McNab Ridge Winery: A Parducci Legacy
A story as remarkable as its history is long, the Parducci family’s journey in the wine industry began in the early 1900s and continues today where they are currently partners in McNab Ridge Winery. Located in Hopland California, McNab Ridge’s charming tasting room attracts visitors, friends, and serious wine connoisseurs from all over the United States interested in sampling their celebrated selection of wine. While McNab shares many commonalties with other small family wineries, what sets them apart is their legacy in winemaking. On a cool spring day earlier this year, Winestyleliving.com sat down with head winemaker and McNab Ridge business partner, Rich Parducci to discuss his family’s history in winemaking and how he is carrying on the Parducci tradition as a 4th generation winemaker.
The Parducci Family first became involved in the wine industry when Rich’s great-grandfather purchased land in Mendocino County to begin growing grapes to sell to home winemakers across the country during the era of prohibition. While others were confused why anyone would purchase land to grow wine grapes on during that time, Rich’s great-grandfather had the foresight to take advantage of a caveat in the prohibition law. During the prohibition era, home winemakers could produce up to 200 gallons of wine legally, all they needed were the grapes, naturally the price of grapes increased. It was at that time that Rich’s grandfather, John Parducci, stepped into the wine industry at the tender age of 14 years old.
Working in the new family business, John worked with his father to manage the delivery of grapes to home winemakers all over the United States. In order to facilitate the sale of the grapes in the early 1930s, John was sent to Hoboken, New Jersey at age 14 with a train car loaded with grapes to sell. John lived with another family in the area while he worked to sell new shipments of the Parducci’s grapes that were delivered by train. “You know, at 14 years old I was looking for a new tire for my Schwinn, not to be sent to the other side of the country”, joked Rich. “In the 30s that had to be a trip to be on a train from little Ukiah. It is an interesting industry, I’ll tell you that.” Impressive as it is shocking that a young adolescent was negotiating the sale of wine grapes while living so far from home, it opened the door to John Parducci’s long career in winemaking.
Described as “Mr. Mendocino” by his grandson, Rich, John Parducci’s success in winemaking puts him in the company of other admired winemakers such as Robert Mondavi and Earnest Gallo. In fact, Rich recalled an “old-timers” luncheon he took his grandfather to, which he said the only reason he could attend was because he was acting as chauffeur. “I would go to these luncheons with this exclusive group of older winemakers…I would see Peter Mondavi, Earnest Gallo, people from the Martini family, and all of these guys that are considered pioneers of the California wine industry. And it dawned on me that my grandpa is one of those guys. The light went off in my head, wait a minute, your grandfather is a pioneer in the industry. To be sitting there with a group of people that everyone has so much respect for, guys that have been in winemaking since the beginning, not because they wanted to be rock stars, but because it was something they knew how to do and make money doing it.” Realizing his grandfather’s significant contributions to winemaking, Rich does not underestimate the role he has assumed as head winemaker at McNab, as he puts it, “[My grandfather] has tasted some amazing wines throughout his life. They are some pretty big shoes to fill.”
Throughout the majority of his career, John worked at Parducci Winery, his family’s business, which is the same place where Rich Parducci received his introduction to winemaking, albeit modest in comparison to his grandfather’s cross-country journey as an adolescent. Over 30 years ago, Rich started in the wine industry at age 12 working on the bottling line for his uncle making about $2.35 an hour. From that point forward until 1998, Rich worked various positions at Parducci Winery, in between attending college. Although he began his start in the wine industry at a young age, it wasn’t always his goal to become a winemaker. While attending Santa Rosa Junior College, Rich became a certified welder, a skill he later took back to the winery to build aluminum cat walks to get to all of the tanks. After doing hard labor for about a year, he realized, “…wow, my back hurts, it’s kind of tough to breathe with all of that smoke, so I decided to go back to school for viticulture in 1986.” After receiving an A.S. from Santa Rosa Junior College, Rich transferred to Fresno State where he earned his B.S. in winemaking.
After leaving Parducci Winery in 1998, Rich began working for Associated Vintage Group, which at that time owned McDowell Winery, now Weibel. Following his grandfather, John’s semi-retirement from Parducci, he began consulting with other wineries and was a partner in Konocti Winery, which he later sold to Jed Steele. However, as Rich explained, “wine was his life and he needed a winery.” Luckily, a facility was available only 10 miles away from John’s home; and at age 81 he purchased the building in the summer of 1999 to begin the process of starting a new winery. Rich Parducci stayed with the Associated Vintage Group through the fall harvest and then joined his grandfather in early 2000 at their new family business.
Working with his grandfather to start a winery from the ground up required a lot of work, including determining what their name was going to be. “When I came on in 2000 we figured out what our brand was going to be, and here we are McNab Valley, it just seemed natural with the ridge back here to name the winery McNab Ridge Winery”, Rich explained. A decade after beginning McNab Ridge, Rich has been acting has head winemaker; with his grandfather John working in the winery everyday up until a few years ago. When describing his grandfather, Rich’s admiration for him pours through his narrative of him. “He was here pretty much every day, he’s slowed down the last couple of years, but he still loves wine. He is an amazing guy. My grandparents have been married for 73 years this past March. The story is they eloped in Reno and got married for $5.00 dollars. My grandpa always jokes that he deserves a refund or some change back. But 73 years, you know? God bless them because there are a lot of people that don’t even make it to 73 years old, let alone be married that long. They live together in the eastern hills of Ukiah, so I hope I have those genes. My other grandma is 92, so I’ll count my lucky stars.”
