Thomas Kruse Winery: Vestiges of the Valley of Heart’s Delight

A century and more ago, Santa Clara Valley was filled with the fragrance of vineyards and orchards. So beautiful and bountiful were the environs that it gained the name, Valley of Heart’s Delight.

Traveling eastward toward the Thomas Kruse Winery on a crisp autumn afternoon, the foothills embrace the southern edges of the valley. A few turns, and a few miles further, and the landscape takes on a burnished, timeless mantle.

The hills are dotted with clusters of oak. Walnut, apple and apricot orchards stretch on either side of the road. From a distance, a horse whinnies.

The steady stream of immigrants to California after the Gold Rush was in response to the open spaces, temperate climate and opportunity. The bubble had burst on gold mining, but many more people continued to come to till the land.

Then as now, land was needed for people and their activities: schools, residences, mining, commercial ventures.

Tom Kruse’s chosen activity is winegrower. Across more than 12 acres, he maintains vegetables, an apricot orchard and extensive vineyards planted during the past 10 years.

Merlot, Chardonnay, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are set out in clubby quadrangles. With a nod to technology, iron posts and steel wire trellis the vines, and black hosing delivers drip irrigation to the roots.

As the weather cools, he will determine the cover crop to grow between the rows, providing natural fertilizer next spring, suppressing weed growth, and cushioning the foot on the soil.

Decisions made each month will affect the outcome of the harvests next year.

As an “old-timer” in the resurgence of California’s wine industry, Tom has been making wine since the 1960s. An urban Chicago transplant, he has seen much of Santa Clara County convert from crops to computer buildings and concrete strip malls.

Today, with open space at a premium, the “gold in them thar hills” is less the mineral deposits and more the opportunity to deposit commercial buildings on flat land near major highways.

Open space, and the timelessness of Old California, may yet become the “gold” of the next few decades.

 

Harvesting Creates a New Community

Get in touch with your inner winemaker by spending some time in the vineyard.

But where, you might ask?

Although a growing number of wineries invite newbie grape harvesters into their fields, the Thomas Kruse Winery has made a three-decade tradition of it.

In years gone by, you would have heard of an upcoming harvest by word of mouth. Up until recently, you might receive a postcard announcing an upcoming harvest.

Today, you will get an e-mail. You can respond, and you can share.

Friends of Tom, whether they are attending their first harvest or have known him for more than 30 years, show up wearing extra layers while the dew is still on the grape leaves.

Don’t have clippers? No problem, there’s a basket of them just inside the tasting room. Not sure what to do? Tom will explain how to pick and what to leave.

The vineyard is spread out on 12 acres snugged up against the eastern foothills of Gilroy. Apricot orchards and horse ranches dot the landscape.

The calendar peels back a few decades as the grapes thud into white buckets.

Arriving before 8 a.m., 70 people fan out in the rows, the vines muffle their voices and hide their presence.

Friends and couples pair up on either side of the trellised vines, clipping the fully ripened fruit and chatting about their activities. Buckets and bins make their way from the vineyard to the crusher; empties make their way back again.

By noon, the last of the day’s harvest is complete. Weekend warriors clean up, return borrowed tools and relax across a lawn shaded by a 300-year-old oak.

While they were toiling in the vineyards, a different crew was busy preparing a feast of barbecued tri-tip, pasta with pesto, salad and garlic bread. Bottles of wine grace the tables, and the Friends of Tom, both old and new, toast the results of the day’s efforts.

Nine tons of Zinfandel are now part of Vintage 2007.

 

Free SO2s in the Barrel

Imagine winemakers just as sensitive to sulfites and tannins as you are.

Meet the proprietors at Soquel Vineyards.

Paul Bargetto, who performs many of the cellaring tasks, is very sensitive to sulfites. His partners, brother Peter and longtime friend Jon Morgan, are both sensitive to tannins.

The grapes they purchase from various growers in the Santa Cruz Mountains are high in tannins because of the varietals grown, the soils and irrigating techniques.

As they sample the contents of their barrels, Paul swears the other two can pinpoint, by palate, the test results before he’s even run them.

He runs several tests each month on every barrel, including a test for free SO(2) in the wine. The time it takes to extract a sample from 250 barrels and run each of the tests reflects a real commitment to wine quality.

