Iron Horse Estates, Sonoma County VineyardsIron Horse Estates Iron Horse Estates
Iron Horse Estates-Makers of the best champagnes I mean Sparkling Wines
A Brief HistoryIron Horse is one of Sonoma County's most prestigious, small, independent, estate, family owned wineries located in cool, foggy Green Valley. The founding partners, Audrey and Barry Sterling first saw it in the pouring rain in February 1976. Driving down Ross Station Road, they were sure they were lost until they crested the knoll and the view opened up to 300 acres of gentle rolling hills and a wall of trees behind that looked like Camelot to them. Incurable romantics, and having extraordinary vision, they bought the property in just two weeks. In those days, Iron Horse was the most westerly vineyard in Sonoma County. Even the agricultural extension agents from US Davis recommended they look further east as this vineyard was prone to frost as late as June 1st, well after bud-break, and jeopardizing the crop. But having lived in France, the Sterlings knew the cool, foggy climate was exactly what they were looking for to grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. And, as a native San Franciscan, Audrey Sterling had spent part of her summers on the Russian River and was familiar with the area. There were 110 acres in vine at the time, originally planted by Forrest Tancer when he was working for Rodney Strong. Forrest and the Sterlings became partners, upgraded the vineyard, engineered an elaborate frost protection system, built the winery and produced their first vintage of Estate Chardonnay in 1978. The winery officially opened in 1979 with the first vintage of Estate Pinot Noir on Barry Sterling's 50th birthday. The first vintage for the Sparkling Wines was 1980. The name Iron Horse came from a train that stopped at Ross Station at the turn of the 20th Century. The logo, the rampant horse on a weathervane, came from an actual weathervane that was unearthed when they were leveling the ground to build the winery. In the arena of Sparkling Wines, Iron Horse stands at the top.
served at the White House for the past five consecutive presidential administrations, beginning with the historic Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings, which lead to the end of the Cold War. The winery is proud to produce a limited number of special cuvees for Charlie Palmer, Michael Mina, Bradley Ogden, Commander's Palace, and Disney. Iron Horse is truly a family affair. Audrey and Barry's daughter Joy Sterling is the CEO and lives at the foot of the vineyard. The Sterlings' son Laurence, his wife Terry and their children moved to Iron Horse in 1990 and built their home on the far southwest corner of the property. Laurence is Director of Operations. Audrey and Barry are retired, but still reside at the heart of the estate in the original Victorian built in 1876. Forrest Tancer retired in 2005.
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Barry H. SterlingBarry Sterling knew as a child he wanted to be a lawyer. Accelerating his studies in the lower grades, he entered Stanford at the age of 16 and passed the bar examination before graduation at the age of 22. The summer of 1952 was an eventful one for Barry. He graduated, married Audrey, a Stanford classmate, and moved to Washington, D.C., to join the Judge Advocate General's Corps. In the top of his military class, Barry was selected to work at the Pentagon and spent two years representing the United States Army in contract negotiations. He also assisted the Defense Department's legal staff during the McCarthy senate hearings. Wine and food became a major part of life as the Sterlings immersed themselves in the French culture. Home entertainment-still almost a 19th century way of life at that time-increased his knowledge of French cooking and wines. The Paris apartment included an empty wine cave below street level with a space for 10,000 bottles. Barry launched a tasting program, collecting more than 4,000 bottles of the finest wines in Europe. As the family traveled to their home in the South of France, they would zigzag across the country, trying new restaurants and wines. On other occasions they would visit homes of artists, sculptors and authors as well as museums and art galleries, always tasting wines of the area. With friends, they arranged bus trips to wine regions, participating in tastings. Barry became celebrated as one of the few Americans to win a major Paris blind wine tasting as a result of his knowledge of lesser-known Loire Valley wines. Although raised in the city, Barry's family had strong ties to the land. His Canadian grandfather was a grain farmer, his father owned a farm at a young age and his family owned a table grape, date and grapefruit operation in the Coachella Valley. On his mother's side,the family had grown walnuts in Southern California. One of his great grandfathers had, in fact, been a vintner in Moldova.
