Ron Lanza

Ron Lanza worked with his brothers, driving tractors and helping with bottling. He has very clear memories of the love that his grandfather Mario had for Wooden Valley Winery. Ron recalls that Mario was always present for bottling. He always filtered the wine, and it was understood that nobody was allowed to touch his filter. One year, Mario called Ron over to him and showed Ron how to use it. Ironically, Mario passed away two weeks later. Ron also recalls how hard his grandmother Lena worked. Besides running the household, she worked in the tasting room every day. She labeled the wine and did all of the bookkeeping, until Adrienne took over that responsibility. When she retired from the tasting room, customers used to come in and ask for her to come out to visit with them. She remembered everybody that came in, and people loved her for that.

Ron studied sales and marketing at Solano Community College and then came back to Wooden Valley Winery to work on the finances. His role at Wooden Valley is not clearly defined by a title. He acknowledges that he has a general manager-type role, but that is not what he calls himself. Ron is responsible for all of the public relations for the winery, as well as managing the tasting room, and all of their sales and marketing efforts. He also handles land sales and acquisition, and most of the finances. Additionally, he is very involved with Rick, tasting all of the wines with him before they’re finalized.

Ron would like to see their current case production of 9,000 grow to 20,000 or 25,000 cases per year. He says that even if they do achieve that growth, they’d still like to be “everybody’s” winery. They strive to make the best wine possible and to price it in a way that it appeals to everyone. No matter the price, he wants their wine to be an understated value.