South County Vintners Place Well at Wine Competition
By Jennifer Van Gundy Staff Writer
Gilroy – One man is a fourth generation vintner, the other escaped the rat race to ply a craft that is closer to his heart. Both were honored for the fruit of their labor at the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.
Local vintners Tim Slater of Sarah’s Vineyard and Gino Fortino of Fortino Winery brought home medals for their submissions to what is widely known to be the largest competition of American wines in the world.
Sarah’s Vineyard took home two gold medals for their 2003 Reserve and Estate Pinot Noirs while Fortino Winery walked away with a silver medal for a particularly special Cabernet Sauvignon.
Tim Slater’s part in the story began when the former owner of Sarah’s Vineyards, Marilyn Clark, decided it was time to bow out. Clark opened the vineyard in 1978, just one year before a blind wine-tasting in France would bring fame to California wines and incite the state’s wine explosion. Slater, a self-described “mad scientist,” worked in the telecom industry until fortunes shifted and he was laid off.
“It was fine by me,” he said. “I’m just a weird inventor guy from the Silicon Valley that wanted to do something different.”
Slater and Dave Heiber, the current winemaker at Sarah’s Vineyard, were friends who were both fond of Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. As luck would have it, they stumbled upon Sarah’s Vineyards where Clark had planted precisely those two type of grapes.
“It was perfect serendipity,” Slater said. “We tasted Marilyn’s wine and we liked it, there’s a lot of potential here for making premium wine since Gilroy has favorable conditions for grape growing.”
Slater had long been drawn to the idea of owning a winery.
“I liked the idea of the idyllic life, wandering around with a glass of wine in your hand,” he said. “Actually, it turns out that you just move a lot of dirt around.”
Slater freely admits that his expectations for what it would be like to run a vineyard were “shattered,” but he still loves what he does for a living.
“It’s better than working in a windowless office building being harangued by your boss,” he said. “You’re a jack of all trades, integrating the artistic, mechanical and practical aspects of the job, and you get to see the result of your work.”
Today the vineyard is still small and is committed to more of a “art for art’s sake” ethic as opposed to being driven by the desire to amass medals.
“We don’t compete in anything except the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition – to see if we rank.” The winery is mainly dedicated to Chardonnays and Pinot Noir grapes but Slater has his eye on developing more of the grapes that are common to the Rhone Valley in France such as Syrah, Roussanne and Viognier grapes.
Even with modest holdings – the vineyard encompasses eight acres – Sarah’s Vineyards has garnered some big time attention, including a glowing review in the Wall Street Journal where their Chardonnay was described as “so rich and sensuous it was almost illegal.”
Even though the grapes themselves are quite sumptuous and certainly contribute to the wine’s success, Slater credits the winery’s Hecker Pass location with being responsible for the colorful complexities that make the wines standouts.
“It’s cooler here than in Gilroy,” he said, “There is a strong maritime influence; we have hot days but the wind tempers it and a Pinot Noir loves hot days and cold nights.”
“The gentle sunshine of the late afternoon and early evening hours lengthens the fruit’s ripening period. “Conditions are just right here on Hecker Pass,” said Slater, “There are lots of old Italian families that have been making wine here for several generations.”
Four generations of Fortinos
Gino Fortino, who won a silver medal for his Cabernet Sauvignon at the Chronicle wine competition, belongs to that classification precisely.
Bound up inside the bottle and seal of a Fortino wine is a whole lot more than just old grape juice: it’s four generations worth of family wine-making.
“This is something I’ve been doing for a long time,” he said with the off-hand, casual attitude of a man who is comfortable in his own art. Surrounded by the land that has been his world since the age of 4, Fortino seems at peace with his place in the family heritage.
“My family has always worked in the wine industry,” he said.
His family has been tending vines in the same Hecker Pass location for 36 years and the neatly spaced vines and gentle roll of the property contain a lifetime’s worth of memories.
Up on the hillside behind the house where Fortino grew up, are the vines that have most recently brought honor to the winery’s name. An acre of the estate’s cabernet grapes rest in the unseasonably warm sunlight.
“I don’t know why, but the wine produced right here on our little estate does seem to be some of the best,” Fortino mused. “It has something to do with the soil and the climate.”
Fortino is relatively modest in his assessment of the fruit of his labor. Others, however, are much more effusive in their praise.
Rob Rothenburg, a Fortino wine club member, called the wine fabulous.
“It’s a real full-bodied, palatable wine, it’s wonderfully easy to drink,” he said.
For fans and judges alike the success of the small winery tucked along the edge of the county seems to have everything to do with the fact that the art of wine-making is bound into the very fabric of the Fortino family and has been for a long time.
Today the winery encompasses 60 acres of vineyards in Santa Clara County in addition to their eight-acre Hecker Pass estate and processes 200 to 250 tons of grapes annually. All of the processing, from stem-removal to bottling, takes place on the winery’s estate.
It seems that somewhere amidst the vines and barrels, good things happen out on Hecker Pass for Fortino and Slater, and both men seem equally satisfied in their work.
And, if current wine trends are any indication, than fourth generation wine-makers and those new to the business have something to smile about – sooner or later the more sophisticated tastes of the wine-buying demographic will lead straight into their arms.
“Even if they start with wine coolers, eventually they will drink better and better wine. It’s a natural progression,” Slater said.
