Santa Maria vintner, Texas manufacturer buy the university’s North Fork Ranch and vineyard for $5 million.
Back in 2014, the company overseeing Harvard University’s $36 billion endowment fund decided it would be a good investment to grow grapes on an old cattle ranch in the Cuyama Valley, a dry agricultural region where the underground water basin had been depleted by decades of over-pumping.
So, Brodiaea Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Harvard Management Co., the university’s investment arm, bought the North Fork Cattle Co. ranch, a 7,600-acre property that straddled both sides of Highway 166. It was part of a historic land grant known as the “Cuyama Rancho.”
Brodiaea drilled 16 wells and planted an 840-acre vineyard, the largest in the valley. No zoning permit was required to grow grapes. Harvard became one of the largest water users in this land of little rain.
Local residents speculated that the university’s investment firm had set its sights on becoming a seller in some lucrative future water market. But around March of this year, they said, the workers at the North Fork vineyard were abruptly laid off.
This May, public records show, Brodiaea sold the North Fork Ranch and its abandoned vineyard to Rancho Cuyama No. 2, a limited liability company registered in Texas to Dustin Noblitt, a manufacturer of western lifestyle products, and James Ontiveros, a vintner who grew up in the Santa Maria Valley.
Transfer taxes recorded by the county on May 22 show that the North Fork Ranch sold for about $5 million. Brodiaea had purchased it for $10 million in 2014 — without the vineyard in place, the records show.
In 2025, the ranch at 7400 and 7401 Highway 166 was assessed by the county at $38 million.
The new owners
Noblitt, Ontiveros and representatives for Brodiaea and Harvard Management, which now oversees a $56 billion endowment fund for the university, did not respond to requests for comment this month on the sale of the North Fork Ranch.
Public records show that Ontiveros is a co-founder of Grapevine Capital Partners, the San Luis Obispo-based agricultural investment firm that developed and managed the North Fork vineyard. Matthew Turrentine, also a co-founder of Grapevine Capital, is the Chief Executive Officer of Brodiaea.
Ontiveros owns the Rancho Ontiveros, Alta Maria and Rancho Viñedo vineyards and the Rancho Dominion and Rancho Potrero cattle ranches, all in the Santa Maria Valley.
Noblitt, a resident of Garland, Tex., is the CEO of the Pro Equine Group, Inc., a manufacturer, marketer and distributor of western products such as ropes and saddles; and its sister company, RHE Hatco, a manufacturer of western hats and apparel, including the Stetson brand.
The LinkedIn pages for Noblitt and Ontiveros show that they both entered California Polytechnic State University in 1994 and graduated in the late 1990s.
Looming water cutbacks
Brodiaea had faced significant challenges at its Cuyama Valley vineyard in recent years, the record shows.
For starters, the valley is on the state’s list of groundwater basins in “critical overdraft.” About twice as much water is being pumped out every year as can be replenished. Portions of the valley get less than eight inches of rain per year.
Under state law, the Cuyama basin must be brought back into balance by 2040. To reach that goal, the valley’s Groundwater Sustainability Agency estimates that agricultural pumping will have to be cut back by at least 50 percent.
In 2024, agency records show, Brodiaea was the eighth largest water user in the valley, pumping about six times as much water as the community district that provides water to New Cuyama, population 700.
In 2021, the top two water guzzlers in the valley — the land companies for Grimmway Enterprises and Bolthouse Farms, the world’s largest carrot corporations — filed a water rights lawsuit against all other valley landowners, forcing them to hire lawyers and make a case for their water allocations before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. The suit could drag on for years more.
Early on, Brodiaea tried but failed to convince the judge that the North Fork Ranch property was located in a separate water basin and should not be included in the water rights lawsuit.
Then, in 2023, Brodiaea tried but failed to obtain a county permit to build two large storage reservoirs, or “frost ponds,” at its North Fork vineyard. The company was proposing to spray the water on the grapevines during winter to prevent new leaf buds from curling up and turning black in a frost.
