 |
|
 |
Sierra Starr Vineyard
and Winery
Phil Starr, owner and
winemaker
Phil’s interview was conducted by phone over the summer; he’s such a busy guy, we just couldn’t get our schedules to mesh.
Over the summer, Phil, his wife and business partner Anne, and their son Jackson moved their tasting room a few doors down from their original location of 209 W. Main Street in Grass Valley to 124 W. Main Street at the intersection of Mill Street. But this information didn’t make it to us in time to correct their listing in the Wine-Oh! Guide; we’ll be updating their tasting room’s description and address in the book’s next print run. Their new tasting room was once a bank, and when the Starrs began restoration, they uncovered a gorgeous open-board ceiling and original brick walls, plus a totally unexpected stone wall. Here’s a photo of the inside of their new place, originally built in the 1870s:
One of Sierra Starr’s most popular wines is a holiday offering called “Zinjolais.” The wine is made in the traditional Beaujolais Nouveau style, and if you’re not familiar with this method, here’s a quick lesson: Beaujolais Nouveau wine, named after a region in France, is created by using a whole berry fermentation process, which emphasizes the particular fruit’s flavor without extracting the bitter tannins from the skins. Typically, the wine is produced within six to eight weeks after harvest.
The French created the process and made the wine each year to celebrate their harvest. Due to its short shelf life, the wine was usually consumed by locals until it was realized that if the wine could find its way quickly to Paris, vintners could take advantage of additional income. So the race was on to see which vintner could make the wine and get it to the city first. This unofficial race became so frenzied that a committee was formed and in 1937 and rules were put into place to assure fairness: Beaujolais Nouveau (“Nouveau” means “new” in French) could only be released on the third Thursday in November of each year. The Starr’s release their Zinjolais wine the second week of November, in time for Thanksgiving.
The process to make this wine is quite interesting, and this is where the interview picks up:
Before I ask the usual questions about how you started your winery and
such, I’d would love for you to talk about one of the wines Sierra Starr
is known for—Zinjolais. What makes this process different?
Sure, we make the wine the same way they do in the Beaujolais region in France. In France, they make it out of Gamay grapes. We felt that the best grape we grew to make that style of wine was Zinfandel, because it tends to be a very fruit-forward, fruit-driven style of wine.
We make the wine basically the same way the French do—we’ll pick the grape fairly early in its maturation, in the 22 or 23 degree brix range of sugar ripeness (normally, Zin is picked at about 25-28 brix—25 percent sucrose sugar). We want to retain a very fresh, spice style of wine and want the alcohol levels, by today’s standards, to be very low because this is a very fresh, fruity, medium-to-light bodied red wine that you serve slightly chilled. You don’t want a lot of alcohol because that creates a lot of heat in your throat and on your palate. Thus, harvesting at 22 or 23 brix yields us about an 11- or 12-percent alcohol wine at the end of the process.
The grapes are hand picked then hand loaded into a stainless steel tank. We do not de-stem them. From there, we charge the tank with CO2 gas to protect the grapes from any kind of infection that might get started as the fermentation begins slowly. We then check a couple of times each day to be sure there is a high level of CO2 in the tank to protect the grapes. As the fermentation process gets started it gives off its own CO2 and we no longer have to introduce it from the outside. Most of the fermentation takes place inside these whole, unruptured berries; that’s called “carbonic maceration.” Now, some of the grapes are crushed by their weight so there is some juice created on the bottom of the tanks, and the fermentation process takes place a little more rapidly in this juice environment than it does inside the berry.
At a certain point in this process, we take the grapes out by hand and run them through the press. The color of the juice is one of the determining factors because we don’t want this to be a real dark red wine as we’re looking for a medium to light-color red wine. In fact, it’s one of the prettiest wines we make because it’s so young it retains it bright ruby red color.
How
long does the fermentation process take until you press off the final
wine for Zinjolais?
It takes a couple of weeks or so because this wine requires little or no aging. And we’ve got a deadline—the second week in November. Fermentation is very temperature dependent—when it’s cool, it goes very slowly which will create a nice, fruity, spicy wine. Once we press it off, we have to let it settle. We will cold stabilize it if we have the opportunity, then we have to filter it and get it ready to bottle. This last year it was a week after we bottled it that we released it. In 2009 it was bottled on Thursday and released on Saturday!
Some people love Zinjolais and some don’t. It’s interesting for me being on the working side of the tasting bar and seeing how people react. Most of the time they’re expecting a big, fat, juicy, soft red wine because it’s a Zinfandel—that’s not what this is. It’s young, it’s spicy, it’s vibrant, it’s got nice firm acid, and it’s just a different style of wine.
Where did you attend school?
