Quivira Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Quivira sits on West Dry Creek Road outside Healdsburg, and a creek runs through the middle of it. Wine Creek is a spawning stream for coho salmon and steelhead trout, and Quivira worked with Trout Unlimited to restore it: a series of nine weirs now makes deep, calm pools where fish can rest on the way upstream, and new willows hold the banks.

It is not a small matter. Coho salmon on the central California coast are listed as endangered under federal and state law, and in the drought of 2015 state biologists rescued fish from Wine Creek: 12 coho smolts, 81 young-of-the-year coho, all of natural origin, and 187 young steelhead.

Pete and Terri Kight bought Quivira in 2006. Pete had built the payments company CheckFree, and has said that for all his pride in it he had never made anything he could take home and enjoy. Soon afterwards Demeter certified the estate as Biodynamic. In 2015 it gave the certificate up, saying many of the required practices were having no measurable effect on the farm or the wines. It still farms with a mix of biodynamic and organic methods, keeps nine breeds of chickens and beehives in the garden, and has preserved a 140-year-old fig tree.

What is certified today is the vineyard. CCOF certifies 71 acres of grapes, olives and fallow ground as organic. There is no winery certificate, so the wines themselves are not certified organic. The 2023 Fig Tree Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc took a Double Gold at the 2026 North Coast Wine Challenge.