Food & Drink: Making wine -- from the ground up Food & Drink: Making wine -- from the ground up (October 06, 2004)

Portola Valley doctor's home-winemaking technique begins with the soil, and ends with award-winning chardonnay

By Renee Batti
Almanac News Editor

Serious wine lovers tend to fantasize about making their own wine at home, but few find the time, energy and resources to do so.

Of those who do pursue the dream, the great majority start midway in the arduous process -- with grapes bought from an established vineyard.

For Dr. Donald St. Claire, part of the allure of winemaking was the prospect of starting from the beginning: from soil and vine to barrel and bottle; then -- best of all -- to the glass.

So when the still-practicing Portola Valley physician and wine aficionado found himself in the 1990s with an empty corral after finding another home for his horse, it wasn't long before his thoughts turned to chardonnay. And the planting began.

It might have seemed to many like a hare-brained enterprise for someone with no training in vineyard management or in winemaking. But with the help of a handful of fellow wine-loving friends and knowledge culled from extensive reading, Dr. St. Claire transformed his corral into rows of thriving vines, calling his vineyard Arboles Grandes -- "big trees."

The grapes from those vines have found their way into bottles for only three years now. And, amazingly, the 2002 vintage "Millennium Chardonnay," which was the second bottling, took "Best of Show" in the white wine category in the 2003 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition -- the first wine contest he ever entered.

The competition was stiff: There were 1,499 entries from four countries, according to WineMaker magazine.

Dr. St. Claire received word only weeks ago that his chardonnay had taken a silver medal at the Orange County Fair competition as well.

Planting his own vineyard was only the start of Dr. St. Claire's winemaking adventure. Eager to try making red wine, he asked fellow Portola Valley residents Michael and Georgia Bennicas if he could manage and maintain the vineyard they own and harvest the grapes, and they agreed.

Now, with a group of friends, he maintains those vines, harvesting cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot. Harvest time is hard work, but it's also one big party, with family and friends, music and food.

The old corral

It's been about nine years since Dr. St. Claire traded his horse for vines.

The old corral is a few yards down the hill from the home he shares with his wife, Mary Jean, a short distance from Portola Road and from the medical offices in which he practices.

Near the corral's gate sits an old garden chair, and he explains that "at the end of a day from hell," he sits there with a glass of wine and unwinds. "Sometimes I talk to the grapes," he says, his smile not exactly revealing whether he's joking.

The vines are covered with netting to keep the birds from eating the grapes, he explains, adding that birds devoured his 2001 crop because of a problem with the netting.

For weeks before harvest time, Dr. St. Claire measures the sugar content of the grapes with an instrument called a refractometer, but he knows "when the sugar is getting high because the birds will flock." Once the sugar content is where he wants it to be -- 24 Brix for chardonnay -- the harvest begins. (The "Brix" scale measures sugar density or concentration.)

For the most part, Dr. St. Claire, wife Mary Jean, and their longtime gardener, Miguel Cardenas, do all the pruning and other maintenance work in the small vineyard. Taking proper care of the vines, and the fruit that emerges every season, is a satisfying endeavor, but it can also affect the quality of the wine.

Dr. St. Claire says he doesn't like to manipulate the slowly fermenting wine much as it's becoming what it will be. If he takes care of everything properly before the harvest and throughout the crushing and fermenting process, a winemaker shouldn't have to intervene much, he says.

"The less you screw around with it the better." That said, though, he acknowledges that he added some acidity to his award-winning chardonnay to give it a crispness he found ideal.

Group effort

Although Dr. St. Claire is the only one who can wear the "award-winning winemaker" hat, there are plenty of other people who imparted important knowledge, and who are involved in the process.

They include Ralph Oswald, former owner of the Woodside Village Pub; Ralph's son, Bill, who works for Hop Kiln winery in Sonoma County; Tulio Zingone, a native of Calabria, Italy, who learned about home winemaking while growing up; Scott Clearwater, a PhD in quantum physics who helps the MD with his wine-related chemistry; and Bob Schilling, "who just loves wine and wanted to help," says Dr. St. Claire.

The crew harvested merlot in mid-September, and any day now the stalwarts are expecting to hit the vineyard again, clippers in hand, to pick the cabernet sauvignon.

When that happens, Dr. St. Claire says, it will be an event. "Tulio brings his opera recordings," as well as an accordion player. And Dr. St. Claire's son, restaurateur Greg St. Claire, provides the post-harvest feast.

Family and friends clip countless grape clusters during the hours-long process, and the grapes are crushed there as the harvesting continues. The crushed grapes are distributed to a number of the core group to ferment, then ultimately returned to Dr. St. Claire for the final winemaking process.

In the cellar

At the foot of the St. Claire home, a door signed Cave aux vins opens into a dark, cool room. The walls are paneled with sides of wooden wine crates, and clusters of 60-gallon barrels promise good things to come.

Dr. St. Claire sips from a glass of sangiovese made by friend and fellow Portola Valley resident Carlo Bessio, a retired veterinarian who's been making wine for much longer than Dr. St. Claire. "I've learned a lot from Carlo," particularly regarding managing the vineyards, he says.

Dr. St. Claire is clearly at home in his cellar. It is decorated with posters and other aesthetic flourishes that enchant the eye while the nose delights in the heady aroma permeating the bracing air.

And it's clean. "The big secret for the home winemaker, if he's going to have any success at all, is sterility," pronounces the man who's practiced medicine for 40-plus years.

"I'm obsessive about sterility," he says. As he floats his hand through the chill air to indicate the oak barrels in the cellar, he adds, "If you get contamination, you're going to get 300 gallons of vinegar."

Dr. St. Claire came to winemaking as a novice. He grew up in the Central Valley, and in 1947, his father bought a 55-acre vineyard in Livingston. "He bought it to get me through Stanford, which it did," he says.

But the grapes were sold, and no wine was to be had from the family vineyard in those days.

After many years of enjoying wine, he says, he just got curious about making it. "You have to have interests outside of medicine, and I hate being idle," says the father of six and grandfather of 16.

So he read and studied and sought advice from those who had some expertise in vineyard management and small-scale winemaking.

"There are a lot of really, really good books to help the home winemaker," he says. But ultimately, he adds, no matter how hard you try and how much you study, "you're going to make some bad stuff. I have too."

Recommended reading

Dr. St. Claire recommends several books for people who want to make their own wine. They are:

** "From Vines to Wine," by Jeff Cox (this should top the list, he says);

** "Home Winemaking Step by Step," by Jon Iverson;

** "Techniques in Home Winemaking," by Daniel Pambianchi; and

** "The Complete Handbook of Winemaking," from the American Wine Society.

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