Story by Judith Horstman.
Feature image: Winemaker Thomas T. Thomas (Photo: The Global Food and Drink Initiative)
At age 18, Thomas T. Thomas was a self-taught guitarist from a small Ohio town. At 67, he still plays guitar. But in the intervening years, he‘s become a classically trained opera singer, the chief financial officer at biotech companies and a painter, and discovered his life passion as an award-winning vineyard owner and winemaker. “In high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I liked music – that’s the one thing that got me to university,” he says, over a glass of excellent wine from his Anderson Valley vineyard north of San Francisco. When he showed up at Ohio University, he was told he had to audition to be admitted to music school. There was no guitar major, so singing was the only option. “I didn’t know much about singing as I only sang in church – and I was playing guitar in a rock band!”
Handed a hymn book, he opened his mouth, “And lo and behold, I had a beautiful singing voice I didn’t know existed.” He was immediately enrolled as a voice major and trained as an operatic baritone for the next 12 years at Ohio University, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in voice performance.
Primed for a career in opera, he began to think about what that involved: near constant travel, uncertain employment, and perhaps the deciding factor: “Men’s voices don’t mature until they’re in their 30s. It was just too tough,” he says. Changing plans, he earned an MBA in finance from the University of Cincinnati and began working in business.
Discovering a Passion for Wine By 1989, he had met and married his wife, Leala, and they were living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two major events happened soon after they arrived: The l989 Loma Prieta earthquake and his discovery of really good wine.
Thomas was not very familiar with wine until they moved to the Bay Area. “I was never much of a drinker and drank mostly white wines. I didn’t understand red wine. To me, it tasted like battery acid,” he says.
A business dinner changed all that. “We had a bottle of Parducci, a cabernet and merlot blend, and it was delicious! I was finally able to taste all the fruit flavors, and it just made sense. That dinner really started this wine journey for me.
With a copy of Hugh Johnson’s “The World Atlas of Wines,” he began tasting his way through all the wine varietals. Soon, he was collecting wines, and in 1999, he set off to explore the vineyards and wines of France. There, it blew him away. “I had never seen anything like Burgundy in my life! Vineyards as far as the eye could see and each little town had its own name on the bottle of wine, and the restaurants in each of these towns matched their cuisine with the local wines. It was just fascinating.” “That’s when I decided I want to do this. I was going to own a vineyard and make wine,” he says. “I told my wife I wanted to have a vineyard, and she looked at me like I was crazy.”
Finding Eden in the Anderson Valley: On a family vacation to Tuscany in 2000, he was on a train between Rome and Florence when he read an article in Wine Spectator magazine about a little-known wine region two and half hours north of San Francisco called Anderson Valley. The 15-mile-long Anderson Valley in Mendocino County is not like the well-trodden wine trails of Napa and Sonoma. It doesn’t have any spas, resorts, in-your-face wineries or even a single stop light. It’s main settlement – population around 1,000 – is named, appropriately, Boonville. What it does have is the near-perfect terroir for growing the notoriously picky pinot noir grapes: the unique soil, topography, and climate that Pinot loves. It also has a tight community of outstanding winemakers, supportive of neighbors and newcomers.
Thomas took to the valley immediately and to the very first property he saw: 36 uncultivated hillside acres. He was shown a half-dozen other properties but kept coming back to that first hilly site. “It spoke to me,” he says. ”It was saying ‘Buy me!’” They bought the land 2001.
He first cleared space for a second home because there was no place to stay in that rural valley. A winery building and vines followed in 2008 when he planted his first vineyard: a bit less than 3 acres of pinot noir grape clones carefully chosen to create the wine he envisioned. This spring he added a half acreof chardonnay. It was slow going, as he had a full-time job in the Bay Area as treasurer at the biotech company Genentech, and it took time to produce the grapes he wanted. “I sold the fruit for seven years before I began making my own wine for two reasons: one, to have the vines mature; and two, it gave me a chance to see what kind of quality the grapes would produce.” Thomas’ first vintage from his own grapes under his own name was a 2017 Reserve Pinot Noir released in March 2020, just as COVID shut everything down. And what a wine it was. In March 2021, it was awarded Wine of the Year at the Monterey International Wine Competition. In August 2021, his 2018 Reserve Pinot Noir won Best of Class Red Wine and the John Parducci award at the Mendocino County Fair Wine Competition. “I was totally surprised,” he says. “That is when I really knew we had a special property.”
