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Wine royalty snaps up California vineyard for rebrand
Arista Winery’s Westside Road estate in the Russian River Valley has been acquired for a reported US$25.35 million as part of the reimagining of a wine mogul’s existing label.
Arista’s Westside Road estate vineyard, planted to “grand-cru level” Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, is located in sought-after Russian River Valley terroir. Founded in 2002 by Al and Janis McWilliams, Arista Winery has been managed by the McWilliams’ sons Mark and Ben since 2012, but it’s about to get a new custodian.
Revealing they decided to offload the vineyard to allow Al and Janis to retire, as well as to avoid accruing debt, the McWilliams told Wine Spectator: “We saw that paying current market rate for the estate would require Arista to take on more debt than we wanted to and make growth that much more difficult.”
As Arista Winery makes its wines using grapes from growers spread across Russian River Valley, the McWilliams will continue to make wine under the Arista name, just without using fruit from that particular vineyard, which represents around 10% of the business.
New guard
The 8 acre (3.2ha) vineyard, as well as a winery and tasting room, has been acquired by Chris Underwood, CEO of wholesaler Young’s Holdings, one of America’s oldest family-owned businesses (founded in 1888) and the parent company of luxury wine importer Wilson Daniels.
Underwood also owns wine brand Jonive, which uses organically farmed grapes in the Sebastopol Hills, the coolest area of the Russian River Valley. Explaining in 2023 why he decided to start his own label, Underwood said he had “immensely enjoyed” working in the wholesale side of the wine business, but had “always had this untapped passion and drive to produce fine wine in my home state of California.”
Two years on from the birth of Jonive, Underwood now intends to expand on its 1,500 cases of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay per year, but says consumers struggle to pronounce his brand’s name. Because of this, he plans to rebrand Jonive as Harper’s Rest from 1 June 2025. The Harper’s Rest name is a nod to Ruben Harper, a pioneer farmer that settled in the Russian River Valley in the mid-1800s and who is buried on the Arista estate’s property. The McWilliams previously made a Pinot Noir called Harper’s Rest, the production of which has now halted.
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What now?
Underwood plans to use grapes from the Arista vineyard from his 2025 vintage, though the wines’ name will change over to Harper’s Rest from the 2023s.
He is also working with an architect to give Arista’s tasting room an overhaul, with plans to make more of the beautiful views over a knoll and Japanese garden planted there.
“Definitely the big elephant in the room was the declining tasting room visitation,” Mark McWilliams told the San Francisco Chronicle. The tasting room is currently closed to visitors, which Underwood will want to change quickspeed in order to optimise its cellar door. At Jonive, welcoming guests to the winery is at the heart of operations with the team “thrilled to receive curious guests for a tasting and discussion of our estate wines, for a walk through our organic vineyard, and to have food paired expertly with each wine by our winemaker/chef,” the website reads.
Pricing wise, Jonive and Arista wines both retail for around US$70 per bottle so there’s likely to be synergy between their existing customer bases. And with the property’s 20,000 case storage capacity, holding back older vintages will certainly be possible.
High praise
Russian River Valley is fast becoming one of the most exciting global spots for Pinot Noir. Two producers from the region – Patz & Hall and Marimar Estate Vineyards – won Master medals (the highest accolade) in last year’s Global Pinot Noir Masters. And in 2020 a body of research found that Pinot Noirs from five Russian River Valley sub-zones were identifiable based on the clusters of chemical elements in each wine, an important discovery as it means the authenticity of wines labelled from these regions can now be proven beyond doubt. These ‘fingerprints’ held true regardless of the vineyard site within the smaller region, the clone planted or which winery produced it.
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