Twin Sisters Jenna And Mara York Talk Wine And The 49ers Foundation

With the 49ers Foundation and a wine venture, twin sisters Jenna and Mara York continue to redefine innovation in the community and among the vines.

Jenna and Mara York at Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers

Anyone who spends five minutes with Jenna and Mara York, members of the family that owns the San Francisco 49ers, quickly learns how passionate they are about countless endeavors. The 49ers Foundation (49ers.com/foundation), where they sit on the board, is at the top of their list.

Proceeds raised by the 49ers Foundation support legacy nonprofit partners African American Female Excellence (ousd.org), City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley (cityyear.org), Fresh Lifelines for Youth (flyprogram.org) and the 49ers STEM Leadership Institute (svefoundation.org/programs/49ers-sli).

I recently sat down with these passionate women to discuss everything from how their Foundation has disrupted charitable works to their wine label.

The York sisters oversee the 49ers Foundation, which has worked with over 500,000 Bay Area kids in the past decade.

Please share your earliest experiences with charitable work.

Jenna York: From a very young age, it was instilled in us to use our platform and blessings to give back to the community. We volunteered at inner-city schools, fed the homeless and received lists every Christmas at church to shop with our mom for those less fortunate. Those acts struck a chord.

The Foundation is that work, writ large, yes?

Mara York: For the past 10 years, we’ve been able to focus on our mission to educate and empower Bay Area youth. And it’s fun to use football and the team to reach out to people and engage them. Getting kids involved in learning is also a big part of that.

Do you have a classroom at Levi’s Stadium?

JY: Yes! It’s the first and only classroom in a professional sports stadium. The programs, including STEM, are based on a common, core-aligned curriculum and tied into football so that students in grades K through 8 can learn in a fun and unique way.

How many kids have come through the Foundation’s classroom since it launched 10 years ago?

MY: Over 500,000. We break down all of the barriers for inner-city schools and kids so they can come in and get to work.

How does the classroom part of the Foundation work?

JK: We have full- and part-time educators on our staff. They send the material to the schools beforehand, and the teachers lay the groundwork. Transportation is covered. We have a generous donor who underwrites everything. The kids may want to avoid learning math or science during these trips to the classroom, so we use football and the stadium to get them engaged. It works. Everything is interactive.

What is the Red and Gold Society?

JK: In 2021, the 49ers Foundation established the Red & Gold Society, the NFL’s first-ever annual giving program. We have raised $3 million so far, which has allowed us to reach more kids—through the classroom and physical fitness—than ever before.

Jenn and Mara York’s home away from home: Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

What’s next for the Foundation?

MK: We’re about to announce a new beneficiary and are excited about it. It will help us expand our reach even more, including Oakland.

We’re also excited about girls’ flag football. We’ve always provided the sport for girls and boys in our 49ers youth football program. We were big proponents of girls’ flag football becoming a high school varsity sport, and it became one last year. Now, there are 270 teams and it’s growing like crazy in the Bay Area. It will be an Olympic sport in 2028.

One of your other passions is wine. When did your interest in wine begin?

JK: Our mother’s family is Italian, so her father always drank wine. He was at our house six nights a week for dinner. So we grew up having baby sips every night [laughs]. Our dad even says he used to come to say goodnight to us in our rooms at night when we were kids, and Mara and I would be discussing the nuances of the wine.

How did your interest turn into something bigger?

MK: When we assumed ownership in 1999, we decided to make a better connection with Napa and Sonoma. We started inviting vintners to support games, and we developed great connections. When we met our winemaker, Bob Foley, he told us we had amazing palettes and that he would make our wine someday.

JK: From there, we worked at Groth (grothwines.com). Michael Weis was the winemaker there at that time. We visited all their vineyards, learned where their fruit came from and worked in the cellar and lab. We moved on to Spring Mountain Vineyard (springmountainvineyard.com), helped plant a vineyard and installed the irrigation system. We put the emitters into the hoses, and my thumbs will never be the same.

After that summer, we didn’t want to leave. But we returned home, got our degrees and eventually moved to Napa. I worked my first harvest. I returned to Spring Mountain, and Mara went to Robert Foley (robertfoleyvineyards). We did everything from crushing grapes to adding yeast to barreling. We then moved to Argentina to work for Paul Hobbs (paulhobbswinery.com). We did a harvest down there, and it was an eye-opening experience. We returned to the States and worked for Steve Reynolds at Reynolds Family Winery (reynoldsfamilywinery.com) for a couple of years, followed by work with Philippe Melka at Tusk Estates (tuckestates.com), where we oversaw sales and marketing for the launch of the new brand.

The York sisters with Justin Prettyman, the executive director of the 49ers Foundation, in the STEM classroom at Levi’s Stadium.

You were ready to launch your label with a pinot noir, cabernet and merlot. Please tell me about it.

MK: It’s called JennaMarise (jennamarise.com), and Robert Foley is our winemaker. The name is a blend of our names. Our first vintage is 2019, and we launched last year.

What are you proudest of regarding this label?

JK: We’ve put in the work and been lucky enough to work with some of the greatest winemakers worldwide, like Rolando Herrera, Ashley Hepworth and Sally Johnson. There are so many people who’ve helped us along the way. We’re very fortunate to live in a climate where we can grow great fruit and make exceptional wine.