More About Frick

 Bill Frick and Judith Gannon started FRICK Winery in 1976 with proceeds from the sale of their 1957 Chevy. They worked together during crush sharing the hand labor. Feeding grapes into the crusher with a pitch fork. Operating manual presses, hand stacking barrels, finishing and bottling their handmade wines. Then proudly selling the wines to visitors.

Judith Gannon's death changed things.  It was a hard transition. Bill stuck with it alone and continues to personally craft every wine by hand. Traditional time honored methods of wine making are always employed;  hand harvesting, punching the cap by hand during fermentation, soft pressing, no fining and long cellar aging in small oak barrels.

All Frick wines are grown in one place. A highland corner of Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley. Here grapes mature to be true to the terrain with balanced delicious perfection.  In the quiet vineyards you can view beautiful rolling vineyards and the valley below.  Hawks, vultures, ducks and herons often soar overhead. The winery and vineyards are hidden away on a small country road where nature is fertile and abundant.

                                               

 

 

 

 

Frick Estate Vineyards have a natural balance with nature. A mere 7.77 acres of special hillside. These vineyards are where delicious grapes ripen to perfection. Birds nest in the vines, lady bugs, butterflies and wildflowers abound. Most days you will find Bill Frick out in the vineyard attending to vines in these vineyards that are his front yard.  

My Personal Story, by Bill Frick

 

On summer vacation in 1954 my parents stopped at Italian Swiss Colony Winery in Asti, California just up the road a few miles from here. We took the tour.

This was my first time at a winery. In the summer sun, green grapevines danced in a soft breeze. Inside the cool winery, large hoses were neatly coiled on wet concrete floors next to gigantic redwood vats. When no one was looking I stuck my head in the open manhole of a vat and breathed in the exotic wine aromas. I was smitten. The wine bug bit me there and then. I had just turned 8.
From that visit on I was enchanted and wanted to make wine and grow grapes.

The dream came true in 1976 when my late wife Judith Gannon and I obtained the licenses and gathered equipment we needed to make wine. A small crusher, wine press, some redwood tanks and oak barrels. 
We had sold the 1957 Chevy and emptied our savings account.  

We were broke but happy. We had our own little winery and it was heaven to us.

Frick Winery by numbers 
48 years in business. 1976-2024
7.77 acres
1 man
800  cases made per year
6  grape varieties. carignane, cinsaut, counoise, mourvedre, syrah, viognier
13  different varietal and blended wines.