Jim Regusci talks the 'long game' as Napa Valley's Grower of the Year

For James (Jim) Regusci, longevity and modesty are the name of his game.

Named the 2026 Napa Valley Grower of the Year by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, Regusci is the founder and owner of Regusci Vineyard Management, a Napa enterprise he launched in 1986 when he was just 19. What began with a single truck and a relentless work ethic has grown into one of Napa Valley's most recognized and respected vineyard management companies. Today, RVM farms more than 2,000 acres and employs a team of over 175 full-time professionals.

Regusci, who was driving his truck to multiple work sites when he spoke to the Napa Valley Register by phone, says he doesn't know exactly why he was chosen as Grower of the Year, and he's wary of the spotlight.

"I'm not big on getting, you know, the award scene," he said. "If I were to get one, this one would be the best one for us, for the family, the company and all."

Still, Regusci suggested, albeit modestly, that it was a combination of his family's long history in agriculture and their ongoing community contributions and involvement, a long-term stewardship mentality that he simply calls "culture."

"The most important thing is culture. All the other stuff you can hire - consultants, talent, whatever," he said. "The longevity of these companies is culture. We've been this deep for this long because we care."

"Jim Regusci embodies every criterion we look for: a relentless commitment to sustainable viticulture, a lifetime of advocacy for the preservation of Napa Valley agriculture, and a depth of community investment that goes far beyond the vineyard," said Caleb Mosley, the executive director of Napa Valley Grapegrowers, in a statement to the Register.

Regusci is part of five generations of farming heritage. His Swiss-Italian grandfather Gaetano Regusci arrived in Napa at age 13 in the early 1900s, encouraged by an advertisement for milking cows in the valley.

In 1932, Gaetano purchased the plot that is now the heart of the home ranch in an audacious Depression-era land gamble.

The family started as dairy people, then moved into beef cattle and ran one of 17 slaughterhouses in the valley. Jim worked in the slaughterhouse "until I was about 14."

Regusci said his father, Angelo, saw the writing on the wall in the 1970s. As cattle began to decline and grapes rose as the key local commodity, Angelo leased the dairy ranch across the road to Robert Mondavi after the Napa Valley legend built his namesake winery. He then converted the family land to grapes, while still keeping about 150 mother cows until the mid‑1990s.

"I think people forget how poor we were here until grapes came along," Regusci said.

Asked what difficulties the family faced during this agricultural transition, Regusci said - whether it would have been pivoting to pistachios or sheep farming - his family's strong work ethic and humility have allowed them to successfully keep pace with the valley's shifting agricultural commodities.

"It all comes down to survival," he said.

But Regusci and his family have done more than just survive with Napa's transformation into a global wine titan, though he repeatedly frames their story as a mix of foresight and luck.

Regusci himself graduated high school in 1986, skipped college and started a farming company right away. That business grew from 1986 to 1996, and he still has 12 original employees who have been with him for over 36 years - a prime example of his keeping longevity central to his business and personal life.

As Regusci's farming operation expanded, it "made sense to get into the wine business," he said.

He started the winery side, which grew to about 200,000 cases across various brands in 40 markets.

About 10 years ago, Regusci sold off the large brands and shifted to a direct‑to‑consumer focus under the family label that still farms on the same ground that was purchased nearly a century ago.

A powerful lesson from his family's history - three generations of gambling on the valley's shifting commodity landscape - is the validation that a long-term, hands-in-the-dirt and community-rooted approach to farming can still define success.

Family, workers and community

Regusci likes to define success through the satisfaction and the impact of taking care of "his people" - his family and his workforce. That means providing full benefits - health, dental and retirement - that he says ultimately flow into the broader Napa community. Regusci believes that no one should have to live through the Hollywood cliché of missing their child's recital or play because of work.

"That task will be there tomorrow, or we can drop someone else in to cover you," he said.

His worker‑first philosophy extends to philanthropy, too. He prefers to put resources directly into his employees' lives rather than chase the kind of public-facing donations that generate gushy press but little day‑to‑day change.

"I'd rather have a guy shake my hand and say thank you than get my name on a piece of paper that will just get thrown in the garbage at the end of the event," he said with a laugh.

Still, Regusci and his family have done plenty on the outside.

In 2017, he co-chaired and hosted Harvest STOMP, a harvest-season celebration and fundraiser that supports both the Napa Valley Grapegrowers and the Napa Valley Farmworker Foundation.

The family has focused their philanthropic efforts on what Regusci calls the four pillars that help sustain Napa's quality of life: the hospitals, schools, the agricultural landscape and local culture.

His team has underwritten dozens of local sports teams, and he has turned his ranch into a home base for Oaxacan Mexican dance groups. They also backed the people who keep working land in agriculture, from the Farm Bureau's old technical committee to the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, the Farmworker Foundation, and agriculture fairs and scholarships.

He singled out hospice care as something they now support "pretty heavily" because of seeing firsthand what that support has done for his family and others.

But Regusci, who says he's much more comfortable driving a truck or tractor, or operating any kind of heavy machinery, relishes lending his and his team's services directly on the ground using their skills and equipment. At local schools, Regusci has helped build gardens for both Scouting projects and for pregnant and parenting high school girls in a special class.

"We have a lot of capabilities," he said. "Instead of money, people use our capabilities much more."

The long game

Perhaps it's his roots as a farmer, but at the vineyard management, community and philanthropic level, Regusci said he likes to make decisions thinking decades ahead to what is ultimately the most sustainable path forward.

"Our outlook on everything is long-term," he said. "When I say long-term, it's minimum 10 to 15 years, minimum, even 30 to 40."

Unlike some of his more corporate, quarterly-focused counterparts in the industry, Regusci prefers to size his operation on a scale that helps weather the industry downturns that someone with his deep roots in the valley has come to expect.

"With the industry having difficulties right now, there's a time to grow and a time to hold," he said.

In the current downturn, Regusci has taken on new leases, but only where "it really makes sense" for the long term. He is adamant that he won't dilute service quality just to farm more acres.

"We don't drop (the service level) just to grab more acreage," he said. "It has to be sustainable."

His long-view ethos also shows up in how he talks clients out of bad ideas, including pushing back when certain overambitious buyers want prestige varieties in the wrong sites, leaving them with decades saddled with an unmarketable vineyard.

"Being around as long as we have, probably the best thing we've ever learned is to plant the right varieties in the right sites," he said.

Regusci's long-term wisdom is disarmingly simple – protect your people, plant the right varieties in the right places, and build a business that can survive the bad years as well as the good. And the fruit of that wisdom can sometimes be delivered with tongue in cheek.

"We're better off … I mean, we could be farming corn in Kansas. At least we're farming grapes in Napa Valley," he said.

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