GILROY
– On the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, encircled by redwood
trees and manzanita, one local family spent a recent Sunday
bottling their new Cabernet on land the family has owned for more
than a century.
By JENNIFER DENMAN
Special to The Dispatch
GILROY – On the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, encircled by redwood trees and manzanita, one local family spent a recent Sunday bottling their new Cabernet on land the family has owned for more than a century.
Matt Oetinger is winemaker and co-founder of Fernwood Cellars located off Redwood Retreat Road outside of Gilroy.
“We are not a big winery, and we do not have staff, so it is so wonderful that all of my friends and family helped us with the bottling,” Oetinger said.
But before a single bottle could be filled, Oetinger spent more than four years preparing.
Oetinger and his wife, Tiffany, along with their co-owners Linda Pond – his mother – and Wayne Simmons, planted Redwood Retreat Vineyards in 1999. After the Cabernet grapes were harvested and barreled, Oetinger had to choose the perfect cork, labels and glass bottles, all features he says can make or break one’s success as a vintner.
“When ordering my bottles, I look for the right color and shape. Since we are an artisan winery, we must adhere to old standards,” Oetinger said, meaning he wants his Cabernet to appeal to the more educated consumer.
After choosing the right bottles he also made sure the corks he bought were up to standard. Corks can sometimes have 2, 4, 6 Trichloanisole – a volatile chlorinated compound of organic origin, produced by fungi. Oetinger said that because the chemical can destroy the wine, it is important to know the cork company has taken the proper precautions.
Then it’s time to add the winery’s name to the corks.
“Most people use a food-grade ink for branding their corks, but I like to microscopically burn our name into them,” Oetinger said. “I think it is better this way.”
Along with the right name, a vintner must also have the right label that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms must approve. The BATF makes sure that all of the Surgeon General warnings and correct alcohol content are located on the bottle. The approval process sometimes can take up to a month.
After all the nitpicking is done, it finally was time to make wine.
Everyone arrived at 6 a.m. on Aug. 10 to begin the process, which involves one big truck and lots of helpers, Oetinger said.
As the wine bottles rotate on the truck, they are filled and dispersed onto a conveyer belt. It is one person’s duty to place the lid foil capsules over the corks.
“It was my job to put the foils on the bottles, and I had so much fun doing it,” said Betty Hartman, a friend of the Oetinger family. “You get instant gratification when you see the wine bottled.”
Next, the bottles go through a labeler, which Oetinger said is usually where delays can arise.
“It took us about an hour to get the labels on right, but that is normal for any winery,” he said.
Other bottling friends and family members were responsible for adding the filled bottles to cases. When the bottling was finished, the group had successfully bottled 110 cases, each containing 12 bottles.
Most wineries are able to bottle and case much larger quantities, but Oetinger said he wanted to keep his crop levels low to make sure quality was high.
“It takes a lot of money and time to do something like this, but when I see that wine bottled and ready for people to try in the end, it is very rewarding,” he said.
His father, Lew, owner of Hummingbird Hill Vineyards, sparked Oetinger’s love of wine. While Oetinger attended the University of California at Davis to earn his bachelor’s degree in biology, he helped plant grapes and make wine at his father’s vineyard in Shingle Springs. Oetinger then spent several years as the vineyard manager at Clos LaChance Winery’s vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Oetinger then decided to transform the family’s 98 acres of land – which has been in the family since the 1860s – into a vineyard.
Since its transformation in 1999, Fernwood Cellars has bottled not only this year’s Cabernet but a 2001 Zinfandel that has been selling at Café Marcella and Steamers in Los Gatos. The wine is not sold in stores, but the public can directly purchase it from the winery. It sells for $27 a bottle.
Fernwood Cellars hopes to have the Zinfandel and eventually the Cabernet, which must age in its bottles for the next six months, selling in a couple of Gilroy restaurants.
Oetinger stood proudly in his cellar among the newly bottled 2001 Cabernet. The bottles waited to age while his future barrels lingered in the wings.
“I think making wine is simply a third science,” he said, ” a third science and a third magic.”
