Suncé Winery, Santa Rosa CA

Suncé, which is Croatian for “sun,” is owned and operated by Frané and Janae Franicevic, with one employee – tasting room manager Kimberly Harbaugh, who was a classmate of Janae’s in pre-school, and has been a friend ever since. The winery property, on Olivet Road in Santa Rosa (CA) was purchased in 1998, and when not tending vines and crushing grapes, Frané has spent his time transforming a former stable into a compact winery, and a former shed into a comfortable, light-filled tasting room.


Frané was born and raised in Croatia, where his great-grandparents had been among the largest wine producers in the region. In 1970, the teen-age Frané joined other family members in Louisiana, and continued his education, earning a doctorate in humanistic studies in Georgia before moving to California in 1980.

Always feeling a kinship to the earth, Frané sought a quiet, bucolic spot to settle into while writing his dissertation and completing his hypnotherapy program. He found his spot in Sonoma’s West County.

“I had no technical training when I first started making wine in 1988/89,” he says. “My idea was to make wine part time and spend more time with psychology, but considering I was doing everything alone it didn’t work out that way.” Total production annually is in the neighborhood of 2,000 cases of 14 different varietals. From those figures it is easy to see there is not a lot of any one wine. Most lots are about 100 cases.

Frané and his wife met in 1994, when he was operating a small tasting room in Santa Rosa, and she was working in a store across the street. They have two daughters, two-year-old Suncé for whom the winery is named, and Zora, who is four. The new Pinot Noir vineyard will be called Zora’s Vineyard.