Explore hidden $4.25M estate on 180-acre lake behind unmarked gates near Lodi

Behind a set of unmarked gates and along a stretch of dirt road, Keith and Cheryl Bewley’s lakefront home sits inside an 870-acre private community along the Mokelumne River. First-time visitors may find GPS only gets them so far, and it helps to follow a resident the rest of the way.

Step inside the Bewleys’ 5,948-square-foot estate and the point is immediate: The residence was built to pull in the landscape. Walls of glass frame a 180-acre lake and riparian forest, while a decorative objet d’art above the stone fireplace embedded with 10-million-year-old fish fossils serves as a focal point.

“The whole concept of the house to bring the outside in and make the house feel bigger,” Keith Bewley said.

The property at 1850 W. Twisted Vine Way in Acampo is listed for $4.25 million. Acampo is about 33 miles south of Sacramento and roughly five miles north of Lodi. Beth Bryant of Coldwell Banker is the listing agent.

Bewley was an early investor in California Cooler, co‑founded by his brother R. Stuart Bewley. He’s an entrepreneur who built NEx Systems, an environmentally focused commercial flooring and cleaning‑technology company. His wife, Cheryl, is a horticulturist with degrees from Cal Poly and UC Davis.

The home includes four bedrooms and five bathrooms, and was built in 2009. The architecture is intentionally clean and contemporary, understated but elegant. The living room opens up under 30-foot ceilings with exposed Douglas fir beams. Underfoot are new hardwood floors made of Brazilian cherry.

For the Bewleys, the home’s design has translated into a way of life — mornings watching migrating birds through binoculars, afternoons tending to tomatoes and French tarragon in the greenhouse and garden, and evenings choosing a bottle from a 1,200-bottle cellar before the sun drops toward the water.

“This is one of my favorite spots,” Keith said, while standing in the redwood-racked, temperature-controlled wine room. “If I’m not looking outside at the lake and everything, this is not a bad place to be.”

Unusual ownership setup

The house is one of the most distinctive homes in the Brovelli Woods community, which was designed to feel far removed from the Central Valley wine region’s busy roads and dense subdivisions.

“It’s a very secluded place,” Keith said.

Such privacy was part of the concept for the community — an idea to mix luxury homes with shared, low-density open space, strict conservation and agriculture.

“(The original landowner) bought the property and thought this would be a great place to have eight or ten families live here, and then we could share in the (overall) property and have farming operations,” Keith said. “You’d have your designated house, and the other area would be common land that we would farm, or just open land.”

The ownership structure is not typical for a high-end, single-family listing. It’s “an exceptional and rarely available ownership opportunity,” according to the property listing.

Buyers get a 99-year ground lease for their two-acre home site, ownership of their house and voting rights in the partnership. The next buyer would receive the same long-term lease. The farming operations cover partnership costs. The LLC manages the shared land and operations — including conservation work, roads and water systems, and agricultural uses such as vineyards.

The lake is the view everyone notices first from the Bewleys’ great room — but Keith said the water is not just decorative.

“It’s a natural lake — stream fed, rain runoff,” he said. “When you get decent rain in the wintertime, it will fill up. This is a groundwater recharge lake — they can pump water into here and bring the lake up, and then it percolates back down into the ground and increases the groundwater level. This is one of the first groundwater recharge lakes in California.”

The lake is part of the day-to-day routine.

“You can take kayaks out. We don’t allow motorized boats — that’s one of the restrictions,” he said. “But you can kayak (and) paddleboard.”

Beyond the lake, the landscape shifts into a corridor of trees and shade near the Mokelumne River. And the wildlife is not subtle.

The Bewleys keep a set of binoculars and a bird book close at hand to identify different avian species that visit and migrate across the property during the year — white pelicans, sandhill cranes, wood ducks and more. Other wildlife, such as tortoises and river otters, is constantly present too, the couple said.

“As the year goes along you get different migrations, and you’re always looking at something,” Keith said.

While the community is defined by open space, the house itself is engineered to work with the climate, not fight it. The deep, lower roof overhangs are one of the simplest examples.

