Hahn Family Wines grew out of the love of land, and devotion to growing great grapes.

The Santa Lucia mountain range, formed over millions of years by the movement of the San Andreas Fault, helps funnel coastal fog across the Salinas Valley in the morning and creates a rain shadow over it that allows the sun to warm the land.

These are good conditions for growing wine grapes.

Nicky and Gaby Hahn could see that. Nicky was a Swiss citizen and successful international businessman, while Gaby had earned law degrees in Germany and France but remained committed to the arts. In the late 1970s they purchased the Smith Ranch and Hook Ranch in the Salinas Valley, and converted them into a vineyard that would form the basis for Hahn Family Wines. The family-owned winery sits 200 to 1,200 feet above sea level on an alluvial fan on the east side of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

Paul Clifton, who has worked at Hahn for 16 years, is its vice president of operations and director of winemaking.

“A lot of Monterey County was growing Cabernet then,” Clifton says. But growers discovered that the land is best suited to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. So Hahn pulled up the Cabernet vines on 650 acres and replaced them with mostly Pinot Noir, grapes that take a greater level of attention to grow, but that soon started making standout wine.

Early on, Nicky rallied his neighboring winemakers to campaign for federal recognition of the Santa Lucia Highlands as an American Viticultural Appellation. It was granted in 1991.

Today Hahn offers three tiers of wines, averaging $14 to $50 a bottle. They produce about 400,000 cases of wine a year, which they ship nationally and internationally – though California remains their biggest market.

They have two tasting rooms. One is on the Smith vineyard with a deck looking out toward Pinnacles National Park, the other is at Carmel Plaza.

Nicky’s son Philip has taken over as chairman of Hahn Family Wines. Tony Baldini helms the day-to-day operations as the president.

Gaby, who served as a trustee for the Monterey Symphony, Monterey Institute of International Studies, and Monterey Museum of Art, currently lives in Switzerland. Nicky passed away in March of this year, months after receiving the American Wine Pioneer award from Wine Enthusiast.

“He [said to] me, ‘Make sure whatever you put in the bottle tastes twice the price,’” Clifton says. “And that’s what I’ve tried to do. Awesome wines that taste really good.”