Open: Year-round
History:
The winery was named by Joe Swan when he founded it forty eight years ago. Joe came to winemaking from an unlikely background. He grew up the son of teetotaler parents (his mother was in the Women's Christian Temperance Union) in the farm country of North Dakota. He was an avid reader (there not being a whole lot else to do), and he happened to read about wine. Not lacking for imagination but definitely lacking for grapes, he nonetheless set out to make wine. Using his mother's ringer washing machine, he squeezed the juice from some rhubarb from the garden, and, in a crock he had secreted in the attic, proceeded to produce his first "wine".
History doesn't record the score this first effort received from the critics, but one can safely assume that it didn't rival his later efforts! Nonetheless, the beginning of a quest to become a winemaker was born.
In the intervening years, Joe was an artist. He would later say that the only painting of significance that he did was on a famous mural painted during the depression. He was paid by the WPA and his job was to paint the blades of grass! Joe decided that he lacked the ability to succeed as an artist and pursued another of his interests in flying. During WWII he taught flying to the Army Air Corps and then took a job with Western Airlines as a pilot, a career path that he would follow until his retirement in 1974. During this time, his love affair with winemaking and grape-growing never waned. He visited the enology and viticulture department at UC Davis in the years immediately after the war and made several friends there. While based in Salt Lake City, Utah, he made Zinfandel from locally grown grapes, a wine dubbed "Jose's Rose" by his flying buddies. Later when based in Southern California, he purchased land in the Sierra foothills where he planted a small vineyard. But his real goal was to establish a small vineyard and winery where he could follow his dream, to produce small lots of the world's finest wines.
Joe really believed that, when it came to grape growing and winemaking, small was beautiful. A small vineyard could be tended by one person. Small crops led to more intense, ageworthy wines. A small winery allowed you to oversee every aspect from fermentation to bottling. Joe was a perfectionist and felt that if the wine was to carry his name, then he should be personally responsible for every aspect of its production.
In 1967 he purchased a small farm on Laguna Road near the town of Forestville in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County. The property consisted of 13 acres of old Zinfandel vines, fruit trees and pasture along with several structures including an old barn and a nearly 100 year old house. In addition to the physical attributes, it included an interesting history. The house once housed the post office of the village of Trenton along with the general store and telephone exchange.