Chico State: I graduated from there the first time with a degree in business administration. After a short time in business and being drafted during the Vietnam War (I didn’t go to Vietnam—I ended up at Fort Hood, Texas), I returned and got my degree in agriculture.
Didn’t you live and work in the Monterey Bay area for a while?
Yes, Anne and I left Chico in 1975 and started our
first farm, which was over on the coast near Monterey. We ended up in
the cut-flowers business growing in greenhouses. But life in the fog in
Monterey County from May through September was more than I could take: I
was tired never having sun in summer and needed to move. A high school
buddy lived in Nevada County, so we bought a second home there in the
early ‘90s and started building a client base for the cut flowers; one
of us would spend a few days there then the other one would. Once we
moved we opened a candy and ice cream store in Nevada City. We were in
that business for about one year then we turned around and sold it. All
the time we owned it we were very careful about what we ate because we
didn’t want to gain 400 pounds! Once it was sold, with 30 days until
escrow closed, I bet I gained 20 pounds!
In the meantime, in 1995 we bought another house with property (15 acres) that had existing vines (Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon). After the candy store, I decided to become a grape grower and winemaker. I had to get my hands back into the soil.
Is
this where your actual winery is located?
Yes. It is a15-acre parcel, just two miles from our tasting room in downtown Grass Valley.
What
do you have planted now?
We have Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petite Sirah and a tiny bit of Merlot and Alicanti Bouschet that we use for blending purposes.
Even
though the vineyards where at the new place, did you have to bring in
winemaking equipment?
Yes, we had to put it all in and it’s been quite a journey because we didn’t have a million dollars to dump into this venture. So it’s been slow going, purchasing equipment here, purchasing equipment there. Now we’ve got a really nice high-end pump, stainless steel tanks, and a very nice wine press, and a new de-stemmer. We have now outgrown our production facility, so we are in the planning stage—I’ve got drawings and waiting for some cost estimates for a new production building that we want to build entirely underground.
How
big will that facility be, if you can do it?
It will be about 2500 square feet.
What’s your production now?
We’re in the 2,000 case range. The new facility will take us up to 5,000, 6,000 to 7,000 cases.
How
large do you want to get?
I don’t have a set number in mind. It’s more that I have a set style and type of wine that we want to make and a certain quality of wine we want to make, and then we will respond to the market.
Can
you tell us a little about your style of winemaking?
Sure, we try to make wines that reflect the vineyards that we grow the grapes in. We really like the new world style of wines, namely big, rich, lush, nice fruity wines. In our particular part of the world we tend to get very firm acids in our wines because of our soils and our terroir, our climate, and so on up here. Our production runs in the 2-1/2 to 3 tons per acre range, so we pick wines that have a nice structure, with nice firm acid so they are very good with foods. They aren’t real flabby wines. Our Zinfandels, for example; we don’t harvest all our Zin at once. Our main Zinfandel vineyards run up and down a hill, so the grapes at the top of the hill ripen before the grapes at the bottom of the hill. Our picking crews will pick the clusters that are ripe and leave the others behind. We may go through the same section of the vineyard three or four times before we completely harvest the grapes out of that section.
Let’s talk a little about your son Jackson. How long has he been involved in the business?
A little over three years now; he also graduated from Chico State as I did, and his mother, too.
So
he wasn’t self-educated in the wine business as you were?
He was. With four-unit classes, you always have a practical or lab part, so we kind of joke that he had the practical education—his induction into wine and alcohol at Chico State (has the reputation of “the party school”).
What
is his role at Sierra Starr?
I carry the label of “winemaker” and Jackson’s the assistant vineyard manager and assistant winemaker. He loves the part of being in the vineyard, working with the vines and grapes, and also working with the wines. Instead of me having to take care of every detail in the winemaking process, my son is there and it’s much better as we work together. It frees me to do other things with the business, such as trying to get this underground facility built.
Your
winery and tasting room are family businesses: where does Anne fall into
all of this?
Anne runs the tasting room and manages the wine club.
And
keeps you two guys in line?
Tries to!
And
contains the chaos?
Again, she tries to!
What
kind of hobbies or collections do you have?
Hmmm, let’s see…I have a hat collection.
What
kind of hats?
All kinds of hats. I have a top hat that I bought for Jackson’s wedding a few years ago. And I’ve got a bunch of baseball caps.
Last
question: after a hard day’s work, what do you drink?
Well, first off
there’s an old saying in our business, “It takes a lot of beer to make
good wine!” This really
holds true after a long hot day of harvesting and processing grapes. But
after a cold beer, my tastes move to wine; all sorts, varieties, styles,
and from as many other producers as I can get my hands on. It is truly a
fascinating beverage.