Though it might be quiet outside Sycamore Creek Vineyards,
inside, surrounded by rows of grape vines, winemaker Ted Medeiros
directs the fermentation of select wines using new equipment to
implement tried-and-true methods he learned during his lifetime of
winemaking.
Morgan Hill – Though it might be quiet outside Sycamore Creek Vineyards, inside, surrounded by rows of grape vines, winemaker Ted Medeiros directs the fermentation of select wines using new equipment to implement tried-and-true methods he learned during his lifetime of winemaking.
In 2005, Bill Holt and Medeiros bought Sycamore Creek Vineyards and have since prepared it for this year’s harvest. Medeiros and Holt combine their vineyard practices to produce zinfandel, Malbec, cabernet franc, savignon blanc and chardonnay.
Medeiros learned his craft after eight years of working on the land at Uvas Creek Vineyard only a few miles away from Sycamore Creek.
“We were growers at Uvas Creek for the last nine years,” said Medeiros. “During that time I was a distribution manager in San Leandro, and I got into wine by purchasing wine for our company.” During this time Medeiros read about making wine. He got his hands dirty while making mistakes, but he learned.
Holt and Medeiros purchased Sycamore Creek Vineyards to gain growing room and control over how to make the wine.
Unlike other wineries, Medeiros has the advantage of using state of the art equipment and remain a small business, producing 65 to 70 tons this year. Each ton translates into 60 cases of wine. Clos LaChance, a larger local winery, produces 600 tons a year.
Medeiros focuses on details.
“I can hand craft and pay attention to each individual barrel,” Medeiros said.
That doesn’t mean Medeiros ignores technological advancements; he recently purchased a positive displacement pump, a crusher stemmer and new barrels.
It’s not easy to make a quality wine. Many factors must be considered – from the way the rows of grapes are planted, to the equipment used to move the juice from barrel to barrel.
With goblet-shaped grape plants, the fruit receives less light from the sun, as it is buried under large green leaves. He must thin the trees to allow more sunlight absorption. With sunlight absorption the fruit becomes sweeter.
“We get very berry tasting wine because the fruit is getting more sunlight,” he said. “We have a healthy ecosystem, and use no pesticides.”
He also uses a method called cluster thinning to get sweeter berries. Medeiros trims the grape clusters, which allows the remaining grapes to get more nutrients.
But this wouldn’t happen if he used regular irrigation. Medeiros uses dry farming, a method of farming used for many years that produces smaller yet sweeter grapes.
Once the grapes are ready for picking, Medeiros doesn’t just pop a berry in his mouth, he tastes the skin of the grape since that is what the wine will truly taste like.
The grapes are then put inside the new crusher-stemmer, a machine that carries the berries on a band and into a bin that crushes them. The machine that was used before was older an crushed the seeds and stems of the fruit, which released more tannins. Tannins are a natural astringent, acidic compound that has a drying, puckering effect on the palate, like a sweater on the tongue. It is usually found in the seeds, skins and stems of grapes. But the key word is care. The new crusher allows for more grapes to be crushed without harming the stems or seeds because of the limited pressure applied to the grapes important to the taste.
“Wine is a living thing. The more you move wine the more it changes. The pump disturbs the wine the least,” Medeiros said. He described the change in the wine as an awkward teenage moment.
“When one moves the wine less, the compounds don’t move as much to produce a extremely different taste. It’s like an adolescent, changing and growing,” he said.
Medeiros compares winemaking to directing an orchestra. While it sits in the barrel to ferment, the wine is absorbing the butter and oak flavors of the wood. Barrels have a lot to do with the taste of the wine, but care is needed to prevent the wine from tasting too much like the flavors in the wood.
To avoid the overpowering flavors of pine or oak – depending on the flavor he is striving for – Medeiros also has neutral barrels where the wines are moved to finish fermenting.
With new air conditioning capabilities, Medeiros will eliminate the heat swings and keep the wine at 60 to 62 degrees while it ages in the barrels, again trying to disturb the compounds the least.
Medeiros lifted a wine glass to his lips and savored the maroon juice from the barrel.
“Our aim is to be on the quality side of wine,” he said.
Wine tasters such as Stacy Wiebe definitely enjoys the wines at Sycamore Creek Winery, as she looks for the sweeter tasting wines.
“I like any winery where I can get the one-on-one attention and where they will take the time to explain the process and how wines differ from each other,” said Wiebe, a Ventura resident who comes through the area once a year. “I like wine, but I really like the experience of going out and tasting wine,” she added.
