McHenry Vineyard

About the winery

McHenry Vineyard is a family vineyard in Bonny Doon, on a sandy slope among redwoods about 1,800 feet up, north of Santa Cruz¹. Dean E. McHenry, the founding chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, wanted a vineyard near where UC Davis scientists had found ideal conditions for Pinot Noir. In the early 1970s he and his wife Jane, their son Henry and daughter-in-law Linda planted four acres: Linda had trained in viticulture at UC Davis, and Henry, a professor there, learned winemaking from his colleagues. The first Pinot Noir was picked in 1976², and the winery was commercially established in 1980¹.

Pierce's disease destroyed the vineyard in the early 1990s, and the family replanted it in 1997 and 1998 with four Pinot Noir clones². The winery's pages on Web Winery in June 2003 listed Dean, Jane, Henry (the winemaker) and Linda McHenry as partners and put production at 300 cases a year, from the Bonny Doon vineyard and from Ray and Shirley Massaro's vineyard in Carneros. The winery opened only for its annual open house, Passport days and the Vintners' Festival⁴.

In late 2013 Annalisa McHenry and Brandon Blanchard took over the day-to-day running of the vineyard, with Henry still advising². The CZU Lightning Complex fire of August 2020 destroyed the winery building, built in 1980, and the 2020 estate crop¹. Vines were replanted between 2020 and 2022, and the family's rebuilding update hoped to begin construction in 2025³. The winery is not open to the public but still sells its wine¹.

Nearby in Santa Cruz Mountains

• Aptos Vineyard AptosOpen
• Bargetto Winery SoquelOpen
• Burrell School Vineyards & Winery Los GatosOpen
• BByington Vineyard & Winery Los GatosOpen