Take a trip through most small towns and you’ll find the usual public amenities: A park, a library, maybe even a pool — but a city vineyard?
Welcome to Tex Juen Park and Vineyard in Sonoma, where about an acre of Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon is meticulously maintained and harvested by a devoted crew of hobby enologists called the Sonoma Home Winemakers.
“It was a big lot of weeds when the city took over,” says Doug Ghiselin, who helped establish the tiny, unassuming vineyard on Leveroni Road near downtown Sonoma in the 1990s, along with namesake Henry “Tex” Juen, better known as a prolific stonemason who built many Sonoma Valley wineries.
“Somebody called it a vineyard. But the only vines that were there at the time were the big, heavy, thick ones — the Sauvignon Blanc at the end of the rows.”


Originally calling themselves “The Valley of the Moon Dilettante Enological Society,” the group planted new vines donated by local wineries and grapegrowers. Where once there was a mink farm, and later an artist colony, now there is a “teaching vineyard.” If you want to learn printmaking or ceramics, you go to the local community center. For budding viticulturists and winemakers, there is Tex Juen vineyard.
On a recent morning, midway through another heat wave, Ghiselin and six other members set up a table in the shade alongside the vineyard. They’re part of “the Leveroni Group,” a subgroup within Sonoma Home Winemakers who do most of the care and harvesting. Within minutes, they’re popping a 2019 Merlot, aged in Ghiselin’s makeshift wine cellar, aka a crawlspace beneath his house.
The Merlot tastes like any moderately priced bottle you might pull off the shelf at a local wine shop. To the bikers, joggers and walkers that pass by frequently along the adjacent Fryer Creek Trail, it seems perfectly normal that the group are standing around drinking wine at 11 in the morning.
In 2023, the Leveroni Group filled two barrels each of Chardonnay and Merlot from around 1,000 vines on just over an acre. Other members farm a few additional rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc. Some of the wine will go to the city of Sonoma, for pouring and auctioning off at fundraisers and events. But most is split between members.
Over the years, member Bob Brindley catalogued the most common reactions he gets after pouring homemade wine for the uninitiated. They range from “I’ve had worse” and “it’s drinkable” to “not bad” and “this is really good” — the last comment uttered almost in shock.
Dressing up the morning work party’s picnic table with a tablecloth and a spread of gourmet cheeses and almonds is member Rebecca Kreeger, who joined the group in 2019 after she and her husband bought a home with 63 Cabernet Sauvignon vines that needed caring for. Kreeger’s block was too small to hire a professional vineyard company, so she came to a monthly meeting looking for pruning tips. Before long, she was out in the vineyard with Ghiselin and the gang.

The group has around 50 devoted members, many who have small vineyards at their homes. They regularly attend monthly meetings, where wine industry guest speakers often share their expertise and year-round vineyard work parties. At the parties they do jobs like pruning, suckering, weeding and sulfur dusting.
Many volunteer at harvest, collecting grapes in truckloads of 5-gallon buckets. Some are retired or semi-retired, while others are near the end of their careers. Vocations include salumi salesman, travel industry executive, fabricator of large-scale art installations, savings and loan asset manager, and newspaper ad rep. One member, Joseph Daniel, made a documentary called “Tiny Vineyards,” and now makes wine professionally.
They all have a similar dream — to make the best possible wine on what is often the smallest scale possible, with the least amount of expensive tools.
Without professional resources, sometimes basic winemaking needs like temperature control can be a challenge. Over the years, there have been plenty of mistakes and lessons learned. About a decade ago, the city cut off the water. The group has been learning to dry-farm ever since, except for new plantings.
One year, they were fermenting Chardonnay in aluminum beer kegs when a newbie filled them too high and all of the kegs bubbled over. Another year, they didn’t have the technology to determine if the wine had gone through malolactic fermentation. They bottled it — and corks started popping when warm weather hit.
“We’re always trying to find ways to make what we do better, or make the wine better, and so a lot of that is learning from experience,” Brindley says. “We’ve had situations where something didn’t work out and was a big disappointment. And other times we’ve seen really, really big improvement.”
In 2020, the Chardonnay was loaded with too much residual sugar, which led to super-high alcohol content. “It was totally oxidized,” says Brindley. “It tasted like a bad sherry, which you don’t want in a Chardonnay.” Most of it went down the drain, but some people distilled it into rubbing alcohol. Kreeger bottled it in plastic spray cans she uses to clean around the house.

In a way, it’s nothing new. “The Chardonnay never really came out that good back in the day,” says Ghiselin. The reason? “We didn’t have a lot of wine snobs in the group back then,” he says with a dry laugh. After working 30 years in the Vallejo shipyards, he enjoys poking some good-natured fun at some of the less blue-collar winemakers who have joined the ranks over the years.
At an open house in January, part of the mission was to actively recruit the next wave of home winemakers. Paz Del Rascate and Jesse Castro, both in their 30s, were immediately hooked. The friends were already working locally in wine production but wanted to branch out from their day jobs. At their first meeting, a member offered them 100 Chardonnay vines to maintain, harvest and turn into wine. Soon after, someone else offered them 86 Merlot vines. And the offers kept coming. This harvest, they’ll be making wine from nearly 1,400 vines they’ve adopted.
“It’s been crazy,” says Del Rescate, who used to ferment cheap wine in a bag back in his dorm room at Texas A&M. “And in exchange, all they want is a little bit of finished wine.”
Overwhelmed with the amount of pruning, they reached out last winter to Kreeger for help. “She sent out a post, and all of a sudden eight members came out to help us prune,” says Castro. “They had only met us like once or twice. I was like, ‘Wow, is this for real?’ The fact that they came out to support us just speaks volumes.”
When harvest rolls around, “I know if we need more help, they’ll be there,” says Del Rescate. “You can’t do this alone — it takes a community.”
Sonoma Home Winemakers hosts monthly educational talks and group events at the Sonoma Community Center. There are also twice-monthly Saturday morning work parties at the Tex Juen Park and Vineyard in Sonoma. New members are always welcome. For more information, visit sonomahomewine.org.