In the runup to Pedroncelli’s 100th anniversary, no less! – we sat down with President and CEO Julie Pedroncelli St. John at a wooden table in their intimate tasting room. It’s set against a steep hill bristling with craggy Zinfandel vines, and the moment you step inside, you can smell the fresh, wine-soaked barrels stacked in the adjacent room. This is a true estate winery, with farming, winemaking, and tasting happening right here at their original property on Canyon Road west of Geyserville, in the northeast corner of Dry Creek Valley. In fact, Julie’s former childhood bedroom is now her office. The complex is handsome and grounded, with stylish touches in that self-assured Italian way: little cylindrical water glasses, orange umbrellas, ivy cascading up the side of a building.
If you have been tasting in this part of Sonoma County, you'll remember its glorious, swept-open valley floor and reddish benchlands, and the dense concentration of wineries along a main drag. Pedroncelli is only a seven-minute drive from the famous Dry Creek General Store, but tucked away by itself – just enough to seem like a metaphor for the refinement, creativity, and fortitude that define the winery.
Julie and her three sisters are the third generation to lead Pedroncelli, with members of the fourth generation coming up now. As the Pedroncellis say of their wines: “Enjoy them with confidence.” To that end, we talked about everything from what it takes to become a nationally trusted brand, to the tradition she wants all of us to experience, becoming more extroverted, AI, and the special yeast chosen for the 2022 Legacy Block.
Pictured above, left to right: Lance Blakely, Julie Pedroncelli St. John, Cathy Pedroncelli.
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How did your family come to start a winery?
The story began with my grandparents, Giovanni and Julia, who bought this property that we're sitting at right now. There had been a winery here since the early 1900s. Prohibition came along and shut off all the winemaking, and the Italian family who owned it continued for a few years because you could still sell the grapes at a pretty good price to ‘head of households’ for home winemaking. When my grandparents purchased the winery in 1927, we were more than halfway through Prohibition, and the owners had basically fallen on hard times and needed to sell the property. So it came with a defunct winery, 25 acres of grapes, a total of 90 acres of land, and a home.
Pedroncelli now owns 100 planted acres around the valley, and while they have experimented with various grape varieties a great deal over the years, they’ve honed their portfolio to Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Sangiovese – with their restaurant-favorite Sauvignon Blanc being the only white grape they grow.
Where did your grandparents come from?
They came from two separate areas, but very close, in northern Italy. My grandfather is from a town, Madesimo, 8 kilometers from the Swiss border, and my grandmother's town, Morbeno, was at the base of the Alps. I liken my grandfather’s town to the Aspen of Italy because it's basically a ski town. In fact, a relative from that town, Italo Pedroncelli, competed in the 1960 Olympics in what was known as Squaw Valley, now Palisades.
So, no wine roots in either of the families. It all started here in the U.S. And many people were like, well, why did he buy a vineyard? Why'd he buy a defunct winery? I think they thought Prohibition was going to end sooner than it actually did, but they continued selling the grapes. The good news is, he had seven years of knowing the land before we were able to start making our own wine.
Who was the second generation?
My uncle, John, and my dad, Jim. John became winemaker in 1947, and he made wine until about 2014, and passed in 2015.
That's an incredible tenure.
It is. In 1954, my dad took on sales and marketing for the winery, and that's basically how they built their partnership over 60 years.
Someone's got to make it, and someone's got to sell it.
That’s right. My dad, through the ‘60s and ‘70s, really expanded our network. We started making more wine, and we started honing the line.
Was it a big decision for you, whether to work in the family business?
When I was heading to college, I was told: Go pursue what you want to pursue. As a result, I majored in English with a writing emphasis. I didn't go to UC Davis [to study wine] – I went to a liberal arts college, Dominican University. I had a wonderful education. But I got hooked back in because my sister was going to have the first grandchild of the family, and she needed help on the weekends.
