Giuseppe Bargetto, the first Bargetto in America, departed his home town of Castelnuovo Don Bosco in the Piemonte region with his son Philip in 1890. Giuseppe and Philip worked at Casa Delmas Winery in Mountain View. Giuseppe eventually returned to Italy in 1892, leaving a seventeen-year-old Philip to make his own way in California. Philip continued to work in the California wine industry. He started a family and eventually became a naturalized US citizen.

In 1910, Philip Bargetto and his uncle Giovanni “Barba” Bargetto, leveraging Philip’s two decades in the California wine trade, established their first winery in San Francisco, the South Montebello Vineyard and Wine Company. They sourced grapes from the Santa Clara Valley and sold their wines to local restaurants and to other immigrants in San Francisco.

John Bargetto, Philip’s 24-year-old brother, joined him in San Francisco in the same period. Shortly afterwards, John moved down the coast to Soquel, California, where his sister Angelina was living. The were settled adjacent to the current winery property. John would go on to become co-founder of Bargetto’s Winery.

In 1917, under the threat of Prohibition, Philip joined John in Soquel and they moved to the current winery property, which they purchased outright several years later along with a 50 acre ranch in the nearby hills. In the early years, the family farmed the ranch, growing fruit, making wine for family and friends, and waiting out Prohibition. As dedicated winemakers, they had hope that someday Prohibition would end.

Despite family setbacks and federal restrictions, the 1920s were a time of expansion for the family, between produce sales and their discreet sideline in providing authentic Italian dinners for wine-loving local leaders. Now firmly planted in the Californian soil, the brothers never returned to Italy except to visit.

Upon the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the Bargetto brothers founded Bargetto’s Winery as a wholesale wine business. Despite 14 years under the rule of Temperance, the family was ready with a fully stocked cellar of product, which they labeled and prepared for sale forthwith. In Ralph Bargetto’s words, “I always laugh that on Repeal Day. . . we started with vintage wines.”

The brothers knew they were early pioneers of the post-Prohibition California wine trade. They made early efforts to encourage the burgeoning wine industry by becoming charter members of the California Wine Institute in 1934. They were also industry leaders in experimenting with different varietal wines.

Soquel in the early 1930’s was a rural and remote community. To support their new business, the brothers also opened the first post-Prohibition wine and liquor storefront in Santa Cruz in 1935. The store served as a retail location and auxiliary production facility. It stood on Water Street until it was destroyed by the catastrophic flood of 1955.

Following Phillip Bargetto’s untimely passing in 1936, John assumed leadership of the winery. John and his sons Lawrence and Ralph continued refining the family’s winemaking techniques and growing the business over the following decades. While running the winery alone, John was forced to make the difficult decision to sell the ranch in 1941.

By 1949, both sons had graduated from Santa Clara University and were ready to fully contribute to the family business. With the capital from the sale of the ranch and his two sons home, John had newfound optimism. He decided to complete the biggest expansion in the history of the winery. A new fermentation room and a new aging room were built and filled with oak and old-growth redwood tanks, greatly expanding winery operations.

John also invested in his own little piece of the American Dream, building a Mediterranean-style house for his wife Ernestina on the winery estate grounds, where it still stands to this day (including a basement with a wide enough door for puncheons, just in case Prohibition should return).

John’s passing in 1964 marked a dark day for the winery, as they had now lost both the original founders and the winery was heavily in debt, with most of the tanks standing empty. But John’s son Lawrence was determined to save it, and he would come to be the visionary of the winery from 1964 until his unexpected death in 1982.

Fondly known as “the Boss,” Lawrence was a born innovator. While tasting rooms were still a novel concept, he saw the value of offering complimentary wine-tasting and oversaw the opening of a tasting room on the property, followed by a second tasting room on Monterey’s historic Cannery Row in 1968. On the production side, Larry introduced stainless steel tank fermentation, refrigeration, and oak barrel aging, always seeking to craft the most premium vintages and showcase the quality of Santa Cruz Mountain wines. In the late 1960s, he also introduced premium fruit wines for new wine drinkers who leaned toward sweet dessert wines. His efforts were rewarded with rave reviews and awards from national wine publications throughout the 1970’s.

Many long-standing plans for the winery that have been achieved in subsequent years date to Larry’s tenure, including the dream for a Santa Cruz Mountains estate vineyard. This photo of Larry was taken by Ansel Adams when he visited Bargetto Winery in July, 1967.

Lawrence’s sudden death in 1982 left a huge void in the family and the business. It fell to his wife Beverly and children Martin, Loretta, and John to keep the business moving forward. Beverly stepped into the unexpected role of president and the siblings took on prominent roles as general manager, wine club manager and financial officer, and winemaker, respectively. The winery was entering a new era, both in terms of production and in terms of marketing.

