francisco was destroyed by the fires after the earthquake. For most of the following decades the fruit from their vineyard was sold to other wineries. In 1970 Jim Bundschu entered the picture to replant and restart the winery. The rest, as they say, is history. Jim's son now runs the business. While Buena Vista is the oldest commercial winery in the state, Gundlach Bundschu is the oldest continuously operating family winery.

Jim Bundschu has quite the sense of humor

Pedroncelli

Giovanni Pedroncelli purchases a vineyard and winery planted mostly with zinfandel in 1927 (during Prohibition). They sold grapes to local home winemakers during that time. They opened their tasting room in 1955 where, for 50 cents, you could fill your gallon jug. Their son, John Pedroncelli Jr, began making the wines just after WWII, was involved for 66 vintages, and was responsible for bringing the winery into the modern era of California winemaking. A section of the original vineyard still exists and goes into making their Mother Clone zinfandel.

Founder Giovanni (John Sr) and son John Jr Pedroncelli

Interestingly, I find that Foppiano, Gundlach Bundschu, and Pedroncelli make some of the best, and best-priced, wines in the county.