White Oak Winery
Sonoma County region
From Healdsburg to Hamburg, White Oak Estate wines are an exceptional value for all to enjoy!
Anyone who spent any amount of time during the late 1980’s or early 90’s around the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma County was certainly aware of the upscale presence of White Oak Winery. From a rather unassuming tasting room located adjacent to the old Clos du Bois winery, White Oak successfully established itself as one of Sonoma’s principal wineries with a minimum of marketing dollars and with even less observable fanfare. The word on the street was that White oak’s wines sold themselves and that the quality in the bottle was undeniable, so when we gained the opportunity to showcase these wines for our Gold Club members, we could not pass it up.
A little more than a decade after its establishment in 1981, White Oak’s 1990 Chardonnay won the Sweepstakes (best individual wine out of 654 entries) at the Sonoma Harvest Fair and the still smallish winery (production was around 10- 12 thousand cases at that time) was no longer an insider’s secret to the area residents around Healdsburg. Most recently, the 2004 Russian River Sauvignon Blanc won the Sweepstakes Award again in 2006 and the wine sold out in one day. Since the Sonoma Harvest Fair is considered by Sonoma inhabitants to be the single most important competition held in California (or anywhere else for that matter), White Oak Winery was suddenly thrust into virtually every local conversation and the winery’s entire production that amounted to over $300,000 in sales was immediately sold out within the next thirty days.
Even with such fanfare, it took White Oak’s laid back owner Bill Myers over five years to affect a change in White Oak’s basic setup. Myers gathered together a small group of his friends and some outside investors and together successfully obtained a beautiful piece of Alexander Valley property that contained some sixteen acres of old vine Zinfandel that had been planted sometime during the 1920’s. This unique merger with a grower-oriented base of investors, provided the setting for White Oak’s new winery and tasting room, a splendid Mediterranean-inspired villa that Bill Myers designed and built almost by hand. The entire project took Myers nearly five years to complete, and the new winery enabled White Oak to increase its production to its present 22,000 case level, a mark that Myers feels he will hold for some time to come.
“Even though I have been in the business for over 25 years,” Myers reflects, “I have taken White Oak’s growth very slowly and have been able to control our quality.” He is also exceedingly proud of his comfortable and attractive tasting room, where he proudly states, “we sell more wine than we do in the entire rest of California.” Another key to White Oak’s success is the 325-acre ranch in Sonoma’s Russian River Region that is planted entirely in Chardonnay and that produces unusually high-caliber fruit that insures White Oak a leg up on other wineries. White Oak also owns an additional 420 acres in Napa Valley that is planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Syrah. White Oak owns the property in partnership with a San Rafael company called Burdell Properties who in turn has some 200 individual investors involved in the ownership of their combined vineyard land. This appealing alliance gives White Oak a better than normal retail sales base for its wines and also offers to each investor a carrot in the form of a small discount on White Oak wines.
“When all is said and done,” Myers adds, “it is absolutely necessary that the winery make money. We figure to do well even in a down economy. We sell a lot of our grapes (Alexander Valley neighbor Jordan Winery is White Oak’s largest customer) but we must always insure that White Oak’s bottom line is favorable.”
In 2002, White Oak focused its marketing attention to the Eastern Seaboard and attempted to break into the attractive Boston and New York markets, today, White Oak is in 36 states as well as being in Japan, Canada, Germany and Austria. Bill Myers feels that this accomplishment is due to the fact that White Oak’s wines are perceived as exceptional values in the national and international marketplace. What’s more, he realized that increasing his winery’s capacity makes it that much more attractive to national distributors, most of who possess huge portfolios.
Gold Medal Wine Club also considers White Oak’s wines a terrific value and is delighted to introduce them to this month’s Gold Wine Club members. We know they will bring you a great deal of enjoyment.
Map of the area
Bill Parker: Winemaker
Bill Parker got his start in the wine industry back in 1974 when he worked for Chateau Souverain in California's iconic Alexander Valley. Prior to joining White Oak in 2004, Parker was cellar master and winemaker at Matanzas Creek Winery for 15 years and then winemaker at BR Cohn Winery for a short time before finding a home at White Oak in the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma County. Parker shows incredible winemaking talent in his 90+ rated, medal-winning wines and keeps White Oak positioned as the world-class winery it has become.
Bill Myers: Owner/Winemaker, fisherman, and builder.
Many stories have been written about the varied backgrounds and former occupations of many of today's premier wine industry personalities. White Oak Vineyards and Winery owner Bill Myers lists building contractor and salmon fisherman as his former professions, and it is the latter that provides him with his most direct correlation to the wine industry.
The Los Angeles-born, San Jose State-educated Myers actually hitchhiked to Alaska in his youth without viable resources, following the footsteps of his grandfather who had made the trek back in 1898. Bill Myers was following his family's stories and began the task of establishing a business for himself in the salmon fishing industry. This occupied the greater part of the 1970's and extended into the middle of the next decade.
During the latter part of this period, Myers became a part-time resident of Healdsburg in Sonoma County and regularly traded some of his prize catch for bottles of wine from his favorite wineries. He became closely enamored with the area and after a while was sufficiently charmed with the wine bug to be convinced that his immediate future lay within the boundaries of the wine industry and Sonoma County.
Encouraged by his close friends and supporters, Myers began the task of establishing a winery operation that would fit his needs. He was extremely fortunate to attract Mary Ann Graf, one of the pioneer female winemakers in the industry who had recently left Simi Winery (with great accolades), into becoming his winery consultant.
Myers immediately sold his salmon fishing boat and invested in his first Alexander Valley vineyards. Since money was certainly a significant factor, White Oak's initial wines were produced in a rented garage that was outfitted to become a small lab and winery.
White Oak Winery started small and can arguably be called a moderate sized winery in today's competitive wine industry.
White Oak and Bill Myers' style is pure Burgundian, and according to the personable Myers, seems to be getting more so with each succeeding vintage. He points to the fact that he and present winemaker Bill Parker, Bill was winemaker at Matanzas Creek for 15 years before coming to White Oak, are producing a sur-lies Chardonnay that carries with it a reserve status.
Myers has turned over the winemaking duties to Parker but admits that he still has a great deal to say about White Oak's final blends. Bill Myers seems a happy, fulfilled man that is extremely proud of his winery's staff and their cumulative accomplishments.
His tasting room is one of his proudest endeavors, and he feels his in-house staff's efforts make other things happen for White Oak. The winery enjoys a fiercely loyal customer base and Myers feels this base has been built very patiently, by offering value-oriented wines in a productive environment staffed by really knowledgeable personnel.
He smiles and adds, "When we started in Healdsburg, there wasn't any money for marketing or anything. It was simply word of mouth and most of our customers were from the local area. I realized that if I could make wines that impressed these people who had a whole assortment of wines and wineries to choose from, I might just be able to make it. Over the years I have made some incredible friends and they have enjoyed some remarkable wines.”
Such candor is refreshing in a wine industry that has steadily eroded into mega wineries with mega marketing budgets and accompanying marketing techniques. Bill Myers and White Oak continue to be basically the same entities that started in business over twenty-five years ago. Sonoma insiders and winery friends are betting the situation at White Oak won't change much for the next twenty years.
