St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco has produced a very impressive list of alums working in the world of wine. The Alumni Department at S.I. forwarded me this list of graduates affiliated with wineries in the Napa Valley, Sonoma and beyond. I find it fascinating that so many grads from S.I. are owners of wineries and/or winemakers. My guess is if you looked at other high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area you would not find anything close to matching that of the St. Ignatius group. Perhaps in the Napa Valley, where wine folks live and send their kids to high schools such as St. Helena High, you would expect a large connection from its graduates to wineries, but from a San Francisco City school, it is totally unexpected.

My friend Bob (a fellow alum and retired S.I. teacher and coach) and I paid a visit to Whitehall Lane Winery in St. Helena, owned by S.I. alum Tom Leonardini. We discussed the guys we each knew from S.I. who owned wineries and that prompted us to get a complete list from the Alumni Department at St. Ignatius High School. The list below shows the name of the winery, the individual, their graduation year, and their affiliation with the winery.

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