A 41-acre vineyard estate in Portola Valley tied to the family of the late Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty has sold for $11.04 million, according to newly released county sales records. The property comes with a 14,500-square-foot, three-level stone Italian villa, a private tasting room and sweeping terraces looking out over San Francisco Bay.
The sale was reported in a home-sales roundup published Friday by Palo Alto Online, which tracks home sales weekly across nine Midpeninsula communities. The outlet's report describes the villa as containing a wine cellar and tasting room, a theater, and a spa with a steam room and sauna, all inside the main residence alone. Elsewhere on the grounds, the report lists a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a pool house with a full kitchen and bath.
Notably, the same report also describes a separate transaction involving two side-by-side properties in Palo Alto that sold together for $11 million. The $11.04 million price is for the Portola Valley vineyard property.
Other Features on the Estate
A separate pool house with a full kitchen and bath rounds out the collection of structures.
The property had been owned by the Fogarty family trust, associated with the late Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty, a doctor and longtime Portola Valley resident who founded Thomas Fogarty Winery, the report states. According to Thomas Fogarty Winery, the estate sits roughly 2,000 feet above Silicon Valley, surrounded by vineyards with views spanning the bay. Visit Half Moon Bay notes that Dr. Fogarty partnered with Michael Martella in 1977 to establish the vineyard, and the pair founded the winery in 1981. The winery's estate vineyards focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, with nearly 30 acres of vines now organically farmed using minimal irrigation, per Visit Half Moon Bay.
How It Stacks Up in Portola Valley's Pricey Market
The $11.04 million sale is a modest figure by recent Portola Valley standards. Just a few days earlier, a roughly 5,200-square-foot home at 155 Grove Drive sold for $14.9 million, or about $2,860 per square foot, according to The Real Deal. A single-family home in the 500 block of Cresta Vista Lane reportedly sold for $6.13 million in a separate ranking of the county's top sales, per The Mercury News.
Those numbers are dwarfed by the town's record-setting deal: a three-lot, 12-acre estate at 20 Meadow Lane that sold for $56 million last November, according to the San Francisco Standard. That property's 12,000-square-foot Italian-inspired main home has just four bedrooms but includes a home theater, wine cellar and 20-foot ceilings, alongside a 6,500-square-foot unfinished entertainment house and a 2,000-square-foot pool house with two more bedrooms, the Standard reported. The $56 million sale eclipsed Portola Valley's previous record of $35 million, set by tech executive Scott McNealy's 13-acre estate in August 2024, per the same outlet.
How the Sale Data Comes Together
Home sales figures like these come from Embarcadero Media's weekly review of transactions across nine Midpeninsula communities, drawing on data supplied by California Resource, a real estate information company. That firm pulls its figures from county recorder's offices, where sales are logged from deeds after escrow closes. Typically, the information is not published until four to eight weeks after a deal closes, which is why the Fogarty estate's sale — part of a report covering activity from Sept. 7-25 — only became public the week of Oct. 19.