I worked in the East Bay and wanted to go get my certificate in publishing, which you could get from UC Berkeley by going at night. I had a full-time job – I was an admin person at a flexible metal hose company [laughs] and I was like, wow, this is really tough to go to work, go to my classes, and then come up to help on weekends. Then my dad came to me in the warehouse – the tasting room was in the warehouse at the time – and he said, what do you think about working here full time? And I said, well, I love coming back home. So I left that particular publishing dream behind. And I started in the tasting room, because growing up around it didn't give me everything I needed to know. I also started taking courses.
Did growing up at a working winery give you more of a window into the production side or the sales side?
Production, for sure. Because we lived the seasons of the vineyard. We were in the middle of everything. Grapes being picked, vineyards being plowed. This building where we’re sitting used to be a vineyard – which was my playground. So you get a sense for the seasons. My uncle's out on his tractor; my dad’s on a sales trip.
And then, of course, we had the tasting room that was open in the middle of everything. So we saw people coming and going with cases of wine, and it all sank in. But the particulars of the industry didn’t. Santa Rosa Junior College was the best place to go for night classes. At that time, [local legends] Rich Thomas and Bill Traverso were teaching. I took anything I could take that would educate me, from pruning to marketing.
Pulling it all together seems to tie into your publishing pursuits in a way?
Yes, and later on, I found that a liberal arts degree was really good to have when you hopped in a car with a sales rep you didn't know! What do you talk about? You can only talk about the winery story for so long when you’re spending an eight-hour day with someone. I'm an introvert – it's hard to believe, I know – and I basically became an extrovert by profession because I realized that if I never said anything, nobody would know anything about Pedroncelli.
My husband was working in another business, but he always said, just tell your story from your own perspective. I can't be anybody I'm not. And Pedroncelli can't be a brand other than who we really are, which is Italian immigrants with their American dream coming true. Owning this property, which had everything they needed, and a family legacy now through four generations.
Do you think Pedroncelli’s endurance mostly comes down to wine quality, business decisions, and luck? Or is it more owing to character and personality?
It’s a combination. It's determination. And it's being able to ride the waves of the market. So you have to have fortitude and grit to do that.
Meanwhile, the vines are doing their own thing.
Yes. Mother nature bringing rain at the wrong time, knocking half a Sauvignon Blanc vintage out in the middle of bloom, for example. We’ve been agile. I think the root of it is we're farmers… and to be a farmer takes a lot of courage. It also takes a lot of courage even to forecast how much we’re going to make and how much we can sell. In the history of the time we've been in the business, this one's the most turbulent. But the good news is, we had solid roots down.
Julie explains that even as visitation to Dry Creek Valley fluctuates, Pedroncelli has maintained a thriving wholesale business, with bottles in restaurants, wine bars, and wine shops around the country. The family was initially worried when their wholesale partner of 40 years changed hands, but their decades of consistency were rewarded when the new company saw Pedroncelli’s strong foundation and the wines’ steady popularity.
Everybody talks about the wine business being a relationship business, and it really is. It's putting the work in, and having the relationships.
I grew up in Sonoma County, and the Italian wine families and deli families felt like kind of a friendly Mount Rushmore. Any thoughts about the Dry Creek Italian scene?
The immigrants who came to the U.S., that culture always had wine as part of the daily existence. The way we do life [in broader American culture] has changed. By the ‘90s and the 2000s, family dinners were kind of a thing of the past – grandma and grandpa weren't necessarily a part of it. I ended up with a husband who had come with kids, so I had an instant family, and we always made sure we sat down for dinner. Wine was on the table. I would really like to see a comeback of that, because I think that's what's going to help. Making sure that wine is a beverage of moderation, and something that draws people together. The idea of loneliness is definitely part of our culture now, exacerbated by the pandemic. Yes, you can have a great conversation over a martini. Or a beer. But there's something about wine and the food component – that picture is one I want for everybody. Wine has been around for thousands of years; it isn't going to go away.