A visit to the lab one morning provided, in ten minutes’ time, a fascinating explanation on the purpose of adding sulphur dioxide, where Paul likes to keep the levels, and the drawbacks if the levels aren’t maintained.

He slipped a wine thief into a barrel of the old vine Zinfandel that had been crushed in early September and demonstrated one of the standards tests.

The United States and the European Union have slightly different allowable levels; for red wines, the upper limit in the US is 350 ppm (parts per million); in the EU it is 160 ppm.

Paul’s cellaring practices keep his levels as low as possible while still maintaining the antioxidizing and antibacterial functions of the food preservative.

As further prevention of oxidation, he fills each barrel with argon before racking the wine, ensuring that air does not have a chance to touch the wine.

Until you pop the cork.

 

For Paul Bargetto, Winemaking Quest Started Early

Paul Bargetto, third-generation winemaker, believes that wine is made in the vineyard.

At Soquel Vineyards, he and his partners, brother Peter Bargetto and long-time friend Jon Morgan, have vintage 2007 to produce, and it is shaping up to be a stellar year.

Descended from the family that bonded Bargetto Winery immediately after Prohibition, Paul credits an older brother, Tom, with inspiring him to make great wine. What initially appeared to be an overcritical approach on his brother’s part was actually a way of fine tuning all the steps in the process.

The partners produced wine in their garage for 12 years. Over time they experimented with different techniques and created lasting friendships with growers in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After they expanded their capacity to 15 barrels, Paul told them it was time to start thinking about the next step.

Their wines were very well received, and he wanted to market them.

It’s been a gradual process. In 1987 they moved into a bonded facility where a producer was getting ready to retire from commercial wine production. More than 10 years later they moved to their current location in the Soquel hills, bringing with them the knowledge and relationships gained from growing the business slowly.

A phrase you will hear often from Paul about their winemaking techniques: Dialed in.

They know what to do with the grapes they purchase from their long-term suppliers growing Pinot noir in Corralitos, Chardonnay in Ben Lomond and Zinfandel in Lodi.

And they know what to do with wine even when the product isn’t initially stellar.

One of their customers’ favorites, the Trinity, was launched in 1989 as a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignane and Zinfandel when the Zin didn’t measure up to be bottled on its own.

Paul and his partners became winegrowers with the planting of their five-acre property, a new venture for them. They will harvest the first full crop of Pinot noir in 2008.

Without doubt, they will dial it in once again.

 

Hang Time in the Santa Cruz Mountains

No, not hang gliders, basketball players or Wild West bandits.

Grapes.

Grapes destined for wine rely on the weather for their hang time, that extra week or two in autumn when temperatures stay warm and skies remain clear.

By most accounts, Weather 2007 delivered in a big way for Vintage 2007 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A few mountain vineyards brought in their last harvest the second week of November.

The original boundaries of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, or American Viticultural Area, were walked by two 1970s vintners, Ken Burnap of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard and the late David Bennion of Ridge Vineyards.

Looking to the western ridge line as you travel the major Silicon Valley highways — 101, 280, 880, and 17 — the steep hillsides are densely covered in native trees: madrone, oak and redwood. An aerial view would reveal vineyards tucked into the mountains from Half Moon Bay down to Mount Madonna.

Turn back the calendar more than 100 years, and most of those surrounding hillsides had been denuded by clearcutting the original redwood forests, creating a much sunnier environment for vineyards and fruit orchards. It was in the 1870s that grapes were originally planted in the region.

Back then, California wines were beginning to rival those from France. Both areas dealt with phylloxera epidemics, but France got to skip Prohibition. After Repeal, as the state expanded its winegrowing, a global wine tasting was in order.

Judgment of Paris 1976 gave long-deserved attention to California wines. Three decades later, Judgment redux cemented their position worldwide.

For mountain winegrowers, getting people up narrow, windy roads to their tasting rooms can be a challenge. The 70 member wineries of Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association have a number of events to entice visitors.

Passport Days, four each year, allows visitors to see the vineyards in each season, including wineries not generally open to the public. Members of the trade — restaurants, bars and hotels — get to sample wines twice a year.

The energies and enthusiasm of John and Karen Hibble, directors of the winegrowers association and the Aptos Chamber of Commerce, pull together the overlapping needs of businesses and winegrowers under one roof, and display 400 years of history as well.

