History of Rodney Strong Vineyards
In a way, our history goes back a hundred years, when Sonoma County settlers planted our heritage River West Zinfandel vineyard (just behind what would later become our winery) in 1904, and Tom Klein's great-grandmother was tragically killed in the powerful 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Having lost their mother in a city in chaos, Sol Klein and his brothers were raised in an orphanage, and later found structure and sustenance by serving in the U.S. Navy during World War I. After getting out they began working to establish a small business buying and selling beans at the busy seaport of Stockton, thus beginning an agricultural legacy that remains intact today. The success of Klein Brothers meant eventually acquiring land on which they would grow potatoes, almonds, tomatoes, asparagus, and more, but strangely enough, never beans!
Our founder, Rodney D. Strong, was born in 1927, in Camas, WA, during the heart of the Great Experiment otherwise known as Prohibition, an ironic time for someone who would later be known as a visionary winegrowing pioneer to begin his life! His first love was dance, and by 15 he was practicing 5 hours a day, training for what would be a successful career, refining his skills with the likes of Martha Graham and George Ballanchine at the American School of Ballet, and highlighted by 4 years dancing in Paris, including lead dancer at the Lido in its early years. Rod returned to the U.S. in 1951, to dance and to teach dance, but his head was now filled with the wondrous aromas and flavors of so many fine French wines.
In that same year, 1951, both Tom Klein and a gentleman by the name of Rick Sayre were born. Both born into agricultural families, Tom followed in his father's footsteps and pursued a Stanford education, knowing that the bean business awaited him, while Rick found himself running his family's prune-plum orchard in Windsor. Coincidentally, although they each shared a strong desire to make a life in agriculture, neither of them really embraced the idea of a lifetime in their family's chosen businesses. Rick struck out on his own, joining up with the California Forest Service, and finding a special niche for himself as the company cook at the Occidental station. Between literally putting out fires, Rick began honing his culinary skills, and showed, through the meals he created for the crew, what a great palate can do for food preparation, a quality that would later come in handy.
One of Rod Strong's more famous quotes is "I knew I couldn't be an old dancer, but I could be an old winemaker." So, retiring, more or less, from dance in 1959, Rod married his lovely red-headed dancing partner Charlotte Ann Winson, whom he danced with in a performance called "New Faces" on Broadway. They moved to Tiburon, purchasing a century-old railroadmen's boarding house on the waterfront. In those early days, Rod would search for wine to his liking, have it delivered to the cellar of the old house, and blend and bottle it to his taste. Upstairs, Charlotte would put out the Wine Tasting sign, and being fortuitously located right next to the Tiburon yacht club, they had a ready customer base. Tiburon Vintners was born.
But Rod yearned to make wine, and in 1962 purchased an old vineyard and winery building in Windsor, once known as the Monte Carlo Winery. There he crafted his first wines by doing: asking questions, taking classes, making mistakes, and learning. Once he'd mastered the basics, he quickly came to the inevitable conclusion that all winemakers must reach: quality winemaking requires quality grapes, and the best way to assure the latter is to grow your own, and get good at it. By 1968, Rod had gotten good enough at making and selling wine, that he was able to convince financiers to loan him the money he needed to acquire land on which to establish vineyards. In those days, this county was dairy country, with pears and prune-plums, but very little in the way of grapes. Armed with the latest climate data from UC Davis, and equipped with an uncanny, visionary approach to selecting sites where great grapes would grow, Rod purchased and planted many of the best vineyards we have today; all right here in Sonoma County.
By 1970, Rod was breaking ground for a new winery building in the recently planted vineyard he called River East, in Healdsburg. Originally a large prune-plum orchard, Rod established chardonnay, pinot noir, and an impressive, efficient winery building, which today houses our tasting room and lower cellar.
1970 was Tom's first year at Stanford, and the first year Rick Sayre found himself making wine, taking a harvest position at Simi winery in Healdsburg. Within 3 months, Rick was promoted to assistant winemaker, and he began to feel he'd found his calling. Over the next nine years, Rick remained assistant winemaker, being passed over as "too young" while working with the likes of Zelma Long, Robert Stemmler, Mary Ann Graf, and most notably, Andre Tchelistcheff, who had been hired as consulting enologist, and took Rick "under his wing". What Rick would learn from Andre, not just skills, but a certain winemaker mind-set, would serve him well in the future. And in 1979, when Rod Strong was looking for a full time person to take over winemaking, he placed a call to Rick, and Rick began at Rodney Strong Vineyards that December.
1979 was also the year Tom finished his Stanford MBA, and began working for Mckinsey & Company, an international management-consulting firm. One job the McKinsey team was hired for in the early eighties was to take a look at a well-known winery in Sonoma County, study its business, and make suggestions for improvements. Tom got to meet Rod and Rick, and evaluated the potential of the company. He actually thought it had a lot of potential. He also liked the wine.
Shortly thereafter, one afternoon while enjoying a glass of wine outdoors at a historic Sonoma winery, Tom had an epiphany: he loved agriculture, but not the family bean business; he had a valuable degree in business, and wanted to put it to use; and he loved wine, in fact, he was already a collector. He said to himself "I can do this. I'm getting into the wine business!" Tom was going to be one of the few fortunate enough to combine vocation and avocation. It would be just a few short years before Tom would convince his family to purchase Rodney Strong Vineyards in 1989. Tom envisioned Rodney Strong Vineyards, as it existed at the beginning of the 1990s, as a true diamond in the rough. He saw tremendous potential in the business side of the winery, but true to his family's values, he knew that ultimately, no matter how well a business is run, there had to be quality in the product. It had to be in the bottle.
And it was, but Tom wanted more. Tom felt that Rodney Strong Vineyards could and should be a leader in Sonoma County, and asked Rick if he had all the tools he needed to get there. Rick agreed that the existing vineyards could make better wines, but the winery needed attention. Over the next decade, the Klein family funded the purchase of fermentation tanks, four state of the art Bucher presses, a steady infusion of new oak barrels, wood tanks, an on-site case goods warehouse, custom barrel servicing equipment, six rotary fermenters, a new crush pad and scale house, a conveyance system to perform whole-cluster pressing on white grapes, and a 100 thousand square foot temperature controlled barrel storage building. It worked. Sales grew from 69,000 cases in 1989 to nearly half a million by the end of the decade, and many of our more popular wines were being sold on allocation only.
But the Klein family, with Rod's legacy of vineyard ownership, didn't stop at the winery. By the early 2000s they had acquired an additional seven vineyards totaling 606 acres in the Alexander Valley, Chalk Hill, and Russian River Valley appellations. The vineyard acquisitions required careful stewardship, and in 2001 they hired seasoned viticuturalist (and avid fly-fisherman) Doug McIlroy as Director of Grower and Vineyard Operations.
Doug, like Rick, grew up in Sonoma County working in his family's prune plum orchard, which was eventually planted to grapes. Grape growing became his passion, and Doug's dual university degrees in Viticulture and Economics served that passion well for the nine years he spent in the many vineyards of Fetzer and Kendall-Jackson, as well as his family's vineyard.
Joining fellow fishermen Rick and Tom here at Rodney Strong Vineyards, the three anglers, each in their own way, fish for the essence of Sonoma County from 100 years of history; the land through the grapes and into wine.