Three Sisters Vineyard takes its name from the three daughters of George Charles — Carolyn (the eldest) and her two sisters — who would meet at this site under the redwoods, sitting in three plastic chairs, sharing a drink of their father’s preferred Johnnie Walker and occasionally a cigar, holding what they called a board meeting. Carolyn and her family now own and manage the vineyard. The chairs, by all accounts, are still there.
The site was originally a grazing pasture. In the 1860s, the redwoods that covered these flatlands were burned rather than logged — clearing land for sheep grazing on ground that had already been fertilized naturally for years. When the Martinelli family planted vineyards here in the 1990s, they did so without cutting a single tree. The old pasture soils, the redwood canopy at the edges, and the history of the land are all still present.
The Martinelli family has been farming their estate vineyards for over 135 years — six generations of wine growers. Leno Martinelli was making wine young. His son Lee Sr. started at five years old. The generations that followed learned to tie vines and sucker and pick before they were old enough to have much say about it. That kind of continuity — the land as inheritance, not just investment — shows up in how the vineyards are farmed and how the fruit tastes.
