A Dream Come True

How tragedy united one family to achieve a shared wine goal

By Aakanksha Agarwal

“There hasn’t been a single year when I haven’t spent at least a month in Napa Valley,” notes Brooke Delmas Robertson, recalling childhood crush pad memories of barefoot grape stomping.

Delmas Robertson was born there, growing up amid the rhythms of vineyard life, even when her family moved away from the vines. Her parents, dreamers with more ambition than money, settled briefly in a small cottage in Calistoga in the early 1980s. “They couldn’t afford it,” Delmas Robertson says. “But it was on 10 acres of mostly scrubland, with a small ghost winery and an ambitious goal of planting wine grapes.”

That dream had to wait. With two children and mounting financial pressures, the family moved frequently, chasing opportunity. Steve Robertson, Delmas Robertson’s father, worked a variety of jobs, from housing development to fitness equipment distribution, while her mother, Mary Robertson, was employed by wine importer Wilson Daniels. Despite obstacles, they stayed closely tied to wine country through relationships with winemakers and vineyard managers. Delmas Robertson recalls vivid childhood moments.

“We grew up with Molly and Cooper Kenward. Their dad, Tor, served as winemaker at Beringer Vineyards for nearly three decades before launching TOR Kenward Family Wines. He had a small vineyard, so we’d all help pick it before heading to Beringer to foot-stomp the grapes on the crush pad.”

Those early years rooted something deeper. “Being in that environment is so impactful,” Delmas Robertson reflects. “It really steeps into your skin because it’s such an unusual world. It doesn’t seem like it’s real, but when you live there, it’s your reality.”

Delmas Robertson continues, “My brother followed directly after me, and over our lives, we collectively tried to make a go of vineyard life, with no luck,” she recalls. The family moved back to Napa a few times, tried the Willamette Valley, and eventually found themselves in Walla Walla. There, through a series of coincidences and relationships— including one with Dr. Miles Anderson, founder of the Walla Walla Wine Program— they discovered land that would become SJR Vineyard. “That was not we initially expected to pursue in this small Eastern Washington town.”

During college, in one of those late-night sibling conversations, Delmas Robertson and brother Stuart crystallized their future. “Growing up 13 months apart and moving just about every two years leads you to think of the collective ‘we’ rather than what would ‘I’ like to do in the future,” she says. “Stuart and I landed on winegrowing as our mission. Likely not without some level of subliminal manipulation from our time growing up.”

After Stuart died, the family’s mission deepened. They poured their grief into purpose. “My parents and I made this our raison d’être,” Delmas Robertson says. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Delmas, along with SJR Vineyard— named after Stuart John Robertson— were born from that shared vision. SJR Vineyard was planted in 2007.
From the outset, Delmas Robertson has been a one-third owner alongside her parents. But she didn’t start in the cellar.

“My path took me first to the vineyards– my preferential place,” she says. With a philosophy degree and a love of ambiguity, she wasn’t drawn immediately to the chemistry and precision of winemaking. “The 1+1=2 science of winemaking seems so finite to me. I am learning more about how to dance with the numbers as I go… but let’s just say it is to our collective benefit I was not solely in charge of the wines in the early days.”

Nevertheless, winemaking always remained the objective. “The ultimate goal of this project was to be all-encompassing, where we do everything ourselves,” Delmas Robertson explains. Acknowledging what they didn’t know was key: the family brought in Master of Wine Billo Naravane of Rasa Vineyards as a consulting winemaker to guide them. “His help in pointing Delmas in the right direction has been invaluable to us.”

Delmas Robertson grew into the winemaking role, taking full charge with the 2023 vintage— a milestone she approached with a combination of reverence and readiness. She describes that vintage as one of the winery’s best, not only in quality, but also what it taught her about presence, patience and trusting herself. Being “in the room where it is happening” became a mantra. So did her gentle rebellion against dogma.

With a philosophy degree, Delmas Robertson feels more attuned to nuance and gray areas than to the inflexible certainties of lab-based winemaking. “I’m most comfortable living in the gray area where there is no black or white, and 1+1 could equal 3 if you argue the point right,” she observes. “In this way, cellar or vineyard operations are more experimentation with the culture of growing wine grapes than following a dogma about the science.”

At Delmas, the team makes all winemaking decisions— occasionally with healthy disagreements. But the family’s collective philosophy is to “get out of the way,” intervening as little as possible, starting every decision in the vineyard and allowing the land to tell its story.

That approach is especially vital in The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater, where extreme conditions challenge even veteran farmers.

“Implements and tools are damaged quickly, and pH levels are high... it’s lots to think about,” Delmas Robertson notes. “But mostly, just get out of the way of your vines. If you set them up to be more self-sustaining (such as head-training), then you don’t have as much to worry about.”

Resilience is a quality both the vines and winemaker have learned over time. “Even when things seem most bleak, such as after a freeze, there will always be some resurgence of life,” she observes.

Currently, she juggles vineyard operations, winemaking and sales… while raising a toddler. “My daily routine is more chaotic than I ever expected. Motherhood has really thrown me for a loop,” she admits. “In the past, I was the one waking up early to be at the vineyard before the day got away from me, but these days I feel as though my brain is in a blender.”

Her relationship with the vineyard has largely remained the same, although she’s trying to intentionally carve out more time to simply walk the rows, all with the responsibilities of the winery– and a two-year-old– in tow. “Ah, the life of a modern woman,” she exclaims.

For Delmas Robertson, success isn’t measured solely in points or press, even if Delmas wines often earn high critical acclaim. “The wines I have made completely on my own are now being scored. I am so thrilled with the response,” she says. “Of course, critical review will always be important... but what I like hearing most is when our customers share how they opened a bottle for someone’s birthday or wedding– or just a Tuesday night! How they enjoyed it with friends and great conversation. I want our wines to aid in positive connections.”

Working with her father, Steve, remains a complex, treasured experience. She calls it both the hardest and most rewarding aspect of her job. They butt heads sometimes. Regardless, she admires his unwavering belief in situations he feels are right, a quality she calls “Delmas Miracles.” She believes they are fortunate accidents that, when viewed from the correct angle, become breakthroughs.

She sees parts of herself in him: his fearlessness, decisiveness and belief in what feels right. “There’s not really a lot he second guesses. If something is right, it’s right, and you know it. You can feel it, and just go,” she says.

And yet, she’s different, too. “I’m a little more cautious... I would also say my outlook on where we are and the path we need to follow is based on a more worldly view,” she says. “There are literal rainbow directions we can travel in. Not everything has to be so binary.”

To Delmas Robertson, legacy isn’t merely a label or a lineage. It’s made of the people who shape– and are shaped– by the land. At the end of a long day, meaning doesn’t come from accolades. It comes from watching her daughter in the backyard, singing a song about a slippery fish. “Gulp, gulp, gulp,” she says.

And, just like that, everything makes sense.

Delmas
In The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater
Tastings by appointment
delmaswines.com

Aakanksha Agarwal is a wine, travel and lifestyle writer from India. Formerly a Bollywood stylist, she now resides in the U.S., embracing writing full-time while juggling family life and indulging in her passions for cuisine, literature and wanderlust.