DaVero Farms & Winery: Healdsburg’s Italian Varietal Biodynamic Farm
CrushBrew Editorial · Wine Travel · Sonoma County · 7 min read
Most Sonoma County wineries grow Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. DaVero Farms & Winery grows Sagrantino, Barbera, Vermentino, Sangiovese, Malvasia Bianca, and a dozen other Italian varietals that almost no one else in California bothers with — because Ridgely Evers and Colleen McGlynn asked a different question. Instead of asking what wines sell, they asked what the land actually wants to grow. The answer, confirmed by four decades of farming on the 38th north latitude of Healdsburg’s Dry Creek Valley, turned out to be: Italy.
In This Article
How Did DaVero Farms & Winery Begin?
The DaVero story starts not with wine but with olive oil — and not with a winemaker but with a software entrepreneur. In 1982, Ridgely Evers, who would later lead the development of QuickBooks at Intuit, bought an old hillside property on Westside Road in Healdsburg’s Dry Creek Valley. It began as a weekend retreat. Then, in 1990, he did something no one in California had done since the 1800s: he imported olive tree cuttings from Italy and planted them.
The olive oil that followed was extraordinary. It became the talk of California’s chef community — Mario Batali was an early devotee, featuring it at his restaurants — and then something remarkable happened. DaVero’s olive oil was secretly entered in a prestigious Italian competition in Tuscany. It won. The Italian judges, having assumed it was the finest Tuscan oil, discovered they had just awarded their prize to something grown in Sonoma County.
The wine chapter began in 1993 when Colleen McGlynn, a highly accomplished Bay Area chef, became Ridgely’s partner in life and in the farm. Together they expanded DaVero’s vision from olive oil to a full Mediterranean farm. The wine epiphany came for Ridgely in 1999, over dinner with Mario Batali in New York, when he tasted Paolo Bea’s Sagrantino di Montefalco — a wine from a rare Umbrian grape variety almost unknown in California. The following year, they planted their first vineyard: Sangiovese and Sagrantino at Hawk Mountain Vineyard on the home farm’s steep northeastern-facing slope.
About the Founders
Ridgely Evers & Colleen McGlynn
Ridgely Evers is a Stanford MBA, tech entrepreneur, and the driving force behind QuickBooks — one of the most widely used small business software products in history. His right brain, as Slow Food Sonoma describes it, runs the show at DaVero. An autodidact farmer who learned biodynamics by doing, he has described the 2008 property they acquired as “gravel parking lot dead” from decades of chemical farming — and is currently in what he estimates as a 30–40 year process of rebuilding its soil. Colleen McGlynn grew up on a family farm in rural Wisconsin — the sixth of ten children — and brought that farm-raised sensibility to DaVero when she joined in 1993. A professional chef whose food pairings are integral to the tasting experience, she is described by Ridgely simply as “the single best human being I know.” Together they have built what is regarded as one of the most intentional farm-based wineries in Sonoma County.
In 2008, they acquired a second property — now the Valladares Vineyard estate and hospitality center on Westside Road — that had been chemically farmed for 60 years. Rather than farm it conventionally, they committed to biodynamic and regenerative restoration. That commitment transformed a struggling, depleted property into thriving biodiverse farmland that today houses vineyards, gardens, an olive grove, fruit orchards, and the farm animals that are central to DaVero’s biodynamic practice.
Why Does DaVero Grow Italian Varietals in California?
The short answer is: because the land said so. The longer answer involves climate science, centuries of Italian viticulture, and a refusal to follow the crowd.
Dry Creek Valley in Healdsburg sits at 38 degrees north latitude — the same latitude as central Italy. More precisely, the valley’s climate falls under the Köppen-Geiger Csa classification: a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot, dry summers with mild, wet winters. This is the same climate classification as most of Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, and Sicily. The grapes that have spent centuries evolving for Mediterranean conditions — Sangiovese, Sagrantino, Barbera, Vermentino, Dolcetto, Malvasia Bianca — are climatically at home in Dry Creek Valley in a way that, Ridgely argues, Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir are not.
Definition
Mediterranean Climate (Köppen Csa)
A climate classification characterized by hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters — named for the Mediterranean Basin where it is most prevalent but found in a handful of other regions worldwide, including coastal California. Under the Köppen-Geiger system, Csa indicates a climate with dry summers (the driest summer month receiving less than one-third the rainfall of the wettest winter month) and at least one month above 22°C (72°F). This climate type is considered ideal for many traditional wine grapes because the dry summer prevents fungal disease while the mild winter allows vines to rest without deep-freeze damage. DaVero’s founding premise is that Dry Creek Valley’s Csa climate makes it a natural home for Italian varietals that evolved under the same classification — and that planting climate-appropriate varieties produces more expressive, lower-intervention wines than forcing French varieties into a Mediterranean environment.
