We are good friends Bob Zeches and Chad Richard, and this is a little bit about the history of Furthermore Wines. Friends and business partners since the early 90s, we began an exploration and education around wine together soon after we met, which continues to this day. Our shared tastes in wine have always centered around Pinot Noir, particularly from California and Oregon, and in 2006 when the opportunity arose we created our first two barrels of wine – about 50 cases of Pinot Noir. The fruit came from the Bohemian Vineyard in Freestone just a few miles from Nevina’s Vineyard, the estate vineyard in Occidental that we would eventually purchase in 2011.
Our mission back then was to begin conducting a long term study of how Pinot Noir diversely expresses itself regionally throughout California, particularly in areas influenced by coastal climates. All these years later it is still our main mission, producing Pinot Noir from vineyards up and down the California Coast as far south as the Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County and as far north as the Yorkville Highlands in Mendocino county, including wines from our estate vineyards located in the Sonoma Coast and Russian River Valley AVAs. Although we’ve grown gradually over the years and now make more than just Pinot Noir, we are still a relatively small operation making about 4,000 cases of hand crafted wines annually.
In 2015, to support our modest growth and to establish a permanent home, we purchased a winery and vineyard located just north of Sebastopol at the corner of Gravenstein Highway and Vine Hill Road. This allowed us to consolidate our winemaking operations and establish our second estate vineyard, Graton Ridge Vineyard. It also began a new chapter for us with a comfortable space in beautiful West Sonoma County, allowing us to host guests in our tasting room or outside in our courtyard and bocce court.