“In California, especially Sacramento and where we are, it gets hot,” he said. “In the summertime the sun is high in the sky, so this (overhang) blocks the sun from coming into the house and keeps it cool. In the wintertime the sun is low in the sky, and it allows the sun to come into the room and warm up the house. That’s why we have the bigger overhangs.”

Keith, who spent many early mornings designing the house and fine-tuning the plans, leaned on skylights to bring in daylight.

“We’re big on skylights … they’re triple-insulated so you don’t get the heat through them, but you get the light,” Keith said.

The great room is the home’s anchor point, with glass facing the water and a stone fireplace built for attention. Its most talked-about detail is the fossil set above the firebox — the element that tends to stop visitors.

“We came across this fossil when we were looking for granite and stone for the house,” Bewley said. “ We thought it would be a nice focal point.”

The owners credit a specialized mason for the rest of the stonework.

“We had this stone guy, such an artist, a retired dentist,” Cheryl said. “The stones he put in and cut — it’s an art, it truly is. He was here for months.”

A kitchen for the host

In a house made for gatherings, the large, well-appointed kitchen — artisan-crafted copper hood, 5-by-8 foot custom mesquite island, six-burner gas cook top, dual ovens and dishwashers — was planned as a working space that stays connected to the rest of the action.

“We entertain all the time, and this is where everybody is,” Keith said. “They’re over here talking, we’re over here cooking, other people are over here helping. When I designed the house, I designed it with this concept — you’re there, you’re slicing bread, we’re talking here about something, wine or whatever it is. Everybody helps, and everybody wants to be in the kitchen.”

He also liked that the outdoor cooking setup is close enough to use without disappearing from the group.

“The barbecue is right there, so when I’m cooking I don’t have to be that far away,” Keith said. “You don’t have to miss out on things.”

Living large

Although the home has multiple suites upstairs. Keith said the couple lives primarily on the main level, closing off space they are not using.

“We don’t have to go upstairs, so (we) don’t turn the air conditioner or the heat on,” he said. “You just close them up, and then the kids come home and we turn it on.”

Radiant heat helps, too, the owners said.

“We have radiant heat in the floors downstairs, and it rises upstairs,” Cheryl said. “Really, we don’t even turn on heat up here.”

Outside, the estate leans into a farm-to-table rhythm: garden beds, a greenhouse and an orchard. The greenhouse itself has its own backstory.

“It was my wedding present, and we moved it from our old house here,” Cheryl said.

Past the planting beds, an orchard adds seasonal variety. There are 500 planted trees, including peaches, apricots, apples, plums and persimmons. Cheryl planted perennials at the property to bloom throughout the year. She is a big believer in re-seeding and loves columbine and fox glove.

The lakeside pool is an unforgettable outdoor amenity with a gray bottom and electric spa. Outside, the primary bedroom suite is a private spa. Outdoor features include a putting green and lighted horseshoe pit.

With wildfire in mind, Keith said the exterior materials were chosen to reduce risk.

“The house is pretty well protected. You’ve got stucco, you’ve got stone, and then you’ve got Hardie board, which is like a concrete board, so it doesn’t burn,” he said. “The only wood is the beams and the braces, and the roof is metal. So it’s pretty fireproof.”

Land management is part of that approach, he added.

“We mow all the lands. You can see all the dead grass — that’s all mowed down for fire protection,” Bewley said.

There are also nine fire hydrants around the house.

The shop, storage, tools

For a property that functions partly like a small operation, the garage with nine-foot-wide doors and shop are part of the package.

“They have storage on the whole second story of the garage — just cabinets everywhere. Nobody has as much storage, which is so nice,” Beth Bryant, the listing agent, said.

Bewley said much of the equipment needed to maintain the property will stay.

And while the community can feel remote, Bewley said the home has modern connectivity.

“We have Starlink, and that works,” he said.

David Caraccio

The Sacramento Bee

916-321-1125

David Caraccio is a video producer for The Sacramento Bee who was born and raised in Sacramento. He is a graduate of San Diego State University and a longtime journalist who has worked for newspapers as a reporter, editor, page designer and digital content producer.