Tag: wine club

In the small crossroad town of Los Olivos, California, a handsome old barn wood sign with the name "Blair Fox" stands along the street. Those familiar with the region’s finest wines realize they’ve come across something special: the tiny tasting room where renowned Winemaker Blair Fox and his wife Sarah pour their family’s own boutique wines.

A Santa Barbara native, Blair earned a degree in Viticulture and Enology at UC-Davis. He consulted for Fess Parker Winery and then spent a year making wine in McLaren Vale, South Australia.

For more than 100 years, the George Mettler family has farmed Harney Lane, a 100-acre parcel just east of Lodi, California.

But it wasn’t until 2006 that George, his wife Kathleen, daughter Jorja, and son-in-law Kyle Lerner, decided to venture into winemaking. Jorja left her career as a physical therapist to help with the winery; Kyle—who jokes that farming is legalized gambling with more variables—took on added responsibilities to manage the winery; and Kathleen applied her strong hospitality skills to organizing the tasting room. Even George’s two grandchildren, Kirsten and Ian, who represent Harney Lane’s sixth generation, played a part. The family now has complete control of their wines from vineyard, to the bottle, to the consumer. All the Lodi vineyard grapes are handpicked, hand sorted, then fermented in small lots and barrel aged.

In 1852, an ambitious young Scottish immigrant named James Skinner discovered the unvarnished beauty of the Sierra Foothills—along with an ideal climate in which to grow Rhône varietals. In less than ten years, he established one of the first commercial wineries in Fair Play, California, a family business that thrived well into the early 1900’s.

One hundred and fifty years—and seven generations— later, James’s great-great-great-grandson Mike and his wife Carey set out to bring Skinner wines back to the Sierra Foothills. With their inaugural release in 2007, the Skinner family restored a legacy that is not only a part of a rich family heritage, but also California’s early winemaking history.