Sutter Home Winery

Sutter Home Winery is one of the largest family-run independent wineries in the United States, and is the estate known for the creation of White Zinfandel. It is located in St. Helena, California. It is owned by Trinchero Family Estates, which also sells wine under twenty other labels including Newman's Own and Folie à Deux.

In 1874 the Swiss-German immigrant John Thomann established a small winery and distillery in St. Helena in central Napa County, California. After his death, the winery and Victorian home beside it were sold to another Swiss family, the Leunbergers, who renamed the estate Sutter Home.

As with most Napa Valley wineries, Sutter Home was shut down during Prohibition. The winery remained abandoned until 1948, when it was purchased by John and Mario Trinchero, immigrant brothers from New York City whose family had been active in the Italian wine business. The Trincheros refurbished the winery and began producing Napa Valley wines, initially scraping by making generic jug wines. For years they operated “mom-and-pop” style, selling to their Napa Valley neighbors, who filled their barrels and bottles at the winery’s back door.

In 1968 Louis “Bob” Trinchero (Mario's oldest son) began vinifying Amador County Zinfandel.

In 1972, another of Bob Trinchero’s innovations provided the American wine consumer with a new style of premium wine known as White Zinfandel. Initially labeled as an Oeil de Perdrix, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms demanded something in English on the label, and the name, "A White Zinfandel Wine" was added. By 1975 the name Oeil de Perdrix was removed. A fortunate accident occurred during the making of the 1975 vintage, as some 1,000 gallons of bleed-off juice from red Zinfandel refused to ferment to dryness, retaining a substantial amount of sugar, and Trinchero put the wine aside for the time. He said, "Two weeks later, I tasted that wine and it was sweet, had a pink color, and I thought, 'Darn, that's pretty good. We bottled it, and the rest is history."

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