SAN MARTIN
– While many area wineries are family-owned through generations
and have learned to grow grapes by tradition, the LaChance
vineyards and winery are as much Silicon Valley as they are Napa
Valley.
SAN MARTIN – While many area wineries are family-owned through generations and have learned to grow grapes by tradition, the LaChance vineyards and winery are as much Silicon Valley as they are Napa Valley.
Clos LaChance opened at 50 percent of its capacity, meaning it will produce 30,000 cases of wine this year. It is expected to be producing 60,000 cases within a few years. The winery now has 12 full-time staff members, and about 20 more seasonal employees.
“We’re a small winery in a bigger, modern facility,” Winemaker Jeff Ritchey said.
While the winery is not at full production, it definitely is as high-tech as anyone could imagine.
The complete wine-making process at LaChance is monitored from a controlling room in the winery. A software program monitors the vineyards, and implements irrigation and fertilizer as it is needed.
Once the grapes have been harvested and the wine-process begins, software in the winery tracks the temperature of the fermenting wine, the humidity and temperature of the winery and can make adjustments as needed.
Ritchey said this control over the process doesn’t mean the workers at LaChance can make wine without getting their boots dirty, but it gives them an advantage in controlling how the wine is made.
“You only get one chance each year, and each year is different,” he said about the variable of growing grapes.
LaChance also focuses on using gravity in the wine-making process to avoid using a pump. It even converted a tank usually used for beer to press wine out from fermentation tanks from above, pushing the wine out instead of pumping it.
“There’s a big tradition to do it hand-crafted,” Ritchey said.
