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Montoliva Vineyard and Winery
Mark Henry, owner and winemaker
We met with Mark Henry at his small winery located in the foothill community of Chicago Park, just below Grass Valley. Montoliva Vineyard and Winery is adjacent to his home, and his barrel/tasting room looks out over his small vineyard and neighboring farmland. After the majority of the interview concluded, Henry’s wife Julianne joined us; excellent hosts, the couple poured us a taste of their flagship wine—a fine Sangiovese.
Mark Henry takes a short break.
Much of what was discussed had to do with this unusual varietal. You can read more about Henry in his winery listing, but here’s a quick snippet: he began as a beer maker and owned a small chain of amateur beer and winemaking stores in Seattle in the 1990s. He then founded an import business, which included supplying Canadian winemakers with grape concentrate from Australia. With the import business going great guns, Henry figured he should probably make at least one batch of wine himself; he surmised that it couldn’t hurt, and if his customers asked, he would be more informed about the process. Little did he know what he was getting himself in for—he had found his true calling.
During our interview, Henry shared his thoughts and philosophy for growing grapes and making wine, especially Sangiovese in the old world style.
------------------------------------------------------------ Why did you go with Italian varietals?
I knew when I moved to California that I was going to want to do Italian varietals. It was the mid 1980s and ‘90s that the French chateaus were coming to California and doing deals with California winemakers. One of the best was the deal between Mondavi and Rothschild. By the mid-1990s, a few Italians came to California looking for deals they could make. . .the soils, the climate, and all the microclimates are very similar to Tuscany.
Chicago Park is a deeply rooted Italian community. Is that why
you settled here?
Yes, when I learned the history of Chicago Park, I knew I had to [make wine] here. So in 2000, I bought the property and planted the vineyard. We had our first commercial harvest in 2005.
Do you have a particular style of winemaking?
Everything we do is Tuscan-oriented, a very old world style, which is very different from what is typical in California. Most California winemakers are classically trained in winemaking through UC Davis or Cal Poly or Fresno State. They tend to learn how to make wine using new world methodologies because those are the methodologies that are reinforced at universities.
Where did you get your schooling?
I didn’t learn how to make wine at universities; in fact, my background is actually in beer making, which I started up in Seattle. And I learned to make wine, largely self-taught, by going over to Tuscany. When you go to Italy you don’t meet many winemakers who are classically trained in school. They spend ten years following the head winemaker around then they are allowed to start making wine. That’s basically what I did, although not for ten years. I did that in part because I knew I wanted to make Italian varietals.
And that included Sangiovese?
In the mid-90s, Sangiovese enjoyed a real boom in California then skyrocketed downward just about as fast. It’s not because I don’t believe Sangiovese can’t be well made in California, I just don’t think it was being grown in the right places. And winemakers were employing new world style methodologies to a grape that frankly needs old world methodologies to bring out the earthiness in the mid-palate that a good Sangiovese should have.
Is Sangiovese your favorite varietal?
I love Sangiovese. I felt [Chicago Park] is where Sangiovese would grow well. Not in Napa, not in Sonoma. There are people growing some perfectly good Sangiovese, but not to my style. So much of the California Sangiovese I sample, I get the sense that what the winemakers are trying to do is not Sangiovese, but Cab Light. A well made Sangiovese should have an earthiness in the mid palate. It should have a noticeable acidity and very noticeable tannins. The reason you see so few Sangioveses made that way in California is because of the feeling that it doesn’t comply to the California palate. California wine drinkers want soft, approachable big fruit—and that’s not Sangiovese. This wine needs food. Sangiovese needs food. It’s designed to be consumed with a hearty stew or anything with a tomato base. If you look at Tuscany cuisine, it’s largely based on tomatoes, very acidic. Look at their wine, primarily based on Sangiovese, very acidic. They work well together.
We’re asking our winemakers the same question: What do you drink
after a hard day making wine?
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
What kind of hobbies do you have or what activities do you like?
I was a political science major in college. I collect constitutional history books. And I’m a baseball fanatic. I have an autographed Hank Aaron baseball. I read and study baseball stats. My favorite team is the Seattle Mariners, so I’m always crunching minor league players’ stats to see who has potential to make the majors. And each year we (three college buddies) take a baseball trip to a new stadium, but we need to go three or four times a year to keep up with them.