The Families Behind the Bottle: 13 Wines to Open With Dad This Father's Day

There's a lot to love about a good glass of wine, but what gets me most is the craftsmanship behind it - the kind that doesn't roll off a line, it gets handed down. Pour a bottle that sticks with you and you're holding generations of somebody's family: the vineyard a grandfather planted, the blend a father spent thirty years dialing in. More often than not, the person who learned to make it learned it standing next to their dad. So instead of another "ten wines dad would like" list, we asked the families behind the bottles to tell us the real story.

You'll notice this list isn't strictly father-and-son. The handoff in the wine trade has run father to son for centuries, but that's changing fast, and some of the best stories here are father-and-daughter - Mike and Violet Grgich, Marc and Angelina Mondavi, Stefano and Elena Casadei. Today the through-line is dad: the men who built something worth inheriting, and the kids who picked up the work. Chasing those stories down, cellar door by cellar door, also makes for one of the better father-son road trips you can plan, and if your dad leans more toward whiskey, we ran a Father's Day spirits roundup on the very same idea.

DAOU Vineyards: Soul of a Lion

Georges and Daniel Daou didn't grow up planning to make wine in California - they grew up in war-torn Lebanon, watching their father hold the family together through everything that came at them. Soul of a Lion is named for him: the brothers' flagship off DAOU Mountain in Paso Robles, a polished, Cabernet-driven blend with notes of blueberry, plum, and baking spice, and the whole project reads like a thank-you note to the man who taught them that the setbacks aren't the end of the story. If your dad is the type who built something out of nothing, DAOU Vineyards made the bottle for him.

Thacher Winery: Cuvée Cody

This is the one that got me. Sherman Thacher's son Cody grew up around the family winery in Paso Robles, and at nine years old he decided he wanted to make his own wine - Cuvée Cody, from estate-grown fruit. During harvest he'd jump out of bed before school to pick a tray, handle his own punch-downs, and fill his own little barrel at the end of the season. Five harvests later, even after school and sports pulled him other ways, he's thinking about majoring in wine and viticulture in college. That's the whole thing I love about wine in one story: a dad showing his kid what he does all day, and the kid catching the bug for good. The fruit comes off the same Paso estate, and you can find it through Thacher Winery.

Grgich Hills Estate

You know the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the blind tasting where a California wine beat the French and rewrote the wine world overnight. Mike Grgich made the Chardonnay that won it. A year later he founded Grgich Hills Estate, and his daughter Violet grew up in the cellars, started on the bottling line, and worked her way through every part of the business because her father insisted leadership had to be earned. She runs the place today, still making the Napa Valley Chardonnay to Mike's original vision. A genuine piece of wine history to put in dad's hand, straight from Grgich Hills Estate.

Famiglia Casadei: Le Anfore

Elena Casadei could have stayed gone - she'd built a career in London, the U.S., and Hong Kong - but the harvests back home in Chianti pulled her back to work beside her father, Stefano. He mentored her, then handed her the keys to Le Anfore, her own project making wines entirely in amphora, the old clay vessels, from native Tuscan and Sardinian grapes. It's father-and-daughter winemaking in the truest sense: he taught her the tradition, she's the one bending it into something new. A great pour for the dad who likes seeing what the next generation is up to, and you can follow it through Famiglia Casadei.

Charles Krug: The Mondavi Family

Charles Krug is the oldest winery in Napa, and the Mondavi family has run it for generations. Marc Mondavi's daughter Angelina grew up on the estate learning the craft from her father, Marc, and drawing on the example of her grandfather, Peter Mondavi Sr., and she's now a winemaker carrying it forward. Their Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is the kind of bottle that tastes built to outlast everyone who made it, which is sort of the entire point of a family winery. A classic for the dad who appreciates a name with real history behind it, from Charles Krug.

Tasca d'Almerita

The Tasca family has farmed Tenuta Regaleali, a 1,200-hectare estate in the Sicilian highlands, since 1830. Alberto Tasca is the eighth generation to run it, and he's handing the torch to his son Alessandro, out in markets like the U.S. learning to tell the family's story firsthand. Alberto's lesson to him: they don't own the land so much as look after it for whoever comes next. Pour the Regaleali Nero d'Avola, their bright, elegant flagship Sicilian red from Tasca d'Almerita, and you're tasting two centuries of that idea.

