Susan Tipton, born and raised in Chicago, has a love of food and wine that can be traced back to her Irish heritage, where a focus on recreating Julia Child recipes and weekly entertaining was kindled. While raising three sons and being married to a corporate executive, she was responsible for managing her family’s relocations to several different states and a move to Europe. Before moving to California’s Central Valley, Susan lived in Portland, Oregon, where she owned a successful mail-order business. It there where her love of wine grew because of the area’s reputation for Pinot Noirs.

Susan’s life changed when she tried her first white Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine. Delicious and unlike any wine she had ever tried, Susan began planting grapes from Tablas Creek cuttings in 2008 in an attempt to recreate this wine. The combination of Lodi’s fertile soils and these select white Rhone grapes, which are hand-picked, whole-cluster pressed and fermented in stainless steel, have created quite a buzz. The result is the wines of Acquiesce Winery, of which she is the owner and winemaker, in Acampo, CA. It is Lodi’s only all white-wine winery, featuring estate-grown Rhône varietals in a sea of Zinfandel grapes. Her tasting room resides in a 100-year-old barn on her 18-acre property and is surrounded by vines producing wine grapes.

Measures of Susan’s winemaking talents are her 2020 Viognier being named “Best White” at the 22nd annual San Francisco Chronicle Competition and her selection as the 2022 Woman Winemaker of the Year in the International Women’s Wine Competition.

Susan serves on the board of directors for the Lodi Winegrape Marketing Committee and as Treasurer of the Rhône Rangers, a group dedicated to promoting American Rhône varietals. She lives with her husband Rodney in their vineyard home.