Dick Stark started his ‘side project’ under his Palo Alto home in 1976.
Page Mill Winery founder Dick Stark and his wife Ome are pictured in this undated photo. While Dick Stark died in 2023, Ome lived to see the winery hit the 50-year mark this year before passing away in January.
Their son Dane Stark took the reins after his father retired in 1996, moving the winery from Palo Alto to Livermore in 2004. Back in 1976, Dick Stark decided to dig a hole under the house and create a winery. Little did he know that this crazy little side project, inspired by spending time in Germany while selling laser technology for Varian and later Spectra Physics, would turn into a winery that survives 50 years later. Today Page Mill Winery is no longer under a house, and it is far from where it began on Page Mill Road on the outskirts of Palo Alto.‘I thought I was in control’: Ex-Napa Valley winemaker apologizes as he’s sentenced in $2.5 million grape scamHopland: A tiny town packed with 15 tasting rooms and zero pretense“My Dad was traveling to universities around the world, showing physics professors this amazing new technology none of them had seen before,” says current Page Mill Winery proprietor Dane Stark, the youngest of Dick and Ome Stark’s four sons. “One day, he went wine tasting in the Rhinegau and saw all these family operations with 10 or 12 barrels under the house, and that planted the seed.” Dick dug the hole in the hill, cemented it all in and then borrowed 2 acres of land from a friend who had 13 acres—back in those days, such transactions were simpler—and planted a vineyard. The deer promptly ate it all. So, in 1976, he began purchasing grapes. Dane says his dad bought cabernet from Napa and the Central Valley, as well as from Monterey and some from the Santa Cruz Mountains. “His philosophy was to just buy really good grapes, and it was all built around what you could put on the back of flatbed truck: about 4 tons at a time,” he adds. “The initial business model was to have folks come to the winery twice a year to taste and buy wine.” Dick created a mailing list that would grow to over 3,000 people, and they would invite 40 at a time, to sit at picnic tables and taste, usually in April and October. They would do 40% of their sales for the year in those two months. The rest was sold to restaurants and retailers throughout the Peninsula, and eventually beyond. Dane remembers putting stamps and address labels on the fliers they mailed out twice yearly. An avid backpacker who loved to hike, Dick saw wine as a way to spend more time in the Sierras. “We would put 40 pounds on our backs and we would hike all day in the dirt and mud,” says Dane. “That cured me of backpacking, but all my siblings still love it.”Among those wineries were Woodside Cellars, Cooper Garrod and Ridge. At the time, the wine industry was becoming segmented into AVAs , and the eastern side of the Santa Cruz Mountains spanned several counties, among them San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. “My parents were instrumental in bringing together the Santa Clara and Santa Cruz sides,” says Dane. “They created fundraisers with Duane Cronin, the Martellas, the Obesters, Jeff Emery , Dr. Fogarty – lots of neat of folks, including Don Riesen of Ridge. Those were good times.” Getting into the wine industry wasn’t a given for Dane, but he eventually wound up there. While attending college in Boulder, CO, he applied to study abroad the summer before his junior year to bolster his major in French studies. “We did a blind tasting with my uncle and mom and dad, and they tried to get me up to speed because I didn’t want to look like an idiot in Bordeaux!” Dane learned French the hard way by enrolling in the enology program at the University of Bordeaux, where he learned about the wine and the language. “That’s where I got the bug,” he admits. “They have such a different way of looking at things in Europe, especially in France.” His year abroad over, Dane came back in 1989 with what he calls “a bit of an epiphany, or perhaps it was a mental breakdown.” He called his dad to ask if he could come back and take a semester off and work for him during harvest. That went great, but then his Dad told him, “We’re gonna do sales.” Dane admits that first sales trip spoiled him for life. “We drove around to all these great accounts like Bambino, Flea Street Cafe, Iberia restaurant, and they each said they would take three cases. They loved the wines and we even got it back on the shelf at Drager’s. I thought, ‘This is really easy!’ But I’ve spent the whole the rest of my career trying to emulate that day.” Dane eventually became a member of the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers board and was president when his parents decided to retire in 1996. “There were under 30 wineries when I joined board in the mid-’90s,” he says. “I held the first trade tasting at the Palo Alto Sheraton, and I also organized the Santa Cruz Mountains certificate for servers. It was one night a week for eight weeks. We wanted front line people to be familiar with Santa Cruz Mountains history.” Dane says that after his parents retired, his intent was to take over the winery and keep it local, but they needed more space. The cellar was filled to the floorboards above, and barrels hit the floor joists. By 2004 he and his wife Angela were thinking about a family of their own. “We looked all around the mountains and even asked the Fogarty’s if they could sell us some land on Skyline,” says Dane. They also looked in the Sierra Foothills, Healdsburg and Livermore but wanted to stay close to Silicon Valley. It became clear that Livermore was experiencing a renaissance and had the wine country feel they sought, and it was far less expensive. The couple found the ideal house right away, and the late Dick Bartlett of Charles R offered them barrel storage. Soon they found the vineyard and winery property next to Concannon on Tesla that would become the new home of Page Mill Winery. After years of buying fruit from as far south as Santa Maria and as far north as Napa, they now source everything from Livermore. “I could have coffee with Angela, and the fruit would show up on the crushpad and it made better wine,” Dane says. “By 2014, I was totally Livermore.” He feels the same spirit of camaraderie in Livermore as he did in the Santa Cruz Mountains. “The regions are similar in that they have red-headed stepchild syndrome,’” says Dane. “Both live in the shadow of Sonoma and Napa and Paso. Neither wants to be Napa, and it has fostered an underdog mentality that works in our favor. And yet, the Santa Cruz Mountains is still the Wild West: there are so many remote outposts, it fosters an independence that still works.” As for his parents, when they sold their property on Page Mill Road, they moved to Twain Harte, where they lived happily hiking, skiing and generally enjoying the great outdoors. Dick passed away in January 2023 and Ome died on Jan. 30, 2026, having lived to see the winery that became part of her life mark 50 years. “My Mom was the quintessential good sport, open to any adventure, from river rafting to skiing and backpacking,” says Dane. “Our front yard was chaos four months out of the year during harvest. After my Dad retired, she got a job as a tour guide and traveled the world. One night she called from Fiji to check in, and my Dad was beside himself with the four of us, telling her ‘The kids are driving me nuts!’ To which she replied, ‘Oh, so sorry to hear. I’ve got to run to a luau now.’”Dear Abby: My boss is trying to smooth over the snub, and I'm not having itMiss Manners: The newsy family letter they sent me wasn't that at allAsking Eric: My boyfriend is great, except when he's saying mean things about my past
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