HEALDSBURG, CALIF. — When Debra Mathy was in high school, she took French classes so she’d have an excuse to visit France’s wine country and experience its vineyards first hand.
“My parents never knew it, but that was really the only reason I wanted to take French,” recalled Mathy, who grew up in La Crosse and is the daughter of Leah and the late Chuck Mathy. Her family runs one of the largest road-building companies in the Midwest – Mathy Construction.
She returned from France the summer of her junior year enthralled with wine making and told her father that her dream was to one day operate her own winery. She graduated from Logan Senior High School in 1987.
Mathy made that dream come true – with guidance from her father – and today is the proprietor of the Dutcher Crossing Winery, which is about 10 miles north of Healdsburg in Sonoma County, Calif.
Her father’s initial reaction, however, was anything but positive. He said “no, no, no,” she recalled. He told her she needed to go to college and get a real job. So she earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona and later a graduate degree at Colorado State University.
“I grew up in La Crosse, but left as soon as I graduated from high school,” said Mathy, who taught physical education, health and nutrition during her career as a teacher in Fort Collins, Colo. “I wanted a warmer climate and never made my way home, though I’m very fond of the Midwest and its people.”
She let her brothers take over the family’s fourth-generation business, which also deals in timber and fuels.
“I’m the only one who said ‘no thanks’ and headed off on my own. But I had the blessing of my parents, which was nice,” she said during a recent interview at her winery on Dry Creek Road near the intersection of Dutcher Creek Road. As she spoke, her Golden Labrador, “Dutchess,” lay on the floor beside her.
Mathy, an avid mountain biker who rode 50 weeks a year in Colorado, said she never lost her desire to run a winery.
“It was my life-long dream and it all stemmed from that school trip to the Rhone region of southern France,” she said. “Before then, I’d never seen vineyards or tasted really good wine. It was a moving, life-changing experience.
“As a 16-year-old, I was pretty wide-eyed and naïve. But I always kept pestering my dad about running a winery,” she said. “I made one hard push about 25 years ago, but it didn’t make financial sense at the time. I looked at other business possibilities, but I kept coming back to wine.”
Mathy said when her father was diagnosed with cancer around 2002, he asked what she wanted to do with her life.
“He’d always encouraged me to find my own path,” she said. “So when I said I still wanted to be in the wine industry, he said ‘OK, let’s do this together as long as I have left.'”
They hired consultants and went on a search that took them to Australia, Germany, Oregon, Washington and California. Eventually, she focused on several Napa and Sonoma county wineries in the counties north of San Francisco.
A Napa County winery deal fell through, but she was able to strike an agreement with the owners of Dutcher Crossing and closed the sale in 2007. Unfortunately, her father died three months before the papers were signed. Before he died, though, he gave her a Penny Farthing bicycle, the kind of bike that was popular in the late 1800s and has a tall front wheel and small rear wheel. She uses it on the winery logo.
“It represents our journey into the wine country together,” she mused.
Though Dutcher Crossing felt “just right,” she said the purchase wouldn’t have happened without a push from her siblings.
“The day before the funeral, my brothers asked where I was with the Napa winery,” she said. “I told them what had happened and they asked me if I wanted to keep looking. I said the one I wanted – Dutcher Crossing – wasn’t for sale and they said ‘why don’t you ask, the worst they can do is say no.’ So I did and the owners agreed to negotiate.”
Mathy assumed ownership in 2007. She said the transition has been smooth because the founding winemaker has stayed with the winery. Dutcher Creek has won numerous awards over the years and is best known for its Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel wines, as well as a Cabernet-Sirah blend.
“We make very good wines, from top to bottom, at fair prices,” she said. “We’ve also continued and expanded the previous owners’ philosophy of finding small vineyard sites with a unique ‘terroir,’ that sense of place that expresses itself in the grapes. Now, depending on the vintage, we have 22 to 27 different wines.”
She said she owns 35 acres at the Dutcher Crossing winery, with 24 planted in grapes. Another nearby vineyard is 24 acres, with 18 acres planted. A vineyard planted with pinot noir grapes is now being developed along the Russian River.
Mathy said between 28,000 and 35,000 visitors visit her winery annually to sample and often buy Dutcher Crossing wines. The winery also direct ships to customers and members of its wine club. Several hotels and B&Bs in Healdsburg – including the Honor Mansion – serve Dutcher Crossing wines. Production has increased from 4,500 cases a year in 2007 to more than 12,000 cases in 2014.
“Dry Creek Road is a well-traveled road,” she said. “We believe we offer a full experience, here, too. You may love the hospitality and site of a winery, but not the product. We think we are pretty balanced. Healdsburg is also really becoming a destination, so we get a lot of people who are visiting that cool little town.”
Thanks to a distributor in La Crosse, Mathy’s wines are available in Wisconsin. In addition, because of a friendship with the president of Carroll University in Waukesha, Dutcher Crossing wines are served at some school functions.
Mathy’s family is also involved with her winery. Her mother comes out five to six times a year and has made thousands of cookies during the Christmas holidays to hand out to winery patrons. Her brothers, who run Mathy Construction, visit several times a year and often work in the vineyards.
Mathy said she pairs Dutcher Crossing wines with Wisconsin cheeses at two parties she does annually. Sometimes, she even includes deep-fried cheese curds.
“We celebrate our heritage with an Oktoberfest celebration at the winery, too,” she said. “My family brings out bratwurst, dark rye buns and one of my brothers makes the sauerkraut. We also have German-style potato salad and yodelers. Why, we even fly the Wisconsin flag for the festivities.”
For more information on the Dutcher Crossing Winery, see http://www.dutchercrossingwinery.com.
— By Brian Clark
For WisBusiness.com
