ABOUT US

No joke—our growers are the bomb.

These are guys, and families, that know what "place" means and know what "connection" means. These are guys that know their home and their land in a way that many of us—most of us—will never know. These are guys that do what they do because that's utterly and perfectly just the way it is. It chose them and they chose it.

Actually, we should probably say we're their winemakers…

Gary Mangels

If you get Gary on the phone he might just be out tending to the cows, and it's probably too windy to talk out there but he'll answer and try. Where he is when you call isn't important except for one not-so-little thing—he'll be home, just where he wants to be. Take a look, would you want to be somewhere else?

When Gary walks the fields surrounding his home with his Jack Russell Terrier, he looks out at earth and sky and hills that his family has looked at since 1876 when they first arrived in Suisun Valley. If you visit, you'll find roads named Mangels. Think about that. Chances are none of us will have roads intentionally named after our families.

In 1941, Gary's grandparents purchased a ranch in Sonoma near Sears Point where the Nascar track is now. Gary started ranching there, something he still does—hence those cows. It wasn't long till Gary moved back to Suisan to the place he still lives and ranches and grows Manifesto!'s grapes. Those first vineyards were planted in 1991, and he and his brother John look after it all. Gary is kinda 80/20 grapes to cows guy; his brother is the opposite.

If you ask, "Gary, you seem to derive a lot of contentment just from driving your own tractor in your own vineyard," you'll get a pretty simple answer.

"Yeah," he'll say. "I do." And he'll fully mean it.

Lanny Capp

The Roaring Twenties were coming to an abrupt end as Wall Street crashed and the Great Depression began. The Geneva Convention was signed and the 1st Academy Awards were held. And Lanny's grandfather planted the Capp family's first grape vines. Vines, by the way, that are still producing grapes.

The Capp family farmed many fruit crops on that land, but in the late 1960s they left that behind and began tending grapes and grapes alone. Lanny has farmed those very same grapes—and others in the Suisun Valley—since high school. As did his grandfather, father, two sons and two grandsons.

But it wasn't just his father's side of the family walking the land. Lanny's mother's great-great grandfather built the Hudson House, which is now on the Beringer Estate. In fact, the Hudson family began farming in the late 1860s, and sold grapes to Charles Krug. Yes, the Charles Krug who started the first winery in Napa Valley.

When Lanny takes a break from the land and a history that's as old as winemaking in Northern California, he heads to where it's cold. Winter often finds Lanny at the Arctic Circle snowmobiling the Arctic Sea and staying with Eskimo families. Cold and harsh and isolation are words that make Lanny smile, that give him peace. "I don't head south during the winter," he says. "I head north."

Oh, and if you're abalone diving on the northern coast of California, look for Lanny. He might just be there.