The success of Cain depends on the combination of an incredible site, an inspired vision, patient, persevering, and tenacious ownership, and the unending hard work of the Cain team. Take any of these key elements away, and you would not be reading this—nor would we even be writing it.

Each year, our work on Spring Mountain is marked by a few almost sacred moments in both the vineyard and the cellar: the beginning of pruning, the end of pruning, budbreak, flowering, veraison, bottling, the arrival of harvest interns, the beginning of harvest, the making of the wine, the end of harvest. Some of these events we acknowledge with ceremony, others we quietly observe.

What follows are our thoughts and observations, our questions and curiosity about this endlessly fascinating alchemy and its history that begins in the vineyard and results in the beautiful, complex, nuanced, refined glass of wine in your hand.

In 1980, Jerry and Joyce Cain purchased 550 acres, part of the historic McCormick Ranch, on Spring Mountain. Five generations of a family have grown up on the McCormick Ranch. Much of the ranch is still in the hands of that founding family. The tradition of the homestead is embodied today in the McCormick Sanctuary, which, through the generosity of the founding family, has become part of the California State Park System.

The planting of the Cain Mountain Vineyard began shortly after the Cains purchased the property. This initial phase continued through 1988, followed by replanting from 1996 through 2006 onto phylloxera-resistant rootstocks. Replanting has begun again after the 2020 Glass Fire burned directly through the bowl of the Cain Vineyard, taking most of the vines and all of the buildings.

The first crush at the new winery, christened “Cain Cellars,” was in the fall of 1982, at the newly constructed winery. Jim and Nancy Meadlock joined the Cains in 1986, and, in 1991, assumed sole ownership of the property. Chris Howell, who began consulting to the Cains in 1990, took over direction in 1991.

Since then, the entire project has been known as Cain Vineyard & Winery. 1990 saw first vintage of estate-grown Cain Five, continuing through 1994, and beginning again in 2007, as the replanted vineyard matured.

Cain Vineyard & Winery could only have developed as it did through the continuity of more than three decades of ownership and the very long term stewardship of a core group of the Cain team.