 

Shears Clip at Dawn in Sarah’s Vineyard

The first estate harvest and crush of 2007 at Sarah’s Vineyard is complete, with an acre of Pinot noir grapes traveling from vine to bin to crush. A week before, the first managed estate harvest put the crew and the equipment to the test, and tensions that previously ran high are now running at a steady pace. No new equipment will be put to the test today.

The rhythm of harvest pulses through this vineyard, in sync with all the others.

A team of six experienced pickers wielding the sharpest of shears systematically harvests each bunch of grapes. The vines have been managed with care and the fruit hangs well below the canopy, ready to release.

In the growing warmth of the morning, a murmur of voices, the arrival of equipment, the movement of people and the clip of shears meld in natural harmony.

The slope of vines was well planned; the width between rows allows room for the forklift to bring bins halfway into the rows, shortening the steps of the workers and speeding the transfer from tub to bin.

Fruit will arrive at the crusher two hours after leaving the vine.

The arrival of motorized equipment has eased the physical labors of the vineyard tremendously. Machines will haul half-ton bins of fruit, lift them 20 feet into the air, pirouette and tip so the grapes fall slowly, finishing the transfer when the bin is completely upended.

The equipment takes on a personality of its own, and the galleries below reflect the pace of harvest, equipment and crush.

Even with machines, sometimes there is nothing quicker or more reliable than a strong back or pair of hands to keep the process moving along at a clipper’s pace.

 

FPS Grape Program Cleans, Tests and Certifies

In the early 1850s, immigrants from many European countries brought thousands of cuttings of their favorite grape stock to California, planting vineyards across the state.

Don’t plan on tucking foreign cuttings into your steamer trunk today.

Pests and diseases invisible to the eye can wreak havoc on agriculture, yours as well as other growers. If that isn’t enough disincentive, the U.S. Customs Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Food and Drug Administration all have major penalties for this kind of smuggling.

California ranks fourth in world production of wine. The wine industry is a $45 billion economic engine statewide and more than double that nationwide. Federal and state regulations restrict imported plant material from all foreign countries, which must undergo stringent quarantine and testing before being released for growing.

If you discover grape stock elsewhere and apply for a permit to bring it into the country, the next stop for the plants would be Foundation Plant Services, a department within the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

Established in the 1950s as a response to diseases in the vineyard while the industry was replanting after Prohibition, FPS has worked with researchers to create an importation program that results in clean plant stock available to nurseries and growers. Painstakingly thorough, the process takes a minimum of two years; if diseases are discovered, cleaning and retesting can take several more.

The first steps ensure the new grape selections test negative for viral diseases, followed by planting and identification in the isolated FPS vineyards. After professional identification, the plants become registered in the Grapevine Registration & Certification Program, available for grower propagation and for purchase.

Each year FPS publishes a listing of registered grape selections for the upcoming dormant season. For the past 12 years it has published an annual newsletter covering issues in the industry.

It also oversees the National Grape Registry, where interested growers, personal and commercial, can locate and purchase specific varietals.

 

100-year-Old Zinfandel Crush at Soquel Vineyards

On a warm afternoon in late summer 2007, the first grapes of the season arrive at Soquel Vineyards.

“First crush of vintage 2007.”

With a grin, Jon Morgan maneuvers the forklift, slides under the first bin, takes a left turn to the back of the winery and approaches the hopper above the crusher platform.

Partner Peter Bargetto stands on the platform, ready to guide the fruit into the hopper where it will move into a destemmer. After passing through high speed paddles, the fruit, now a leafless, stemless crush of red juice and skins, drops to a clean bin below.

Doubled stacked along one wall of the winery, each holding one-half ton of grapes, 22 bins line up for crushing. Their contents: fruit picked that morning from 100 year old Zinfandel vines growing in Lodi. Three generations have managed the vineyard, and old vine Zin is fast becoming a popular label.

At the back of the winery, Paul Bargetto has joined the other two partners in a choreographed pattern. The bin is lifted as high as the rooftops, the tilt begins, grapes spill and the crush continues. The bin is lowered, rinsed out with a high pressure hose and then placed in a position to receive the next crush. The partners take a stint at each job.

Once full, each bin of crushed grapes is parked by the forklift under the eaves of the winery. Jon punches down the cap of fruit that has floated to the top, scoops a glass cylinder into the depths, then floats a hydrometer in its contents to measure the sugar content.

