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Default FA: Wines and Winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains by Sullivan

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Wines and Winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains - An Oral History
By Charles L. Sullivan

Soft Cover, 11 pin Velobinding, DR Bennion Trust, 1994, 708 Pages with
fold out maps.
The Velobinding is damaged, 1/2 of the back strip is missing, but this
can be rebound at any copy/printing shop with a Velobinder


About This Project
David R. Bennion was was one of the founding partners of Ridge
Vineyards. He was also something of a midwife to many of the individual
winery operations that developed in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa
Cruz County from the 1960s until his untimely, accidental death in 1988.
In virtually all the important developments in the recent history of
winegrowing in this important region Bennion took an active and, more
often than not, a leading part. The regularity in which his name comes
up throughout the interviews in this project gives clear evidence of his
importance to the development and success of modern winegrowing here.

My wife and I met Dave and Fran Bennion in the early 1960s and we became
good friends over the years. Aside from our convivial social relations
Dave and I were powerfully affected by the other's interest in wine
history. We spent much time feeding each other historical information
and sources. He was a member of my first wine and viticulture history
class at De Anza College in 1979 and before that he had personally
goaded me into turning my private interest in wine history to a
practical and professional pursuit. My first article on wine history
came out of a dinner at David Bruce's in 1976 when Bennion challenged me
to come up with something tangible others might use, something beyond my
outpourings of data and at social functions. "Solve some mystery,
Charles!" The result was my article in the California Historical
Quarterly in 1978 on the historical origins of Zinfandel in California.
Later Dave was one of the strongest supporters of my history of
winegrowing in the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, Like
Modern Edens. He was also a long and continual supporter of my
publisher, the California History Center at De Anza.

Meanwhile Roz and I had come to know many of the winegrowers who led the
modern wine revolution in this part of California and we developed a
strong devotion to Santa Cruz Mountain wines and some powerful bonds
with many of the men and women who produced them. We seemed always on
the road here searching out new little wineries and stocking our cellar
with their wines.

Following Dave's death in 1988 several friends came together to
commemorate his contributions to the modern wine industry. The upshot
was the D. R. Bennion Trust Fund, whose major purpose was to further the
viticultural and vinicultural interests of the California wine industry
with special emphasis on the Santa Cruz Mountain district. The Board of
Directors determined that its first project would be to fund an oral
history project for this area. It was conceived as a two-year project
and the Board solicited proposals from those interested in conducting
the project. I had just finished writing a large history of winegrowing
in the Napa Valley and was attracted by the idea of a different type of
activity related to an area to which I had developed such a close
relationship.

I submitted my plan and was accepted. My idea was to record extended
conversations with old-timers and modern pioneers, coming down as close
to recent times as possible. I ended by setting my sights on people who
started work here before 1980. I contacted individuals I wanted to
interview and asked others, particularly Board members, to help. During
the first year I concentrated on interviews with older subjects. In the
second year I went after the rest in no particular order. After I had
made my first contact I scheduled a meeting and often was able to start
taping at the first session. I tried to limit these sessions to no more
than two hours. This was not the first oral history project I had worked
on and I was able to start up with a fairly good set of experiences in
my background dating back to 1968. The sessions aimed at a sort of
logical time sense in the discussion of material, but chronology was not
always the rule. Parts of the interviews were organized thematically.
But I did try to come out with a clear time sense and attempted to
answer the basic question which should always be answered in such a
process, "What happened?" Thus I should make it clear that this is not a
collection of opinions and personal philosophies, although from time to
time that does become an important element in the story
Most interviews covered at least two sessions, some as many as four.
After each session I transcribed the interview and heavily edited it to
make the transcript a more literate and orderly document than might have
been the case had the interview been printed as it occurred. Naturally,
I was careful to preserve the sense of the interview and the level of
language that prevailed. But I think that spoken dialogue often results
in such disturbing things as improper pronoun reference and subject-verb
disagreement that may sound all right but are not happily read,
particularly by the participants. And sometimes, since I was often long
acquainted with the subject, the discourse could collapse into a
somewhat ribald exchange that shouldn't be written down. But it is all
on the tapes if anyone might want to hear the complete exchanges.

I then sent the transcript back to the subjects, who made what changes
they wanted, and these I made on the final rendition which was recorded
on a computer disk (Apple). In some cases I collected a sizeable amount
of production data which was also included in the final product.
Eventually all the interviews were organized geographically, on disk and
in the final hard copy. And these were submitted to the Board of
Directors on August 11, 1994. I began the project July 1, 1992.

My interviews did not all have the same purpose. For some subjects the
obvious purpose was to preserve, knowledge of the past which might be
lost after their deaths. This was of particular importance in the
Spezia, Picchetti, and Bargetto interviews, and with the Quistorf
manuscript material.

For others I emphasized the subjects' relationship to their memories of
events in the years before the 1960s and the modern wine revolution.
Here the Hallcrest, Gemello, and Wheeler interviews were significant.

