Max Thieriot’s house is unusual among actors’ homes because it is also a farm, a business, and, indirectly, the reason one of CBS’s biggest dramas exists. In 2013, he and his wife, Lexi, bought a ranch of roughly ninety acres in west Sonoma County, California, a few minutes from the vineyard where he grew up. Three years later, they began planting it with Pinot Noir. That ranch remains his, and it remains working land — but it is no longer where he lives day to day. Since around 2024, Thieriot and his family have been based in Washington state, closer to the British Columbia set where his CBS series films, and the Sonoma ranch has settled into a different role: the place he returns to between seasons.
The purchase price of the ranch has never been publicly reported, and this is not a house that appears in listing galleries. What is unusually well documented, thanks to sustained coverage from Sonoma County’s own press and from the wine trade, is what the property is and what the family has done with it.
This guide covers the ranch, the vineyard planted on it, the separate Occidental property his parents bought in the 1980s, and where the family actually lives now that the show films 900 miles north.
Facts About Sonoma Ranch
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Location | Between Bodega and Occidental, west Sonoma County, California |
| Purchased | 2013, by Max Thieriot and Lexi Murphy |
| Total acreage | Approximately 90 acres |
| Vineyard name | Bodega Thieriot |
| Vineyard acreage | Approximately 9 acres, planted in 2016 |
| Grape variety | Pinot noir |
| Winemaker | Thomas Rivers Brown |
| Neighboring winery | Steve Kistler’s Occidental winery (shared fence line) |
| Purchase price | Not publicly disclosed |
| Current use | Working vineyard and seasonal/off-season home |
| Primary family residence | Washington state, near the Canadian border (since ~2024) |
Property Features
Reliable coverage of the ranch has focused almost entirely on the land rather than the house itself — no outlet has published square footage, room counts, or interior photos. What is consistently documented are the land’s features:
- Rolling hillside terrain across roughly 90 acres
- Mature oak and redwood trees
- Ocean views from the property
- A working 9-acre pinot noir vineyard (Bodega Thieriot)
- Shared fence line with Steve Kistler’s respected Occidental winery
- A mix of hillside, woodland, and pasture beyond the planted vineyard
No verified source has reported details of the residence itself, such as bedroom count, square footage, or interior amenities — coverage of this property has stayed focused on the working land rather than the house.
Who is Max Thieriot?
Max Thieriot is an American actor, writer, and producer who grew up in Occidental, a small town in western Sonoma County. He began acting as a teenager, had a long run as Dylan Massett in Bates Motel, and then spent several seasons on SEAL Team. Max is now best known as the co-creator and star of Fire Country, the CBS firefighter drama, and is behind its spin-off, Sheriff Country. He and his wife, Lexi Murphy, married in 2013 and have two sons, Beaux (born 2015) and Maximus (born 2018).
He is also a grape grower. With two friends he met in preschool, Christopher Strieter and Myles Lawrence-Briggs, he co-founded the Sonoma County wine label Senses Wines, and he farms his own vineyard under the name Bodega Thieriot. Those two identities are not kept in separate compartments: Fire Country is set in Northern California and was drawn directly from the wildfires his community lived through.
The Sonoma County ranch he bought in 2013
The Thieriots looked across Sonoma County before settling on what they have described as their forever property, and bought it in 2013. It sits in the west of the county, on a stretch of land between the towns of Bodega and Occidental, only minutes from where he was raised.
The land runs to about ninety acres of rolling hills, with oaks and redwoods, ocean views, and a fence line shared with the Occidental winery of the veteran producer Steve Kistler. That last detail is the one that matters commercially. Kistler is one of the most respected pinot noir growers on the Sonoma Coast, and sharing a boundary with him is a strong indicator that the site itself is good, not just scenic.
Coverage of the property has consistently focused on the land rather than the house, and no reliable source has published a purchase price, square footage or interior details. That is a fair reflection of what the place appears to be: a working ranch, not a trophy estate. Sonoma County has other examples of entertainers buying land for what grows on it, including Tom Smothers’ vineyard estate in the same county.
