Three great loves lighted George MacLeod’s long life: Stanford University; wife Ann Margaret “Greta” (Fisher, ’48) and offspring; and Indian Springs Ranch, the Sonoma Valley spread he transformed from 50 stony acres into an esteemed vineyard and winery.
George M. MacLeod, ’43, MS ’48, was born June 20, 1921, in San Francisco and died from complications of the flu on January 21. He was 96.
MacLeod’s loves were linked by Stanford. He met Greta in geology lab there, and his expertise in earth dynamics—gained along with his master’s in geophysics—informed his vintner’s skills. In 2016 he published The Land Remembers: An Introduction to Terroir and Its Expression at MacLeod Family Vineyard. As co-author Arthur Dawson said in an introduction, “George MacLeod understands terroir in its richest and most original sense. He knows the joys, the heartbreaks, and the spiritual aspects embodied in the word. He knows that terroir is really an experience rather than a concept.”
Raised poor in Texas and California after his father deserted the family during the Great Depression, MacLeod assumed a man-of-the-house role as the oldest of four children living with mother Olive Marshall. In Palo Alto at the Louis Road home they shared with Marshall’s parents, MacLeod milked Blackie, the family cow, before walking to Stanford. Required to take what he called “Bonehead English” as a freshman, he reported that he had spelled his alma mater “Standford” in a composition. He wrote in 2000 that his teacher, Miss Shoup, once remarked that in her class the Farm actually smelled like one. Abashed, MacLeod checked: Blackie had left her mark on his boot.
“He was a real farm boy at Stanford,” says daughter Noel M.
Beitler. “The school meant everything for him. It symbolized his rise from poverty. He sometimes quoted his mother, saying, ‘We’re not poor; we just don’t have money.’ ”
Daughter-in-law Marjorie MacLeod says he was a Stanford teaching assistant when Greta arrived late and knocked on the locked classroom door. “Sorry, can I come into class?” she asked. “You can come into my class,” MacLeod said out loud. “And into my life forever,” he recalled thinking.
MacLeod had a profitable career at Standard Oil, Fisher Research Laboratories and Knapic Electrophysics in the nascent Silicon Valley, and at Monsanto. By the early 1970s, he was able to fund an early retirement and buy his Sonoma County acreage near Kenwood.
Success followed in growing Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel grapes and turning them, alchemically, into wine. He showed the place to his mother, who had always yearned to live on a Southern plantation like the one her family had lost in the Civil War. MacLeod would pause with her at the ranch’s oak-shaded entrance. “Mom, it’s not Tara, but it’s close enough,” he’d say.
In addition to Greta, survivors include children Richard, Noel, Susan and John; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
John Roemer is a freelance writer based in Sausalito, Calif.
