Landmark Vineyards
Damaris Deere Ford started this in 1974 and hired Helen Turley in 1993 to rebuild the Chardonnay. There are bocce courts, and the tasting is $60 an adult and $15 for children over seven.12
Why go
Ford was the great-great-granddaughter of John Deere and named the winery after her family's home in Bermuda, which was often the first structure sailors saw crossing the Atlantic in the eighteenth century.1 She brought in Helen Turley in 1993 to push the Chardonnay further, and the method they settled on still runs: whole-cluster pressing, fermentation on native yeast strains, aging in French oak.1 Greg Stach makes the wine now.1
The fruit is not all from here. Landmark buys across California from Sonoma to Santa Barbara, and holds a second estate at Hop Kiln in the Russian River Valley with its own Pinot Noir and the old hop kilns still standing.1 The Kenwood room looks at the Mayacamas foothills from the corner of Highway 12 and Adobe Canyon.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Damaris Reserve Chardonnay, the bottling named for the founder, $50 as listed.1
- Order: the Hop Kiln Estate Pinot Noir if you want the estate fruit rather than the bought-in.1
- Order: the Bocce Ball and Wine Experience if you have a family. Sixty dollars an adult, fifteen for children over seven, parties of two to fifteen.2
- Avoid: the Reserve Library Tasting at $70 unless you are a member, since both seated formats come free with membership.2
Good to know
- Thursday to Monday, 10am to 5pm, at the Kenwood estate. Phone 707.833.0053.2
- Two dated events are on sale: Sips and Sunshine on 13 September 2026 at $20, and the Fall Pick-Up Party on 4 October 2026 at $40.2
- The winery calls itself award-winning without naming an award, a body or a year, so nothing is recorded here.
- Nobody outside the winery has written about these wines in anything I could read.
Verdict
could-visit — Helen Turley's 1993 method is still the house method, whole-cluster pressing and native yeast and French oak, and Greg Stach makes the wine to it now. Bring the kids, because a children's price on a tasting is something wine country almost never prints, and the bocce is the reason to pick this door over its neighbors. Be clear about the fruit: Landmark buys from Sonoma down to Santa Barbara, so most of what you drink is not from the ground you are sitting on. No writer outside the winery has put a word on these wines, and the site says award-winning without naming an award.