Gentleman Farmer

Alumni Pour Hospitality Love into New Business Venture

By Melanie Johnson

On a spring morning in downtown Napa, music flows out of the open windows and doors of a midnight blue 1926 craftsman bungalow.

Inside, sunlight floods an open kitchen as Joey Wolosz (’93, hospitality management) rolls out the dough for pierogis, Polish dumplings filled with potatoes and cheese, while Jeff Durham (’89, hospitality management) pulls out samples of his homemade take on the snack Cracker Jacks and wine gummies.

The couple opened the doors of their Gentleman Farmer Bungalow in December, dubbing it a “Studio for Gustatory Well-Being.”

“We wanted to have a social space where we can host people and have them experience our wines and have that in the context of food,” Durham says.

Before they opened the doors to the Napa house, Wolosz and Durham hosted a similar tasting experience in their Yountville home, where they would serve meals of six or seven courses along with their own Gentleman Farmer Wines.

A trip to France in 2017 served as the inspiration for the venture. Wolosz recalls that a friend made a wine tasting reservation at a chateau in Bordeaux. When they arrived, the host asked if they “will have had lunch?” The food was an unexpected treat, Wolosz says.

“I thought it was such an interesting and lovely way to experience wines,” he says.

The Early Years

Wolosz and Durham started making wine together in 1999 out of a garage. They launched Gentleman Farmer Wines in 2005 with the guidance of a local wine maker, beginning with about 80 cases. Their operation remains small, at less than 1,800 cases a year. Their wine is made at a cooperative where they share space with 19 other wineries, sourcing fruit from local farmers. They are responsible for everything from field sampling to lab analysis to choosing when to harvest their own rows. Their catalog includes a Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rosé, a red wine that is a blend of Bordeaux varietals and an Almanac, also a blend of wines.

“We are really present with the grapes every step of the way,” Wolosz says.

A few months before they started making wine, they met in a bar in San Francisco. The couple married in 2017. Their lives had many parallels. Both graduated high school in 1985, attended a community college before transferring to Cal Poly Pomona in their sophomore years and both shared the same major. Although their time at Cal Poly Pomona overlapped, they didn’t know each other as college students. Through a concurrent enrollment program, Wolosz took classes at both Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he grew up, taking his time to complete his studies. Durham, a Napa native, went straight through the program at CPP.

After Durham graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, he worked in hospitality at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco.

“What I learned is that it is not enough to just meet expectations for guests,” he says. “You need to exceed their expectations. So that’s always been with me since 1989.”

For both Durham and Wolosz, their upbringing helped prepare them for what they are doing now.

In the early 1980s, Durham’s family began farming grapes in the Oak Knoll region of Napa Valley, 22 acres total. Durham and his siblings worked at the vineyard after school, on weekends and during vacations. He learned vineyard management, trellising, pruning and harvesting. The family sold the vineyard around the time Durham headed to Cal Poly Pomona.

Wolosz grew up in the hospitality industry. When he was 5, his parents bought two motels on California’s central coast — El Patio Motel and The Wayside Motel.

Durham and Wolosz also owned and operated their own hotel — The Redwood River Walk Hotel — in Humboldt County for 18 years before selling it in April 2023.

The 2017 Distinguished Alumni recipients credit their upbringing, CPP’s hands-on learning opportunities and exposure to faculty with industry experience for helping them navigate the path to career success.

“The hospitality program was exactly what I had hoped for,” Durham says. “It is what got me into the industry and kept me in it. I graduated in four years because I knew I wanted to be a part of it, and everything I have done since I graduated has been hospitality based.”

Wolosz says he originally wanted to be an architect, but his family encouraged him to study hotel management. He was in the cooking program at CPP and fell in love with wine, running home for the summer to work at a vineyard. 

A Taste of Home

That love flowed into Gentleman Farmer Wines, a name Wolosz picked.

“A gentleman’s farm is a farm for his satisfaction and pleasure, not necessarily for profit,” he says.

Gentleman Farmer Wines, recognized by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce as Napa Valley’s only LGBTQ-certified winery, donates a portion of its profits in June to LGBTQIA+ organizations as a way of giving back. They also put their love into each glass of wine poured and every meal prepared, making most of what they serve, from breads to cream, from scratch.

“When I am doing this, I am not checking emails. I am not invoicing anybody, talking to bookkeepers or running spreadsheets,” Wolosz says. “I am doing what I love to do, which is hanging out in the kitchen and visiting with people.”

The bungalow’s guests are there to enjoy their time away from work and daily life, and Wolosz and Durham want to help them make the most of that time.

“Everybody in front of me is on vacation,” Wolosz says. “They are here to enjoy themselves. I also don’t feel like I am working. So, it started to come to me that Jeff and I, our lives are a vacation. We are on everybody’s vacation.”

The aim is to make the guests feel at home when they enter the doors of the bungalow. Their family history plays a big part in the experience.

Chandeliers hanging from the ceiling come from a Wolosz family home in Arroyo Grande. Durham uses his grandmother’s Christmas flatware when serving the Chardonnay course. There is a piano and an accordion at the ready that Wolosz plays for guests and a clarinet that Durham uses to accompany him.

“We want you to feel like you’re coming into our home and not into some sort of business that’s going to be transactional,” Durham says. “It’s all about relationships.”

That’s why, during business hours, the public is welcome to drop in and say hello.

“Every single day we’re here, our doors are open, whether we’re just greeting a neighbor who wants to see what the place looks like, because we’ve been under construction for three years, or welcoming someone who made a reservation for a three-hour lunch,” Durham says. “It is our job to exceed their expectations on hospitality. Hospitality is in everything we do, whether it be the hotel or whether it be this business.”