Success story - Meet Thomas Fogarty JR, CEO of Thomas Fogarty Winerey & Vineyards

"The history of our field is rather improbable. In the 1960s, my father, a leading cardiologist and inventor of the embolectomy catheter, was invited by Stanford University to come and work in California. Rather than live in the valley, he chose to buy a large estate in the hills. That's where my brothers and I grew up. But in the 1970s, a law was passed requiring the land to be used for agricultural purposes. My father wasn't sure what to do with it. A kiwi farm? A wine estate? His doctor friends, great Burgundy connoisseurs, advised him to plant vines. So he did. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in particular, because we're at an altitude of 600 m and these grape varieties are well adapted to a fairly cool climate.

So it seemed natural to make a career out of it. After high school, I went to Sonoma State University to study agribusiness, and a few years ago, my father asked my brothers and me if we wanted to sell the estate. No way! I decided to take over with Nathan Kandler, our winemaker for over 10 years. That's when we started growing our wine organically. We no longer use insecticides or fertilisers. Instead, we make our own compost, and use cutting-edge technology to understand the make-up of the soil... All our production is natural, and it's a real success story. We produce 8,000 cases a year, which is not bad for a small estate. We now sell not only directly and to restaurants in the region, but we also export a lot to Korea, Japan and Poland... We were voted "Vineyard of the Year 2014" by Wine&Spirits magazine and are well known throughout Silicon Valley: Google, Apple and HP come to do their team-meetings here.