European Developers Are Wooing Wine Lovers With Their Own Hassle-Free Vineyards

With careers in Northern California’s tech sector and a primary home on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, Clifton Lewis Lyles and his wife, Serene Lewis Lyles, have long spent their down time among the vineyards and wineries of Sonoma and Napa counties. Now in their early 50s, the two are getting ready for something new—their own bit of vineyard and their own private wine label, some 5,500 miles away in the Alentejo region of Portugal.  

The opportunity comes with their new vacation home: a two-bedroom, 2,500-square-foot villa, currently under construction, in L’and Vineyards, a luxury development about an hour’s drive from Lisbon. The 163-acre estate, with 15 acres of vineyards, lets its homeowners—spread across a total of about 80 units in the coming years—become de facto winemakers.