Under the mentorship of the legendary winemaker André Tchelistcheff, brothers John and Martin initiated the winery’s ultra-premium Santa Cruz Mountains wine program, producing Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay. With John as the young new winemaker out of UC Davis as well as cousin Paul Bargetto as cellarmaster, they completed major upgrades in production.

With the addition of their new premium wines, Bargetto had built a diverse and enticing portfolio with an award-winning pedigree, comprising everything from quality varietal wines to affordable sips. In the late 1980’s, the family decided to expand distribution beyond California. Martin led the national team comprised of Tom Bargetto, John Bargetto, and James Vaughn. They travelled to all fifty states, Canada, Mexico, and even as far as Japan, setting up distribution. Bargetto Winery had gone national (and beyond).

Since the sale of the family ranch by co-founder John Bargetto in 1941, establishing a vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains had been a cherished dream of the Bargetto family. In 1991, following the successes of the SCM program, John Bargetto and his mother Beverly began looking for a site for their estate vineyard. As fate would have it, they settled on the very site that Larry had almost purchased for the winery nearly twenty years earlier, a hilly 50-acre parcel in Corralitos, and Regan Vineyards was born. John and his mother were the founding co-partners of the vineyard venture.

The first planting took place in May 1992. Since then, the vineyard has become a cornerstone of Bargetto’s estate-grown Pinot Noir and Chardonnay program. This cool-climate site with rich soil provides Bargetto Winery with the classic varietals - Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot. In addition, to honor the family’s Italian heritage, Italian varietals Nebbiolo, Refosco, Dolcetto, and Pinot Grigio are grown. More than 90 years after their arrival, the Bargettos are still bringing a little taste of Italy to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Since 1998, Jesus Figueroa has worked with tremendous dedication as the vineyard foreman. He has become a respected vineyard manager in the area. Since 2017, Regan Vineyards has been certified sustainable.

Since the founding of Regan Vineyards, there were plans to introduce premium Italian varietals. After years of research, John, as the winegrower, selected the varietals. Pinot Grigio was selected for as a white option, and it was decided that three red varietals would be selected to create a distinctive Northern Italian Italian blend: Nebbiolo, the greatest red grape from Piemonte, Dolcetto, from the family hometown, and Refosco, from the Veneto region. As luck would have it, the first harvest of grapes from the Italian varietals came during the spectacular 1997 vintage, sometimes called the “vintage of the century” in California. The blend was released four years later as the LA VITA collection. The name LA VITA, meaning “life” in Italian, was chosen to reflect how wine brings so much vitality, richness, and joy to our lives and to celebrate the family’s Italian roots.

LA VITA wine is also an art series. Each year, a new label is chosen to reflect how wine has been represented in art of various media through the ages. The annual release of LA VITA also funds a grant for a local charity, celebrating the connection between wine, art, and community. We have been supported through the generations by the Santa Cruz community, and this represents our best opportunity to give back. LA VITA regularly receives excellent reviews from critics and has come to be the flagship collection of Bargetto Winery.

With the new millennium, the winery made significant investments in their production facilities. In 2001, a state-of-the-art German Europress was purchased to handle 22 tons of grapes at a time and yield finer wines. A few years later, a new bottling line and screw-capping machine were installed. In 2006, the largest stainless steel tank in the history of the winery was placed adjacent to where Grandpa Bargetto had installed his redwood tank in 1949. In addition, French upright tanks and the finest French oak barrels improve the aging process.

These improvements continue adding the finesse of modern winemaking to this historic property. With the latest equipment, Bargetto’s winemakers have more fine-grained control over every aspect of the winemaking process, reflecting the family’s determination to keep Larry’s goal of “producing the best wine in California” alive. Between the premium grapes sourced from Regan Vineyards and expanded production capabilities, Bargetto reached its greatest production cap of 47,000 cases during this period.

In order to upgrade our hospitality and retail areas, Bargetto undertook a series of projects in the early 2000’s, including constructing our creekside courtyard, creating the La Vita Room with its spectacular view of the Soquel Creek canyon, and expanding the indoor tasting room. With our new facilities, the winery has become an important community gathering place that hosts weddings, concerts, festivals, fundraisers, and a wide array of other events.

In 2017, Bargetto Winery and Regan Vineyards earned formal sustainability certification from the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, reflecting the family’s long-term commitment to responsible farming practice and environmental stewardship.

Regan was one of the first vineyards in the region to install photovoltaic solar panels to generate clean electrical energy. Using animals and mechanical traps for pest control and weed reduction as well as practices like hand-harvesting help reduce reliance on automation and produce premium, truly hand-made wines. In the winery, Bargetto implements traditional winemaking practices in conjunction with modern equipment to support energy efficiency.

As resources become ever more scarce, it is more important than ever to be leaders in sustainable practices and be good citizens of the community that supports us. John Bargetto and Bargetto Winery are honored to have received the 2010 “Farmer of the Year” award for our long-standing history as part of the the Santa Cruz community, commitment to sustainable practices, and community leadership.