Others, such as the Ridge partners, David Bruce, and Robert Mullen, were
part of the early years of this revolution and had a special outlook for
the events of the turbulent sixties. The rest took me into the center of
the revolution here in the seventies. These interviews also had their
own special concentrations. In each I tried to develop information that
would afford us special thematic material, based on the unique
experience of the persons involved. For some the stories of their
origins were particularly instructive. Others could supply special
insights into technical matters relating the vineyard and cellar. Some
wine operations had special marketing problems and solutions. Other had
a particularly strong relationship to the development of industry
organization. For all I worked to establish the interrelationships that
had developed between themselves and others, here and in other areas.
Other areas are of great importance to winemakers in the Santa Mountains
and Santa Cruz County, since most of the grapes converted to wine here
do not come directly from this region. And with all I tried to get any
historical information which they themselves had discovered about the
land which they were working or the area in which they worked. Where it
was particularly appropriate I worked up historical maps of an area. I
also was able to get fairly complete production figures from several
persons, often with grape sources in and outside the region. I saw no
reason to attempt this with everyone, but I thought that several
representative operations would give a fair picture of how our wineries
were operating over the years.

In all of this I worked on a special principle. I have written numerous
wine and viticulture histories which go back into pre-Prohibition days
and with but one exception, Inglenook, there are no good sets of data
from manuscript material that give the historian a really clear picture
of the past. Thus, throughout this project I have been animated by the
idea that my product would be something that would be useful to the wine
and viticulture historian at the end of the 21st century, in a way that
material has not been available for me from the previous century.
In preparing this project I have tried to keep the level of discourse
and data to that which could be understood by a moderately knowledgeable
wine consumer, but not an expert in any facet of the industry. Thus our
conversations often need an expansion of added information. This I have
provided by way of footnotes throughout. I have also supplied historical
references from my own files for subjects and questions about which
there has been some disagreement, or where I thought I reader might like
to pursue a point with further reading. For several of the wineries
about which much has been written I have supplied a small bibliography
at the end of the interview.

The physical result of this project is a set of three computer disks,
scores of cassette tapes, and a transcript volume of about 500 pages. I
hope that it will be made available to all who have a serious interest,
which means that there is more work to be done on this project.
Distribution of this project should be thoughtful and deliberate. The
project also needs an index. Without one it will not reach its potential
for usefulness.

Finally, I want to thank all those who have helped me on this project.
Mostly their names can be inferred simply by reading the result. I also
have to thank Roz for letting me use her zippy little car to flit about
the Santa Cruz Mountains to collect these interviews, while she remained
on the valley floor to plod about in my old heap, which she disdainfully
terms the "red slug."
Charles L. Sullivan

Los Gatos, California August 1, 1994
Contents
About This Project 1

Interview Schedule 5

1- The Peninsula ...........7

Gemello Winery 9
Mario Gemello

Woodside Vineyards 33
Robert Mullen


Sherrill Cellars 69
Nat Sherrill

Page Mill Winery 91
Richard Stark

Cronin Vineyards 113
Duane Cronin


2. The Santa Cruz Area 137

Bargetto 139
Beverly Bargetto
John Bargetto
Ralph Bargetto 162
Sylvia Bargetto Nolan 178

Hallcrest Vineyard 185
Penry Griffiths Marie Hall Griffiths


Nicasio Vineyards 203
Dan Wheeler

Roudon-Smith Vineyards 219
Robert Roudon
James Smith
June Smith

Devlin Wine Cellars 245
Charles Devlin

Leo McCloskey 269
Felton-Empire Ridge Vineyards

Beauregard Ranch 305
Emmett Beauregard Jim Beauregard

John Spezia 319

Quistorf Ranch 329


3. The Highlands .......... 339

David Bruce Winery 341
David Bruce

Ahlgren Vineyard 377
Dexter Ahlgren Valerie Ahlgren

P & M Staiger 403
Paul Staiger Marjorie Staiger

Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard 419 Ken D. Burnap

Locatelli - Eagle Rock Vineyard 449


4. Saratoga Hills .......... 451

Marcel Pourroy 453
Germaine Pourroy 455
Congress Springs 457
Victor B. Erickson

Kathryn Kennedy Winery 465
Kathryn Kennedy Martin Mathis

Scott Knight Smith 489

5. Monte Bello .......... 495

Picchetti Ranch 497
Elio Pecchetti
Letizia Picchetti
Hector Picchetti
Zorka Vlaovich Picchetti

Sunrise Winery 523
Rolayne Stortz Ronald Stortz

The Mikulaco Family 555
Josephine Mikulaco
Henry Mikulaco

Fellom Ranch Vineyards 561

Ridge Vineyards 563 Hewitt Crane
Suzanne Crane
Charles Rosen
Blanche Rosen
Frances Bennion
Richard Foster 584
Eric Bennion 598
Elias Carrasco 615
Elmano Homem 623
Paul Draper 633

INDEX 697
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