Big White House was formed by a group of friends making small quantities of wine at the "Big White House". We shared the common vision that to learn more about wine, we would need to start making good wine. It soon became apparent that if we were going to develop the quality we were looking for we would have to operate at a larger scale. For example, for barrel aging, 60 gal barrels is an optimum size. That's about 25 cases. We wanted to explore the effects of different barrels, different yeasts and fermentation regimes and to try making unusual varietals. Lets do the math. To explore different barrels we would need to make wine in barrels made of the two most common types of oak, American and French. We would want to sample barrels made from the different forests of which there are five main ones in the US, five main oak forests in France and others in countries such as Hungary. Each barrel can be toasted differently, medium toast, medium plus and heavy toast are the common selections, but other aspects such as whether the staves are bent with water or with fire, whether the insides of the barrel heads are toasted or not, etc. makes this a multi-variable problem. Each cooperage, of which there are about 10 good ones in the US and at least 25 good ones in France (also some interesting Australian coopers) add to the variables. To do this right we would want to try at least one barrel of each type, per experiment, per varietal. Add to that our interest exploring different fermentation regimes, different yeasts, and numerous rare or unusual varietals meant we quickly reached the point where we wanted to make more wine, in more barrels than wife Diana was willing to tolerate in her living room.

In 1998, Cedar Mountain agreed to incubate us within their facility. With their help we produced wines that won medals and developed a strong following. As our production grew, we sought to move our operation. Licensing difficulties put the operation in a three year limbo. After a year at Tesla Vintners, we now have our own location at 6800 Greenville Rd.

Big White House welcomes John Marion III, known in winemaking circles as "John the Younger" or as J3, as the new co-winemaker and part owner.