A legal education can set you up for many career paths. Tom Stolpman (JD 1975) has parlayed success at the bar into an unlikely parallel life as a world-class vintner.
“Being a trial attorney allowed me to be standing here in the middle of a vineyard,” he says, speaking from his villa on a 220-acre estate in Ballard Canyon, near the historic town of Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County.
Stolpman and his wife Marilyn started growing grapes here more than 35 years ago. Today, the estate produces 50,000 cases of hand-crafted wines annually, which it distributes worldwide — from North America to Asia and Europe.
“Two years ago, we actually started distribution in France.” That’s a major feather in his cap since, he says, because only the best California wines are welcome in the wine capital of the world.
Wine is Stolpman’s passion project, and the seven- and eight-figure verdicts he’s won over a six-decade career as a trial attorney helped to finance it.
Asked why he still hasn’t let his bar card expire, the 76-year-old USC Gould alum says, with a wry grin: “I need to practice law to support my habit.”
That’s not the only reason. “I also really like being a trial lawyer — to put 12 in the box and let them decide. You can make a big difference in people’s lives,” he says.
Wine on Their Minds
The Stolpmans acquired a taste for Bacchus’ brew in their college days at UCLA. Tom and Marilyn would get together with a few friends to watch TV and sample wines. Gradually the two turned into serious oenophiles.
They married in 1974, while they were both law students, him at USC Gould, her at UCLA Law. On their honeymoon — in Napa Valley, of course — Marilyn mused wistfully about someday owning a vineyard. Her dream materialized in 1988, when Tom found the perfect property: a former cattle ranch in Ballard Canyon, part of the Santa Ynez Valley.
The Stolpmans were among the first to plant vineyards in the distinctive limestone soils of Ballard Canyon, naturally suited to grow Rhône varietals like Syrah and Roussanne. More than a dozen wineries now operate in the Ballard Canyon American Viticultural Area (AVA).
Stolpman Vineyards stands apart in practicing “modified dry-farming,” an ancient technique that pushes vines to yield low amounts of high-quality fruit without any irrigation. The winery, too, is old-school, prioritizing native fermentation and minimal manipulation of the grapes.
“We started planting in 1992,” Tom recalls.
“I told Marilyn when we started: ‘I’m crazy enough to be in the wine business, but not stupid enough to become a winery.’” It proved an empty boast. Having started out as a “production vineyard,” selling its high-quality grapes to local wineries, the estate brought on a part-time enologist in 1997, and produced its first 880 cases of wine.
By 2009, when their son Pete took the reins, Stolpman Vineyards was producing 8,000 cases. Inventory has grown five-fold since then.
Valet Entry
Stolpman’s family roots lay not in vineyards but in law and engineering. It was his grandfather, an estate and trust lawyer with a major Cleveland bank, who inspired Stolpman to pursue a JD.
Stolpman’s father was an engineer with RCA whose career took the family to different factory towns in Ohio and New Jersey through his childhood. The company transferred them to Hollywood in Stolpman’s last year of high school, and in the fall of 1967, young Tom enrolled at UCLA, majoring in history.
But his mind wasn’t really on his studies. He needed to pay tuition for college and law school, finding steady work as a parking attendant. The job was stressful, time-consuming and, sometimes, downright dangerous. One night as Stolpman was closing down the lot at Lawry’s Prime Rib, an armed robber put a bullet in his femur that nearly resulted in amputation. Six months later, Stolpman was back on the lot. By the time he graduated college, he was a partner in a thriving valet business, operating 22 restaurant parking concessions and running 30 private parties a month.
Stolpman sold the parking business at the end of his first year at USC Gould, taking a semester’s leave to close the deal. When he returned, he threw himself into moot court, winning a spot on USC’s national team. In his 3L year, the USC team reached the finals in New York City before falling to University of Arizona. They had aced the Ninth Circuit round, where Stolpman took the title of best oral advocate.
Practice Makes Perfect
Meanwhile, Marilyn was also working on her JD across town. She graduated a year behind her husband and later joined his personal injury practice when their first child was born.
Stolpman, who had set his sights on becoming a trial attorney, went to work for a downtown law firm, the precursor to what is now Greene Broillet & Wheeler. He rode herd over a half-dozen clerks there but rarely saw the inside of a courtroom.
After a year, Stolpman moved to join Silver, McWilliams & Booth, a Wilmington, California-based firm specializing in workers’ comp, personal injuries and commercial torts. With its offices conveniently located at the gateway to the Port of Los Angeles, the firm had a lock on maritime injuries. Within three months, Stoplman was trying his first personal injury case and scoring a six-figure verdict. Pretty soon, he was handling multi-million dollar personal injury and insurance bad faith cases.
By 1984, Stolpman’s name was on the firm marquee. Rebranded as Stolpman, Krissman, Elber & Silver, the practice moved to Long Beach in 1993.
As his reputation as a trial attorney grew, Stolpman became increasingly active in the legal community. Starting in 1987, he served on the board of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Association and went on to be president. In 1993, he was elected to the State Bar’s Board of Governors, where he served on several committees. In 1996, he ascended to the State Bar presidency. That role required Stolpman to spend much of the year in San Francisco and Sacramento, keeping him away from his lucrative Long Beach practice and his beloved Santa Barbara County vineyards.
Dry-Farming Syrahs in Limestone
He and Marilyn had started looking into buying land in the wine country in 1988. Stolpman had fallen in love with limestone soils. Having found the perfect property in Ballard Canyon, Stolpman planted louse-resistant rootstocks in its limestone-rich terroir.
Delegating day-to-day operations to their on-site team, Stolpman got into the habit of waking at 4 a.m. to attend to vineyard business remotely, then “playing lawyer all day” in Long Beach. On weekends, the family would make the 150-mile drive to the winery from their home in Palos Verdes.
Much has changed since then. The Stolpman vintage chart lists 50 labels. Nearly half the acreage is Syrahs, but the estate produces 27 other varietals in addition to fine olive oil from the estate’s orchard.
With the “La Cuadrilla” (Spanish for “the team”) label, Stolpman gave his winery a fair-labor twist. Under an innovative profit-sharing program, vineyard workers started making wine from rows they farmed without direction or supervision.
Ruben Solorzano, the on-site manager, “wanted them to be farmers, not field hands,” Stolpman explains. The La Cuadrilla label is now a blend from the entire vineyard, and profits from the wine are shared by the team.
Golden Sunsets, Grandkids and a Glass of Syrah
Stolpman has gradually stepped back from the wine business, letting son Pete take the lead.
At 76, he’s winding down his law practice. He has one last trial on the court calendar, and he isn’t taking new cases.
The Italian villa that he and Marilyn built on estate land is now their year-round residence.
Pete, 44, and his wife Jessica live in nearby Solvang with their boys, August, 8, and Otto, 6.
Farther afield, daughter Jennifer, 47, lives in Ireland with her husband Jason Adams, and their 11-year-old son, Thomas. (“They named him after me, poor kid,” Stolpman jokes.)
In semi-retirement, Tom is ramping up his volunteer community service. Already active in the Vikings of Solvang, he’s considering joining the Rotary Club.
A couple of mornings a week, he heads out to his grandsons’ elementary school in Solvang after picking up print editions of the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. He enjoys reading articles aloud to kids in the lower grades.
He and Marilyn dine out several nights a week, and they always bring a bottle of wine to share with neighboring tables.
Mostly, though, he and Marilyn spend their days on the estate they created, surrounded by grapes and grandchildren, watching glorious sunsets and sipping fine Syrahs.
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