Land, Legacy and Leadership: Margo Warnecke Merck’s Enduring Sonoma Story
By Glenda Winders
SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. — Margo Warnecke Merck doesn’t feel the need to travel — and with good reason. She lives across the road from, and manages, Warnecke Ranch and Vineyards, a property that has been in her family for more than 100 years.
The ranch spans about 240 acres, including 80 acres of vineyards and a mile of Russian River frontage where the river changed course 3 million years ago. It includes oak woodlands, two creeks and volcanic rock that gives the area its Chalk Hill name.
“Our site is pretty remarkable,” Merck said. “But so is nearly any site in Sonoma County. We have a unique microclimate, and being able to grow in volcanic soils is amazing.”
Merck and her niece, Alice Warnecke Sutro, cultivate more than 45,000 vines — including sauvignon blanc, merlot, cabernet and pinot — which they sell to several local wineries. The vineyards are planted on Haire clay loam and the volcanic soil she mentioned. In consultation with winemaker Lisa Bishop Forbes, Sutro also produces Sutro wines. Each year she becomes a client, buying grapes that become terroir-driven wines at the Medlock Ames Winery.
Sutro Wines are available only online. The sauvignon blanc sells for $35 per bottle, and the flagship varietal is Alexander Valley Cabernet at $75. The wines are vineyard designates from Warnecke Ranch, with the express goal of showcasing the unique volcanic terroir.
“I step outside and know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.” — Margo Warnecke Merck
“I love working with Margo,” Sutro said. “She’s an inspirational leader. I’ve learned a lot about business, but what I admire most are her positivity, energy and dedication. We both have a deep connection to the ranch and do everything together — from fixing broken pipes to negotiating 25-year grape contracts. We have a lot of fun. Margo is a dear and important person in my life.”
Sutro is also an artist whose work often appears in pop-up galleries, such as Sonoma’s Alley Gallery, as well as other venues. January will see her opening a new show at the Escolar Gallery in Santa Rosa.
Merck stays busy with more than just vineyards. A third-generation architect, she also oversees the archive of her grandfather, Carl I. Warnecke, and her father, John Carl Warnecke, a world-renowned architect known for designing Logan International Airport in Boston, the Senate Office Building in Washington and the Hawaii state Capitol, among many other prominent buildings.
President John F. Kennedy invited Warnecke to collaborate with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on preservation projects. After the president’s death, she asked the architect to design the eternal flame gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. The two developed a significant romantic relationship that nearly led to marriage and remained close until her death. Warnecke detailed the story in his memoir, which Merck is editing with hopes of publishing.
“I was about 14 or 15 at the time, and to be honest I don’t have a lot of memories,” she said. “I was more interested in my brother’s friends and trying to figure out adolescence. I did spend one Thanksgiving in Hyannis Port, and Jackie sent me a wedding present, but we didn’t interact much personally.”
Merck was born in Oakland, a fifth-generation San Franciscan on her mother’s side and fifth-generation Sonoma County resident on her father’s. Her father’s mother’s Dutch ancestors arrived from Holland in the 1870s, the first year the transcontinental railroad crossed the country. They settled in Guerneville, where her great-grandmother and her three sisters each opened mercantile stores across Sonoma County.
“Alice and I like to remember their entrepreneurship and pioneering spirit,” Merck said.
Her paternal grandfather, a classically trained Beaux-Arts architect, founded his San Francisco firm in 1911 and collaborated on major civic projects, including city hall and the Palace of Fine Arts.
Merck grew up in the Bay Area, attended boarding school in Arizona, then high school in a brownstone on 75th Street and Madison Avenue in New York — right across from the then-new Whitney Museum.
“It was pretty magical to have that experience of New York City at that age,” she said.
She returned to California for college at Stanford, where she studied architectural history and urban studies and spent time in studio art. She worked in San Francisco for an urban planner and served as one of the youngest members of the landmarks commission under Mayor George Moscone.
Later, she moved back to New York for a job in the Department of City Planning and graduate school at Columbia University.
“It was an extraordinary time to be at Columbia,” she said. “Most of my professors were postmodern architects we later collaborated with through my father’s firm.”
In New York, Merck met her husband, Al, and managed her father’s SoHo office. The couple lived in a Tribeca loft before returning to California in 1996 to build the home where they still reside. She continued working with her father and began developing permanent supportive housing for low-income people with disabilities — a mission inspired by her brother Rodger, an artist who lived with mental illness.
“He inspired me to learn more about housing for people with disabilities,” she said. “It was pretty grim in Sonoma County. I became an advocate, then a developer.”
She led a small nonprofit that partnered with for-profit developers to create inclusive housing. They also rehabbed older residential facilities that were closing — many of which already had zoning in place, helping avoid local resistance.
“We developed more than 120 units of permanent supportive housing over that period,” she said. “We also advocated for updates to the county’s housing elements.”
In 2010, the Sonoma County Housing Authority named Merck a Sonoma County Housing Hero, and she was a founder of the Housing Advocacy Group.
She also helped establish the nonprofit Warnecke Institute with her father, which funds the Chalk Hill Residency — an artist-in-residence program on the ranch. Once again, her brother was the inspiration.
“We enjoy sharing the ranch,” she said. “The artists can explore freely in nature. On Studio Days, nonprofits bring disabled and neurodivergent artists to connect with the resident artists and share lunch.”
An ice cream social where locals can meet with this year’s artists in residence will be held Saturday, Aug. 2, from 1 to 4 p.m. Though Merck hopes to one day make the 1925 farmhouse fully accessible and inclusive for disabled artists in residence, it’s not currently set up for caregivers or accessibility. In the meantime, they partner with programs such as the Creative Growth Art Center, NIAD Art Center and Creativity Explored.
Her father also funded the architectural archive. Housed in a converted dairy barn, it contains more than 100 years of hand-drawn work from her father and grandfather — some 860 original drawings.
“It’s really a treasure-trove,” she said. “Collaborators like landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and others are represented here, too. It’s invaluable for historians.”
While architecture researchers are their main visitors, the collection has drawn interest from unlikely corners. A punk rocker recently requested to use an image of the AT&T building in New York — one of the largest windowless buildings in the world — in a video. Filmmaker Laura Poitras, known for “Citizenfour,” sent a researcher who found the building was used by the NSA to spy on the United Nations.
“We’re open to the public by appointment and offer free tours,” Merck said.
To do research or tour the archive, contact her at margo@warneckeranch.com.
Katherine Rinehart recalled her first visit to the ranch.
“The ranch is gorgeous,” she said. “I loved learning about the residency, the property’s history and the winery. The archive was the icing on the cake.”
Rinehart and Merck now stay connected through the Sonoma County Heritage Network. Merck has hosted group meetings and participated in an emergency preparedness workshop for special collections.
“I continue to be impressed with Margo’s dedication to her family’s archive and desire to make it accessible,” Rinehart said. “Managing a collection like this takes real work and investment. It will benefit scholars and the public for years to come.”
Merck is currently taking classes to learn how to digitize the collection, starting with key historic projects.
In addition to everything else, she manages 15 long-term rental houses on the property for Sonoma County workers, helping ensure people who work in the region can afford to live there. She said that they are seldom available because people who live there don’t want to leave.
And with so many members of her extended family living on or near the ranch — Sutro included — it’s easy to understand why Merck doesn’t feel the need to go anywhere else.
“I’m deeply rooted here,” she said. “There’s meaning in every day — whether it’s the land, the work or the people. I step outside and know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.”
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Glenda Winders is a novelist, freelance writer and copy editor for Napa Valley Features.
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