2000s
Joe & Genevieve hand reigns to the 2nd Generation, the 3rd Generation is born, Roche Winery Moves
Ever since opening the doors of Roche Winery, Joe and Genveive had always exposed their children to every aspect of running the winery and they have always focused on keeping this a family-run winery. In the 20+ years Roche Winery has been making wine, customers have been able to watch the Roche Family and Winery grow together. Those rambunctious Roche children and teenagers in 1989 are now managing the day to day operations in the vineyard and winery. Brendan Roche oversees all operations in the vineyards and winery in his role as General Manager. Mara Roche is the Director of Hospitality and continues to be the culinary talent behind our customer-only events while also preparing all of the recipes paired with our wine club selections. Carrie Roche manages the tasting room while also working privately as a certified fly casting (fly-fishing) instructor. Sara Roche lives and works outside of Sonoma as a Second Grade teacher in San Francisco. Today, a third generation of the Roche family will be sure to greet Roche customers at one of their many annual events. Just as the generation before them, Elizabeth and Clare, daughters of Brendan and Colleen Roche, and Kara, daughter of Sara (Roche) and Kyle Killeen, will learn to call Roche Winery home and our faithful Roche customers family.
In the new Millennium Joseph and Genevieve began to explore opportunities to pass their 17-year old winery to their children. In 2006 the right opportunity came about and Joe and Genevieve sold the existing winery property on the southern most portion of Arnold Drive in southern Sonoma Valley in a sale-lease-back agreement. This sale only included the winery building and the property immediately surrounding the building. The Roche brand, inventory, wine making assets were of course all retained by the Roche family. It was a perfect opportunity for Joe and Genevieve to comfortably remove themselves from the day-to-day management of the winery and effectively give the brand they successfully grew to their children and permanently retire to their beautiful ranch where the family still farmed over 130 acres of vineyard and oversaw 1,800 acres of range land.
After this transition, Joe and Genevieve decided to investigate how they could also give back to the community that had given them some much. In December of 2007, in a landmark deal, Joe and Genevieve sold 1,600 acres of open space to the Sonoma Land Trust, to preserve their property as open space for generations to come. As part of this deal, the Roche’s sold the ridgeline portion of their Sonoma ranch to the Sonoma Land Trust, for close to 30% under market value. This sale also included the Roche’s donation of a wildlife and open space conservation easement over a large portion of their remaining land and a cash donation to the Sonoma Land Trust of over $300,000. To learn more about this landmark open space acquisition, please visit our “Stewards of the Land” section of our website.
ROCHE WINERY MOVES TO DOWNTOWN SONOMA
In 2009, under the direction of the second generation of the Roche family, the Roche tasting room was moved to downtown Sonoma and wine making operations were moved to a brand new facility nearby, southeast of the city of Petaluma. This move was planned to accommodate the Roche brand while the Roches were planning build a modern Carneros winemaking and hospitality facility across the street from the existing winery property. The yet-to-be-built winery is to be constructed on the family’s 500-acre estate where they farm over 120 acres of chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot, and syrah and operate their successful guided vineyard horseback tours.
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