Patty Bogle dies at 59; co-creator of Bogle Vineyards

Patty Bogle, who with her husband Chris built Bogle Vineyards from 18 acres of grapes in the Sacramento delta into a regional wine powerhouse, died Friday at her home in Clarksburg, Calif., of complications from leukemia. She was 59.

After marrying in 1973, Patty and Chris Bogle tended vineyards of Petite Sirah and Chenin Blanc grapes planted by Chris and his father, Warren Bogle Sr., in Clarksburg, 14 miles south of Sacramento in Yolo County.

The Bogles first sold their grapes to wineries and founded their family winery in 1979. Starting with a goal of producing 4,000 cases annually, they now ship more than 1.2 million cases of wine and operate production facilities in Clarksburg and throughout Northern California. Bogle Vineyards was recently ranked by Wine Business Monthly as the country’s 14th-largest winery.

“It was intended to be a small thing, an interesting project,” Patty Bogle told the Sacramento Bee in 2009 about the winery’s beginnings. “We just grew as demand grew.”

Bogle oversaw winery operations, and her husband ran the company’s agricultural program. When he died in 1997 at age 45 of heart and kidney failure, their son Warren Jr. left college to become the company’s vineyard manager.

The winery focused on producing quality wines at budget prices — a sweet spot with consumers, especially during tough economic times.

“They’ve grown in volume steadily even when other wineries were flat or dropping in volume, and they continued to grow through the recession,” said Cyril Penn, editor in chief of Wine Business Monthly. “There aren’t many family-run wineries of that size.”

Patty Bogle was committed to seeing the winery continue through the family’s generations. She named Warren Jr. president of Bogle Vineyards in 2002, and daughter Jody Bogle VanDePol was named secretary of the winery’s board of directors. Ryan Bogle, her youngest son, joined the family business in 2008 and now serves as vice president.

Patty Bogle was diagnosed in 2007 with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that forms inside bone marrow, and received a stem-cell replacement and other treatments. Bogle stepped back from many of her winery duties, but the family business continued to thrive under the helm of her children and longtime employees.

In 2008, she married Ernie Roncoroni, a friend from the Yolo County Fair board. Bogle lived cancer-free until October 2009, when doctors found that the leukemia had returned. She is survived by Roncoroni, sons Warren Jr. and Ryan, daughters Jody Bogle VanDePol and Kelly Fransen, and nine grandchildren.

Bogle was born June 27, 1951, and grew up in suburban Portland, Ore. She met Chris Bogle when they were students at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., where she studied political science and economics and he studied history. They moved to Clarksburg after graduation.

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