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The wine country under scrutiny stretches through Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and Alameda. And don’t start looking for acres of newly planted vineyards. Just as most of us don’t grow the romaine, arugula and spinach we put into a salad—let alone the olives for the oil or the varied sprouts, herbs and spices—one doesn’t need to grow grapes to make super-premium wine. Unless you’ve been snoozing, you’ll know the wines of veterinarian-winemaker Kent Rosenblum. Acclaimed for his Rhône varietals and world-class Zins, he’s been making and selling wine in the East Bay since 1978 from grapes grown in Sonoma, Napa, east Contra Costa County, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles and elsewhere. In 1987 Rosenblum Cellars moved to its current home in Alameda, set up its popular tasting room and outdoor picnic area and proved you don’t need to journey north to have an authentic wine country experience.
Rosenblum was the pioneer of what has become a burgeoning network of local artisanal urban winemakers, collectively represented by the East Bay Vintners Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 to spotlight and promote the 14-plus wineries now making and selling wine in the East Bay. About half have a full-time winemaker at the helm. About a third, like Rosenblum, who is a member, have formal tasting rooms. Most of the others offer tasting by appointment. Many are producing wines that rank up there with California’s best, according to Wine Spectator magazine and other reviewers of quality vintages.The blend of vintners includes the likes of Loren Tayerle, who plays the French horn in the Berkeley Symphony when not making Pinot Noir and other small-lot handcrafted varietals at his West Oakland winery. Then there’s husband-and-wife team Michael and Anne Dashe. She has a degree in enology from the University of Bordeaux in France. His equivalent is from UC Davis. Together they make a sublime single-vineyard Zinfandel at their facility near Jack London Square—a space shared with JC Cellars’ Jeff Cohn, who specializes in single-vineyard Rhônes. Also making wine there are Ron Pieretti and Wendy Sanda of Prospect 772 Wine Company. The only winemakers in the group using grapes grown in a vineyard they own, they live in Oakland, planted their vineyard, near Angels Camp in the Sierra foothills, in 2001, and their first release is due out in October.
Brendan Eliason, whose Periscope Cellars occupies 6,000 square feet inside a converted submarine-repair facility in Emeryville, was studying industrial technology when a wine appreciation course jammed a cork on that budding career. He switched to viticulture, apprenticed at a small winery in Sonoma County, and works part time as wine director at Walnut Creek’s popular Va de Vi Bistro & Wine Bar to help support his 60-hour-a-week winemaking passion. He rents space to two new alliance members, Urbano Cellars and Andrew Lane Wines; the latter’s owner-winemaker, Drew Dickson, grew up in St. Helena and makes his signature Gamay from 70-year-old Napa Valley vines. Dickson moved his winemaking operation from Napa to the East Bay two years ago.
“My fiancée and I have lived here for six years,” he explains. “We purchase all our grapes from the Napa Valley, but I don’t like working through a distributor. Being here, I can make the wine and develop direct relationships with restaurateurs and the people who drink my wine.”
Urban Wine Ways
Back at the Commonwealth Club, the four alliance members facing the audience exemplify the eclecticism of these urban warriors. The four represent what panel moderator, wine writer and home-winemaker Tim Patterson describes in his opening remarks as “more than a dozen super-premium winemakers operating out of old facilities and warehouses. They don’t have vineyards. They’re very small for the most part. In fact Mondavi and Beringer probably spill more wine in a year than they make.”Oakland-born Steve Edmunds—of the Edmunds St. John label, one of Northern California’s original Rhône Rangers, the group responsible for the proliferation of locally produced Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and other Rhône-style varietals—has been making wine in the East Bay for more than 20 years. Like Rosenblum, he has played guru and mentor to many of the alliance’s newer winemakers. Unlike Rosenblum, he has no tasting room, but Paul Marcus Wines in Rockridge Market Hall stocks a good selection of his wine.
The other three panelists, Sasha Verhage of Eno Wines, Chris Brockway of Broc Cellars, and Jared Brandt of A Donkey and Goat, add weight to the observation that, just as you don’t need to own a vineyard to make first-rate wine, there is no stereotype when it comes to this bunch of vinicultural zealots.