Varvaglione 1921

Four generations into running their winery in Puglia, the Varvaglione family made a pair of wines just to say thank you to the man who started it all: the Collezione Privata Cosimo Varvaglione, a Primitivo di Manduria and a Negroamaro named for the patriarch whose vision shaped the place. That's the idea this whole roundup is built on - a bottle as a way of passing down what one generation learned to the next. Pour the Primitivo, a big, warm, sun-soaked southern-Italian red from a family that wears its heritage right there on the label at Varvaglione 1921.

McCollum Heritage 91

NBA guard CJ McCollum and his wife Elise built Heritage 91 in Oregon's Willamette Valley with one goal: leave their kids a legacy bigger than anything CJ will do on the court. For CJ, fatherhood reframed the whole project - every decision, from sustainable farming to long-term care of the land, gets made with the next McCollum generation in mind. The estate-grown Pinot Noir is the move here. A good one for the dad who's thinking less about this season and more about what he's handing down, from McCollum Heritage 91.

Josh Cellars

Joseph Carr named Josh Cellars after his father, Josh - a military veteran and volunteer firefighter - and got it off the ground by taking out two mortgages and selling the first bottles out of the back of his truck. It's since become one of the most recognizable premium labels in the country, and Carr has kept the gratitude front and center, supporting veterans and first responders through the brand. The Cabernet Sauvignon is the easy call: widely available, genuinely good, and built from the start as a tribute from a son to his dad at Josh Cellars.

Villa Sandi

Every list needs a bottle you actually toast with, and this is it. Giancarlo Moretti Polegato spent decades turning Villa Sandi into one of the great names in Prosecco, run out of a 17th-century Palladian villa in the Veneto, and his kids, Diva and Leonardo, have just joined the board as the fourth generation. His philosophy has always been that wine is really about getting generations around the same table, which is a pretty good description of Father's Day itself. Pop the Il Fresco Prosecco from Villa Sandi, hand dad a glass, and raise it.

Gianni Gagliardo

If your dad's a Barolo guy, this is his story. Gianni Gagliardo married into a La Morra winemaking family that had been producing Barolo since 1961, and today he works alongside his three sons - Stefano leading the estates, Alberto on the vineyards, Paolo in the mix. It's the wine that's defined them for decades: Nebbiolo from the heart of the Langhe, the kind of bottle that rewards the guy who likes to pour a glass and let it open up over a couple of hours. Old-world, multigenerational, and exactly what you picture when you picture Piedmont; find it through Gianni Gagliardo.

Pasqua

Pasqua has been a family operation in Verona for a hundred years, run today by Umberto Pasqua and his three sons - Riccardo as CEO, Alessandro running Pasqua USA, and Andrea on business development. For Father's Day the call is their Famiglia Pasqua Amarone della Valpolicella: the rich, brooding Veneto red made from dried grapes that's about as celebratory as Italian wine gets, born in the exact region this family has led for a century. The serious-occasion bottle for a serious-occasion dad, from Pasqua.

Ratti

Renato Ratti is one of the men who made modern Barolo what it is - he mapped the region's great vineyard crus and helped set the terroir-driven quality standards the Langhe still follows. When he died unexpectedly in 1988, his son Pietro stepped in at just twenty years old and has spent nearly four decades carrying his father's vision forward. It's hard to think of a better note to end on: a young man handed his father's life's work overnight, and a whole region of wine still shaped by it today. Their Ochetti Nebbiolo is the approachable one, the Langhe in a glass without the Barolo price tag at around $28, and exactly right for the dad whose example you're still trying to live up to. Pour it courtesy of Ratti.

A Fine Bottle of Wine Can Start the Afternoon, but Dad's Story Is What Keeps You at the Table!

Thirteen families, and not one of them talks about wine the way a label does. The thread running through all of it is the same one Father's Day is built on: somebody older taking the time to teach somebody younger, and trusting them to carry it once the teaching's done. Mike Grgich made Violet start on the bottling line. Sherman Thacher ran his nine-year-old's grapes separately so the kid could own his own barrel. Pietro Ratti was twenty when the whole thing landed on him.

So don't shop by varietal, shop by story. If your dad built something out of nothing, that's DAOU. If he's the patient Barolo type who likes a glass that opens up over a couple of hours, that's Gagliardo or Ratti. If he just wants the whole family around one table, pop the Villa Sandi and let him pour. Whichever you open, the bottle is only the reason everyone sits down. The afternoon is what you're really after: the stories that come out around the second glass, and the new one you'll both be telling long after it's empty.