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Audrey SterlingAudrey Sterling is the grande dame, warm hostess and soothing presence who makes everything naturally elegant at Iron Horse. She is a native-born San Franciscan. After meeting at Stanford University, she married Barry Sterling and moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as a lawyer at the Pentagon and her interest in the political system first developed. As she began entertaining business associates for Barry, she found her horizons so broadened by her guests that she developed a life-long pleasure for being a hostess. Soon a daughter, Joy, and son, Laurence, were born and Audrey embraced parenting. When the family returned to Southern California, Audrey's considerable energy was devoted to the children, remodeling their homes, and being the supportive wife and hostess of a hard-working young lawyer. In 1963 she accepted an appointment by then Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown to serve as a California Fair Employment Practice Commissioner. It was the first time she had worked outside the home and the first time she felt what she said mattered. She describes it as the most challenging and frustrating experience of her life, yet she spent almost four years working to eliminate discrimination in employment and housing. In 1967, Barry joined the Paris office of a law firm, opening another new world to Audrey. She studied French by teaching her teacher English. Joining the American Women's Club in Paris brought an opportunity to visit every art museum in the city. A founder of the Los Angeles Art Museum and the Los Angeles Music Center, Audrey delighted in the weekly visits and was one of only four club members to complete the program out of the 80 who started. The Sterlings continued to entertain for business and pleasure, building an international circle of friends. They also traveled constantly during their stay in Europe-always including the children to enrich their lives-through Spain, Italy, East Africa, North Africa, Germany, Holland, Russia, the Scandinavian countries and throughout France. They took art trips, visiting homes of authors, painters, sculptors, and stopping in antique shops, galleries and restaurants. Audrey had always loved wine, and Barry was stocking a wine cellar. With groups of friends, they would hire a bus and tour the various wine regions. Possessing eclectic taste, she began to accumulate the furnishings which make their home a visual feast. "I'm a collector, not for the activity, because I don't confine myself to one period, but because I love beautiful things, whether very old or new," she explains. When Barry opened an office in London, they bought the almost 300-year-old Queen Anne home of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a great actress and friend of George Bernard Shaw. Although basically "unchangeable" as part of the National Trust, it nevertheless received Audrey's restorative touch, as did at least 17 other homes throughout their marriage, to provide what she and Barry felt was a "perfect" environment for themselves and their guests. In their quest for perfection, they began looking for the ideal homesite, "a place to call our own forever where we could have the satisfaction of seeing the full circle-of making something and enjoying it-like a vineyard." From 1967 into the 1970s, they searched France. Finally in 1974 the Sterlings returned "home" to California and in 1976 they found Iron Horse. They first saw it in a driving rainstorm with the vineyard development only partially completed and the 19th century carpenter gothic house leaning dramatically to one side. Nevertheless, after a taste of wines made from Iron Horse grapes, they knew the search was ended and a dream begun. With help from the former vineyard manager, Audrey developed and ran Iron Horse while Barry, joining her on long weekends, continued his Southern California law practice for the next 10 years until he retired from the law. Never an idle observer, Audrey did whatever was needed at the bare-bones operation as they restored the vineyards, built the winery, built the offices and began to travel and promote the wines. She had never sold a product before in her life, but she plunged in, learning as she went. At the same time, she began renovation of the 1876 redwood Victorian house. A seasoned veteran after so many previous homes, Audrey advised the amused construction crew that they had nine months for the renovation-that a house should take no longer to create than a baby. It was pulled apart, restored, and put back in place. Right on schedule, Audrey moved in amidst the sawdust and the house was miraculously completed shortly thereafter. "Flowers are my passion," says Audrey with such emphasis you immediately understand the necessity of all the greenhouses at Iron Horse and Barry's stepped gardens around the Victorian. Another continuing passion is obviously people. Spontaneous, warm and giving, Audrey is always entertaining-luncheons for the winery's wholesalers, retail store and restaurant owners, receptions for writers and artists, fund-raisers, and parties for 300 or more without hesitation-making each guest feel welcome. She is the most celebrated hostess in Sonoma County. As an early member of the board of Sonoma Wineries Association, Audrey negotiated bringing the San Francisco Symphony in its only annual North Bay performances to add to the celebration of the association's annual Showcase. For several years, Audrey was chair of that event. She also served on the boards of the Sonoma-Marin Fair, the Sonoma County Harvest Fair, the Advisory Council for the Sonoma State School of Wine Business and the Advisory Council for the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University.
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Joy Anne SterlingJoy Sterling represents the second generation at Iron Horse. She is the CEO of the winery and the author of four books: A Cultivated Life, published by Random House, Vintage Feasting, Vineyard: A Year in the Life of California Wine Country with photographs by Andy Katz and A Vintner's Guide to Red Wine published by Simon and Schuster.
