Eric Grigsby, MD, Co-Founder
Much like his wife, Mary Rocca, Eric Grigsby leaves little doubt that there’s anything he can’t do. As a nationally recognized Pain Management Physician, grape farmer, businessman, father of four, and draft-horse driver, he is a dynamic counterpart to Mary’s vibrant personality.
When asked about his dual role as a doctor and the co-founder of a winery, Eric jokes, “I’m from Tennessee, you know, so my family has been in the liquor business for a long time.” As he smiles, it’s easy to see Eric as the inspiration for Rocca’s Bad Boy Red wine, donning a cowboy hat in black and white on the wine’s label. He jokes again that he’d have sold his practice to run the winery were it not for an ill-fated coin-flipping match between him and Mary: “Years later, I found the double-headed coin in her purse!”
Jokes aside, Eric is seriously passionate about the land, and says it’s something that both he and Mary have shared since the early days of their marriage in Minnesota. “Mary and I have always loved the country life and living closely in rhythm with the seasons,” he explains. Growing up in rural Tennessee, he fancied himself as a cattle rancher or corn farmer someday. “None of those things are feasible industries in the Napa Valley,” he smiles. “Which is fortunate, because grape growing is really interesting farming.”
This love for the land proved instrumental in the design and management of Rocca’s estate vineyards. In 1999, with the acquisition of the Grigsby Vineyard in Yontville, Eric was able to convert the land from traditional farming to sustainable farming. His vineyard experience again came into play in 2002, when he helped to design the layout and clone selection of Rocca’s Collinetta Vineyard.
Eric attended Boston University Medical School and trained in Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. After five years of post-graduate training, he was invited to join the Medical Staff and teach at the Mayo Medical School until moving to California in 1989 to become the Founder and Director of Pain Management Services at UC Davis Medical Center. In 1992, Dr. Grigsby established his private Pain Management practice in Napa.
Eric echoes many of Mary’s sentiments about doing everything with a drive to be the very best, and repeats her emphasis on excellence. “One would expect Mary and me to make good wine because we come from such an objective and scientific point of view. Just as in our medical practices, we want to do the best we can possibly do. In medicine, you can talk all you want, but once you get in the operating room, it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s how you perform,” he says. “In wine, what really matters is what’s in the bottle,” he adds.
While Eric considers himself the number one fan of Rocca’s wines, and a silent board member with strategic vision, he admits that all of the winery’s success is Mary’s doing. “My number one passion is still looking after patients in the exam room every day,” he says. At harvest, he enjoys leading his team of draft horses through the vineyards, transporting crates of freshly-picked grapes. The rest of his attention is spent on his family, and on the Grigsby-Rocca Foundation, which he and Mary founded in 1998, and has grown from a non-profit to help patients with transportation and healthcare at his clinic in Napa into an international organization providing palliative, end-of-life care to AIDS patients in Malawi.