Frank Pastori was a fixture in the Alexander Valley grape-growing community, rooted on the land his immigrant Italian parents planted in 1914. With his wife “Edie” by his side, he replanted the family ranch north of Geyserville to 60 acres of Zinfandel, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carignane — selling the fruit to local wineries and making some wines of his own.
A natural storyteller, Pastori set up a tasting room on the ranch in a converted prune dehydrator and charmed visitors for decades with tales of Alexander Valley’s colorful past. When he died in 2020 at the age of 100, it marked the end of an era for Pastori Wines. But not the end of the story.
Pastori’s 28-year-old grandson, Paolo Pastori-Ng, took over the family grape-growing operation in 2020 and he has since revived the winery side of the business.
City kid on the ranch
While growing up in Oakland, Pastori’s young protégé spent weeks every summer helping out on his grandparents’ ranch. When he got older, Pastori-Ng bottled wine and picked leaves from newly harvested bins of grapes.
“I just loved coming up here as much as possible,” he said. “I was probably just in the way of the workers, but my grandpa always tried to get me as involved as possible.” Later, Pastori taught his grandson the basics of winemaking and vineyard management.
Paolo Pastori-Ng with his wife and twin boys, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, at Pastori Winery in Geyserville. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Despite this early apprenticeship, Pastori-Ng didn’t expect to one day take over the family business. After spending a year at Chico State, he returned to Oakland and worked construction jobs while trying to figure out his next move. Mulling over his future, his thoughts kept returning to Alexander Valley.
“It just kept popping up,” he said. “When I started thinking about it more in depth, I realized that (working on the ranch) is something I’ve always loved doing.” He moved there full-time to help with farming after his grandmother died in 2011.
Pastori-Ng was essentially running the operation by the time his grandfather passed. That year, with encouragement from his mother, Sharon Pastori, he officially took up the baton. Between pandemic lockdowns and the 2020 wildfires that ruined all of Pastori’s grapes, it wasn’t an easy time to join the business.
“It was an interesting year to say the least,” Pastori-Ng recalled. “It almost felt like the universe was throwing curve balls to make sure this was something I really wanted to do.”
Reviving the family winery
For years, the Pastoris sold most of their grapes to Constellation Brands. But when wine demand fell, the wine giant pulled back. This led Pastori-Ng to diversify the business by relaunching the family wine brand, which had fallen by the wayside in his grandfather’s later years. First on the agenda was giving the old winemaking facility some much-needed love.
Still set in the original prune dehydrator, the winery was stacked with dozens of barrels — some half-filled with wine-turned-vinegar — along with old furniture and unusable steel tanks. Pastori-Ng spent the first year clearing and tidying the space, dumping about 9,000 gallons of spoiled wine down the drain.
The facility is still what you’d call rustic. Daylight peeks through the building’s wooden planks and the ceiling is covered in plywood. Some of Frank and Edie’s old furniture remains, now neatly stacked near the winery’s compact crusher.
Old vine Zinfandel and Pastori Winery, in the Alexander Valley AVA, Thursday Sept. 4, 2025, in Geyserville. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
The winery has no fancy, open-top fermenters or temperature-controlled anything. When the weather warms up, Pastori-Ng transfers the barrels to an off-site storage facility. There’s an old press out back that he hopes to get working again someday; in the meantime, he uses a vintage model better suited to home winemaking.
With advice from a family friend who works as a winemaking consultant, Pastori-Ng produced his first solo wines, two old-vine Zinfandels, under the revamped Pastori label in 2023. The 2023 Centurian Zinfandel — made with grapes from the original Pastori estate vineyard planted in 1914 — won a gold medal at the 2025 Press Democrat North Coast Wine Challenge. He made just 40 cases of the wine.
“I truly wasn’t expecting to win a gold,” Pastori-Ng said. “When we got the results, I was very excited and super happy. After all of the hard work, it paid off.”
Even more gratifying, he said, was pouring samples at the North Coast Wine & Food Festival after the competition. Throughout the event, attendees came over to share stories about Frank Pastori and offer encouragement.
“I feel very connected with my grandpa doing everything I’m doing here,” he said. “It was heartwarming and also great to hear that people are excited to see I’m carrying on the legacy. They’re big shoes to fill.”
The future of Pastori
By all accounts, this is a tough time to be in the wine business. Yet 33-year-old Pastori-Ng says he’s determined to forge ahead. Along to support him are his wife Miriam and his mother, who plays the role of family historian, publicist and business advisor.
“I’m always very optimistic in how I look at everything,” Pastori-Ng said. “If I can get through these times, things will hopefully only get better. I hope we can slowly expand production over time, and I’m excited about where our wine quality is now.”
Though Pastori doesn’t currently offer public tastings, the winery is open with advance notice for retail pick-ups. Its old-vine Zinfandels are also available at Dahlia & Sage Community Market and The Beet restaurant in Cloverdale, as well as Big John’s Market in Healdsburg.
Pastori-Ng’s long-term plan is to upgrade the winery facility and build a little tasting room on the ranch he calls home.
As he looks toward the future, Pastori-Ng and his wife are now raising what they hope will be the fourth generation to farm the Pastori ranch. He says their 4-year-old twins Andres and Mateo have inspired him to double down on his dedication to carrying on the family business—and they’re already helping out in the vineyard.
“They love being outside and they always copy what I do,” Pastori-Ng said. “I won’t force them to do anything, but I have a feeling they’re going to have a secret love for being here in the country.”
Details: Pastori Winery, 23189 Geyserville Ave., Cloverdale.
Tina Caputo is a wine, food and travel writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including SevenFifty Daily, Visit California, HuffPost and Sonoma Magazine. Follow Tina on Twitter @winebroad, view her website at tinacaputo.com, and email her story ideas at [email protected].
