Thursday Open Thread: African American Winemakers

GOOD MORNING POU!

We continue our series on African American Winemakers with….

THE STERLING FAMILY

Esterlina Vineyards & Winery
Mendocino County, California

From Santa Cruz Sentinel, Nov. 2009:

Sometimes wine tastes a bit richer when you know who’s making it.

The Sterling family has been making wine under the Esterlina label, which is their name in Spanish, for more than a decade now, but their love of the land dates back decades. One of only a handful of black families that owns vineyards in America, the Sterlings farmed for three generations before getting into the wine business.

The patriarch, Murio Sterling, made wine at home while ranching grass-fed cattle and growing corn in the Central Valley. He and wife Doris eventually jumped into the wine business with their four sons — Stephen, Chris, Craig and Eric — all of whom work in the family business.

A recent tasting with other visitors at Esterlina Vineyards’ 20-acre spread — at the end of a two-mile gravel road off Highway 128 — felt like a family reunion. Crew member Dan Voisan put the eight of us at ease with a bowl of cheese puffs, healthy pours and a gracious grin.

“Anything that makes you come back to Mendocino,” Voisan said.

Stephen Sterling, who serves as Esterlina’s vice president of marketing and sales, said, “We like to have people come up without all the pomp and circumstances that go into wine tasting in some areas.”

In creating a winery, Sterling said, “One objective was to make wines that our friends could afford to enjoy and drink and have a good time with.”

The Sterlings grew for large producers before striking out with their

own moderately priced label in 1998, when they released their first Riesling and Pinot Noir. Their wine has continually won high praise, including gold medals at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition for Esterlina’s 2005 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir and 2006 Cole Ranch Riesling.

Sterling’s brother Eric, a physician, is the company’s winemaker, while Craig, an attorney, manages the tasting room and offers legal counsel. Chris is the vineyard manager.

Besides the Philo property acquired in 2001, the family owns vineyards in the Russian River Valley and on the 253-acre Cole Ranch in Mendocino, which is the smallest appellation in America. The Sterlings, who also own Everett Ridge Winery in Healdsburg, take pride in making wines sustainable, using primarily native yeast for fermentation, among other measures.

They also take pride in overcoming cultural barriers to winemaking. Stephen Sterling said less than one percent of the country’s 7,000 wineries are black-owned. Besides the considerable cost of buying vineyards, Sterling said many black entrepreneurs probably haven’t thought about becoming vintners because wine drinking isn’t as pervasive among black families as it is in white cultures. Grape cultivation also has long been the provenance of European families.

“A lot of African Americans don’t live on farms anymore,” Sterling said. “They don’t get to experiment with growing fruits and vegetables, let alone vineyards.”