FREY VINEYARDS

Paul and Beba Frey grew up a few blocks apart in the gritty Brooklyn, New York of the 1930's and 40's. Paul relished his summer escapes to the Poconos Mountains, Pennsylvania. And Beba found bliss each summer on a Catskill Mountains dairy farm. Each vowed to escape the city permanently. They later met and married in medical school. While their family grew, they longed for a life closer to nature and finally settled down in Northern California in the early 1960's on their ranch in Redwood Valley, Mendocino County. The children grew up instilled with love and respect for the natural environment, as their parents had dreamed.
In the late 1960's, Paul and Beba and the older kids planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Grey Riesling

on the ranch's old pasture land and sold the fruit to nearby wineries. A decade later, brothers Jonathan and Matthew realized the vineyards' potential when a Cabernet Sauvignon grown by Frey's grapes won a gold medal for a Santa Cruz winery. Frey Vineyards was bonded the next year, in 1980.

The eldest brother Jonathan and his wife Katrina studied organic agriculture under the tutorship of Allen Chadwik, a green-thumb guru of the California 70's. At the winery's inception, Jonathan introduced high integrity organic practices that are still in place today, and now Biodynamic® grape production has been added, the first in the United States. Another brother, Matthew, learned the mechanical and technical skills of the wine business when working at nearby wineries. His knack with machinery would prove invaluable. A final touch to the new winery's credo was that the wine would be made not only from organically grown grapes, but without any added sulfites. In the late 1980's, Paul Frey Jr. returned from the University of California at Santa Cruz to help perfect the techniques for making wine without the pungent preservative. Recently, Luke Frey has spearheaded the conversion of our estate vineyards to Biodynamic® cultivation.

Today, almost 20 years since the founding of Frey Vineyards, nearly all of the 12 children and spouses work for the winery. As organic food production is reaching new heights in the U.S., we hope our recent introduction of Biodynamic® grape growing methods will be a part of a growing movement in agriculture in the new millennium, benefiting taste buds, planet, and the children of our children's children.

THE WINES