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Our Family Story

We Staglins are a family that enjoys wine and cares deeply about philanthropy. Each person in our family, Shari, Garen, Brandon and Shannon, works together to make our motto, “great wines for great causes,” a reality. The wine we make is a not only a passion in itself but also a means to make the world a better place.

DeEtta, Allen, Shari and LeAlyn King, in 1945

Our motto is easy to understand when you look at our family roots, in the farmlands of America and Italy. Shari’s parents, DeEtta Derscheid and Allen King, grew up on farms in South Dakota, and taught Shari and her big sister LeAlyn to give life their best and depend on their own good judgment. Shari, born in 1945, enjoyed exploring the rows of corn on their grandparents’ farm as a little girl and singing at church and other local functions. Shari’s mom encouraged her to sing and to keep music a part of her life—“I was this little girl with this huge voice,” Shari remembers. She was lucky enough to live near the world’s only Corn Palace, where she and her family went to the musical Corn Palace Festival each fall. These traditions helped inspire our first Music Festival for Mental Health at harvest time.

In 1957 her family moved on to Southern California to find a better life. At Paramount High school, Shari learned Spanish, and was an exchange student to Mexico, where she spent her 16th birthday. Her interest in science also developed as a teenager, and she hoped to someday put chemistry and science to work in her career. She put herself through school, first Compton Junior College (1962-64) and then UCLA (1964-66) by working nights in the then-booming aerospace industry.

Darlene and Ray Staglin, on honeymoon in 1933

Garen grew up with an appreciation for his Italian father’s favorite things in life: Good food, wine, family, and friends. Pasquale “Pat” Stagliano was born in the mountains of Calabria, in the village of Bella near Nicastro, Italy, in 1912. When Pat’s family emigrated to Rochester, New York in 1916, they brought to the new country their tradition of eating lively meals together—sometimes with as many friends as would show up and the table would hold. Pat eventually became naturalized as Ray Staglin--during the Depression, it was much easier to find work as an Italian-American by changing his name. Ray married Darlene Guilliams, whose family immigrated from France, while he was a sergeant in the Army Air Corps stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska. The family moved to California in 1945, where Ray learned a new trade as a custom upholstery and drapery designer and manufacturer, and bought his own workshop. He introduced his son, Garen, to wine at an early age, of course diluted with soda water.

At age 7, Garen began his own career in his father’s shop, where Ray’s initiative, tenacity, and good business sense began to rub off. Garen spit tacks and tucked fabric there throughout high school, and went on to major in electrical and nuclear engineering at UCLA, the foundation for the technology background he would later use in his own entrepreneuring.

Garen and Shari, joined at the wrist in matrimony

UCLA was where Shari met Garen, at age 19, on a blind date. Garen introduced Shari to wine during a dinner with his family. They graduated college together in 1966, and Garen went on to Stanford Business School, which was close enough to the Napa Valley that Shari and Garen could travel there often to explore their growing passion for wine. The openness of the winemakers and grape growers they met helped encourage them to form a dream. By the time they got married in 1968, they had a goal to own a Napa Valley vineyard and make world class wines someday.

Our family with our first vineyard sign, in 1990

The couple followed their dream. While Shari entered a career in public service and health care management, Garen focused on information technology, and after selling a company, they began looking for their vineyard in 1982. Three years later, they were able to purchase a 62-acre ranch with a 50-acre producing vineyard in the Rutherford Bench in the Napa Valley, and Shari went back to school to study viticulture and enology at UC Davis. This unique Rutherford Bench property had been planted under the guidance of the legendary André Tchelistcheff in 1965, and for many years was his favorite vineyard for producing the BV Georges de La Tour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Garen and Shari were able to convince Walter Sullivan and his wife Dagmar dePins, Georges de La Tour’s granddaughter, that they would continue to give the vineyard the same care that her family had given it for almost 20 years.

Staglin winemaker Celia Masyczek, Shari, Dorothy and Andre Tchelistcheff, Garen, and vineyard manager David Abreu in 1992

In early 1986 Shari and Garen convinced David Abreu to become their vineyard manager and began to replant the vineyard with guidance from André. Since then we have been focused on producing the finest wine possible from our estate. With severe thinning and organic viticultural practices, our annual production is less than 7,000 cases. It is one of the largest single vineyards owned by a family without any other partners or outside investors and through careful estate planning, we plan to keep it that way!

Today, we make Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Sangiovese, and are proud of our heritage. We named our Sangiovese "Stagliano", for our family’s (and its!) Italian history. In the last year of Ray’s life, Garen and Shari took the whole family to Bella, Ray’s birthplace in Calabria. This was the first time he had returned since coming to America in 1916. Within minutes of Ray’s arrival in Nicastro, just below Bella, his former neighbors recognized his dialect and knew that a native had returned. We traveled next to Tuscany and the estate of Biondi Santi in Montalcino. This is where Shari and Garen found the budwood that would become, for the first time in 1993, "Stagliano" Sangiovese. Our memories of that estate, and of Papa Ray himself, live on in the “Stagliano” bottle.

Pat Kelly receives Pfizer Pharmaceutical's award for its $500,000 donation to Music Festival 2005

“We are proud of our ability to turn wine into good deeds through the many important charities we support,” says Shari. We have formed a 501(c)(3) public non-profit organization, the The Staglin Music Festival for Mental Health, which has raised over $53 million for mental health research. We are grateful that, since 1995, so many people have pitched in to help, from Gladys Knight to chef Charlie Trotter to scientist Solomon Snyder, along with many generous wineries from around the valley and the west coast. Two of our own wines further contribute to the cause, with the profits from Salus Cabernet and Salus Chardonnay sales underwriting 100% of the costs of the Music Festival.

Brandon, Shari, Shannon and Garen

My mom Shari, dad Garen, I, Brandon (the winery’s Marketing Communications Director and website writer), and my sister (who just received her MBA from UC Davis - go Shannon!), are working and living for what we value: love of family and friends, and care for the planet and the people in it.

Salud!