With pleasure, he announces the reading: the Brix level is a bit more than 23 and may continue to rise. Multiplying by .55, the final alcohol level of the wine can be estimated.

Peter dons protective gloves, grabs a brick of dry ice and slips it into the crush, and a blanket of fog covers the top of the bin. Used for thinner skinned red grapes, cold soaking plunges the temperature of the crush to around 40 degrees. The juice will rise to ambient temperatures over the course of a few days before fermentation begins.

Three hours later, all the equipment is cleaned, the cold-soaking bins are covered with lids, and the stems are moved to the perimeter of the property.

A voice calls out, “Who brought the beer?”

 

 

 

 

Anticipation Over: First Crush at Sarah’s Vineyard Begins Season

At Sarah’s Vineyard, first day of harvest and crush was filled with anticipation as an intense season of activity begins.

The pickers gathered at the winery before dawn, following the big truck to a private property a mile away. The sky lightened from dark blue to orange, fading to yellow.

Typical late summer, midday temperatures may climb into the high 80s, but in the moist, pre-dawn air it hovers in the low 50s.

Grape harvest begins early in the morning so the pickers can finish without working in the noonday sun. The lower morning temperature serves as natural refrigeration for the fruit after it leaves the life source of the vine and fills large bins.

The vineyard for the fruit of the first harvest is owned by a private winegrower, passionate about Pinot noir Wadenswil clone, yet not ready to personally manage the vines on a daily basis.

Sarah’s Vineyard leases the land and, through the season, staff tends the grapes and manages the harvest. The property owner, in addition to the lease arrangement, receives the bottled result: award winning, private reserve Pinot noir.

After spending a season growing the best fruit possible, it will be rushed from the vine to the crusher, ensuring optimal sugars as the fermentation process starts.

The Santa Clara Valley, primarily an agricultural area until the 1960s, will never have the expanse of orchards and vineyards it did one hundred years ago; astronomic property values and increased population have seen to that. Collectively, the harvests from small vineyards of one to five acres supplement what the wineries can grow so they can produce to their maximum capacity each year.

The Hecker Pass area at the eastern side of the Santa Cruz mountains has proven an ideal location for vineyards and, for now, property developers are pursuing the more easily managed parcels down in the valley.

Twelve hours after harvest began, Tim Slater, proprietor, and Rob Henson, winemaker, share their pleasure of accomplishment. The tension of the first day, with the inauguration of a new, untested piece of equipment, has dissolved. Talk of the day’s events is mixed with future plans.

Sarah’s Vineyard will remain focused on the Rhône varietals that grow well in the Hecker Pass area: Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Roussanne, Viognier.

And making the best wines possible.

 

Winemaker Combines a Love of Chemistry and Business

With the deft slice of a pristine white shovel, Lois Dowd pushes through the crust of grape skins at the top of a 50-gallon blue barrel.

When the solids at the top have been completely submerged at the bottom, she covers the barrel and moves to the next one. As she uncovers it, a splash of water sheets unceremoniously to the side, the accumulation of unexpected rainfall in mid-September.

Once again she punches down the sediment at the top, and the liquid surrounding the grapes foams up audibly. The cap changes during two weeks of tending, softening from crust to slurry, eventually sinking to the bottom.

Estate vintage 2007 Merlot at the Thomas Kruse Winery is in progress.

There is a rythym and a system to her technique. Several more rows of barrels, each intentionally only four-fifths filled, await her experienced hand.

Moving among them, situated between the tasting room and the vineyard, she shares details about her four-year tenure with the winery, which began while she was studying enology and viticulture at UC Davis.

Her love of learning is palpable, as she talks about the chemistry of fermentation and the efficacy of wild yeasts, the business of selling wine and retaining loyal customers, and the physicality of the daily work.

Moving liquids around is a big job at any winery, and walking the rows of the vineyard is a daily activity.

She describes Tom Kruse, owner and winemaker, as a see-feel-touch-taste artisan who learned the craft from others. He makes choices based on what is moving through the vineyard each season: which overwintering cover crops to plant between the rows, every pruning cut in the early spring, and leaf-by-leaf canopy management in the summer.

Lois speaks with pleasure about learning something new every day, as everyone gets to do all the jobs at a small winery. At her behest, some of the wines were entered into competitions for the first time, and three bottles in the tasting room now display an array of medals.

Soon enough, fall harvest will reveal the results of this year’s creativity.