Growing Wine in the Foothills

Have you ever thought of growing your own grapes and trying your hand at making your own wine, just for fun or even for some profit? Well, here in the Foothills, some folks are having a great time doing just that.

We just happen to have good soil, perfect climate (warm days and cool nights) and available land.

Mark Henry, for example, moved to Chicago Park five years ago with his family and bought a home on just under two acres. The land was zoned “ag”, so he knew that he could put in vineyards now and eventually a winery. “I came to visit the area and said: ‘I’ll live up here. I want a vineyard. I love it here,’” Henry said. His daughters go to the school next door, with eight grades and just 120 students.

Henry, who started making wine and beer in the early eighties as a hobby, now has one and a half acres planted. He produces 500 cases of wine a year, purchasing grapes until his vines are ready.

He calls himself a “garagista,” a term from France, which denotes a growing phenomenon of small wineries where everything is done by hand. “It is a one-man operation from beginning to end, from the vineyard all the way to selling the bottles,” he said. The day of our interview, Chris and Ken, two of his college buddies, with their sons tagging along, had come to help plant another half acre of vines.

Wine production in Chicago Park began in the 1800s, with Italian immigrants from Chicago who grew a high quality Italian varietal.

Henry wants to continue that legacy by growing an old-world Italian varietal, sangiovese, which is not the California norm. “Let’s not plant Cabernet or Zinfandel, let’s create our own identity,” he said.

Henry, who has an import business, is semi-

retired. “The main thing you need to do this, is time. There is some investment, maybe $15,000 for planting, trellising, preparing the soil, getting a tractor,” he said.

Of course, it is a risk. Henry listed the three big “Ifs”:

“If the terroir will produce good grapes, if I am capable of being a good steward and if I am capable of turning super premium grapes into a super premium wine. Otherwise, it could turn out to be just a cool looking back yard,” he smiled.

“I like the romance of doing it all myself,” Henry said. “I don’t have a degree from UC Davis. I’ve read books, attended some classes and Vic Borgman has helped me a lot. I am happy to talk to anyone who wants to try.”

Mark@cascadiabrew.com

Vic Borgman and his wife Jan won the “Best of Show” at the Nevada County Fair in 2002 for their “Old Vine Zinfandel 2000.” But the Borgmans accidentally fell into wine making. When they moved up to Nevada County in 1994, Vic bought seven grapevines on sale at Peardale Nursery, thinking they would make a nice hedgerow on their new property.

“I stuck those things in the ground and forgot about them. Three years later I had a lot of Merlot grapes and didn’t know what to do with them,” Borgman said. His brother-in-law suggested he make some wine, even offering to give him some equipment. This was on a Sunday, and on Wednesday the relative pulled up with a pick up truck-full, unloaded and left, calling back over his shoulder: “Get yourself a book, crush those grapes and you’ll do fine.”

So Borgman and his wife did just that. “With Jeff Cox’s book “From Vines to Wines” in one hand, and various tools and implements in the other, we got through the entire process with a fairly decent wine on our first try,” Borgman said.

“We soon became addicted to the whole process of planting and attending a vineyard, harvesting the grapes, getting them through the fermentation stage and eventually the bottling of, hopefully, a great wine,” he said.

The Borgmans now have about a half-acre of vines including Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Syrah and Barbera and produce 35 cases of red wine in four different varieties. During their first few years of winemaking, they supplemented their own harvest with some donated and purchased grapes. In 2002, they crushed over 1,000 pounds of their own grapes and expect to have some extra grapes to sell to other home winemakers.

“I really love it. I don’t ever want to sell wine, though I do sell the grapes to other home wine makers, though I mostly give them away,” Borgman said.

“Once you get ’em started, the drip system is easy to put in and so effective for watering. It also helps that we get 60-70 inches of rain each year,” he said. He puts Mylar tape up to keep the birds from eating the grapes.

Borgman walked me through the carefully tended vineyards and then gave me an introduction to the process of making wine. Most of it went right over my head and seemed complicated, though I did have

a new appreciation for just popping the cork and

pouring…

Borgman gives his wife Jan the credit for being the winemaker in the family, though he clearly loves growing the grapes. “I enjoy working with the vines. At this point, I feel it is something I should have been doing all my life,” he said.

“It’s very special when my wife and I sit under the cedar tree at our picnic table on a summer evening, looking out over the vineyard, with bread and cheese and a bottle of our own red wine,” Borgman said.

Vic and Jan Borgman • BorgManor Vineyards

grtborg@yahoo.com



Mount Vernon Winery. For the Taylor family in Auburn, growing grapes seemed like a good business venture. Jim Taylor started growing grapes for Napa Valley wineries in 1996 on six of his thirty-two acres. That led to some experimental winemaking and in 1998, Taylor planted some vines for his own use and got his son Ryan involved. Mount Vernon Winery was born.

“We were just going to sell grapes, but instead, we put our heads together, did some research and decided to have our own winery,” Ryan said. The winery is now a family venture, with Jim and Ryan running the wine production and winery, sister Jayme heading up the tasting room, mom Lynda doing the books and brother Todd keeping the grounds.

Ryan, who learned winemaking at Chico State, punched the numbers and saw that if they grew their own grapes and bottled them themselves, it could become a successful venture. He even gave up playing college basketball to come home from college on weekends to plant the vineyards.

The family worked together to put in all the irrigation pipes, pumps and tanks, cutting the trenches with a tractor. During 1998 and 1999, they bought grapes and learned how to make wine, then harvested their first crop of grapes in 2002. “Now: with our own grapes, it is really cool. We baby these plants for four years,” Taylor said. They now grow three varieties: Zinfandel, Syrah and Barbera.

“It takes an awesome vineyard to make really good wine. Eighty percent of it is in the actual growing of the grapes. It’s Mother Nature’s Magic,” he said.

The winery produces and sells ten different varieties of wines wholesale and retail and produces about 3,000 cases a year. The wine ages twelve months in the barrel, though eighteen months to twenty-four months “is awesome” to quote Ryan. Cabernet Franc and Viognier are wines that they hope to produce in the future. Their on site tasting room has been open over a year.

“We treat it as a business. It doesn’t take a genius. Making a good bottle of wine is a science. The numbers have to come in right — sugar, acid and pH,” he said.

“We’re very successful. We’re growing a whole lot faster than we thought we would,” Taylor said.



Open Thursdays-Sundays, 11-5,

www.mtvernonwinery.com,

10850 Mt. Vernon Rd.

Auburn, CA 95603

530-823-1111