The philosophy is captured in DaVero’s governing principle: “Grow what belongs here.” It is a deceptively simple phrase that encompasses both a viticultural argument (climate-matched varieties require less intervention and produce more authentic wines) and an ecological one (plants from similar climates are better adapted to local conditions, building resilience against drought, heat, and disease). DaVero grows some varieties that are genuinely rare outside Italy — Sagrantino, native to Umbria; Pallagrello Bianco, which DaVero claims to be the only winery outside Campania, Italy to grow; and Cannonau, the Sardinian expression of Grenache. Each varietal choice is a deliberate response to what the land and climate support best.
What Does Biodynamic and Regenerative Farming Look Like at DaVero?
DaVero operates under three overlapping certifications and philosophies — organic, biodynamic, and regenerative — that it treats not as marketing labels but as a hierarchy of increasing commitment to soil and ecosystem health.
Definition
Demeter Biodynamic Certification
The international certification standard for biodynamic agriculture, administered by Demeter International and its national affiliates including Demeter USA. Based on the agricultural philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who introduced it in 1924, biodynamic farming treats the farm as a unified living organism in which soil, plants, animals, and cosmic rhythms are interconnected. Demeter certification requires farmers to use biodynamic preparations (herbal and mineral compost preparations applied in specific ways), integrate livestock into the farming system, maintain a portion of the farm in biodiversity, and work according to a sowing and planting calendar aligned with lunar and planetary cycles. Demeter certification is widely considered more rigorous than USDA Organic — it is organic plus. DaVero is one of a small number of wineries in Sonoma County to hold Demeter certification.
In the cellar, DaVero’s low-intervention winemaking extends the farm’s philosophy to the finished wine. All wines ferment using native yeasts — not commercial laboratory strains, but the yeasts that live on the grapes, in the vineyard, and in the winery environment itself. This means each vintage reflects not just the grapes but the specific microbial ecology of DaVero’s land. Aging is in neutral oak barrels to preserve rather than overlay varietal character. Natural wine writer Alice Feiring included DaVero in her 2011 book Naked Wine, where she wrote about trying her hand at making a wine of her own at the farm.
What Wines Does DaVero Make?
DaVero produces small lots of more than 15 Italian varietal wines from its estate and partner vineyards, most of which sell out to wine club members before public release. The portfolio ranges from approachable everyday wines to rare, club-only bottles that represent some of the most distinctive Italian-varietal winemaking in California.
DaVero also produces what is widely regarded as one of California’s finest estate olive oils — the product that started everything. Available in the tasting room alongside aged balsamic vinegar imported from Modena, Italy, seasonal preserves, and other farm products. Most visitors leave with both wine and olive oil.
What Is It Like to Visit DaVero?
A visit to DaVero is genuinely unlike most Sonoma County winery experiences. The tasting room sits within a working farm — not a farm-themed tasting room, but an actual functioning biodynamic operation where the agriculture is immediately visible and the animals are part of the property rather than props. Visitors frequently mention the pigs as unexpectedly memorable.
The experience centers on connection to place. Staff are deeply knowledgeable about the farming philosophy and genuinely enthusiastic about explaining both the Italian varietals and the biodynamic approach to visitors who may be encountering both for the first time. Tastings are unhurried; the property rewards wandering. The courtyard is shaded, the olive tree at its center a living emblem of where DaVero began.
One visit note worth flagging: DaVero does not work with traditional wine distributors. Everything is sold direct — through the tasting room, wine club, or their website. This is a deliberate choice that keeps the farm-to-consumer relationship intact, but it means that if you want DaVero’s wines at home, you need to either visit or join the club. You will not find them at a local wine shop.
Frequently Asked Questions About DaVero Farms & Winery
🍷🫒 DaVero Farms & Winery — Visitor Quick Reference
Everything you need to plan your visit to Healdsburg’s most distinctive farm winery
| Detail | Information | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 766 Westside Road, Healdsburg, CA 95448 | ~1 mile from Healdsburg Plaza |
| Phone | (707) 431-8000 | Call ahead for private experiences |
| Hours | Mon, Thu–Sun 10am–5pm; Tue–Wed closed | Verify at davero.com — hours change seasonally |
| AVA | Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County | 38th north latitude — same as central Italy |
| Certifications | Demeter Biodynamic, USDA Certified Organic, Real Organic Project | One of very few Demeter-certified wineries in Sonoma County |
| Varietals | 15+ Italian varieties: Sagrantino, Sangiovese, Barbera, Vermentino, Malvasia Bianca, Pallagrello Bianco & more | No French varietals; climate-matched Italian focus |
| Distribution | Direct-to-consumer only | No retail or restaurant distribution; tasting room and wine club only |
| Also produces | Estate olive oil, aged balsamic, seasonal preserves, olive oil soap | Olive oil is internationally award-winning; pre-dates the wine program |
| Farm animals | Heritage breed pigs, Shetland sheep, chickens | Integral to biodynamic farming system; visitors frequently mention the pigs |
| Website | davero.com | Book tastings and tours; join Farm Membership wine club |
