Brassfield Estate in Lake County, California

Feb 11, 2011 by Diane Davis

As you slide into Lake County from Williams across Highway 20, the first town you come to is Clearlake Oaks, California. Clearlake Oaks is tiny and unassuming. It is like the secret entrance into a hidden treasure trove.

If you watch carefully, there is a small sign in the middle of town that directs you to the right and down a two lane winding road, through the countryside and into farmland, seemingly unending, though in reality it is only just a couple of miles. As you start to relax into the scenery, you are suddenly jolted by what seems like an apparition in the “desert”. After driving down an avenue of Sycamore’s that will someday form a tunnel into the property we arrived to the winery.

When I reached the property, I was met by Kevin Robinson, the winemaker at Brassfield Estate. Kevin is a very friendly gentleman eager to share the winery he helped build. One of the first things that Kevin proudly shares is the history of acquiring the High Valley AVA . The process to receive an AVA is lengthy and requires that the uniqueness of the property be proven in the soil, temperture, location, etc. Kevin and the other vineyard owners in High Valley got together to file the petition and follow the process to competition. Kevin completed most of the research and paperwork in just a few months, however, it took over two years for the application to be reviewed and granted. Since the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) does not grant new AVA’s lightly, it is an accomplishment of which Kevin and the rest of the High Valley vineyard owners deserves to be proud.

Brassfield Estate History

Brassfield Estates is a true estate set in the idyllic High Valley surrounded by mountainsides covered in trees, brush and vineyards.  Thiry-seven years ago Jerry Brassfield purchased the property and continued to run it as a cattle ranch until 1998 when he learned what his neighbor was doing with his property than no one thought possible.

Clay Shannon also owns property in the High Valley. Clay was having success in growing wine grapes on this land that everyone said wasn’t good for grapes. Jerry approached Clay to plant 300 acres of grapes on the Brassfield Estate. After setting up weather stations, testing soil and plotting temperatures and conditions, the first vines were planted. By 2001, Jerry decided that he wanted to put in a winery and so, as Clay suggested, his next step was to hire a wine maker.

As coincidence would have it, Kevin Robinson had just left his wine making position of eight years at Rutherford Hill. Since Clay Shannon knew both men, Clay introduced Kevin and Jerry and a partnership was formed.

 

 

Kevin is still excited to share how, in April of 2001, he was given a blank slate with which he co-created a winery with Jerry.

Kevin’s first design footprint was a tin shed. Jerry vetoed that idea and hired architects to create a Tuscan experience.

Though there is a lot more to be done, a visit to the property is an exceptional experience.

The Property

High Valley is unique in that it was created by the Round Mountain volcano. Round Mountain is a young volcano of only 10,000-20,000 years old as opposed to Mt. Konocti which (as one of the oldest formations in America) is one to two million years old. Clear Lake was also formed by Mt. Konocti and is equally as ancient.

Round Mountain is a vent off from Mt. Konocti and, along with other little vents in the county, produced the soil which contributes to the perfect grape growing situation. High Valley was formed when the Round Mountain volcano erupted and dammed up the valley, which turned into a meadow that made an East/West valley. East/West valleys are rare, and ones that grow grapes are even rarer. High Valley is one of two such valleys in California, which is why High Valley has it’s own appellation (High Valley AVA in Lake County California).

High Valley is situated at an elevation of almost 1800 feet, 500 feet above Clear Lake.   On the West side of the property, the soil is volcanic and on the East side (where most of Brassfields vineyards are) the soil is sandy loams and shales. Even in the same valley there are vastly different growing conditions.

There is a tiny farmhouse that sits on the property by the tasting room. That little farmhouse is one of the oldest structures in Lake County and it is destined to be a mini-museum for visitors to enjoy. There is a monument by the house that tells the story of the property and the little house that is over 150 years old. The house originally sat where the tasting room now is situated, the current winery offices were a converted barn and the corrals, now gone, used to be close to the barn.

One of the things that caught my attention was the hitching post that was originally connected to a tree and, after so many years, the tree has actually grown around the hitching post and incorporated it.

The Winery

Jerry built the business and the brand and then he began to build the structures to complete his dream for the property to be a destination. Included in that vision was his guest houses so that people could come and spend the time necessary to really appreciate the property and wine.

The barrel room is one of the first structures you notice when you enter the property. There are two huge doors that remind you of a medieval castle. In front of the doors is a statue of St. Francis by artist Doug Van Howd. Doug came to the property and told Jerry that the statue belonged in front of the doors, and it does. Doug also designed other sculpture on the property, including the deer that roam in the grassy area across from the barrel room.

