Greg Graziano & the Family of Wines

A family vineyard story before a wine label

The Graziano family’s Mendocino roots reach back to Vincenzo Graziano and his family, whose first local vineyards were planted in 1918. Their account follows grape growing through Prohibition, when sales to home winemakers helped sustain the business, and into later winery ventures.

Greg’s father Joseph continued the vineyard work. Greg represents the next generation, while Alexandra carries the growing and winemaking connection forward. This is a family story with several contributors, rather than a label that appeared without a vineyard past.

Greg’s route through the vineyard and cellar

Greg worked in the family’s Redwood Valley vineyards, studied viticulture and enology at UC Davis and gained cellar experience at Cresta Blanca. He became a founding partner and winemaker at Milano in Hopland in 1976, then winemaker at La Crema in 1986.

Greg and Trudi established their own wine business in 1988. The names that followed reflect different interests, with Mendocino providing a Californian home for grapes associated with several European traditions. Their first Hopland tasting room opened in 1999; that visiting address should be kept separate from the origin of each wine.

Four labels, several directions

These label identities help organise discovery; the actual bottle’s grapes, vineyard origin and vintage still matter. A California wine made from an Italian variety remains a wine of its stated California origin.

Italian heritage becomes a vineyard experiment

The producer’s vineyard account describes its Vincenzo property in Calpella and the Nube Bianco vineyard in Potter Valley. Established grapes sit alongside trials of other Italian varieties. The question is practical: how do these vines grow and ripen in a particular Mendocino site?

Barbera, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo and other varieties connect this family story with our Italian grape guides. The vineyard account also names experimental plantings such as Aglianico and Ribolla Gialla. A trial planting is not proof that every variety is available as a current commercial bottling.

Keep the geography precise too. Redwood Valley is part of Greg’s background, while the family’s wider vineyard story ranges across Mendocino County. A family association with one valley does not establish the appellation of every wine.

The family and the wider team

The winery’s team page identifies Trudi’s compliance and events work and Alexandra’s winemaking and grape-growing role, alongside cellar and vineyard colleagues. Those contributions connect the continuity of a family business with the daily work required to make and deliver wine.

For a useful introduction, choose a bottle from one label, find its exact grape and origin, and follow that back to the vineyard information. Then compare another label rather than assuming the family name supplies one uniform style.

Inside the winery

The cellar offers another set of questions: which components were kept separate, what vessels were used, and what was assembled before bottling? Blending Wine includes combinations of different lots of the same grape as well as mixtures of varieties.