A self-taught winemaker and the “best of the vine.”

La Crema began in 1979 in Petaluma, in southern Sonoma County. Wine Review Online, in a 2020 column by Rebecca Murphy marking the winery’s 40th anniversary, says it was opened by Rod Berglund and a group of investor friends. He called it La Crema Viñera, which the winery translates as “the best of the vine”; the company’s own anniversary history says the name was later shortened to La Crema.

Berglund was self-taught. According to Wine Review Online, the Sonoma winemaker Joseph Swan, who had learned about Pinot Noir from André Tchelistcheff, encouraged him to make wine after a blind tasting. Berglund worked in what the column calls a restrained, Burgundian style, with vineyard-designated bottlings, and the wines drew early praise: Wine Review Online notes that Robert M. Parker Jr. wrote favourably about them in The Washington Post in 1983.

The first chapter was short. Wine Review Online reports that the winery was sold in 1984. The new owners, who are not named in the column, renamed the wines La Crema, moved the production facility, dropped the vineyard-designation programme and the original winemaking approach, and greatly increased production over the next five years, a period the column says strained the business’s finances. The company’s own anniversary history moves directly from the founding to the next owners.

In 1993 La Crema was bought by Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke, the couple behind Kendall-Jackson, the company says, and the first vintage under their ownership was the 1994. English Wikipedia’s article on Jackson Family Wines, the group founded by Jess Jackson in 1982 and based in Santa Rosa, also dates the acquisition of La Crema, in Windsor, California, to 1993. A new winery in the Russian River Valley followed a few years later, according to the company.

Cool climate, two grapes and a growing map.

La Crema’s identity is built on two grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and on cool coastal growing areas. The company says Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke wanted to make Pinot Noir as popular as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and that they valued the winery’s early record as a maker of single-vineyard wines. Wine Review Online describes La Crema today as a producer of cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

The winemaking line runs back to the founder. The company names Rod Berglund, Jeff Stewart and Dan Goldfield among the winery’s earlier winemakers, and says Craig McAllister has been head winemaker since joining in 2009. For the 40th anniversary in 2019, Wine Review Online reports, McAllister invited Berglund back to help create a wine marking the occasion.

The vineyard map has widened in stages. The company lists the Sonoma Coast, Green Valley, Anderson Valley, Los Carneros and the Russian River Valley among its California appellations, and says it added Monterey in 2008 and the Willamette Valley in Oregon in 2012; McAllister also oversees production in the Sta. Rita Hills, according to the company.

Visitors meet the brand in two places in Sonoma County. The company runs a tasting room in downtown Healdsburg, and an estate in the Russian River Valley described in the next section.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all American wine names: Woodbridge, Josh Cellars, Meiomi, La Crema, Duckhorn, Caymus and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. American wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A wine brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A grower’s vineyard becomes the brand’s home.

For years La Crema bought fruit from Saralee’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley under a long-term grower contract, the company says. Wine Spectator reported in November 2012 that Jackson Family Wines was buying the property from its growers, Richard and Saralee Kunde, in a sale of about 260 acres that included Richard’s Grove, the meadow the couple used for community events; the magazine noted that the Kundes were not connected to Kunde Winery in the Sonoma Valley, and that the deal was set to close in early December. The company says a three-year restoration of a barn dating from around 1900 followed, and the site reopened in 2016 as La Crema Estate at Saralee’s Vineyard.

Within its owner, La Crema sits beside some of the best-known names in California wine. English Wikipedia lists Barbara Banke as chairman and proprietor of Jackson Family Wines and names its brands as including Kendall-Jackson, Cambria, Stonestreet and Murphy-Goode, alongside wineries outside California such as Yangarra Estate in Australia and Château Lassègue in France. The company says members of the next generation of the Jackson family, including Laura Jackson Giron and Jenny Jackson Hartford, have taken on leadership roles in the business.

Accounts of the years between 1984 and 1993 differ in emphasis: Wine Review Online describes them as a time when the original approach was abandoned and says Jess Jackson stepped in to restore the founding philosophy, while the company’s own history moves from the founding to the 1993 purchase.

For a design guide, La Crema shows how a founding phrase, “the best of the vine,” a shortened name and a growing roster of appellations can carry a winery through two sales and four decades of growth under one family owner. Compare Kendall-Jackson, the Jackson family’s founding brand, and Meiomi, another coastal California Pinot Noir label. For this guide we use Pinot plum, Chardonnay gold and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep La Crema’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.