After taking a chance on a foggy valley in west Sonoma County, the Sterling family has grown Iron Horse Vineyards into a world-class destination.
It’s 11 a.m. on a Friday, and already a dozen people line the long, wooden planks balanced on wine barrels that make up Iron Horse Vineyards’ unassuming, outdoor tasting area. A colorful chalkboard announces what’s being poured today, and the sounds of classic Motown compete with birdsong. The fog that normally blankets the hills on summer mornings is absent, leaving an unobstructed view of nearby apple trees, heavy with fruit, acres of softly rolling vineyards and the unmistakable peaks of Mount Saint Helena to the east. This is wine tasting, west Sonoma County style, at Sebastopol’s Iron Horse Vineyards.
Finding the perfect spot
Iron Horse Vineyards, named for the train that brought visitors to Sebastopol’s Ross Station a century ago, is the business venture and home of Barry and Audrey Sterling, who met as classmates at Stanford University and were married in 1952. After several years in Washington, D.C., they settled in Barry’s native Los Angeles, where he opened his corporate law practice in 1960.
The two started a family and quickly became active in the community. They were founding members of both the Los Angeles Music Center and Los Angeles Art Museum. Barry worked on a number of state and national campaigns, including holding the office of treasurer of California’s Democratic Party, and, in 1963, Audrey was named a commissioner of the California Fair Employment Practices Commission.
It was a trip to Europe for Barry’s 30th birthday that sparked the busy couple’s lifelong love affair with France. When an opportunity for Barry to practice law in that country arose in 1966, the Sterlings packed up their family and moved to Paris.
They remained in Europe for the next decade, traveling frequently with their children to expose them to the wider world. The couple was enjoying learning all they could about wine, entertaining international friends and business associates, and stocking their own growing wine collection.
When the pull to purchase a vineyard of their own grew impossible to resist, they began their search for the perfect property in France. But after years spent looking in vain, they decided it was time to head back to California in 1974.
Though a native San Franciscan, Audrey had spent several childhood summers in the Russian River area, and it was those memories that brought them to Sonoma County. They purchased the 350 acres that were to become Iron Horse Vineyards in 1976.
At the time, the property was farther west than any other Sonoma County vineyard, and people thought they were crazy to risk the unpredictable frosts that pop up late in the season. It had first been planted by Rodney Strong, and after the purchase, the Sterlings’ first improvements were to put in the reservoir and complete frost protection methods.
By 1978, they’d produced their first bottles of Chardonnay. The winery officially opened in 1979 with the introduction of its estate Pinot Noir, followed a year later by its first vintage of sparkling wines. For the first 10 years, Barry continued to practice law in Southern California, commuting up for long weekends, while Audrey worked with their vineyard manager to restore the vineyard, remodel the existing farmhouse and begin the process of marketing Iron Horse’s wines.
Since those early days, Iron Horse has gained a worldwide reputation for its award-winning wines and gracious hospitality. Barry and Audrey are now officially retired, though their contributions are still felt strongly within their family, in the greenhouses and gardens, when entertaining the property’s many guests and as patrons of the local arts community.
The second generation comes home
Today, the Sterlings’ children, Joy and Laurence, have taken over the reins at Iron Horse. The siblings seem to have inherited their parents’ energy and commitment to making a difference in the world around them.
Joy Sterling is CEO of the company and a tireless representative for the brand. An outgoing and adventurous spirit, she left her career at a major news network in 1985 and came to live and work at Iron Horse, traveling extensively to promote the winery. She took on the role of CEO in 2006.
Joy has published four books, including A Cultivated Life, which details a year in the life of Iron Horse, and Vineyard, which celebrates the Sonoma and Napa wine growing regions and features photographs by Andy Katz. She’s on the board of trustees of the Leakey Foundation (a scientific organization that funds research into human evolution) and was recently appointed to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture.
“I’m really thrilled to be starting this new chapter in my life,” she says. “This board advises the governor and secretary of agriculture on the most extraordinary breadth of issues, such as water issues, food safety, climate change and immigration.”
Laurence Sterling, an attorney like his father, is Iron Horse’s director of operations and handles many of its legal affairs. He worked in mergers and acquisitions in Los Angeles prior to moving his family onto the vineyard in 1990. He and his wife, Terry (also an attorney), have raised their three children in a home they built on the property.
Laurence has also been an active leader in the wine industry, acting as previous director of The Wine Institute and a member of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Industry Sector Advisory Council for Consumer Goods. He’s involved in several charitable organizations, notably as a former board president of Redwood Empire Food Bank.
