The Cassara family has been making wine for so long that Prohibition could not stop them. Back in the early 1900s, Dan Cassara grandfather Angelo kept right on making it, the way his family had in Sicily, and passed the habit down through a Chicago basement where the uncles crushed grapes by hand. Generations later that same instinct put a vineyard on a foggy hilltop above Solvang and Italian grapes in the cellar. Casa Cassara is what happens when a family treats wine not as a business plan but as a birthright.

A brick mason, a hilltop, and a hunch about Pinot

It began as a getaway. In 1981, Bennie Cassara, a brick mason who ran a masonry company in Orange County, and his wife Mary went looking for a family retreat and fell for a mountaintop above the Solvang and Buellton hills. They built a Mission style house there by hand, anchored by a circular brick fireplace that holds up the roof of the great room, and called the place The Ranch. It was meant for rest, not wine. Then a friend changed the plan.

That friend was Brian Babcock of Babcock Winery, who looked at the hillside exposure, the warm days, and the cold foggy nights and told Bennie the site was made for Pinot Noir. The first vines went in the ground in 1992, on land that would later be drawn into the Sta. Rita Hills appellation. In 1995 Bennie, Brian, and Bennie son Dan stood in the lab at Babcock and tasted the first tiny batch, about five gallons, and Babcock knew a world class Pinot could come off that hill. By 1999 the family had its own first Estate Grown Pinot Noir, and a brick mason side project had quietly become a winery.

A pilgrimage to Sicily, and a turn toward Italian grapes

In 2007 Bennie began handing the reins to Dan on the long Wednesday drives up from Long Beach, three hours each way, talking through his vision for the estate. Dan and his wife Bridget eventually moved to the valley and, in 2012, settled the tasting room into its home at 1607 Mission Drive in Solvang. The estate Pinot Noir from the Sta. Rita Hills hilltop remained the flagship, the wine the whole story was built on.

Then, in 2016, Dan went to Sicily to walk the streets his grandfather walked. He knocked on the door of the house where Angelo was born and a woman answered who turned out to be a second cousin he never knew he had. He came home with a family tree and a new mission: bring the grapes of his ancestors to Solvang. Working with winemaker Mikael Sigouin, who owns Kaena Wine and is known among locals as the Grenache King, Casa Cassara began sourcing Italian varieties like Sangiovese, Barbera, Nebbiolo, Vermentino, and the great Sicilian red Nero d’Avola. The cellar became a bridge between a Sta. Rita Hills hilltop and a Sicilian village.

The wines and the family on the labels

Two threads run through the lineup. The first is that estate Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir, cool-climate and elegant, the wine that started it all and still the heart of the house. The second is the growing collection of Italian varietals, from bright Vermentino and Arneis to structured Sangiovese, Barbera, Nebbiolo, and Nero d’Avola, plus Syrah, Grenache, and a string of dessert wines. For a small family winery making around 1,200 cases a year, the range is remarkable, and it earned Casa Cassara the title of Solvang Winery of the Year in 2020.

The most charming part is on the bottles. The family tribute series, called La Collezione de Familia, puts real Cassara relatives on the labels: grandfather Angelo, known as Sam, on a Dago Red, a Padrino Sangiovese, a Capo Nero d’Avola, and Bennie own blend with his picture on it. The tasting room carries the same spirit. As the family puts it, the goal is to make you feel like you are sitting in their living room, drinking wine with them.

What to pour it with

Lean into the Italian heart of this place. The Sangiovese, Barbera, and Nebbiolo were all bred for the Italian table, and that is no accident of romance, it is acid chemistry. Their high acidity matches the acidity in a tomato sauce, so neither the wine nor the dish collapses into sourness, which is exactly why a plate of pasta with red ragu, a margherita pizza, or an eggplant parmesan makes these reds sing. Their firm tannins also bind to the fat and protein in aged cheese and braised meat, so a Sunday gravy with sausage and a chunk of parmigiano is a near-perfect match.

The Sicilian Nero d’Avola, dark and savory, loves grilled lamb and caponata, the food of its homeland. Save the estate Pinot Noir for something gentler and earthier, seared duck, salmon, or a mushroom risotto, where its savory notes bridge to the mushrooms and its soft tannins flatter the fish. The pairing to avoid is putting a tannic red like the Nebbiolo next to a delicate flaky white fish, where the tannin finds no fat to grab and turns hard and metallic in the glass.

Casa Cassara Winery & Vineyard: common questions