History

Cris & Lorna Strotz purchased the land that would become Pickberry in 1975 from the Raffo family. At the time, the land was open pasture, an old plum orchard and blackberry patches. A 3 room house on the property, last used in the 1940’s, had been damaged by curious cows and reclaimed by nature.

Our daughter, Kirsten, provides a name -- our first few weekends on the land were spent exploring, camping and most importantly, picking delicious blackberries. About our third weekend, while we were loading our car on a foggy San Francisco morning, our daughter Kirsten, who was 2 1/2 at the time, asked “Are we going back to that Pickberry Place?” The name seemed perfect to the whole family and our place in the country became “Pickberry Place”.

After two years of camping, first in a tent and then in an old trailer, we built a one-room cabin with sleeping lofts, which kept us out of the rain and was “home” at Pickberry for the next 20 years. There was no indoor plumbing, so it was still like camping, but beds, a wood burning stove and electric lights made living there much more comfortable.

The land on the northeast side of Sonoma Mountain had been planted in wine grapes since the early 1900’s. Some of the vineyards had been removed because of phyloxera and others were removed during prohibition, but many famous ones remain including Milo Shepard’s Jack London Vineyard -- initially planted by Jack London -- and Patrick Campbell’s Laurel Glen.

Our neighbor to the north, Guido Farina, had a vineyard which had been planted in the 1960’s and was doing well, so we knew that grapes could thrive at Pickberry. In 1982, after putting in a well which had adequate flow to irrigate a vineyard, common sense lost out to our dreams, and we began planting grapes. Most of the work was done by our family with help from friends, students from Rich Thomas’ viticulture program at the Santa Rosa JC and planting help from neighbor Jim Katon and his crew. Our son Whitney at the age of 12 became a tractor driver and field worker, and Kirsten, now 10, became skilled at putting together t-arms and kept the rest of us going with lemonade deliveries. In 1982 and ’83 we planted 15 acres and in 1985-6 after buying more land from the Raffo family we planted an additional 15 acres.

What grapes do we plant?

The decision was difficult for neophyte farmers. After taking courses at UC Davis, talking to consultants and industry “experts”, and after lots of family soul searching we decided to plant Chardonnay, and at Whitney’s urging, Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Perhaps the most helpful advice came from Al Baxter who had a vineyard and winery on Mt Veder. Al advised, based on his experience with similar soils and terrain, that we should avoid varieties that did well on rich valley floor soil. He pointed out that we would not be able to compete in quantity with our shallow hillside soil, but that we would be able to produce excellent quality fruit. He also suggested that we choose varieties based on wines we like to drink (perhaps assuming that we would drink what we could not sell).

In our excitement to plant a vineyard, we had not given much thought to who would buy our fruit. Following the concept of “build it and they will come”, we planted and tended our baby vines, and only later started to wonder about a market for the grapes. One of the students from the Junior College who worked with us at that time was Mike McAuley. Mike is now a winemaker in Oregon with his own Bordeaux Blend wine, but while he was working at Pickberry, he had been on a field trip to the Benziger Family’s Glen Ellen vineyard which is about 2 miles from Pickberry. The Benzigers bought their vineyard in the early 1980’s and moved their family from the east coast to Glen Ellen. Mike, after meeting the Benzigers on the field trip was very impressed with them. He pointed out that they had a family operation like we did, they were interested in making quality wine like we were, they were nearby on Sonoma Mountain and most importantly they were good people!

With Mike Mcauley’s introduction, we met the Benziger Family and agreed with his assessment -- they were great people! We began selling to them with our first harvest in 1984. The patriarch of the family, Bruno Benziger, drove a tractor from their vineyard to ours to help with our first harvest (even though we are only 2 miles apart as a crow flies, it was a 45 minute tractor drive on rough winding country roads).

We had wanted to have the grapes in a vineyard designated wine, but in the 1980’s Benzigers did not plan to do vineyard designates. Mike Benziger suggested Joel Peterson as a winemaker for our Bordeaux grapes. Joel, who at the time was specializing in Zinfandel, was interested in adding a Bordeaux blend and was willing and able to do vineyard designated wines. We met Joel, liked him and his wines very much, and he thought that our grapes would make an exciting wine. The first Ravenswood Pickberry was the 1986 vintage. Primarily a Cabernet blend with 10% Merlot and 40% Cab Franc, the ’86 was a wonderful wine -- solid fruit, strong tannins and beautiful structure for aging. It was the first of what is now a long string of outstanding, award winning Pickberry wines from Ravenswood. We also continued to sell grapes to the Benziger family until 1994.

“Go with the Award Winners”

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s it became apparent that Pickberry, like most California vineyards which were planted on AxR rootstock, would need to be replanted to deal with phyloxera, a root louse that was able to survive and thrive on the AxR rootstock. After discussions with Joel and Mike we decided to eliminate the Chardonnay and just replant the Bordeaux varieties. As the winemakers said, “your chardonnay is good, but your red blends are winning awards”. With their encouragement, we went with what experience had shown was the best choice for the site.

Initial Sales