The Proprietors
Douglas Ian Stewart, Breggo's co-proprietor and "apprentice" winemaker, grew up in the town of Sonoma, surrounded by family farmers who had been growing grapes and selling wine for five and six generations. Then he went off to college and never found his way back. Instead he had a three year stint teaching middle school, did research on farmers in the Brazilian Amazon and eventually wrote a book about it, launched an Amazonian fruit sorbet company, then found himself stuck running an ice cream factory in San Francisco for ten years, when he really just wanted to be a farmer. By the age of 30, when Doug started looking for ground of his own, even the "marginal"farming lands of Sonoma - the valley's hillsides and cool Carneros - had been converted to vineyards. He noticed that marginal lands seemed to produce the best wines, and went off in search of a place even more marginal, something cooler, so to speak, certainly more affordable, and incredibly beautiful. He found it in Anderson Valley.
About the time he first stepped foot on the farm, he met his future wife and co-proprietor, Ana Lucia BenÃtez-Stewart. Ana Lucia grew up in Quito, Ecuador, from a large family whose roots as farmers and ranchers from the South dated to Spanish colonial times. She spent her summers on the family's dairy, milking cows and making cheese. A city-girl at heart, the hacienda represented a summer retreat to her, not a job. As an adult, she held various posts as a researcher and park ranger in the Galapagos Islands, tour guide in the Amazon, eco-adventure TV show hostess, and ultimately fundraiser for the Charles Darwin Foundation in Washington, DC, when Doug convinced her to drop everything and move to California.
Back in Anderson Valley, on the highest hill overlooking the farm, Doug proposed. When asked whether she wanted to raise children and grandchildren in this place, she said, "Yes." She didn't add an asterisk about "as a summer retreat" from the City. He didn't mention enduring winters with 80-plus inches of rain and a week of snow, living full time, three miles past a town of 700 souls, half a mile from the nearest neighbors.
In addition to starting a winery on the farm, Doug & Ana launched a family. Their Ecuadorian-American daughter, Tabatha Rey, entered the world in December of 2003, just before her family moved to Anderson Valley full time. Her favorite fruits are bananas and grapes. Go figure. Her little brother, Ian Alejandro, joined the family in August of 2006. He has recently begun to talk, and makes no apparent distinction yet between wine and water, referring to both as “agua!”