Gathering the Good
Big Basin Vineyards: Harvest Waits for No One
By Julie Horner
The last half mile of the drive to Big Basin Estate Vineyards at the top of Memory Lane in Boulder Creek is heavily fire damaged. Golden wind-rattled branches frame an ashen understory before giving way to blue sky and acres of sunny rolling hills. The winery building itself and much of the winemaking equipment, and the surrounding patio and grounds where the winery presented outdoor events often featuring live music are untouched. Along the slopes, chestnut colored patches tell where the CZU fire danced between rows of vines and groves of trees. The private residence with moorings in the solstice and the equinox overlooking the vineyards and the hazy western ridges beyond did not survive the fire.
The 2020 Estate vintage is lost. The vines are still heavy with fruit that will now be cut away, too smoky to be palatable. “The grapes are way off the scale smoke damaged,” winery owner Bradley Brown said. Workers in the field have dropped the clusters off the vine onto the ground. “It’s kind of sad. They look beautiful, but the grapes taste like an ashtray.”
Harvest waits for no one. “We literally would have been picking the estate pinot immediately after the fire, but we couldn’t even get in here.” So they’re making wine from grapes brought in from vineyards in Salinas Valley and Corralitos, for instance. “We finished the harvest two or three weeks ago bringing grapes in, and we’re just pressing off the last couple of fermentations now.”
There was an acre of newly planted vines that weren’t strong enough to survive the intense heat, and much of the irrigation was destroyed. Although grape vines are hardy and stubborn plants, Brown estimates that some of the established vineyard will need to be replanted. The Rattlesnake Rock and Old Corral Blocks, which produce some of Big Basin’s 95- and 94-point scoring wines, bore the brunt. But already there is new growth on the heavily singed Old Corral Block Pinot.
“We had just finished bottling 1,800 cases the day of the evacuation. The bottling truck was gone, everybody had left, I was up at the house with my girlfriend, and the helicopter flew over with the megaphone: Get outta Dodge! Evacuate immediately!” Brown said, “The fire burned from here all the way down to the sea. I’m pretty sure Cal Fire must have protected this place.”
And for so many the fire serves as a pivot point. “We’re moving out of the Saratoga tasting room.” They’ve outgrown the space and are hoping to “catapult out of this era” by opening a centrally located Santa Cruz tasting room in the new year. And as soon as they can repair fire damage to a retaining wall in the parking area, Big Basin Vineyards will resume in-person tasting events at the estate through the winter months under the big tent. “We’ll be moving out of harvest mode and getting things back to tasting mode,” Brown said.
According to Brown, the land in Boulder Creek has been an active site for grape vines since the early 1900s. Standing in the warm sunshine here feels like gathering the good.
Big Basin Vineyards GoFundMe: gofundme.com/f/big-basin-vineyards-czu-complex-fire-recovery-fund
To order wine and join the wine club: bigbasinvineyards.com
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