History
The family reached California around 1901 and farmed dairy here before it grew grapes. Tryfon, who went by Frank, chose the valley because it resembled Vlaherna, where he was raised, and he and Eugenia Lolonis established the vineyard in 1920. The current farmers credit the 1942 white planting to money a Lolonis son sent home from his wartime pay. Organic farming came next, dated by the family to the early 1950s and credited to Nick Lolonis, who earned a graduate degree from UC Davis that his obituary places in 1953. CCOF certification followed in August 1992, covering roughly 109 acres. Petros Lolonis opened a winery here in 1982 that ran on its Ladybug Red and White, though it no longer operates. Athan and Denise Poulos, Denise a granddaughter of Tryfon and Eugenia, farm the ranch today, and the site is on the Historic Vineyard Society register.
The Site
The home ranch lies on Road D, on the valley bench in the Redwood Valley AVA at roughly 800 to 900 feet. Soil descriptions differ by block: red clay strewn with fist-sized rocks under the old Sauvignon Blanc, Yokayo alluvial loam in one account and Redvine sandy loam in another, variation across about 106 acres rather than contradiction. The valley lies inland and north of Ukiah, warmer by day than the coastal valleys and sharply colder after dark, and the hills that enclose it hold the Russian River's headwaters and draw cool air in. Poulos describes summer days in the nineties falling to forty or fifty by nightfall, which is why old white varieties hold their acid here. Nothing is irrigated.
Vines and Blocks
The 1942 block is Sauvignon Blanc with Semillon interplanted, head-trained and dry-farmed, and Saracina's 2022 bottling ran 97 per cent to three. Producers who buy here trace the budwood to one of the great Sauternes estates, a lineage no independent record supports. The Chardonnay is the other landmark, three acres put in over the winter of 1946-47, which Claire Hill Wines calls possibly the oldest surviving Chardonnay in the country, though trade accounts more often place it behind a Napa block a year older. Younger Chardonnay came in two waves, an early-1970s Wente-selection block that Lioco takes and further material planted between roughly 1950 and 1972. Valdiguie grows here too, the block Lioco buys running forty to sixty years old, with older vines in a family photograph that may date to the 1930s. CCOF also certifies Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignane, Merlot and Zinfandel.
The Wines
Lioco has bought here since 2011, bottling the Sauvignon Blanc and, since 2013, a Valdiguie that Kenny Likitprakong had found years earlier, before Folk Machine existed. Saracina makes a Lolonis Sauvignon Blanc and Les Lunes a Chardonnay, including a skin-macerated version. Claire Hill farmed and bottled the 1946-47 Chardonnay in minute volume, taking half a ton off the whole block in 2024 for twenty cases, and has called that her last vintage from it. Hobo, Frey and Bonterra have all taken fruit. The whites remain the argument for the place, low in alcohol and textural rather than aromatic, shaped by vine age and dry farming rather than by picking dates.