History

In the Early Years

In the early part of the 20th Century thousands of families from Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Italy immigrated to Broome County in Upstate New York to work for the rapidly growing shoe manufacturer Endicott Johnson Corp. Ethnic neighborhoods began to develop as each group sought out like people to live nearby. In these Ethnic neighborhoods the culture, traditions, and recipes from their native countries could be found. I was born into an Italian family in the early 1940’s, and grew up steeped in Italian culture and traditions. One of these traditions was wine making. Every family made wine. Some made good wine, some not so good.

Grapes were bought through a local distributor who would order them from California, only Alicante and Muscat were available. These grapes were shipped via unrefrigerated rail cars to New York City and then trucked to Binghamton, NY. They did not arrive in prime condition. The wine makers had limited resources, and very little science. Every process was done in old wood barrels following old procedures handed down through the family. The grapes were crushed into a large wooden fermentation barrel relying on the wild yeast present to start the fermentation. Hopefully, the barrel was not contaminated by a prior bad batch. Fermentation was determined to be finished when no bubbling sound could be heard.

The quality of your wine was a source of great pride and added to your reputation in the community. Secrets of your process were not readily shared. Luckily, the best wine maker in our neighborhood was GrandPa Rocco Pompeii. I was taught by his son, Uncle Phil Pompeii. Over the years I’ve gone on to make some pretty good wines, even won a second place ribbon at the New York State Fair for my Cabernet Sauvignon. Success was due to many more resources, modern equipment, books on wine making explaining the magic that happens, and most importantly, having grapes, many varieties, shipped by refrigerated truck within days of harvest.

“Keeping it on the family” and long drives for Chris

Growing tired of ordinary wine at a price point I was willing to pay, in 1994 I began making the fall journey from Rochester, Minnesota to Binghamton, NY, to begin learning the craft of winemaking from Sam. It started small, as after primary fermentation was complete, I would load up 20-30 gallons of wine in 5-gallon glass carboys into the back of a minivan for the return trip. The wine would age for about 12 months in glass before bottling. While primitive, this extremely small-scale start allowed me to begin learning the basics, and when combined with reading books and supplier documentation the foundation was set for the next step.

Working in tech, being a husband and father, while committed to making drinkable wine as Chris steps up by buying the equipment, recruiting friends and devises a plan: Leveraging contacts from Sam, in 1998 I began shopping around for equipment that could be bought and shipped to Minnesota at the best price possible. Starting with a ½ hp Sorrento crusher/destemmer, 500L and 350L food grade fermentation tubs with spigots at the bottom, 50-gallon Italian style basket press, 59-gallon American oak barrel, all kinds of glass and miscellaneous equipment, by the end of summer I had acquired all the needed equipment.

In parallel I had to figure out who might be interested in joining me in this experiment. In an absolute stroke of good fortune, it turned out my friend and neighbor right across the street, Leo Evans, was immediately interested. It turned out to be a perfect match, as I was willing to use my garage, had all the equipment, and acquired enough knowledge to start, and Leo was a pharmacist at the Mayo Clinic, and therefore possessing a wealth of chemistry knowledge. This turned into countless hours of not just winemaking, but brainstorming and decision making between Leo and me in our kitchens, garage, basement and the middle of the street between our houses.

After making numerous phone calls to secure enough Cabernet Sauvignon to fill the barrel, just over a ½ ton, I finally found a contact in the Twin Cities who would help me out. Gerry Blume, may he be resting in peace, a retired engineer turned home winemaker, developed into a good friend and was just the person we needed. Gerry would collect all the orders from local home winemakers, then work with a local transportation company that provided the logistics for shipping refrigerated fruit from California to Minnesota.

While the fruit was of marginal quality, even by Lodi standards, it was fruit we could make drinkable wine with, and it was cheap. In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon, we tried our hand with Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Zinfandel, Petit Sarah, Sangiovese, Barbara and a little white juice. We recruited a couple of other friends, some who stuck, and some people who would come and then go within a year or two, especially those who only showed up at bottling. While it did not occur to me at the start, most people are not interested in the physical demands of making 25-50 cases of wine by hand, with the only motorized equipment being the crusher/destemmer.

