Four generations on the same land we still call home.

The Founders  ◆  A Tale of Two Families

Two families. One piece of land.

On the Brutocao side, the family emigrated from Treviso, Italy in 1910 — Toronto first, eventually California, where Len Brutocao Sr. would build a successful heavy road construction company that put bridges across Southern California.

On the Bliss side, Irv and Lona Bliss raised three daughters in Healdsburg before Irv began farming in Hopland in 1943. The story of how he found this land has its own quiet magic: an overheated drive on Old Toll Road, a hillside pause to let the engine cool, a thought he kept to himself — and then, years later, a bid placed at the county clerk's office on a parcel listed in the newspaper. He didn't realize until afterward that he had bought the exact piece of land he had once stopped to admire.

Len Sr. met Marty — Irv and Lona's middle daughter — at UC Berkeley. The two families became one. For decades they grew exceptional grapes and sold them to top Sonoma and Napa wineries. In 1980, after a successful career building bridges, Len Sr. turned his attention to making wine — and the family kept the fruit and put their own name on the bottle for the first time. He and Marty raised five children together. The Lion of St. Mark, the symbol of Venice, became the family symbol — Italian roots in Mendocino soil.

Winemaker  ◆  Hoss Milone

Making the wine from land his grandfather cleared in 1943.

Hoss is a fourth-generation Mendocino winemaker who started at his family's Milano Winery. He spent time in Australia exchanging winemaking practices at a winery being built there, then put in eighteen years as Director of Cellar Operations at Ferrari-Carano in Healdsburg before joining Brutocao in 2009 as Director of Winemaking Operations. He trained as a cooper, building barrels by hand. The family roots run deep in this region — his cousin manages Roederer Estate's vineyards in Anderson Valley; his brother co-founded a winery.

Then, when Hoss arrived at Brutocao, the family learned something none of them had known: Hoss's grandfather was the man Irv Bliss had hired in 1943 to clear this land for planting. Today, Hoss makes the wine from grapes grown on the same ground his grandfather prepared — generations before Hoss was born.

Our Place  ◆  Hopland, Mendocino County

Where hops gave way to grapes — and why that still matters.

Hopland takes its name from the hops once farmed here. Over the decades, hop fields became vineyards, and Hopland became one of California's most distinctive wine regions — anchored by family estates with deep roots in the land.

Today we farm two estate vineyards in southern Mendocino County, side by side. Bliss — the home ranch on the valley floor that Irv began in 1943. Contento — the hilltop ranch we bought in 1997, with red clay soils and panoramic views over the valley (now also a wedding venue). From those two pieces of land, we make more than thirty different wines.

That is what “estate-grown” actually means: the family that puts its name on the bottle is the same family that planted, pruned, picked, and pressed every grape inside it. We want you to taste what we taste in the vineyard. Our job in the cellar is to showcase the fruit, not to mask it — oak should enhance what the grapes give us, not stand in for them. Every wine we bottle begins in a row of vines we still walk.

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