“Wine was on the table. I would really like to see a comeback of that, because I think that's what's going to help. Making sure that wine is a beverage of moderation, and something that draws people together. The idea of loneliness is definitely part of our culture now…”
There are a lot of other families who have had many, many generations here. And not all of the kids choose to follow. But it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of the longstanding tradition of Italian families who've been in the area. Even beyond that, Dry Creek Valley is a valley full of small family businesses.
Do you sell your grapes to other wineries?
We don't. We use everything we grow. Our production is between 50,000 and 60,000 cases. 75% of it is estate-grown.
That's very impressive.
Every grape we pick comes to the winery. Our Sauvignon Blanc program has grown, so we supplement our own by buying from another grower in Dry Creek Valley.
Is all of your Zinfandel head trained?
Yes. We experimented with some on a wire, but Lance, my brother-in-law, discovered that Zinfandel likes to be head pruned when it’s growing on hillsides. The fruit wants to stay close to the center of the vine, rather than spreading out, so it’s protected from the sun. It likes to really develop slowly. I love that we head prune the vines because, as you can see [she gestures out the window] not one looks the same. They're individual, like our fingerprints. The people who prune these vines have developed each one in its own way, because that's the way it's going to set the fruit and get ripe in the best way possible. I can look at them endlessly.
Does Pedroncelli have an in-house vineyard crew, or hire rotating workers?
We utilize both. We have our own in-house crew, led by Manuel Diaz, our foreman. And then we hire temps when needed, and for harvest. A vineyard management company can pull 40 people together in no time flat to pick a vineyard – so they can pick at night and the grapes stay cool, and our winemaker is thrilled in terms of quality.
Winemaker Montse Reece served alongside John Pedroncelli as assistant winemaker for seven harvests, and was named winemaker in 2015. A native of Catalonia, Montse attended Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain and graduated with a degree in Agricultural Engineering and Enology. She worked at Gloria Ferrer, Rodney Strong Vineyards, and Ferrari-Carano before joining Pedroncelli.
We’re excited to be bringing our members your 2022 Legacy Block Zinfandel, the inaugural vintage. Tell me about the winemaking.
[Julie points o a gentle, low hill in the distance] The Legacy Block, which we now call Block 13, is a 10-year-old vineyard we planted with Rockpile Clone on St. George rootstock, which is really good for the hillside because the fruit set is wonderful. The soil composition for the Home Ranch Vineyard surrounding the winery is Clough gravelly loam. Montse used a special yeast derived from Rockpile to ferment the 2022. With these single-vineyard bottlings and smaller lots, it's just great – Montse’s imagination encompasses so much. It really brings out the best in these Zinfandels. She calls herself a microbiologist at heart.
The 2022 Legacy Block won a Double Gold Medal at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, and was rated 94 points by Wine Review Online. The latter enthused: “Pedroncelli is not resting on its laurels.” Montse aged the wine for 18 months in American oak barrels from Missouri (40% new) with a lighter toast to ensure the fruit would not be overpowered. The result is a lighter, lifted Zin with beautifully complex aromatics of wild berries, licorice, pomegranate, and cinnamon.
Your family has such a pretty last name, and the font on the label is really appealing.
It's interesting that you point out the font, because that font actually was developed for this label. The side of our old cellar has wood block lettering that my uncle John made with his stepdaughter, Maureen. They carved: “Bonded winery 113, J. Pedroncelli Winery.” So that’s our own font, made from the block lettering.
That's a wonderful example of there being no substitute for authentic, handmade, imperfect, human things as a foundation. They just speak to us.
I keep seeing stories about AI in agriculture. And I think: That's only if you buy really expensive new equipment. Also, to me, it's the hands-on thing that's the bottom line… from pruning the vineyard to picking the grapes – whether they're hand harvested or machine harvested, there are humans involved. AI can help you write a marketing piece with all the pretty words, but does it have the soul of the brand in there?
In the real world, Pedroncelli is about to turn 100!
We’ve been around for 99 years and celebrate 100 next year. What better honor of the memory of my grandparents, and my dad who's going to be 94 next month? I always think about how they could have chosen anywhere on Earth to be. They chose here, and it's wonderful just to continue their dream.
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