This story continues to Uncorked Part 2
Visit wine country by BART or bike? You bet, thanks to an eclectic bunch of East Bay artisanal winemakers. Their urban wine trail runs through Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and Alameda. 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, one doesn’t need to grow grapes to make super-premium wine.
If you’re a wine drinker living in any major city in the United States, you’ll know the wines of veterinarian turned 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 to north to have an authentic wine country experience.
Rosenblum, the consulting winemaker since he sold the winery, was the front-runner of what has become a burgeoning network of urban winemakers, collectively represented by the East Bay Vintners Alliance. This nonprofit organization was founded in 2006 to spotlight and promote the 15-plus wineries now making and selling wine in the East Bay. About a third of them 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.
Among the eclectic group is Loren Tayerle who plays the French horn in the Berkeley Symphony when not making Pinot Noir and other small-lot handcrafted varietals under the Tayerle label 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 Dashe Cellars, their winery facility near Jack London Square — a space shared with JC Cellars’ Jeff Cohn, who specializes in single-vineyard Rhônes.
Ron Pieretti and Wendy Sanda, pictured above center, of Prospect 772 Wine Company, who live in Oakland, are the only Alliance members making wine from grapes grown in a vineyard they own. They planted their vineyard, near Angels Camp in the Sierra foothills, in 2001.
Brendan Eliason, pictured right, whose Periscope Cellars occupies 6,000 square feet inside a converted submarine repair facility in Emeryville, started off studying industrial technology.
A wine appreciation course jammed a cork on that budding career. He switched to viticulture, apprenticed at a winery in Sonoma County, and has worked 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.
With him in the space are former garage winemakers Fred Dick and Bob Rawson who produce hand-crafted Zins, Syrahs and several other varietals under their Urbano Cellars label — and Andrew Lane Wines, whose owner-winemaker, Drew Dixon, grew up in St. Helena. He moved his winemaking operation from Napa to the East Bay, where he was living, four years ago. “We purchase all our grapes from the Napa Valley,” he says — among them, those from 70-year-old Napa Valley vines responsible for his signature Gamay.
Purchasing grapes from these growers gives winemakers great flexibility to find fruit with the flavor characteristics they like the best.
“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.”
When you go to Napa, you get to taste Napa grapes. When you buy in, you can be picky about location, grower and grapes. “Here, the advantage is that you’re tasting everything — the Central Coast, Napa, Sonoma, the Sierra foothills, Mendocino, Lodi and more. When five of us held a wine tasting recently, people got to taste wine from 20 different appellations,” says Eliason.
c: Wanda Hennig, 2009
Photos Wanda Hennig
Continued — See Uncorked Part 2
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