David Bolling: The Important Life of Sam Sebastiani

I was standing in the Cherry Block vineyard, once the pride and legacy of the Sebastiani family, reaching back 100 years into a family history every non-family resident knows by heart, as if they owned it. 

It was mid-August and Sam Sebastiani had just pulled a fat cabernet grape off a sagging cluster and was rolling it in his fingers, shaking his head in disapproval. 

“Look at that,” he said. “Look how fat that is. Like a balloon. Too much water, the grapes will split, they’re overwatering.” 

The “they” he was presumably referring to was Bill Foley, who now owned Cherry Block, the rest of Sebastiani Winery, and an ambitious portfolio of global wine properties currently standing at 24. 

There was something profoundly poignant in that moment, and in the stoic expression on Sam’s face, in which I imagined the emotional scars of a roller coaster life with enough family drama to fuel whole seasons of a TV docudrama. 

I naively thought I knew Sam’s story pretty well – taking over the family winery, investing a lot of capital to transform it into a super-premium brand, being ousted by his brother and mother for spending too much, putting all his chips on the table to start Viansa winery with his wife Vicki, building a revolutionary national marketing plan driven by his stepson Jon, with an Italian marketplace/tasting room around Vicki’s creative vision. 

Then, losing his oldest son Sam Jr. to mushroom poisoning, followed by the collapse of his marriage, the collapse of his winery, and his retreat to a remote and secluded wildlife refuge and ranch along the North Platte River in Nebraska. 

But Sam did not disappear into somber solitude. He eventually returned and, leaning heavily on his deeply Italian roots, launched yet another wine label – La Chertosa. This one is named for the Tuscan monastery in Farneta where family patriarch, winery founder and namesake Samuele first learned the magic of making wine. 

When I first saw Sam on his return to Sonoma, he was deeply engaged in the real and symbolic connection to his Italian roots. He was, after all, beknighted, recipient of the highest award the Italian government can bestow, the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. 

And La Chertosa was perfectly scaled at a size perfect for a man who has earned the right to slow down. At 1,200 cases a year, the volume was well above hobby, but not industrial. It seemed to truly please him, and any visit to the house he shared with his warmly-devoted wife Robin, on the east side of Schocken Hill, was guaranteed to involve a wine tasting, and sometimes a sumptuous Italian luncheon as only true Italians can produce. 

It was during one of those visits that I led Sam gingerly through the story of his life, for publication in my Valley of the Moon magazine. Much of what he said did not end up in print. The transition points, where there was conflict, pain, sorrow, were history now, part of the past, not the present. 

But the past that remained sharply etched in his memory and in his value system, was the life-changing commitment his grandfather – Samuelle – made to the community of Sonoma, to the people who worked for him and the people who bought from him. Sam ticked off the benefits his namesake brought to his adopted town. 

“He wasn’t one to just do the wine thing. He got the winery going and then he built a cannery and started canning fruit products from the Valley, because he wanted to keep people who worked for the winery employed in the off season. Then hired their wives. And pretty soon he started building houses on Fourth Street for the workers, and if you worked there long enough, you could keep it, he gave it to you.”

Of course, Samuele also built the Sebastiani Theatre, a skating rink, a motel, a bowling alley, a bus station, a parish hall at St. Francis Church, and then St. Francis Solano Catholic School. He built a significant part of Sonoma and a lasting legacy that became part of grandson Sam’s personal and social DNA.

And that’s one explanation for why, when he was putting everything he had into Viansa, Sam went further to restore the 93 acres of historic wetlands surrounding the promontory on which the winery sits. With important help from Ducks Unlimited, Sam bestowed Sonoma Valley with the largest private wetland in the county and an important resting point on the Pacific Flyway. 

Why? 

“Well,” he told me, “because I’m not an asshole kind of guy. I like the outdoors and we’ve gone too far with our expansion as human beings. We need to start preserving or we won’t have places where these animals and these birds have a place to carry on their life cycle.” 

On October 9, Sam Sebastiani passed away at the age of 84, an important, consequential, flawed, and generous, proud and loving man, with a legacy that will truly live on. I’m very glad I knew him.