But a number of smaller farm and ranch owners, including some who had been in the valley for generations, opposed the project, saying the ponds would worsen the groundwater overdraft, even as the state was trying to reverse the trend.
Members of Harvard’s faculty and student body, weighed in too. At a hearing on the project, one researcher spoke of what she saw as “deep contradictions” between Harvard’s promotion of sustainability and climate justice in its classrooms, “even as it threatens local residents and farmers.”
Ultimately, the county Planning Commission rejected the frost pond proposal.
Robbie Jaffe, who co-owns a small vineyard and olive orchard in the foothills at the western end of the valley, where the North Fork Ranch is located, said she was shocked when Brodiaea drilled 16 wells for grapes, more than a decade ago. On her five acres, Jaffe said, she is “dry farming” her orchards, relying chiefly on rainfall and saving every drop.
Jaffe said she hoped the new North Fork owners would consider the “needs of the community and the devastating situation of Cuyama’s groundwater” in developing their plans for the ranch.
“There’s not enough water to grow a massive vineyard anywhere in the Cuyama Valley,” Jaffe said.
“Vine graveyards”
Bloomberg News has reported that, beginning in 2012, as part of its strategy of investing directly in agricultural projects around the world, the Harvard Management Co. spent $100 million buying more than a dozen vineyards, mostly on the Central Coast, including the North Fork Ranch. The grapes were sold to other vintners who blended them into their wines.
It appears to have been a gamble that did not pay off. According to the WineBusiness Monthly, a trade publication, Brodiaea has since sold off thousands of acres of vineyards in San Luis Obispo County that it was managing for the university’s endowment fund.
Harvard is not alone in abandoning its grapes. Wine sales are in a historic downturn, as alcohol consumption in the United States hits historic lows. There’s been a generational drop in wine drinking; and cheap imports are hurting the industry, too.
According to some estimates, about 50,000 acres of grapes would need to be pulled from production in California to bring the supply into balance with demand. That’s in addition to the removal of nearly 40,000 acres last year. “Vine graveyards” now lie scattered throughout wine regions such as the Napa and Sonoma valleys.
Kerry Mormann, a Berkshire Hathaway realtor specializing in Central Coast ranch land, said that vineyards are not selling because of the overproduction of grapes in California.
“The vineyard market is dead,” Mormann said.
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Good news. Better news will be to stop the new owners from doing what Harvard did. The fact that Harvard lost its shirt should discourage them. But they didn’t buy this property without a plan. The county needs to be vigilant and rein them in. The wine glut is subsiding not just because wine consumption is down but because the greed of the wine industry has priced their product outside the reach of the general consumer. Fortunately the harsh reality of the market place is bringing things back in line, at the expense of those who often bought these things as vanity projects by the way.
Very interesting story. Now, if we could just get those water-thirsty carrot farms out too. It’s not even close to sustainable in that region. We have a glut of grape farmers around these parts now. Hopefully the pendulum swings back and some of them bail, like Harvard did.
Is the plan working? All across CA we have thousands of agricultural people out of work and more farmland that can be converted to housing.
What are you talking about??
Another con conspiracy fantasy?
The orange moron’s attacks on agricultural workers?
What happened to your build, build, build mantra?
Conspiracy? Tell that to the peach farmers that now have nowhere to sell their crop and are tearing out close to 500.000 peach tress in CA. Also the apple farmers would like to know why their long time buyer goes to Washington now.
Being a city slicker you may not pay attention to the facts of farming in over regulated CA.
Insufficiently regulated, is more like it. Between overdrawing water resources and having a racist crackdown on farm labor, it must be getting tough on the con farming conglomerates.
You said there was a plan. That’s con-spiracy morongering.
Excellent portmanteau (sort of) constructs there.
Thank you … I enjoyed stumbling upon it.
Here’s another thing that popped into my brain recently:
Mirror mirror on the mall, who’s the biggest fool of all?