Hi, I’m Elizabeth - proud owner of Adelaide Thomas Wines.
It all started in 2017, when my husband Chad and I bought a house in Sonoma County.
We just wanted a weekend place to escape the cold San Francisco summers. But we got so much more than we expected; 42 acres and an old winery. We never intended to be winery owners or to make wine, but we decided to take the plunge. We dove in right away, and started fixing up the house and the winery; it felt like a full time job! So at the end of 2019 I decided to make it official, and left behind a career in technology and real estate to try my hand at winemaking. That’s when Adelaide Thomas Wines was born.
Named after my great-grandmother and Chad’s grandfather, we wanted our wine company to represent the love we have for family, friends, and home. It was also important for us to be a woman-led and owned business, because sadly, there are still too few of those in this industry!
With the help of friends and mentors, we managed to get the winery up and running, but in September of 2020 the unthinkable happened. The Glass Fire, which started far away on the other side of Napa Valley, suddenly appeared at our doorstep. Our beautiful mountain-top home, that we poured so much time and love into, burned to the ground in the span of a couple of hours. We were devastated. All the hard work of the last three years was just a pile of ashes, and nothing in our house was salvageable.
But angels were looking out for us because by some miracle our new winery survived, as did all of our wine inside. We couldn’t believe our luck! In the days after the fire we quickly moved our wine to a safer place for storage, and released that beautiful vintage in the spring of 2021.
We were thrilled with the reception of our inaugural vintage, and were so excited to jump back in again for harvest 2021. Our second vintage of white wines features another wonderful Sauvignon Blanc, this time from the Russian River Valley. These new wines, released in 2022, along with our 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon, represent our commitment to small-scale winemaking, organic viticulture, and low intervention winemaking.
Our wines represent resilience - the resilience of our community, Sonoma County, and of our friends and neighbors who have helped us over the years, and especially in the aftermath of the fire.
Follow our journey.
