John Balletto, the company's founder and owner, launched it in the wake of his father's sudden death in 1977. When the family needed him the most, at the age of 17, he placed their needs ahead of his own and declined many offers of college athletic scholarships so he could remain at home and assist his mother, Hazel, in managing the family's modest five-acre farm.
In order to steadily enhance vegetable production, the Balletto family bought property during the 1980s and 1990s. The Balletto family was committed to seeing the company succeed. The current location of Balletto Vineyards is one of those parcels. By 1994, the Balletto family had expanded the enterprise into Northern California's largest vegetable farm, cultivating more than 70 different varieties of vegetables on more than 700 acres.