Mary Rocca, Proprietor
Mary Rocca is a dynamic renaissance woman who embraces multiple mediums all in a day’s work. Her enthusiasm is infectious; she emits the same kind of warmth and understated, comfortable elegance as the downtown Napa tasting salon that bears her name. To watch her in action is to see the seamless integration of all the many facets of her life, from family, to agriculture, to shopkeeper, to a vintner intimately involved in the multiple miniscule and major decisions that come with making and marketing one’s own wine. She buzzes from the Rocca tasting salon out to her sun-drenched vineyard in Yountville, up to her house to check on one of her four children, and back to her other, fruit-tree-lined vineyard in Coombsville. Once she has a free moment to sit and share a glass of wine with her guests, she still doesn’t skip a beat between fielding calls on everything from which glass bottle to use on her next vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon, what to make for dinner, and which particular vine needs more attention in one of the vineyards.
Mary grew up in Santa Rosa as the only child of parents who loved to garden, and raised most of their own fruits and vegetables in their backyard. Early on, she loved the idea of planting and growing things, and inherited her mother’s love of cooking and entertaining. During her junior year in high school, her family moved to Point Reyes in western Marin County. A star student, Mary graduated from Boston University’s School of Dentistry, and was one of the first woman dentists to earn accreditation from the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. In Boston, she met her husband, physician Eric Grigsby, and moved with him to Rochester, Minnesota, where he trained in Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the Mayo Clinic. Mary opened her own dental practice there before moving to California in 1989 and settling in Napa. She opened her own practice there in 1990. In 1996, she began her search for vineyard property. “Eric and I have long valued agriculture and land, and knew that once we moved to the Napa Valley we wanted to become grape growers,” she says.
The hunt for just the right spot to grow grapes took three years. In 1999, they purchased what is now known as the Grigsby Vineyard, in the heart of the Yountville appellation. Mary soon decided to put her own name on her wine, and hired Celia Welch Masyczek—a rising star winemaker who shared Mary’s belief that winemaking truly begins in the vineyards—and Rocca Family Vineyards was born.
In April 2000, Mary sold her dental practice to dedicate herself to Rocca’s wines. She found that while making wine requires just as much time and energy as being a dentist, it allowed her the flexibility to spend more time with her four children. “My work-load is just as full, but it’s flexible, and my children are able to take part in a lot of what we do,” she says.
Vineyard Manager Sergio Melgoza was hired to oversee both the Grigsby Vineyard and the planting of the Collinetta Vineyard in Coombsville, which Mary and Eric had acquired in 2000. That same year, Mary bought the Palace Market in Point Reyes from her mother, who had owned the store since 1973. Mary made several improvements to the market, adding gourmet grocer to her resume. She continues to make the weekly trek from Napa to the market to check in on her customers and her wares, and uses the rare quiet time in the car to brainstorm ideas for the Rocca brand. In September of 2008, she hired Paul Colantuoni as Consulting Winemaker, to continue Celia Masyczek’s legacy of crafting world-class wines that authentically express the character of beautiful Yountville and Coombsville vineyards.
“Excellence is the focal point of everything we do. If my name is associated with something, I want to make it as great as possible,” she says.
In her free time, Mary enjoys playing tennis with Eric and their four teenage and college-aged children, and entertaining with friends, many of whom were early wine club members that became members of the family. She counts the early recognition of Rocca’s wines as a real blessing. “I love knowing that something we’ve made is a pleasure to people,” she says. “And I want to do everything possible to ensure we continue to exceed that expectation.”
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