Sixth generation steps up to run Bogle Vineyards in Clarksburg

CLARKSBURG – By any of the usual measures, the Bogles can label themselves successful. Their family business put Sacramento on the world's wine map and is on track to ship 1.2 million cases to 20 countries this year, with a net worth edging toward $100 million.

Yet today a dramatic shift is occurring at Bogle Vineyards – one as imperceptible to customers as it is unusual among modern-day wineries.

This Sacramento Delta acreage, where Bogles first began farming field corn and sugar beets six generations ago, in the 1850s, is being handed down from matriarch Patty Bogle to three of her children: Warren, Jody and Ryan.

None of them expected the transition to happen so soon, but life on the Bogle ranch has never been predictable – or easy.

The family has faced tragedies ranging from infestations of the land to the untimely 1997 death of Patty's husband, Chris, who had taken over the winery after his father's death eight years before.

Patty stepped up, only to be stricken with leukemia two years ago, requiring her to leave Clarksburg for treatment at a Houston cancer center.

Yet in her absence, the company did not falter; it grew and, with that growth, the next generation's roles expanded.

More than 50 California wineries have merged or been acquired by an outside company since 2004, according to the Wine Institute, a California trade group. And half of family-owned wineries are expected to change hands by 2017, according to a survey by Silicon Valley Bank and Napa's Scion Advisors.

So far, not the Bogles.

"I'm never going anywhere but here," said Patty's son Warren, 34, his work boots kicking up the rich earth that has brought the family fortune as well as failure, calamity – and kinship.

Ten thousand acres of wine grapes grow in Clarksburg, just 20 miles from downtown Sacramento, where the Delta breeze drifts over the fruit with a cooling breath. That microclimate helps coax 25 varieties of grapes from the loamy soil.

Bogle blood has seeped into this soil – literally. Warren is named after his grandfather, who lost two fingertips in a corn harvesting header.

Warren Bogle Sr. and son Chris first planted wine grapes in 1968 – a mix of petite sirah and chenin blanc on 18 acres. They sold the grapes to other wineries, then launched Bogle Vineyards in 1979. Patty helped out with winery operations.

Their goal was to produce 4,000 cases, just a seedling in the world of wine.

"It was intended to be a small thing, an interesting project," said Patty Bogle, now 58. "We just grew as demand grew."

Clarksburg certainly wasn't Napa, where some wine brands were mentioned in the same breath as Bordeaux and could fetch hundreds of dollars. The Bogles had a down-home strategy: wines to drink with dinner, not collect like trophies.

"Anyone can make a great wine for $100 a bottle that you only have for your birthday," Patty said. "We want to make wine for the other 364 days."

The average bottle of Bogle wine costs $10, a sweet spot for many consumers on a budget. The winery focuses on familiar varietals – chardonnay, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir – and has found particular success with its petite sirah. This dense and inky wine grows exceptionally well in the Delta and accounts for one-quarter of the Bogle's 1,200 acres in Clarksburg.

"The Bogles have quietly built this great business over the decades by making good wine at good prices," said Jim Gordon, editor of Wines & Vines magazine.

Wine Business Monthly ranks Bogle as the country's 18th largest winery, peer of the Rodney Strong and the Coppola companies.

More than a business, the Bogle ranch has always been home, where brothers Warren and Ryan grew up riding their bikes through the vineyards. They learned how to drive tractors, knowing this farm was destined to be theirs some day.