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Laurence G. SterlingLaurence is Iron Horse's "Operations Manager," a title which covers multiple responsibilities such as overseeing vineyard operations including our major replanting efforts, legal matters, and picking up the mail in the afternoon. He is also responsible for olive oil production. To celebrate his 40th birthday, the family gave him 140 olive trees.
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Justine SterlingJustine Sterling represents the first of the third generation to join the winery. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2007 and earned a masters degree in journalism from New York University, with a focus on magazine writing. A freelancer, living in New York she has blogged for Chef Eric Ripert and also has contributed articles for Saveur, Wine & Spirits and Time Out New York (both on-line and in print), while holding down a job at Best Cellars Upper Westside. Her role at Iron Horse includes representing the family at distributor events, in-store tastings, restaurant staff trainings, and writing a blog for the winery website. The purpose of the blog is to report on special events, great pairings and all the other terrific experiences a young woman in wine can have in New York. All in-store tastings will be posted on the website. At 24, Justine is already an accomplished foodie. She is naturally very knowledgeable about Iron Horse. Her early tasting experiences include the family's Thanksgiving tradition of thieving freshly fermented wines from the barrel with the caveat that she and her siblings could keep tasting as long as they could conjure up new descriptors with each sip. Having grown up on the vineyard, she can tell the stories behind the wines. She passed the Master Sommelier Level I exam this spring, after taking Jay James' course. |
David Munksgard, WinemakerDavid Munksgard is Iron Horse Vineyards' winemaker. He joined Iron Horse in February 1996, bringing with him 16 years of experience in producing premium sparkling and still wine in California's Russian River Valley and New York's Finger Lakes region. Now in 2010, after 14 years serving as winemaker for Iron Horse, David still sees his position here as evolving much as he sees the wines. "Our goal here is to make better wines each year. That really keeps you on your toes, forces you to re-think everything, nothing is sacred, nothing is cast in stone." Believing that great wines start with great grapes, David has further involved himself with the details of the vineyard. "Here I am 30 years into my career when most would be contemplating retirement and I'm so excited about our future wines I can hardly be contained." David is a 1980 graduate of the Enology/Viticulture program at California State University, Fresno. David and Page, his wife of 38 years, have two sons: Vincent, a teacher who is married and has two sons, and Sterling, who is pursuing a career in law enforcement. Page is registrar at the local Junior College Public Safety Training Center. Of his winemaker position at Iron Horse, "I'm doing everything I've always wanted to do. I'm working with estate-grown grapes; I'm making still and sparkling wines; I'm working for and with some very fine people all of whom are driven by one single goal--to make wonderful wines that we can all be proud of. Summing up his feelings about winemaking, David concludes with: "For those of us who are fortunate enough to have found ourselves in winemaking, it is not that we should be winemakers, we simply MUST BE winemakers. Nothing else will satisfy that need to craft; to imprint onto and into our wines what we feel and see when we walk the vineyard and dream of what it might be." THE VINEYARDS Iron Horse is located in Green Valley in the coolest, foggiest part of the Russian River Valley, just 13 miles from the Pacific as the crow flies. There are approximately 160 acres in vine, planted exclusively to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It is an exquisite estate-all gentle, rolling hills, with a spectacular view from the winery clear across Sonoma County to Mount St. Helena. The predominant soil type is Gold Ridge soil-a sandy clay loam that has excellent drainage and is perfectly balanced in terms of its mineral elements, making it the most sought after soil type in Sonoma, especially for Pinot Noir. The property is divided into specific blocks, which are each farmed individually, harvested separately and then vinified as if each block was a "single vineyard". Iron Horse Vineyard Description We are re-planting 50 acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This is a major undertaking, which we believe will take our wines to an even higher level. Our viticultural knowledge has advanced light years from what we knew when the original 110 acres were planted in 1970. What was once one block is now broken down into five, further honing in on the estate's unique characteristics-each being planted with specific rootstock, clonal selections, trellising, even, in many areas, a change in row direction, with the goal of pulling more distinctive flavors out of the ground. We are engaged in what's called precision farming under the guidance of the current leading viticultural expert, Daniel Roberts, PhD aka Dr. Dirt. It's exciting to look out at a beautifully rounded knoll, now a mound of fresh green cover crop, and dream about what's to come. The Iron Horse family is a highly acclaimed pioneer in the Green Valley appellation within the Russian River area of Sonoma County. For more information on this cool, foggy and distinctive area and its signature wines, please visit Green Valley's website
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Please Come Visit us at Iron Horse
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