Since neither Laurence nor Joy technically grew up in this part of the world, I ask Joy whether moving onto the property felt like a homecoming.
“Absolutely,” she says emphatically. “My parents had lived here for a while, so I’d come to visit a lot. Besides, who wouldn’t be at home here?”
One bottle at a time
During my first visit to Iron Horse, Joy pours me a glass of 2010 Heritage Clone Chardonnay, creamy with lovely citrus flavors, and we head down an easy slope from the tasting area to the structure that houses the winery’s sparkling wine production. She jokes about the grand scale of their operations as we greet the three workers carefully attending to one bottle at a time.
I’m offered the chance to taste one of their sparkling wines prior to corking, just after the yeast has been disgorged, and it’s a revelation. Such delicate flavors and the tiniest, smoothest bubbles I’ve ever experienced.
Iron Horse is perhaps best known for its sparkling wines, such as the 2003 Brut LD and 2008 Wedding Cuvée, a rosy colored, not-too-sweet sparkler made from predominantly Pinot grapes that was ranked second in American sparkling wines in a 2012 New York Times tasting and has been raised to many a bride and groom over the years.
It also produces seasonal offerings such as Winter’s Cuvée, made with a bit of estate bottled brandy in the dosage (the mixture of wine sweetened with cane sugar that’s added following the wine’s secondary fermentation that determines a sparkling wine’s sweetness,) and Summer’s Cuvée, a crisp, mineral sparkler perfect for pairing with a plate of vine-ripened tomatoes.
The winery’s Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and sparkling wine fruit is are all estate grown, meaning only grapes from Iron Horse’s surrounding vineyards are used. The sparkling wines are all bottle-fermented and aged from three to eight years.
Iron Horse’s grape-growing methods have continued to evolve along with the rest of the industry. After noticing the slowing yields of vines now more than 40 years old, the Sterlings began the lengthy process of replanting the vineyards in 2005. The task of planting and budding over 121,000 new vines by hand was just completed in May.
Replanting has given them the opportunity to extend their use of “precision viticulture,” a term used to describe dividing vineyards into smaller blocks to manage conditions on a block-by-block basis, letting growers make planting, pruning and irrigation decisions based on what’s best for that block, as conditions and vine needs can vary greatly, especially in the cool, foggy Green Valley of Russian River Valley AVA.
Signature vintages
At the historic 1985 summit meetings between President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, which marked the end of the Cold War, the two leaders famously raised a glass to each other with Iron Horse sparkling wine.
Since then, Iron Horse has developed a prestigious distinction: Its wines have been served at official White House functions during each of the last five presidential administrations. It’s been served to ambassadors, a pope and even the queen of England. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden hosted China’s then-vice president (now president) Xi Jinping at the State Department in 2012, he toasted to the two nations strengthening relationship with Iron Horse’s Chinese Cuvée (a special bottling the winery released to mark 2012, the Year of the Snake). This past June, President Obama welcomed Mr. Xi for dinner in Southern California and served Iron Horse 2004 Chinese Year of the Snake Cuveé. For 2014, the winery is planning a special release to celebrate Year of the Horse.
The walls of Iron Horse’s offices are lined with photos and menus from these events, to the point that they’re covering every available inch (save the ceiling). Each of them represents an important moment in history that the Sterling family, in some small way, was able to be a part of.
Iron Horse’s winemaker, David Musksgard, has also created a number of signature vintages in limited quantities, including a special vintage called Ocean Reserve Blanc de Blancs, donating $4 for each bottle sold to the National Geographic’s Ocean Initiative to support sustainable fishing practices and establish Marine Protected Areas worldwide. The family has also produced specialty cuvées for celebrity chefs like Michael Mina, Charlie Palmer and Bradley Ogden, as well as vintages like Fairy Tale Cuvée, which is bottled especially for Disney (it’s featured at Disney theme parks and onboard Disney cruise ships).
Carrying the flag for Green Valley
Iron Horse isn’t particularly hard to find, but it is a bit off the beaten path—up a curvy, one-way road that takes you under century-old oaks, between blackberry brambles and past a few farm buildings until you emerge on the gravel parking lot. “No one stumbles onto this place,” Joy confirms. “You have to be looking for us.”
