Tom Smothers House: The Glen Ellen Ranch He Kept for 45 Years

Tom Smothers sold his Glen Ellen ranch for $7.2 million on 11 November 2023, six weeks before he died. The coverage at the time led with the discount — it had been listed at $13 million four years earlier — and largely skipped the part that explains why he owned it for close to half a century in the first place.

The vineyard on that land is named after his grandfather. He planted it himself in 1977, and its fruit still goes to a single winery down the road.

The Ranch: 115 Acres in the Valley of the Moon

The property sits in Glen Ellen, in the stretch of Sonoma Valley locals call the Valley of the Moon. At closing, it covered 115 acres, of which 23 were planted to Cabernet Sauvignon.

Earlier listings marketed it at “nearly 100 acres.” That discrepancy is normal for ranch land — different listings include different adjoining parcels — but it is worth naming, because the 100-acre figure has been copied into a lot of write-ups that describe the same sale.

Beyond the vineyard and the house, the ranch carried the infrastructure of a working property rather than a country retreat: a studio, an office, a shop, a barn with apartments, and a large ranch building with guest quarters.

Remick Ridge: Why the Vineyard Carries His Grandfather’s Name

Smothers planted the first of his Cabernet vines in 1977 and founded the label that year. He originally put the family name on it, then changed it — in his own telling, because “when people heard Smothers Brothers wine, they thought something like Milton Berle Fine Wine.”

The replacement name was not a marketing invention. Remick was his mother’s maiden name, and his grandfather, Ed Remick, lived on the property for fifteen years alongside him.

That is the detail that reframes the whole holding. The ranch was not a celebrity’s wine-country purchase; it was where his grandfather lived, planted the year he committed to it, and kept for the next forty-six years. Remick Ridge is today a monopole — every grape it produces goes to Arrowood Vineyards and Winery and nowhere else, which is a rare arrangement for a vineyard this size.

The House Itself

The residence was built in 1983, six years after the vines went in — the order matters, because he farmed the land before he built on it.

It runs to nearly 6,000 square feet with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, anchored by a gourmet kitchen. By the standards of Sonoma Valley estate listings, that is a modest house on a large amount of land, which is the opposite of the ratio most celebrity wine-country properties carry.

In September 2023, two months before the sale closed, he held an estate sale on the property that cleared everything from household items to farm equipment.

Four Years, Three Prices: $13M to $9M to $7.2M

Most accounts compress this into a single $13 million-to-$7.2 million drop. There was a step in between.

• 2019 — listed at $13 million
• 2020 — relisted at $9 million, a cut of $4 million
• November 2023 — sold at $7.2 million

Read against the 2020 number rather than the 2019 one, the final sale is about 20% under ask, not 45%. The $13 million figure was an opening position that the market rejected within a year, and every comparison anchored to it overstates what happened.

Why It Took Four Years to Sell

Vineyard estates are a narrow market. The buyer needs the capital for a multi-million-dollar purchase and either the appetite to run an agricultural operation or the budget to hire someone who does. That is a much smaller pool than for a comparable house without vines on it.

The monopole arrangement cuts both ways here, too. A vineyard contracted to a single winery comes with a built-in buyer for the fruit, which is an asset — but it also means the new owner inherits a commercial relationship rather than a blank slate, and some buyers want the blank slate.

Then there was the timing. The property spent its listing window across the pandemic and the interest-rate rises that followed, a stretch when the high end of the Northern California market was slow and specialised agricultural assets were slower. Sonoma County ranch sales in that period generally took longer and closed lower than the initial ask — Max Thieriot’s working ranch in the same county is a useful comparison for how differently these properties trade from standard luxury homes.

What Happened to the Vineyard

The vines are still in the ground and still producing. Remick Ridge continues as Arrowood’s monopole under the new ownership, which means the practical legacy of the 1977 planting outlived both the sale and the man who put it there.

Smothers died on 26 December 2023, at 86, six weeks after the sale closed.

The Bottom Line

The Tom Smothers house was the least interesting thing on the property. The 115 acres around it, the 23 acres of Cabernet he planted in 1977, and the name he gave them after his grandfather are what he actually spent forty-six years on.

The $7.2 million closing price reads as a markdown only if you anchor to an opening ask that the market had already corrected three years before the deal closed.

Sources

• Sonoma Index-Tribune and The Press Democrat on the $7.2 million sale closing 11 November 2023, the 1983 construction date, the four-bedroom four-bathroom layout at nearly 6,000 square feet, the 115 acres with 23 in Cabernet Sauvignon, and the September 2023 estate sale.
• The Press Democrat on the original 2019 listing at $13 million.
• Real Sonoma, The Press Democrat’s real estate blog, on the 2020 relisting at $9 million and the “nearly 100 acres” figure used in that listing.
• SFGATE on the completed sale and the ranch outbuildings.
• Arrowood Vineyards and Winery on the 1977 planting, the Remick family name, his grandfather Ed Remick’s fifteen years on the property, the “Milton Berle Fine Wine” remark, and the vineyard’s monopole status.
• Remick Ridge Vineyards on the label’s founding and its relationship with Arrowood.
• The Press Democrat on his long association with Sonoma Valley and his death on 26 December 2023.