Change occurred in 2018 with a move from the home in Rochester to a townhome in Minnetonka, and in parallel movement of the winemaking operation to the cabin on Lake Vermilion, located in the northeastern section of Minnesota. Winemaking conditions were greatly improved, as opposed to working in a garage where temperatures could range from 30-90F, with fruit flies, lady bugs and bees present, I now had a closed and controlled environment. Radiant heat in the floor, an air exchanger, windows facing the lake and upgraded equipment put me in position to make much better wine.

So it really is all about the fruit...

Ok, so it really is all about the fruit. After saying enough with brokers, phone calls to vineyard owners in Napa begin pulling back the curtain, and everything changes: While this initial process served it purpose, especially while doing hard time in tech, raising a family, helping to coach when possible and maintaining a home, the frustration with the fruit steadily grew as I continued to learn more. Pressed the new local broker enough for higher fruit quality, he gave up on me and provided me phone numbers to brokers in California to source my fruit more directly. The result was experimentation with fruit from Paso Robles, Sierra Foothills and Suisun that while much improved, did not give me the access to vineyard managers that was needed.

Committed to understanding how good of a wine I could possibly make, early in 2020 my poking around on websites led me to the Napa Winegrape Marketplace. The website contained a buyers marketplace section complete with listings of different grape varieties, contact information and other information about fruit available for purchase. In another stroke of good fortune, prices for premium fruit were depressed in 2020, which allowed me as a home winemaker the ability to afford to experiment, and not just any good fruit, but very high quality Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley.

The ensuing sequence can be best described as simply going off into the deep end as while making phone calls and learning even more about how much I didn’t know, viticulture in particular, I was also being interviewed by the vineyard managers who wanted to make sure of two things. The first was that I had a viable plan for being present at harvest and for getting the fruit back to Minnesota in reasonable condition. The second issue is they needed to be comfortable with was that they were putting their premium fruit in the hands of someone who knew enough about winemaking to not make a mess and risk tarnishing the reputation of their vineyard.

The result was the ability to secure 1 ton of Merlot from Yates Family Vineyard on Mt. Veeder, and 1.2 tons of Cab from Ferrogiaro Vineyard in Coombsville. With fruit sources secured, I bought 110, 40lb capacity FYBs, 2 polyurethane pallets, reserved a 16’ refrigerated truck, and made arrangements to meet the driver of a refrigerated truck 60 miles south at a terminal in Union City. What I did not realize at the time was that all this turned out to be the easy part.

On the scouting trip to the vineyards in the middle of August, the temperature in downtown Napa read 109 on my rental car, there was lighting on my way to fly out of SFO on Sunday morning, and the Berryessa wildfire started that night. Then 4 days before my October 1 harvest date the devastating Glass wildfire started. Spending the night of harvest at the Yates Family residence on Mt. Veeder, nobody slept, as we were 4 miles away from the fire, and the moon was the deepest orange you could ever imagine. The air was still and stifling, as overnight lows never went below 73, and everyone was wearing masks, not because of Covid, but due to the amount of smoke in the air. While it was a challenging start, my situation was absolutely nothing compared to severity of damage done by the wildfire. To this day it is still very difficult to observe the fire damage driving north on Silverado trail from St. Helena to Calistoga, and other affected areas in both Napa and Sonoma counties.

Having successfully taken possession transferred the fruit at the Union City terminal around noon on Thursday, the truck driver arrived in Eden Prairie, MN at 3:00pm Sunday afternoon. After taking the time to transfer the fruit to my truck and a U-Haul, drive 250 miles north, and bring the fruit into the basement of the cabin on a ramp through a front window, the 2.2 tons of fruit was crushed and destemmed into four 500L fermentation tubs by 2am Monday morning. Hopefully the truck driver and wonderful woman who opened the truck terminal to transfer the fruit in Eden Prairie, on a Sunday afternoon, understand how much I appreciated their determination to help me out, which is certainly much more than the bottles of wine I gave them.

