A question we get asked often is why here? Why make wine in Silicon Valley and keep vineyards in the rugged low yielding Santa Cruz Mountains? Usually people ask about Paso Robles with it’s cheaper land prices. Or they ask about Napa and the prestige of building a brand there (land is actually more expensive to grow grapes on here than in Napa, to most people’s surprise).
The simple answer is this is home. We see the Santa Cruz Mountains everyday driving to work, they are part of our view from our house, and the valley is part of our lives. We’d much rather make our dream happen at ‘home’ than try and fit in somewhere else.
We’re lucky in that home is also a great area to make wine, with a long rich history of quality wine. From the first Spanish settlers in the 1770’s grapes and wine have been part of the local history. For the first 100 years of the California wine industry, the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains were at the very top of the quality pyramid in California. People like Charles LeFranc, Paul Masson, and Martin Ray were considered the top winemakers of their days.
The technology boom of Silicon Valley pushed the vineyards out. Not because it was a bad place to make wine, but because it was land more valuable as suburbia than vineyards. A few dedicated growers and winemakers have always held out against the push of urbanization, scattered in the rugged mountains they make wine mainly because they love to do it.
We joke that this crazy group of winemakers are “Cowboy Hippies”. A little mixture of rugged individual, care taker of the environment, romantics and tough farmer. You may see them in tie dye, or cowboy boots, or both. Most like us, gave up good jobs in the Silicon Valley to take on the life of a farmer. Almost all are a small team of husband and wife, working hard everyday to make wine they love.