Theopolis Vineyards

Petite Sirah with a lawyer's patience

Petite Sirah gives Theodora R. Lee, winemaker at Theopolis Vineyards in Yorkville, her firmest line: dark fruit, structure, and the discipline of a grape that does not reward hurry. She works in the Yorkville Highlands AVA, a rugged interior growing area of rolling hills and benchlands along Highway 128, where the vineyard sits in an elevated landscape rather than a valley-floor ease. Lee's formation carries two kinds of training into that ground. UC Davis gave her a formal wine education; Texas gave her early field sense, including tractor work at eight. Since 2003, she has held the work here as founder, owner, and vintner while maintaining her legal career as a shareholder at Littler Mendelson P.C. The two practices ask for different rooms and different tools, but the habits touch: timing, patience, precision, and the nerve to let a slow argument take shape. At Theopolis, that argument comes through small-lot wines built around Petite Sirah, Rosé of Petite Sirah, Symphony, Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, and Yorkville Highlands Pinot Noir. The house is Black woman-owned, and Lee's presence at the bench matters without needing decoration. She put her name on the vineyard and stayed with the method.

A portfolio held close to the vineyard

The program at Theopolis is small lot and hand-crafted in scale, with still red, still white, and still rosé wines rather than a broad cellar meant to blur its origin. Petite Sirah is the anchor, with Rosé of Petite Sirah carrying the same grape into a different register. Pinot Noir appears through both Anderson Valley and Yorkville Highlands bottlings, while Symphony, Zinfandel, Grenache, and Mourvèdre widen the range without pulling the work away from Mendocino County ground. Conventional farming sits here beside a deliberately personal cellar identity. Lee's legal training can make that sound tidier than vineyard work ever is, but the alignment is plain. Each release has to survive contact with weather, picking decisions, fermentation, and the final blend. Petite Sirah remains the hard center.

Quiet above Highway 128

The room around the work is not urban theater. Theopolis Vineyards belongs to the Yorkville Highlands, an elevated and rugged wine-growing area where rolling hills and benchlands shape the approach before the glass does. The tasting room is intimate, quiet, and set within a rustic vineyard landscape, with a more polished hospitality note than the terrain might suggest. That tension suits the wines: bold and intense in profile, but not presented with noise. The cellar and vineyard sit inside a serene landscape that keeps attention close to the pour, the slope, and the hand behind the label. Lee's signature remains clearest when the place narrows to one grape and one decision, the Petite Sirah at Theopolis Vineyards.