Now at age 92, John Parducci may not be working the long hours he was accustomed to when he was an active winemaker, but his legacy in winemaking continues. Rich explained that during the 1960s his grandfather was heavily involved in making varietal correct wines. In fact, Rich says he has “varietal wines [that] date back to ’63 from Parducci, I’ll never drink them. I’m keeping them as a memento because it’s neat to know that [my grandfather] was a part of that.”
Now as a 4th generation winemaker, Rich is in charge of continuing the Parducci heritage of winemaking in the 21st Century. His plans for the future of McNab are ambitious, but nothing that an experienced winemaker with John Parducci as his mentor can’t handle. Although McNab Ridge is still a small family winery, Rich hopes to see their brand grow, including their case production. “I would like to see us get to 20,000 cases with McNab itself…we can do a lot more here, but we also do work for other wineries. We have the facility to do 60,000 cases, but you kind of lose something. We’re trying to make handcrafted wines and buy from specific vineyards, keeping a quality level while maintaining a fair price. So if we could get up to 20,000 cases I think that would be great. My family has been in the industry for so many years that I don’t anticipate us selling the winery if we got to 20,000 cases and moving to the Bahamas or something (laughs). I love the industry too much. I never regret coming to work and the days fly by.” Rich continues, “So who knows, hopefully it is something that can continue in the family. My cousin Ginette and her husband, Reed own a 1/3 of the winery as well, so it’s nice that the Parducci’s have something and have continued in [winemaking] since prohibition, basically. I’m hoping we can continue on, while I don’t know how long it will take to get us to 20,000 cases, it may take me the rest of my life. I guess it depends on how many people enjoy our wine.”
It is likely that his family’s connection to winemaking will continue in the generations to come. As a father to three children, Rich stated that his two daughters have already expressed an interest in winemaking. “Both of my daughters enjoy coming here. If I let them, they would be on the bottling line working because they think it’s fun out there…My son is only 5 and he knows the winery but has no concept of what goes on here. We’ll see. I wouldn’t be disappointed if they went into the wine industry, but I really hope they do something that they really have a passion for, that they enjoy doing, whatever it happens to be.”
As Rich continues to work towards production of 20,000 cases for McNab Ridge, he employs winemaking techniques that he learned in the classroom, but even more importantly, in the field. “It all starts in the vineyard. If you don’t have great fruit, you’re not going to have great wine…As wine starts to ferment you can taste it and tell that the wine will be good. In 2006 we had a cabernet that just stood out, we thought wow, this cabernet is incredible. We didn’t really anticipate it going in that direction, it kind of started fermenting and getting on the drier side, all of the sugar was gone from it. We started tasting it and though we needed to do something special with it. So we came out with a reserve, our first reserve cabernet in the 10 years we’ve been doing this.”
While not all yearscan be as lucky as McNab’s success with their reserve in 2006, Rich explained there are tactics he uses to enhance the wine to improve the taste and add structure. “You hope Mother Nature gives you something to work with. Sometimes you don’t anticipate it, like the cabernet. As it progressed
through the fermentation we realized there was something more to it. It was more than a good wine. And then it goes the other way too. You get the ones that you had high hopes for. That’s when you do the blending to kind of make it a more complex wine than it really is. And that’s where the art, the science of winemaking really is. Sure if you have great grapes and everything goes perfectly, does that mean you’re a great winemaker? It means that you didn’t screw it up. So being able to take something that isn’t perfect, evaluating it and making it better, that’s where the work comes in.”
Aside from working with and against Mother Nature, depending on how favorable the seasons growing conditions are, McNab Ridge, like other wineries, is at the mercy of market conditions. Due to their size, McNab Ridge buys all of their grapes from other growers from relationships that span decades and are agreed to over a handshake. “We still have the zellerbach brand which is what this facility produced when we bought it. That is our value brand. We only do about 12,000 cases, so to have different varieties on a small 26-acre property with sixteen different wines would be impossible.” Not to mention the fact that many wineries must now compete with many different varietals produced across the globe. “We get wine from all over world, Argentina, Australia, even many states throughout the U.S. McNab does stuff that isn’t new, but new to the U.S., such as pinotage. South Africa has been making it for who knows how long and here we are maybe ten wineries in the United States making it, but it’s something you can introduce people to.”
Introducing different varieties certainly allows wineries to maintain a competitive edge in the market, but as Rich pointed out, unanticipated pop culture influences or unexplained shifts in what consumers purchase happens. “You can never tell. Who would have thought that the movie Sideways would impact pinot noir like it did and cause the death of merlot because the guy in the movie says, “Anything but merlot.” At that time, growers were having a hard time selling pinot noir, it wasn’t that popular. After that movie, it went through the roof. How do you account for that? Foresee something so simple? It goes in cycles, there is always going to be a favorite.”
As the wine industry continues to evolve and the science and art form of winemaking continues to mature, it is certain to remain an unpredictable trade. For many involved in winemaking, that’s what makes it desirable, including established winemakers like Rich. “That is what makes it interesting is every year, not matter if you’ve been mining from the same vineyard for 10 years or a 100 years, it’s never going to be the same twice in a row because of Mother Nature. Maybe it rains more, it was colder, it frosted, or maybe it was a mild summer and things had a longer growing season. Every year is continually different. That’s why you see vintage years because during that particular year, it was great because everything kind of lined up. All the stars aligned.”
To find out more about McNab Ridge Winery, visit their website at www.mcnabridge.com or stop by their tasting room centrally located in Hopland, California located at 13441 South Highway 101 or call 707-744-1986 for more information. And don’t forget to sign up for their mailing list to stay informed on their local wine events, including their popular “Second Saturday” events held throughout the year.
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