His musical background came first. “While my family was in the shoe business in Chicago, my dad sang Italian arias, and my mom was a back-up singer in clubs for people like Frank Sinatra,” Bruce recounts. “But since my dad wasn’t suited to the shoe business, and he couldn’t make a living singing arias, they came out to Forestville in Sonoma County, California, and bought a goat ranch.”

This family farming was another formative influence in Bruce’s life. “My brother and I chopped wood and milked 115 goats twice a day.” It was hard work but he learned two important lessons that have served him well: “If you have an idea, go for it, follow through. And, you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

A fortuitous meeting with a couple of the group who became the Doobie Brothers took place in a recording studio south of San Francisco that his brother ran. It led to the decision to quit his good job as a television engineer and become the band’s manager. “There were moments after that that I thought, ‘What was I thinking?’ It was really rough at first. We’d travel 250 days a year, doing concerts in 150 cities. Then the first album was a ‘stiff’ (a dud in music parlance). But we persevered.”

The Doobie Brothers’ second album sold 2.7 million copies. That was great, but it meant even more travel. Bruce had married and they were expecting their first child, so he decided to buy 46 acres in Sonoma Valley. “It’s just 20 miles down the road from where I grew up. I wanted to raise my family like I was raised, and have a place to chill out between road trips.”

The property was a defunct dairy, but Bruce had had enough of goats as a child. It also had a 100-year-old Picholine olive grove and an overgrown vineyard. He set about educating himself about growing grapes and olives, bringing the olive grove back into production and replanting the vineyard.

The grapes were sold to other wineries for ten years, and then Bruce began making wine from them himself under the B. R. Cohn Winery label. Six years later, he began pressing the ranch’s olives for the highly valued Sonoma Estate Picholine Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The next step, making wine vinegars, resulted from meeting an expert in the Orleans method of making vinegar in French oak barrels, just like fine wine.

Now a line of gourmet foods has been added to the wine, olive oils, and vinegars, making a visit to the beautiful Olive Hill Estate a feast for the palate as well as the eyes. The gold and platinum Doobie Brothers records can even be seen on the walls of the tasting room.

Bruce is very proud of the fact that all four of his children work with him at B. R. Cohn. “My folks gave me a good foundation, working together as a family, and I’m so happy to be able to pass that along to the next generation.”

“Everything in my life is interrelated. Good music and fine wine and food have a lot in common, part of a rich lifestyle.”