His wines have gone on to receive multiple Gold and double Gold medals from the Sunset Magazine International Wine Competition, the North Coast Wine Competition, and other international competitions.
A Trailblazer Vintner: Winemakers of color are a rarity. Of an estimated 11,000 wine producers in the U.S., only 1 percent – about 110 – are Black. While a large number are in California, Thomas is one of only two vintners of color in the Anderson Valley area.
When he arrived in the valley, he says he was well received in general and welcomed warmly by some long-term residents, including the late Milla Handley, founder of that winery. It could be because Milla Handley knew what it was like to be a trailblazer herself, back when women winemakers were a rarity. She made her first Handley Cellars chardonnay in her basement and in 1982, was the first woman winemaker and owner in California to have her name on a winery label.
Thomas became an active member of the community, serving on the board of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association and participating at local fundraisers and tastings such as the wildly popular annual spring Pinot Festival. “It’s a neighborly community,” he says.
Thomas T. Thomas Vineyards is not a big competition – yet. His boutique winery produces about 650 cases of wine a year, 85 percent of which is his much-lauded pinot noir; the remaining is chardonnay, which he makes from purchased grapes while he waits for his vines to mature. By contrast, Handley bottles 9,000 cases.
His Pinot Noir wines claim top dollar for Anderson Valley: up to $100 a bottle with an average price of $70 a bottle. Pinots of similar vintage and quality in Sonoma’s Russian River and Sonoma Coast areas can sell for hundreds. His wines are available in a few fine restaurants but are primarily sold directly to consumers from his vineyard-based tasting room or by mail.
“I am trying very hard to build out being in more restaurants and in wine stores,” Thomas says. “You need to have a long-term view and vision as it takes time for small brands to penetrate the wine market and receive the necessary visibility.”
Painting in the Vineyards: Meanwhile, he discovered another passion. About 15 years ago, “I had this image of myself painting outside in the vineyards, like Monet.” His wife bought him some paints and a bunch of blank canvasses. For three years. they just sat there. “I was scared to death to start, he says.” When he finally did, he was soon creating vivid abstract paintings shown and sold in galleries. Recently, he was surprised to be contacted by a retired FBI agent writing mysteries about a fictional FBI agent named – wait for it – Thomas T. Thomas. Author Tom Burg wanted to use a TTT painting for a book cover and Thomas readily agreed. You can’t make this stuff up.
Living the Dream: It’s a very full life with Thomas’ many passions and obligations. That’s the way he likes it. He loves his current job as chief financial officer at Alopexx Inc., a private Boston-based biotech company, where he works remotely. He splits his time between the family home in Dublin, California, where his wife works as a marketing manager at a private medical device company and the vineyard where he also paints.
Thomas is a hands-on vintner, supervising the vineyards, working with the winemaking in detail, and conducting the wine tastings, often traveling to events to promote his wines. And his wines and paintings keep winning accolades. “I am doing everything I want to do,” he says.
Phil Long, founder of Longevity Wines and president of the African American Association of Vintners, is an admirer. “First, I think his wines are phenomenal, and he’s a great artist,” he says. “But what I love most is the heart of his story, the passion he puts into it — to visit other countries and vineyards and come back and curate terrific wines from scratch, and to succeed. He’s living the dream.”
A version of this article originally appeared online in Cusinenoir.com.
IF YOU GO: Thomas T. Thomas Vineyards in Philo, California is open for sales and tastings by appointment. To schedule, email [email protected] or call 510-375-8411. Some of his paintings can be seen in his art-filled tasting room, and are for purchase at the Lansing Street Gallery.