Bonterra Organic Estates

The Free Bacchus Story

Bonterra started as an experiment inside a bigger wine company. Fetzer Vineyards, founded in Mendocino County in 1968, planted its first organic vineyard in 1987, and in August 1989 its vineyards were certified organic by CCOF.

The business changed hands twice. Brown-Forman bought Fetzer from the family in 1992 and agreed in 2011 to sell it to Chile’s Concha y Toro for $238 million. By 2022 the organic label had overtaken the Fetzer label, which sells about 400,000 cases a year, and the company took its name: Bonterra Organic Estates. The legal company is still Fetzer Vineyards, and it still makes the Fetzer and 1000 Stories wines.

Growing at that size meant bringing other farmers along. Bonterra’s own vineyards supply about half its grapes, and to get the other half certified it has had to help more than two dozen contract growers make the change, which its chief executive at the time admitted was not easy.

Two things are worth knowing about the label. Bonterra adds sulfites, so under US rules its wines are made with organic grapes and cannot carry the USDA organic seal. And the company is a B Corp, certified since May 2015, which speaks to how it is run rather than to how the grapes are grown.