Inside the Iron Horse Vineyards founders' marvelous life

Audrey and Barry Sterling have joie de vivre, something they cultivated while living in Paris in the 1960s.

“All through Europe we enjoyed the antiquities, the mere fact that everything went back so far, but Paris was different,” Barry said. “It was just a feeling that this was the way to live, a beautiful way to live.”

The founders of Iron Horse Vineyards in Sebastopol imported their joie de vivre by creating a house of bubbly.

Now in their mid-80s, each walks with a cane. They’re practically Sonoma County icons, and yet there’s plenty we don’t know about them.

Whoever would have guessed that Audrey rode an elevator to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge when it was being painted in the early 1960s? Who would have suspected that Barry and Audrey went to Stanford University with Sandra Day O’Conner, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, and William Rehnquist, the high court’s 16th chief justice? How uncanny is it that Barry and Audrey’s summer home in France was just a village away from Julia Child’s?

The Sterlings have led an exciting life on two continents because they don’t fear risk. They simply manage it.

“We always say, ‘What is the worst thing that can happen to us?’ If the worst thing that can happen to us isn’t that bad, we’ll take the risk,” Audrey said.

Managing fear is what gave them the courage to do the unthinkable in 1977.

They bought the Iron Horse property in the Russian River Valley and set out to make chardonnay and pinot noir. Most industry experts told them they were making a grave mistake because it was too cold.

“Audrey traveled up here a lot and knew this area,” Barry explained. “We needed a cool climate. When we bought this property, she knew this was the right spot.”

The Sterlings had a lone supporter in the late vintner Rodney Strong, a family friend who once owned the property.

“He is an unsung hero of Sonoma County, and he had decided this was the place to make the great Burgundian-styled wines,” Barry said.

The couple never set out to make sparkling wine. “We stumbled into it,” Barry said. “It was just going to be Burgundian, point noir and chardonnay.”

However, a close friend named Daniel “Danon” Carasso, of Dannon yogurt fame, tasted their rosé and encouraged them to consider making sparkling wine. After a string of tastings in Champagne, France, the couple decided to produce sparklers as well as still wines.

“So it was by accident,” Barry said. “It just happens to you. … Things happen to us because we have good friends.”

Back in 1951, Barry and Audrey met through a friend. On their first date at a roadhouse in Palo Alto, Audrey sipped a martini and they talked for hours. Both studied at Stanford University, Audrey a San Francisco native majoring in biology and Barry, from Los Angeles, studying law. They studied in the law library and befriended both O’Conner and Rehnquist.

“She was No. 3 in our class, and he was No. 1,” Barry said. “We only had five women in our class of 114.”

After Barry graduated, the couple married in 1952. He was 22, she was 21.

In their early years, the Army called the shots. Barry had to report to duty within 48 hours of the wedding. The newlyweds went to Camp Roberts near Paso Robles, then to Charlottesville, Va., and finally to Washington, D.C.

While Barry worked at the Pentagon, Audrey listened to cases at the Supreme Court. She even heard the legendary Brown v. Board of Education case and became passionate about civil rights.

Audrey knew firsthand that “separate but equal” could never be just. When she lived in Charlottesville, a bus driver once forced her to leave the back of the bus where she was sitting because it was designated for blacks.

When the couple moved to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C., in 1954, Barry went into private practice and Audrey had the chance to put her civil rights passion into practice. She was appointed California Fair Employment Practice Commissioner in 1963, and she fought discrimination in employment and housing.

In a case involving the Golden Gate Bridge, Audrey fought to have a qualified African-American person hired to work on the project. She ultimately won. During the case, Audrey was invited to inspect the bridge.

“They took Audrey up to the top by elevator to show her what a tough job it was,” Barry said. “All the way to the top! I was horrified when she came home and told me.”

After four years of serving as commissioner, Audrey left the post to move to Paris with her family. Barry had agreed to open the European offices for the Los Angeles law firm Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman & Kuchel.

Once residents of the City of Light, Barry and Audrey enrolled their 13-year-old daughter, Joy, and 10-year-old son, Laurence, in France’s Bilingual School. Their classmates included the children of former U.S. Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver as well as the grandchildren of Winston Churchill.

The Sterlings had an apartment in Paris with a wine cellar big enough to age 10,000 bottles. They also had a summer home in the village of Castellaras, where they were privy to Julia Child’s culinary adventures.

“Julia Child lived in a village within walking distance to us,” Barry said. “It was her summer home. There were local merchants in all the villages around us, cheese in this market and pasta in that market, and they’d say, ‘Madam Child ordered this today. Would you like to order it?’?”

The couple was welcomed into the Parisian culture, one dinner party at a time.

“If you were lucky enough to be part of the old bourgeoisie, that whole group, it was a marvelous life,” Barry said. “The art was marvelous. We went out to dinner at private homes three to five times a week, black tie.”

British wine expert Steven Spurrier, who went on to organize the Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976, helped them fill their cellar with some buying sprees.

“I had 200 bottles from the south of France, and they looked pretty lonely in the cellar,” Barry joked.

The Sterlings set out to buy a chateau with a vineyard in Bordeaux, but the government made it difficult. Joy also wanted to attend college in the United States, so the family returned to America with a wine cellar that had grown to more than 10,000 bottles. Barry and Audrey hoped to find an ideal spot to make Burgundies.

On a rainy day in 1976, they found it. Once a railroad stop, the property was in ruins, Barry said, but they could see the potential.

Their first vintage from the Iron Horse property was in 1980, with 1,000 cases of chardonnay, pinot noir and three sparklers: Blanc de Blancs, Brut and Wedding Cuvee. Today it produces close to 20,000 cases yearly.

“We wanted to do a European-styled, family operation,” Barry said. “You choose the path you want to follow.”

Iron Horse winemaker David Munksgard said living in France gave the couple insight into cooler growing regions. “It gave them the courage of conviction to plant and grow grapes where others feared to,” Munksgard said.

What makes each of them extraordinary, he explained, is what they love. “Barry loves all things that grow in the earth, and Audrey loves entertaining and all things of beauty.”

Both are still active at the winery, although daughter Joy is partner and CEO. In fact, they hosted Sandra Day O’Conner last April to celebrate Earth Day.

“When Sandra came here, I prepared for it,” Audrey said. “I studied the news. She’s very commanding, but we had the whole group here, and I was able to introduce her and follow through.”

Joy said the smartest thing she ever did was pick her parents. They are a spectacular couple, the ingredient X in Iron Horse wines, she said.

“One way their joie de vivre comes across is that their home is always full of flowers,” she said. “They dine by candlelight, just the two of them, listening to classical music.”

On the back patio of their Queen Anne Victorian farmhouse, Barry took a sip of brandy and looked at Audrey with a broad smile.

“We have no regrets,” he said. “Our life is great. We’ve had a very good run. Frankly, on our passing, no one is going to say, ‘Oh, they never got to enjoy life.’ Everyone who knows us knows we’ve had a hell of a good time.”

Wine writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 521-5310 or peg.melnik@?pressdemocrat.com.