Kenwood Vineyards

Kenwood Vineyards was founded in 1970 by John Sheela and his brothers-in-law Mike and Marty Lee, a group of friends and former students who had taken accounting from John Pagani at Santa Clara University. After Pagani's brother Julius died in 1969, the family sold them the historic Pagani Brothers Winery, a bulk wine cellar built in 1906. The Lees and Sheela turned a jug-wine facility into one of the first premium wineries in Sonoma Valley, building the brand before the Sonoma Valley AVA itself existed. By 1976, Kenwood had acquired exclusive rights to source grapes from the historic Jack London Ranch on Sonoma Mountain, a relationship that stood at the heart of the winery's Cabernet program for decades.

The Artist Series' very first commission, a David Lance Goines drawing, was deemed indecent by federal label regulators (it finally appeared on the 1994 vintage), yet the series became California's first artist-created wine label and one of the most collected reserve Cabernets in the state. Mike Lee led the cellar until 2003, when Pat Henderson, who had started as a harvest intern in 1983, became senior winemaker. Korbel's Gary Heck, who first bought into Kenwood in 1996, acquired it again in 2026 with its brand, inventory and 33-acre estate, returning Kenwood to local family ownership. The tasting room reopened in May 2026 under the Heck family, recommitted to the vineyard-driven philosophy on which the winery was founded, a Sonoma original, restored to Sonoma hands.