Verhage was a confirmed beer drinker when he arrived in the Bay Area from Michigan. Now he describes winemaking as one of his two loves—the o
ther being “what I do for a living”— interface design at Google, based at the company’s Mountain View headquarters. (Previously, he was with Yahoo.) This new wine country might seem a long way from where the grapes grow. But, says Verhage, “living in the East Bay, I can get to all my vineyards—Monterey, the Sierra foothills, Napa and Sonoma—within about two hours.”Verhage learned about wine when he went to help the home-winemaker dad of a former colleague. “I quickly became fascinated with the process,” he says. After doing homework assignments that involved drinking wine, wine and more wine, then reporting back, he quickly switched from cheap Chilean to Carneros varietals and started apprenticing to other winemakers. During the tech downturn he bought his first barrel and produced 100 cases. Now he makes around 900 cases a year of his sought-after Eno label Pinots, Zins and Grenaches in a longtime wine facility once used by Steve Edmunds near Gilman Street in Berkeley. Fellow alliance member Bryan Harrington of Harrington Wines crushes, ferments, blends, barrels and bottles at the same location.
Brockway moved to the East Bay from Nebraska with a degree in philosophy. “What was I going to do? Become a chef, a lawyer or a winemaker?” he asks rhetorically. He spent a week at law school, escaped to UC Davis to study wine and then quickly transferred to Fresno State, which boasts a functioning winery. In 2002, after completing his degree, he—like several other alliance winemakers—apprenticed with Rosenblum before making his first barrel of Zinfandel, with grapes from Lodi. Under his label, Broc Cellars, his output has grown to 1,000 cases a year using grapes “from Napa and all over.”
Brandt makes wine with his wife, Tracey, under the label A Donkey and Goat, named for the animals they saw each day while interning for a year at a winery in France. As a broke undergraduate waiting tables, he noticed he could double his take-home pay if he could sell a bottle of wine at every table. That got him learning—and subsequently drinking a lot of wine on weekends spent in Napa and Sonoma. The Brandts started from their garage with 400 cases in 2003 and are up this year to 1,200 cases.The East Bay has some drawbacks, says Verhage—like the lack of parking space when you’re having 8,000 pounds of grapes dropped off that need to be
processed immediately. And raccoons. “They’re not so gargantuan in Napa.”
But, he adds, “The density of epicureans means there are a lot of people who have an appreciation of the artisanal craft.” This was evident when more than 600 imbibers and nibblers gathered in August at Rosenblum Cellars, where 15 alliance-member wineries paired with top local chefs to present the second annual Urban Wine Experience. The event and others like it could never have happened without the unifying influence and sense of community inspired by the alliance, says Eliason.
“As we grow, we plan to expand in a number of directions. We want to have more events—and to gather more resources. As it is, we bounce ideas, give feedback, lend and borrow paraphernalia—give each other support,” Eliason says. “Potentially, certain equipment could be bought and shared; flatbed trucks, for example, for equipment and grape deliveries. Now we rent bottling equipment from different companies. Perhaps we will buy and share
a bottling line.”
It’s the Grapes
When you drive into the Dennison Street lot where Oakland borders Alameda at the 23rd Avenue exit off Interstate 880, a heavy, slatted wooden door shouts “winery” before you see the name. Walk inside and beyond the high-end tasting room where Lost Canyon Winery Pinot Noirs and Syrahs are being poured, and it is easy to imagine that one is in Napa or Sonoma. Scientist-turned-assistant winemaker Kristie Tacey, who worked on the human genome project before she changed careers, points to the destemmer used when the grapes are delivered and the alchemy begins, the crusher, the stainless steel vats, the wooden barrels—all the traditional winery trappings.
While the winemaker who lives alongside a vineyard and grows his or her own grapes is the romantic ideal, the converse side of the picture is that he or she is restricted by the grapes and the location. When, like Lost Canyon and other alliance members, you buy from carefully chosen vineyards, you can be picky about location, grower and grapes. “The purchase of grapes from independent growers is common throughout most wine regions around the world,” says California wine broker Bill Turrentine, whose role is connecting growers with winemakers. “There are thousands of independent growers in California, each dedicated to producing the best grapes possible. Purchasing grapes from these growers gives winemakers great flexibility to find fruit with the flavor characteristics they like the best.”
“In Napa, you get to taste Napa grapes. Here in the East Bay, the advantage is that you’re tasting everything—the Central Coast, Napa, Sonoma, the Sierra foothills, Mendocino, Lodi and many other locations,” says Eliason. “When five of us held a wine tasting recently, people got to taste wine from 20 different appellations.”
Eliason buys from eight handpicked vineyards spread out over Northern California. “My criteria are that the vineyard is planted by a grower who lives on, and personally farms, the property. The grower must be as passionate about the grapes as I am about the wine.”
