Budge Brown has been farming in California for over 50 years. When asked about his educational background (although he is a UC Davis graduate) he will smile and tell you he graduated from the School of Hard Knocks with a degree in Trial and Error and an emphasis in Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Tulip Hill Winery is the final outcome of a dream and hard work for Budge and his daughter Kristi Brown. Budge and his daughter continue to build the Tulip Hill brand with the winery and tasting room located in Nice, California, as well as an off-site tasting room in Rancho Mirage, California. Tulip Hill Winery also has two main vineyards: Napa Valley's Pope Valley Vineyard and Tracy Hill's Mt. Oso Vineyard.

A fascinating flower with literally hundreds of varieties and a reputation for being highly prized by exotic flower lovers, the tulip captured the imagination of Budge Brown long ago. Brown, the owner and founder of Tulip Hill Winery, has admired tulips for years. When he began laying out his vision for his new winery, he began researching the tulip and its place in history.

In the early 1600s, tulips were so rare a flower that only the very rich could afford to buy, grow and display them. For wealthy Dutch and European aristocrats and the newly rich merchant class, tulips became a must-have status symbol. At the height of what became known as "tulip mania," just one fine tulip bulb could command the equivalent of $2,300 in today's dollars, and notarized bills of sale were issued to authenticate the bulb's origin and owner.

To put the price in perspective, the same amount of money to buy one tulip bulb could also buy two loads of wheat, four loads of rye, four fat oxen, five swine, 12 sheep, two hogshead of wine, four barrels of beer, two barrels of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese, and a wagon to haul it all home.

With modern growing methods, the price of tulips has dropped considerably, although collectors still search the world for new and more exotic examples of this beautiful flower.

As history's finest example of rarity and beauty in a plant, the tulip was the natural namesake of the Brown family winery. The Browns have planted more than 30,000 tulip bulbs of hundreds of varieties on Tulip Hill Pope Valley Vineyard and consider the flowers symbolic of the quality and rarity of their wines.

 

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