Mounts Family Winery

Old Vine Zinfandel — From head-pruned Dry Creek vines, the heart of the estate.

Estate Petite Sirah — Dark and structured, among Richard Mounts’s earliest plantings.

Rhône Whites and Reds — Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Grenache, and Syrah grown on the hillside estate.

Cabernet Franc and Malbec — Small lots from a 140-acre property planted to some twenty varieties.

About eighty percent of the family’s fruit is still sold to other Sonoma and Napa wineries; the rest is bottled in limited quantities under the Mounts label.

Mounts Family Winery sits on a 140-acre hillside estate in Dry Creek Valley that the family has worked since 1946, when Jack and Dorothy Mounts bought sixty acres of prune orchard and a flock of sheep. Their son Richard, finishing a soil-science degree at Cal Poly, talked them out of prunes and into vines — his first plantings, seven acres of Petite Sirah and ten of Zinfandel, went in the ground in 1967. He has farmed the place for more than fifty years since, and the Sonoma County Grape Commission gave him its Viticulture Award of Excellence for it. The winery itself came late, in 2005.

Most of the family’s fruit still goes to other Sonoma and Napa wineries; what stays home is made by Richard’s son David, a Fresno State viticulture graduate who spent six years at Sonoma-Cutrer before returning to bottle under the family name. Tastings are outdoors among the working vineyards and a rustic barn, often hosted by David’s wife Lana, with wine caves dug into the hillside behind. Half of the estate’s ninety planted acres still come off head-pruned vines forty to fifty years old. Old-vine Zinfandel and Petite Sirah are the backbone.

David Mounts grew up in the family vineyards under his father Richard and earned a viticulture degree from Fresno State in 1998. He spent six years at Sonoma-Cutrer and then managed vineyard sites across Napa Valley, refining a grower’s eye for quality before returning to bottle wine under the family name. His winemaking grows directly out of the farming — estate fruit, much of it off head-pruned vines forty to fifty years old.

Richard ‘Rich’ Mounts turned the family farm from prunes to wine grapes. His parents Jack and Dorothy bought the first sixty acres in 1946 to raise sheep and farm prunes; finishing a soil-science degree at Cal Poly, Richard convinced them to pull the orchards and plant vines, putting his first Petite Sirah and Zinfandel in the ground in 1967. He has farmed the Dry Creek estate for more than fifty years and received the Sonoma County Grape Commission’s Viticulture Award of Excellence.