Alliance members, like Eliason, typically have ongoing contracts with specific vineyards. “This is an industry built on relationships, and often a contract is a handshake,” he says.
“I see what we’re doing as a retro thing,” he continues, referring to the fact that grapes were transported to San Francisco and wine was made in the city—not in Napa or Sonoma—prior to the 1906 earthquake. And after that, until Prohibition, Richmond, right here in the East Bay, boasted the nation’s largest wine-production facility. “What we’re doing isn’t new. We’re just bringing back the urban concept,” he says, adding that he doesn’t see Napa or Sonoma as competition. “I just don’t see us becoming a tourist destination draw, like Napa. I see this as a distinct and unique niche supporting, and supported by, the local community.”
It helps to be riding the “fresh and local” wave gaining Mavericks-like momentum. As Eliason notes, “We’re making wine where we live—among friends, neighbors and the community.” So, you get to taste, to meet the winemaker and to learn exactly where the grapes were grown—all facets of the distinct urban appeal.“If we had space,” says Eliason, “we could add half a dozen wineries right now and another half-dozen in the near future—all of whom will probably be here by this time next year. If my facility were double the size, I know of four wineries that would move right now—people who commute to Northern California, live here and want to be here.”
It took him a year to find his facility. Then there was the time it took to modify the space. Then there were the permits—city, county, state and federal. Getting the required tasting room documentation took Eliason 12 months. “Right now I know of three different companies looking to build large shared facilities here in the East Bay. If that happens, I can see us quickly growing to 25 or 30 wineries.”
Just as one can’t squeeze the cork back into a good bottle of bubbly, the barrel has burst. There’s no stopping the flow. Wine country in the East Bay is a fact of life and growing faster than new buds in the vineyards in springtime. Why head north when we can sip locally and savor the pleasures of the vine right here in our backyard?
Alliance Winemakers
A Donkey and Goat
(510) 868-9174
www.adonkeyandgoat.com
Andrew Lane Wines
(707) 815-3501
www.andrewlanewines.com
Aubin Cellars
(510) 339-0170
www.aubincellars.com
Blacksmith Cellars
(510) 917-0537
www.blacksmithcellars.com
Dashe Cellars
(510) 452-1800
www.dashecellars.com
Edmunds St. John
(510) 981-1510
www.edmundsstjohn.com
Eno Wines
(415) 515-7227
www.enowines.com
Harrington Wines
(510) 527-1305
www.harringtonwine.com
JC Cellars
(510) 465-5900
www.jccellars.com
Lost Canyon
(510) 534-9314
www.lostcanyonwinery.com
Periscope Cellars
(510) 655-7827
www.periscopecellars.com
Prospect 772 Wine Company
(510) 531-2274
www.prospect772.com
Rosenblum Cellars
(510) 865-7007
www.rosenblumcellars.com
Tayerle
(877) 894-3118
www.tayerlewine.com
Urbano Cellars
(415) 806-7155
www.urbanocellars.com
East Bay Wine Crawl
Hire a limo, choose a dedicated driver or take BART with your bike and go taste. If you want an all-in-one crawl of regular tasting rooms, Saturday is your best bet, as it’s the single day all are open.
Start at Rosenblum Cellars, 2900 Main St., Suite 1100, Alameda, (510) 865-7007. The tasting room is open 11 a.m.–6 p.m. daily.
From Rosenblum, head for Lost Canyon Winery, 2102 Dennison St., Suite A, Oakland, (510) 534-9314. This tasting room is open 1 p.m.–6 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Other times by appointment.
Next stop on a logical loop will be Dashe Cellars, (510) 452-1800, and JC Cellars, (510) 465-5900, both at 55 Fourth St., Oakland—a little south of Jack London Square. These tasting rooms are open 12 p.m.–6 p.m. Thursday through Monday.
Finally, go taste Periscope Cellars wines at 1410 62nd St., Emeryville, (510) 655-7827—where Andrew Lane Wines and Urbano Cellars rent cellar space and also pour at regular Saturday tastings, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Other times by appointment. Ask about the 4 p.m.–8 p.m. Wednesday happy hour.
To learn more about the East Bay Vintners Alliance, the members and their wines, to arrange a tasting where no formal tasting room is available and to discover where the wines are sold, see the alliance Web site, www.eastbayvintners.com or contact the wineries directly.