As crazy as this all sounds, and it was, the wine turned out to be pretty good, and that is by Napa standards. Because the trailer of the truck is set at 38F the fruit does not break down and begin to ferment, the basement conditions proved to be excellent again, my winemaking abilities were steadily improving, and despite the wildfire smoke the wines do not show signs of smoke taint. But most importantly, this experience gave me the confidence that with good fruit maybe I actually could make respectable commercial wine.

Go big or stay home

Go big or stay home, and with vaccines, lack of refrigerated trucking options and the escape from tech, the move to California begins: As the 2021 harvest approached, it became clear that my winemaking craft was about to take another major turn. While unlike the risks associated with travel in 2020, vaccines were now available, but Covid had made a mess of transportation supply chains. In particular anyone dependent on refrigerated trucking from California to all points east reported trucking capacity being at less than 20% of what was required. As a result, I unable to secure the same arrangements used in 2020. The best I could arrange was to truck my fruit to same terminal in Union City, wait for an undetermined amount of time for a truck to have room, while paying $200/day per pallet for my Napa fruit to sit and shrivel.

In parallel my love for the tech world had run its course so I handed in my resignation from AWS. Shortly thereafter I pulled the trigger in working with legal teams to open a LLC for a startup winery, hire an accountant and California based wine compliance specialist. After pulling together a winemaking resume, I was able to leverage a connection to work as a cellar hand and in parallel make my wine at a custom crush in Santa Rosa called Gravity Wine House. The 2021 Mt. Veeder Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon wines now available on the website are the result of the wine made at Gravity.

Unfortunately, because of the differences in expected fermentation lot sizes at Gravity, staring at 5 tons, and my model of sticking with a 1-2.5 ton range, my winemaking operation had to move. Scouting around led me to Brooks Note Winery in Petaluma, about 18 miles south of Santa Rosa, for making my 2022 Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, and also add small lots of 2022 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

The next move was to accept a harvest internship position with Sojourn Cellars, based out of the town of Sonoma, CA but uses a custom crush by the of Vinify Wine Services, located in Santa Rosa. It was a perfect situation for me, as Sojourn processed over 200 tons of fruit per harvest, that includes high-end Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon. Unlike many other custom crush clients, Sojourn performs most of the work on their wines themselves, and much of this is performed by the intern. More importantly, over 30% of my time as spending collecting and analyzing fruit samples from the vineyards. This part of the assignment allowed to walk the vineyards of the some of the very best fruit in Sonoma and Napa counties, continuously taste and test for ripeness, perform visual inspection of the vines and learn from the feedback from the head winemakers.

Answering the call from Napa

University courses, commercial learning experiences followed by going all-in as I fell in love with Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, followed by the need to answer the call from Napa.

The continuing education program at the University of California at Davis offers a curriculum in enology and viticulture that provides an excellent introduction into all phase of winemaking, and also includes a semester in viticulture. While certainly not to be compared to the standard undergraduate and graduate programs that are the norm, this program provides an excellent foundation for second career people like myself who have experience, but never received formal instruction into the science of the craft. While all the instructors were very good, as always with any curriculum, there are a couple who make it all work for you. For me the first is Dr. Grady Wann, who delivered the initial pre-req course on Basic Chemistry for Winemaking.

Every day in the winery there is always a point where the extra time and effort Grady put into explaining and working through chemistry equations makes a difference. The second is Dr. Jennifer Rohrs, instructor for the viticulture course. Jennifer is the type of instructor where you immediately know she has a Ph.D., but also possesses that uncommon ability to explain answers thoroughly that can be understood by a much less educated audience.

Then towards the of the 2022 harvest, a very established winery owner and winemaker who has helped me immensely, introduced my name to the leadership at Auburn James Winery, located in St. Helena. For non-locals who do not know where it is, as a reference point is it basically a combination of Midtown and Times Square, but from a Napa Valley perspective. It is surrounded by and in the middle of some of the finest wines produced in the world. On a personal level it is humbling and rather astounding that just over 2 years ago I was making home wine in northern Minnesota, and have now landed here.

My plan is to continue with a winemaking philosophy that emphasizes restraint. Being careful to not overpower site-specific nuances, will be combined with the necessity to showcase the depth, complexity and power of superior fruit from this region. While it is unclear if my highest aspirations will ever be met, it is the pursuit that is most intriguing.