Bodega Thieriot: planting the home ranch
In 2016, Max and Lexi began planting the ranch with the winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown, establishing the vineyard they named Bodega Thieriot. About nine acres of the ninety are under vine, planted to pinot noir, which leaves the great majority of the property as hillside, woodland and pasture.
Planting a coastal vineyard is a slow and expensive commitment rather than a decoration. Vines take years to produce fruit worth bottling, the Sonoma Coast is a marginal and demanding growing area, and the decision to bring in a winemaker of Brown’s standing signals that this was meant to be taken seriously from the start. Senses Wines describes the project as the second generation of Thieriot Vineyards, which is the clearest statement of what the family intended: continuity with what his parents started, on land of their own.
The Occidental vineyard he grew up on
The first generation is a separate property. Thieriot’s parents, Cameron and Bridgit, bought a vineyard property in Occidental in the 1980s, with roughly twelve acres planted to pinot noir and chardonnay. That is where he was raised, and its fruit is used by Senses Wines.
“I spent my entire childhood there,” Thieriot has said of the property. “I have an old photo of me with my dad farming grapes. I grew up riding a tractor with my dad when he farmed in the vineyard.”
This distinction is worth keeping straight, because the two properties are often merged into one in write-ups. The Occidental vineyard is his parents’ and his childhood home. The Bodega ranch is the one he and Lexi bought in 2013. His mother and sister still live in the area, which is part of why the family’s centre of gravity has stayed tied to West County even after their own move north.
Why the ranch shaped the television show
Sonoma County was hit hard by wildfire in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Thieriot has been explicit in interviews that Fire Country grew out of what he, his family, and his neighbours went through in those years, and out of watching Cal Fire crews work in the country he farms. During the 2017 Tubbs and Nuns fires, he drove back from Los Angeles to help his mother load horse trailers and move livestock off the property.
That is a genuinely unusual relationship between a person’s land and their work. For most actors, a house is where the career’s proceeds go. Here the land came first, the fires came to the land, and the series came out of that. It’s also why, even after moving his family’s day-to-day base north for the show, Thieriot has kept the ranch active rather than letting it become a weekend curiosity — he’s said he wants his sons to grow up “knowing what it’s like to have a vineyard outside their door.”
Where does Max Thieriot live now?
Washington state, near the Canadian border, close enough to drive to the Vancouver-area set where Fire Country and Sheriff Country film. Reporting on the move dates to 2024, and it tracks with a simple piece of arithmetic Thieriot himself has given: the show shoots roughly nine months of the year, and relocating closer to set cuts a commute that would otherwise stretch nearly 900 miles from Sonoma.
The Sonoma ranch hasn’t been sold or abandoned — it has changed roles. In his own words: “We’re filming nine months of the year, but in the off-season I head back here.” That’s the clearest way to describe the current arrangement: Washington is where the family lives through most of the year, and the Bodega ranch is the seasonal home he returns to, where the vineyard keeps running, and his mother and sister still live nearby.
Fire Country is set in Northern California but filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, a pattern that goes back to Bates Motel, which shot in the same region. That overlap is part of why the Washington move made practical sense: it preserves a rural, small-town setting for raising a family — something Thieriot has said matters to him — without the cross-continental commute that Sonoma would require.
The vineyard remains the emotional and business anchor of the family’s story, even though the day-to-day base has moved. As with other entertainers who keep a working agricultural property in the picture even after their lives shift elsewhere, such as Carrie Underwood’s farm, the land didn’t stop mattering just because it stopped being the full-time address.
Sources
- Senses Wines on the 2013 purchase of the ranch, its acreage and setting, and the 2016 planting with Thomas Rivers Brown.
- The Press Democrat on the ranch’s location between Bodega and Occidental, the nine-acre pinot noir planting, the family vineyard in Occidental, his sons Beaux and Maximus, and his own account of filming nine months a year before returning to Sonoma in the off-season.
- The New York Times on the family’s move to Washington state to be closer to the Vancouver production base.
- Associated Press coverage (April 2026) of the Fire Country/Sheriff Country crossover, for background on his career and Sonoma County upbringing.
