After a successful career playing pioneers Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on television, Fess Parker embarked on a new frontier in the late 1980s by starting a winery in the Santa Ynez Valley. He’d purchased a ranch along Foxen Canyon Road in 1987 after the Hope Ranch home he’d been remodeling suddenly slid off of the cliffs toward the sea.
After considering the options, Parker, who loved the outdoors as much as his characters did, figured the next best step was to start growing grapevines and making wine. A few neighbors were already doing so, and it seemed like a venture that could one day involve the whole family.
“I remember standing in a field, with him pointing in one direction and Eli pointing in the other, saying, ‘Let’s build it here,’” recalled Ashley Parker Snider last week, of her dad and brother’s initial arguments. “We were scrambling not only to build a winery but to purchase fruit. It was a little bit of the blind leading the blind. It was stressful. But it brought everybody together. You could see the potential, and it was gratifying when people started rolling in.”