The family has chosen not to rent the winery out for weddings or other private events, with the exception of an annual Earth Day event it hosts in April. The event is usually a fund-raiser for a charity of the speaker’s choice, with past speakers including entrepreneur Ted Turner (whose Captain Planet organization teaches children about environmentalism) and Gil Grosvenor, chairman emeritus of the National Geographic Society (who chose that that organization as his beneficiary). Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is scheduled to be the speaker at next year’s event, though O’Connor’s ongoing role as a sitting federal judge means it won’t be a fund-raiser, since it’s considered unethical.
Iron Horse continues to find ways to draw people up the lane. The winery welcomes the “Oyster Girls,” Aluxa and Jazmin Lalicker, on Sunday afternoons to sell their Petite Miyagi oysters fresh from Tamales Bay. Wine club events are held onsite throughout the year, such as a pig roast and Pinot Noir release party in September. Iron Horse is also a frequent destination for first dates, bachelorette parties and surprise engagements.
Another way Iron Horse is working to bring people to Green Valley is through its involvement with the new website and mobile app Vinissential. Created by two British documentary television filmmakers, it’s made up of 45 short films shot in Green Valley over the course of one year, from one harvest to the next. Users can watch features spotlighting wineries like Iron Horse, DeLoach and Marimar Estate, cooking demonstrations with chefs like Charlie Palmer and videos that let them experience the crush first-hand.
“My mother applied for the federal designation [for the Green Valley of Russian River Valley AVA] and her attorney of record was my father, so we carry the flag for Green Valley,” says Joy proudly. “I just think it’s a unique and privileged part of the world that produces extraordinary wines.”
The next generation of stewardship
Laurence’s daughter, Barrie Sterling, has more in common with her grandfather than just the pronunciation of her name. At 23, she shares his love of gardening and his appreciation for the complexity and pleasures of wine. She’s part of the third generation of Sterlings to call this valley home, along with sister, Justine (28), a food and wine writer now living in New York City, and brother, Joseph (18), a student.
After attending Barnard College in New York City, Barrie’s now wearing several hats around the vineyard. The first involves selling the wines—visiting with wine buyers, sommeliers and restaurant owners around the North Bay, Texas and beyond. She worked harvest this year, sorting grapes in the field, and she’s also given many winery tours in her day and poured for guests in the tasting room, sharing her knowledge of the wines, the area and her family’s stories.
Barrie says she’s always happy to provide as much or as little information about the wines as guests would like. “Some people really want to get all the technical details, and some just want to drink the wine, which is totally fine,” she says. “Wine is such a deep subject and you can go in so many directions with it. That said, you don’t need to know all about wine to drink it and like it, or to get the benefit of it.”
Another part of her role—and clearly a meaningful one for her—is working alongside her grandfather tending the property’s three-acre vegetable garden. Under the duo’s care, it’s producing more than the family can use in their kitchens and for wine club events. Barrie hopes to get some of the produce into local farmers markets in the future, but, for now, is happy to supply the winery’s workers with the bounty.
She’s also eager to see what else the property can yield. The family’s olive trees currently provide them with enough olive oil for personal use, but not quite enough to market successfully.
“Moving forward, I think this property has a lot to offer. It’s something I’d like to explore,” she says. “We just need to figure out how to best take care of the land and let it show us how it can best take care of us.”
Barrie is as enthusiastic as her aunt in singing the praises of Green Valley’s wines. “It really is special here in Green Valley, and I’m still learning what it is that makes it unique,” she says. “I know part of it is that, being in this climate, we get this really lovely, high acidity, but it’s an acidity that’s well-balanced by the flavors in the wine.”
It’s still early in her life and career to say where her passions will lead her, but Barrie says she’s open to learning everything she can about this beautiful piece of land and the things that grow on it.
“I’m incredibly grateful to this property, everything it’s given me and continues to give me,” she says. “Looking forward, I feel a great sense of stewardship.”
The center of it all
Barry and Audrey still live in the center of it all, literally and figuratively, in the 1876 Victorian farmhouse they’ve occupied for nearly four decades. “They have a phenomenal number of opinions for retired people, but this is their vision, and Laurence and I just feel lucky to be here to help fulfill it,” says Joy. “We cherish and want their involvement, as much as they’re willing to give.”
The intrinsic value of beauty and a job done right is what the Sterlings are trying to deliver in every aspect of the winery, from how it looks to how the wines taste to the hospitality with which guests are received.
“My mother will tell you, according to her sense of luxury, a vine-ripened tomato is more valuable that a tin of caviar,” says Joy. “Living in France opened the door to the whole concept of food, wine and gracious living, and it’s interesting to me that there’s not much difference between that sensibility and what it means to be a Californian. I think we just have our priorities straight.”
