It's a fairy tale typical of the wine country. You’ve read about it and seen it in the movies. A wine-loving couple visits Healdsburg, loves it so much they decide to get married there and end up staying. They buy vineyard property and the rest is history. Yup, that’s what happened with us.

 

Rob’s wine interests started in high school. His father had a PhD in botany and could literally grow anything anywhere. At Dad’s home, flowers spontaneously grew out of cracks in the sidewalk. Dad grew grapes in the back yard and made wine out of them – bad wine, but wine nonetheless. The wine was good enough and in large enough quantity for Rob and his crazy high school freak friends to get a buzz without Dad knowing any was missing.

 

Rob’s father taught him the basics of how to make wine. 10 years later, Rob decided to become a home brewer and made beer for several years. Fermentation is a part of who he is. Fast forward.

 

Beth and Rob “re-met” after a 25 year hiatus. Let’s save that story for another time. Beth’s wine interests grew along side of her interest in Rob. With our busy lives, vacations were closer to home, either at the ocean or in California wine country – Paso Robles, Healdsburg, Napa Valley, Amador. Upon returning from a marathon wine tasting trip to Paso, we stacked our bounty in our living room. As the weather warmed up, we realized we needed to properly store our liquid assets. Small fridge morphed to big cabinet and later to a full blown multi-room cellar. Eventually we decided to make our own wine in barrel-sized lots. For several years, we made wine and gave most of it away for gifts. People were either really nice to us or genuinely liked it.

 

Our tastes moved towards Pinot Noir. We found the wine elegant, highly differentiated from label to label and from vineyard to vineyard, and wonderfully food-friendly. In a moment of pure insanity, not knowing what possessed us, we decided to specialize in making single vineyard Pinot Noirs. Although hard to make, we are encouraged with the results.

 

That’s how Berkstone Vineyards was born. After Rob’s many years in the software industry and Beth’s in retail management, all we do now is make wine, drink wine and live wine. In Healdsburg, wine is currency. You can trade it for hamburgers, air conditioning repair – you name it. Healdsburg is pure heaven - Tuscany in California. We wouldn’t trade it for anywhere on earth.