Katherine A. Philippakis

There’s still room at the “wine bar,” said Philippakis.

“Being a wine lawyer is more fun than a lot of other kinds of law,” said the chair of Farella Braun + Martel’s wine industry practice in St. Helena.

Philippakis’ practice often involves helping clients buy, sell and develop wineries. In many ways it’s a standard land use practice, focused on tasks like permitting and licensing, albeit in an iconic setting.

“I was initially sort of resistant to it,” Philippakis said. “I joke that real property was both my least favorite class and my lowest grade in law school.”

Her career in wine began by chance, thousands of miles away from Napa County. A native of Arizona, Philippakis spent 1989 to 1994 in the United Kingdom, studying for a time at Oxford University.

While there, she started a yearslong relationship with a man who was part of the school’s wine tasting team. They would hold competitions with their rival, Cambridge University, trying to correctly identify fine wines through blind taste tests.

He eventually ended up in Napa. She joined him there in 2000 after completing law school — and then they promptly broke up. But she decided to stay, taking up her law practice and serving nine years on the City of St. Helena Planning Commission.

Much of her work is focused on helping clients deal with the extremely restrictive zoning and permitting laws in Napa County. People often come to her with business ideas, Philippakis said, and she has to tell them that the reason no one has tried it is because Napa doesn’t allow it.

Recently, she’s also done more work in a pair of more permissive neighboring counties, Sonoma and Lake. In fact, she said, her big recent project, “has nothing to do with wine, which is unusual for me.”

That would be the Guenoc Ranch, a 20,000 acre property — mostly in Lake County — with a glamorous history. Philippakis is working with a developer to create a mixed luxury hotel and residential project on the property once owned by Lillie Langtry, a famed British stage actress whose heyday was in the 1880s.

“She would travel up from San Francisco by stagecoach,” Philippakis said.

— Malcolm Maclachlan