J. Rickards Winery
Silver Oak buys his Cabernet and Passalacqua takes his hillside Zinfandel. Jim Rickards keeps the rest, including a Zinfandel block that went in the ground in 1908, and pours it in a barn built for tractors.12
Why go
Rickards wanted to farm from childhood. At eleven he applied for a Homestead Act land grant and was told to come back at eighteen.1 He spent three years after high school assisting with autopsies in a hospital laboratory.1 Then he volunteered for the Hospital Corps, volunteered again for combat training, and served two years with the Marine Corps in Vietnam.1 He came home in 1969 and began a fifty-year career as a critical care nurse.1
He bought a cow. He leased grazing near Petaluma and lost it to the 1976 drought.1 That same year he found sixty acres on Chianti Road with an old vineyard on it, cheap because everyone said there was no water.1 He found water. Then came a well, the 1908 Zinfandel tended back into shape, the rest of the vines planted by hand, and a house.1 He and his wife Eliza opened the winery in 2005 with about 150 cases.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the old-vine Zinfandel. The block was planted in 1908 and he has farmed it since 1976.12
- Order: Five Sisters, the estate Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec.2
- Order: the Petite Sirah, which he bottles on its own and also blends into the Zinfandel.2
- Avoid: arriving without calling. They take walk-ins on availability and ask you to phone first.2
What locals & experts say
- Jim Rickards, on why he could afford the ranch (Press Democrat, 25 October 2024):
I couldn't. It was a distressed property because it supposedly had no water. Only after I found water and dug a well, did it become viable for farming and later grapes.
1 - The winery's own line for what it is doing:
Passion . . . no pretense
2
Good to know
- Open 11am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday, for tastings and pickups. Phone 707-367-7741.2
- You can walk the old-vine Zinfandel on a vineyard tour.2
- The tasting room is the Darn Fine Brown Barn, built in 1997 by a friend, Ron Marley, and originally meant for tractors.1
- No tasting fee is published. Both the visit and tasting pages on the winery's own site return 404s, so call and ask.
- Sixteen reds and six whites, from $30 to $64 as of October 2024.1
Verdict
could-visit — Rickards keeps a fraction of what he grows for sixteen reds and six whites at $30 to $64, and the rest goes to buyers voting with money rather than with tasting notes. The estate runs sixty acres he bought in 1976 because everyone had decided there was no water on it, and he found water. He was a critical care nurse for fifty years and served two in Vietnam before any of this. Eleven to four, Monday to Saturday, and the winery prints no fee, so phone 707-367-7741 first.