Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery

Took over winemaking at Fort Ross Vineyard in 2009, the only winery he works with outside his family's Pisoni Estate in the Santa Lucia Highlands, where his father Gary Pisoni planted the legendary Pisoni Vineyard in the 1980s and where his brother Mark serves as vineyard manager. Jeff holds a bachelor of science in enology from California State University, Fresno, and worked at Bernardus and Peter Michael before joining the family enterprise. At Fort Ross, he succeeds a strong lineage: Fred Scherrer (the founding winemaker, who started in 2000 and built production from 100 cases), Ed Kurtzman (from 2003), then Helen Keplinger. “I'm not trying to make a style,” Pisoni says of his work here. “Fort Ross Vineyard is the style.” He farms the mountain vineyard block by block, mostly Pinot Noir (largely heritage clones) with Chardonnay and Pinotage in homage to the Schwartzes' South African roots, and works with native yeast fermentation, hand-sorting, gentle extraction, and bottling unfined and unfiltered. Production averages around 4,000 cases.

Lester and Linda Schwartz, both born in South Africa, founded Fort Ross Vineyard. They met as students at the University of Cape Town, married in 1967, and moved to California in 1976, where Lester practiced law and Linda worked in arts administration. Longing for the rural life of Lester’s childhood, in 1988 they bought virgin forest and grassland on a coastal ridge above the historic Russian settlement of Fort Ross. They planted one of the closest vineyards to the Pacific in California, and, in tribute to their heritage, became the first private growers to import South Africa’s Pinotage. They also helped establish the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA.