When Brian and Diana Fitzpatrick moved to Fair Play in southwest El Dorado County 50 years ago, the region was recognized, if recognized at all, for its mountainous and scenic terrain, its faint traces of Gold Rush history, and its recreational opportunities – swimming, fishing, rafting.

Fair Play was remote and isolated, with few residents and fewer attractions than other old mining camps scattered through the Mother Lode. An experimental wine-grape vineyard had been developed in the area in the 1960s, but no one was pursuing vigorously its encouraging findings.

Then the Fitzpatricks came to town, though Fair Play was more ghost town than community. About the only remnant of Fair Play was its curious name, attributed to a peacekeeper’s plea for “fair play” when a couple of residents got into a feud during the Gold Rush. Today, Fair Play is an officially designated American Viticultural Area (AVA) playing host to some 20 wineries.

Several people played instrumental roles in establishing Fair Play as California’s arguably most overlooked AVA, but Brian Fitzpatrick played the biggest role of all, and not just for his burly build and bushy beard. From the outset, he has been one of those hugely capable people who when they see a challenge can’t help but take it on, whether it be building a bed-and-breakfast inn or coaching a girls’ basketball team. Those are in his resume, as well.

Diana and Brian Fitzpatrick with his newly published book “Confessions of a Winemaker” flanked by Lake Mt. Aukum, the front yard of their Fair Play spread.

Fitzpatrick was president of the Fair Play Winery Association in 2000 when the group petitioned federal authorities to establish the 33-square-mile Fair Play AVA on the grounds that its sandy granitic soils, rangy elevations (2000 to 3000 feet), rugged and varied terrain, and winemaking history were individualistic enough to set it apart from the surrounding Sierra Foothills and El Dorado AVAs, both of which include Fair Play.

Historic evidence suggests that Fair Play’s first vineyard was planted in 1869, but the industry did not exactly take off, not even when Civil War veteran Horace Bigelow arrived from Wisconsin to develop Fair Play’s first commercial vineyard and winery in 1887.

Since then, Fair Play’s grape growing and winemaking have mimicked the region’s topography, scaling sunny heights at times while dipping into dark hollows at others. When Fitzpatrick filed the petition to declare Fair Play an AVA, the area had about 250 acres in vineyards and 10 wineries. (As of 2023, El Dorado County had a total 2,634 acres in wine grapes, but officials don’t break down acreage by area, though Fair Play today probably has around 350 acres in vineyards.) Compared with other AVAs along the Sierra foothills, growth since inception of the AVA has been slow and unsettled. Fair Play wineries have come and gone, or changed hands, at a more frantic pace than elsewhere in the Mother Lode.

The Fitzpatricks are among several early pivotal Fair Play vintners who no longer are in the business, though they continue to reside in the area, their residence overlooking Mt. Akum Lake. When they aren’t traveling, they relish their role as grandparents, scuba dive, cut firewood, and tend a large orchard and garden, the latter being the kind of pursuit that drew them to Fair Play in the first place.

Brian Fitzpatrick also has been writing, and now has published a book that reflects on the couple’s relocation from Santa Barbara to Fair Play in 1975 and their subsequent role in launching Fair Play as a grape growing and winemaking enclave – “Confessions of a Winemaker” (297 pages, $23.99 softcover, $55 hardback, $9.99 Kindle, from Amazon.com; $8.99 from his website, fairplaycalifornia.com). An audio version is to be available soon.

“Confessions” is a rambunctious read, capturing with detail, candor and humor the dogged determination of two people with urban backgrounds who decided they wanted to be farmers in accord with the back-to-the-earth ethos of the turbulent 1970s. It was not an easy transition; one of their early mishaps was the falling of a large oak tree onto the first building they built, a redwood barn. That yarn, and other lessons they learned, makes “Confessions” as much manual for anyone tempted to enter the wine business as it is memoir.

The Fitzpatricks were self-described hippies when they left Santa Barbara, but their carefree attitude and their limited finances were offset by indefatigable energy, abiding optimism, and a gutsy do-it-yourself attitude. In late 1974, after touring the state in search of appealing and affordable farmland, they gave up their coastal lifestyle to move inland, paying down $500 for 34 wild acres in unlikely Fair Play. Early in 1975, they packed up three goats, two beehives, a crate of chickens and a six-foot clawfoot bathtub and settled on their Fair Play parcel. They had no electricity and no water with which to fill that tub, but they remained undaunted and began to dig, plant and build.

Diana is a native of Santa Barbara, Brian a native of New Jersey drawn to California to pursue his surfing dreams. Before jumping to Santa Barbara, Fitzpatrick owned a combination natural-food store and surf shop on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island. In Santa Barbara, he ran a landscaping business.

From adolescence, Brian was amiably cantankerous, starting by declaring at 16 that he henceforth would be a vegetarian, from which he has not wavered. At that point, and ever since, he has been concerned about personal and environmental well-being, also reflected in his early commitment to organic principles in growing grapes and making wine.

During the couple’s early Fair Play years he repeatedly had run ins with El Dorado County building, education, and law-enforcement officials over building standards, construction permits and the like, yet he also had the knowledge and adaptability to work for the county as a farm adviser.

“Confessions” is rich with maxims Fitzpatrick came to live by as he adapted to life in the hinterland, one of which is to “study the rules and develop a strategy.” He came by that after ignoring one of the county’s more stringently enforced rules, prohibiting the growing of marijuana long before the practice was legal. That resulted in a one-year jail sentence for Fitzpatrick, though eventually relaxed.

There were other obstacles. They established their first business, Famine’s End Farm & Nursery, in a hollow too chilly to accommodate their horticultural ambitions. Then they lost the property to foreclosure. “What a mess that time was leading up to foreclosure on Famine’s End. I could have packed my family up and just quit,” said Fitzpatrick in a recent email exchange. “But I had responsibilities to keep on keeping on. Luckily, my Diana was strong and able to manage all the stress…and keep our young family healthy. I put my little family through many challenges, and they came through with flying colors.”

They rebounded on a nearby hilltop, where they built the massive and rambling log Fitzpatrick Winery & Lodge, which became a popular destination for wine tourists drawn by Fitzpatrick’s portfolio of roughhewn wines and the couple’s embracing hospitality, which Fitzpatrick traces to his affable Irish ancestry. He built a wood-fired oven for Friday-night pizza parties and launched a successful series of themed winemaker dinners (Brazilian, Moroccan, Armenian, Incan, Basque). Poetry, dancing, and music became as much the attraction as the wines.

Fitzpatrick Winery & Lodge was an outgrowth of their initial winery, Somerset Vineyards, which they founded with a partner, Bill Bertram, in 1980. They released their first wines in the spring of 1982. Their “tasting room” was an empty wine barrel they stood upright, bottles arranged on top.

Fitzpatrick’s transition from fruit trees to wine grapes emerged from his growing environmental awareness, specifically his realization that grapes need less water than fruit trees, a major consideration in southwest El Dorado County, where the availability of water is shaky. (Early on in the couple’s Fair Play adventure he earned a degree in soil and water science at the University of California, Davis, and continued his study of the local area as a county farm adviser.)

If Fitzpatrick’s wines didn’t generate much widespread critical acclaim, it could have been due at least in part to his limited distribution, pretty much within the immediate area, as well as the remoteness and isolation of Fair Play, only occasionally visited by wine critics. Nonetheless, Fitzpatrick wines had their following and their moments. They won several best-of-show honors at county-fair competitions along the Sierra foothills, and in 1995, President Clinton served two of Fitzpatrick’s Irish-themed wines – King’s Red V and Eire Ban – at a St. Patrick’s Day soiree for Irish dignitaries at the White House.

Their lifestyle was hectic – growing their own grapes, running the winery, handling wine sales, overseeing the bed-and-breakfast inn, and tirelessly promoting the region. Their output ranged from 2500 to 5000 cases annually.

“I had no business being in the wine business, but we survived for 33 years,” Fitzpatrick said during a recent interview at the couple’s Fair Play residence. “I was 10 years younger than anyone else (in the business here). I was not well respected at first, but I worked hard to prove myself.”

And he succeeded. Twice he was elected president of the El Dorado Winery Association. He also served as president of the Fair Play Winery Association. He was founding president of the Sierra Gold chapter of the Certified California Organic Farmers. He organized the Sierra Foothills Wine Alliance, a group of El Dorado and Amador vintners who staged ambitious wine tastings in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. He brought together all the data to get Fair Play sanctioned as an AVA. And he was the inspiration and driving force behind the region’s hugely successful Fair Play Wine Festival, an imaginative marketing event subsequently emulated elsewhere.

Though he grumbles about curmudgeonly vintners who were slow to get with whatever program he advocated, he clearly enjoyed himself, especially when he was staging or participating in competitive grape stomps, a fall ritual throughout California’s wine countries. He was so adept at the chore that he won several championships that included trips to New Zealand, Mexico, and France.

The span from the early 1980s to the turn of the century were the Fair Play wine trade’s “golden years,” reflects Fitzpatrick today. “I was a perpetual optimist. I believed that if you made a bigger pie, you’d get a bigger slice. I pushed everyone to work together,” Fitzpatrick says.

He hasn’t soured on Fair Play’s long-range potential as a stable and respected appellation, but he does fret that the area has too many brands, and that too many members of the area’s wine community still aren’t working together to effectively promote the region. He advocated early on for a single central cooperative winemaking facility for Fair Play, with a full-time professional winemaker working for individual resident vintners, and a seasoned marketing team to manage sales. “We’d be the growers. It would not preclude the ego of having your own brand. If we had done that 40 years ago Fair Play would have a national presence today. But the wine business in America attracts a lot of egos, and the last thing they want to do is work together,” says Fitzpatrick.

The Fitzpatricks sold their winery in the fall of 2011, five years after they put it on the market, their timing complicated by the nation’s abruptly depressed economy. Their decision to sell was motivated in large part by the realization that their two daughters, who had grown up on the estate, were staking out careers that did not involve pounding grape stakes.

Even before the sale, the couple was working on their next chapter, which involved a return to the ocean that drew Fitzpatrick west in the first place. They commissioned the construction of a large catamaran in France. After Fitzpatrick took delivery of what the couple christened “INNcredible,” he sailed it across the Atlantic, about the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, and up the California coast to San Pedro, where he moored it and started to charter the vessel’s four staterooms to guests eager to sail about the Sea of Cortez off the east coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. “Sailing filled the void really fast,” Fitzpatrick says of getting out of the wine trade.

They had planned to keep sailing for 10 years but gave it up after eight and a half when the Covid-19 pandemic virtually eliminated bookings, and they struggled to meet ongoing maintenance costs of up to $40,000 annually.

Today, he is a content, easy-going farmer, continuing to delight in cooking, still favoring his customary working-man overalls, and commonly accompanied by Bear, the latest in a long line of the couple’s Golden Retrievers – Mooch, Duffy, Corky, Marley, Dublin. With Diana, he tends his sprawling and diverse orchard, harvests its fruits and nuts, takes occasional excursions about the country to visit family and friends, and returns to the sea that brought him west more than 50 years ago.

To find where my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi” is available, please visit my website SignatureWines.us.