A Young Winemaker's Perfect Timing in a Historic Deal

The Rixford legacy thrives through vines enriching Santa Cruz Mountain wineries today.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson, author of 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 my forthcoming memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Read the origin story of the book.) 🍇 The Centenarian Playbook is my newsletter, which features longevity tips and stories from Grandma Kay’s long life. It also includes stories of the Gemello Winery, which her late husband, Mario, ran for nearly half a century. 📖 I’m sure you’ll find my maternal grandparents are quite lovable characters.

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Rixford Legacy Continues In the Wines of Santa Cruz Mountains

In 1945, Mario Gemello got a tip that the owners of the historic La Questa Winery were closing and looking to unload 40,000 bottles of premium post-Prohibition Cabernet Sauvignon.

Emmet H. Rixford launched the winery in Woodside in 1884 and had turned it into one of California’s most prestigious brands by the turn of the century. His La Questa Cabernet Sauvignon won several awards, including the gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Expo. 

Rixford died at age 87 in 1928, leaving the winery to his sons, Halsey and Allan. By the mid-forties, Mario Gemello, my grandfather, not yet 30, had taken over the day-to-day operations of the Gemello Winery in Mountain View. His father, John, had semi-retired. For this Rixford deal, John came along to mentor his son.

They drove up to the hillside winery, located where highways 84 and 280 now intersect and the property has since been subdivided into homes. They entered the driveway from the hilltop, then looped down to the lower level of the winery.

“It was a gravity flow winery. The grapes came in on top and they were fermented up high, and then the wine went down to the lower level,” Gemello said. “By the time the wine was ready to sell, it would be on the bottom level.”¹

“It was a gravity flow winery. The grapes came in on top and they were fermented up high, and then the wine went down to the lower level,” Gemello said.

During the Gemello-Rixford negotiations, Mario and his dad were encouraged to take “just about everything,” Mario Gemello said. That included several wine tanks, three of which were 1,000-gallon casks of 1940 to 1944 vintages. In addition, they bought the bottled wines of 1938 and 1939 with the classic Rixford wine labels on them. (Years later, that label would serve as an inspiration for the Gemello wine label.)

“I think the 1944 was the biggest amount, in a 1,222-gallon oval cask,” Gemello said. “It was one of the best casks we had in the winery. We bought the cooperage too. I would say that it came to about 8,000 gallons total, including the bottled wine.”

Gemello added, “We also bought the tanks and equipment, and an old press. We had to pay in cash, too.”

Coming In October: The inspiration and evolution of a wine logo.

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This was a “very historic purchase,” acknowledged wine historian Charles Sullivan in a 1992 interview with my grandfather at his Los Altos home.

That La Questa purchase was so historic it caught the attention of Martin Ray, another industry-leading winemaker. 

Ray was a protégé of Paul Masson, the French immigrant who pioneered Santa Cruz Mountains’ sparkling wine in the late 1800s. Ray would purchase Masson’s Champagne Company in 1936, taking it on a roller coaster of a ride. In 1940, it peaked, producing as much as 2,000 cases of premium wine and 3,000 cases of sparkling wine. A year later, the Cupertino winery would be destroyed in a fire. Two years later, he’d rebuild the Champagne Company and sell it to Joseph E. Seagram & Sons.²

For his next venture, Ray bought land to the north of his former winery, planting Cabernet, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines, coming from cuttings from Rixford (this winery lives on as Mount Eden Vineyards).

After Gemello purchased the 8,000 gallons of La Questa wine in 1945, Ray came to visit my grandfather.

“Do you realize what you have here?” Gemello recalled Ray asking him.

“[Ray] purchased most of the 1,222 gallons of the 1944 wine,” Gemello said. “We bottled it for him in about 1946. Then we started selling what we had left as Cabernet Sauvignon. We got maybe a dollar, dollar-and-a-half per bottle.” ³

Rixford’s Influence Throughout Silicon Valley

Rixford vines live on at a number of Santa Cruz Mountains wineries, including Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino. Cuttings from La Questa were the basis for the original Monte Bello vineyard, planted in 1886.

In 2016, Ridge’s longtime chief winemaker Paul Draper told the New York Times he was originally inspired by Rixford’s guide to winemaking, “The Wine Press and the Cellar,” first published in 1883. 

Draper retired that year, ending a 45-year career at Ridge Vineyards. He was 80 years old.

Other Santa Cruz Mountains wineries, such as Bargetto and Woodside Vineyards still produce wine from grapes rooted in the Rixford cuttings.

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1. Sullivan, Charles, Wines & Winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains, An Oral History, 1992 - 1994 (D.R. Bennion Trust Fund)

2. Sullivan, Charles, Like Modern Edens: Winegrowing in the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains 1798-1981, (Publisher Name) 

3. Sullivan, Charles, Wines & Winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains, An Oral History, 1992 - 1994 (D.R. Bennion Trust Fund)