Brassfield is a 100% Estate bottled wine. That means that all of the grapes are grown on the property and the wine is produced on the property. There are few truly estate wine operations, and probably only two in Lake County  ” Our focus is all about quality, not quantity”, Kevin shared.  “We currently have David Ramey working as a winemaking consultant to truly focus on improving our core wine distributed nationally.”

Central to the crushing and processing plant at Brassfield is a custom designed crushing facility. The crushing facility is set up to process as little as ½ ton bins to several tons of grapes with only a two man crew. Because of the innovation, the two man crew can process up to 8-10 tons of grapes per hour. The facility is so unique that it has been featured in industry magazines and the design is now copied by several other wineries. Brassfield Winery is so efficient that all the employees wear a lot of hats. Not only does it make the winery more financially sustainable, it give the employees opportunities to learn more about the business. Also central to Jerry’s vision of production and guest experience is the wine cave that is situated behind the barrel room and future tasting room.

Our Tour

We started out tour at the new tasting room that was under construction.

Inside the tasting room were artist renderings of how the building would look once construction was completed. Kevin also showed me where the new bar would be built and how the building would flow in the very near (he hoped) future. We then walked outside to the old farm house and the smoke house. The smoke house was also relocated. Every brick was taken down, numbered and cleaned. Then it was reconstructed exactly as before in a new location. We then walked through the barrel room as Kevin shared the statistics of the winery and some of the history.

We climbed the cat walk to the balcony and there I forced Kevin to endure a portrait session. Being a good sport he played along and while there, he also share the view of the property.

I found the lab most fascinating, mostly because the way the light fell on the glass in the room.

The lab is the place where the science of wine making is practiced. The sugars levels (brix) in the grapes are tested to determine if they are ready to pick. Kevin then practices the art of wine making in the final determination of the grapes readiness for crush by tasting the grapes. Not all winemakers taste the grapes, which further distinguishes Kevin from those colleagues.

As we drove to the wine cave, we passed a collection of salvaged treasures. These include granite from 100 California Street in San Francisco when they refurbished their buildings and timbers from Town & Country Village in San Jose after the fire. Jerry takes great pride in using reclaimed and salvaged materials in his projects. There is a beautiful arbor between the tasting room and the office created from some of the San Jose timbers.

We moved on to the wine cave. The cave isn’t yet finished, though when it is, there will be a waterfall cascading down either side of the public entrance. We went around to the service entrance to the cave and stepped into another world.

The cave is huge, wide enough to comfortably drive a car through. The tall ceilings give the illusion that they were as tall as a two story house. From the public entrance to the back wall it is over 600 feet with about a mile of tunnels that wind through the rock.

Excavation is about 65% completed as of my visit. One of the big challenges of excavation is the shale rock. It fractures and splinters easily and must be reinforced with rock bolts, steel and concrete to stabilize it. The  cracking would be much worse if it weren’t shored up. Kevin said that they have been working on the cave for 2 ½ years and were taking a break. The cost of making the cave rose from the projected $120 per linear foot to $140 per linear foot because of the extra work required to make the cave safe.
When we walked into the cave the smell of wine signaled that it was currently being used to store wine. Kevin shared that when storing wine in a traditional barrel room you lose about 5-6% to evaporation. When you store wine in a wine cave, with the optimal humidity and temperature inherent in a wine cave, the loss drops to 3-4%.
We continued to walk through the cave until we arrived at a large open space that is designed to host parties and events. It reminded me of a huge ball room minus the crystal chandeliers. I could see the what Jerry imagined for the space and the experiences he has planned for his guests there. It was easy to visualize elegant tables bathed in candle light serenaded by a string orchestra on the opposite side of the room while couples dressed in their finest gowns and tuxedo’s whirl around the dance floor.
Further down another tunnel, there is an antique fire truck parked, waiting to be needed and then, off that tunnel, there is a mural painted, which, upon closer inspection, is not a painted mural. Instead, it is the shale that makes up the walls of the cave, exposed; a beautiful piece of textured art that shares with the viewer the geology of the cave.

As we were leaving I kept looking at the walls. They weren’t as I expected, rough, carved rock. They were, instead, finished with a stucco-like finish. Kevin explained that the walls were finished with hand troweled exposed aggregate. As there has never been another cave finished with this process, there was a learning curve to apply it and keep it on the walls, mainly, heating up the cave a bit so that it wasn’t so cold.

Outside the cave and around the corner is a small pond that is the frost protection for the vineyard there. The area is the coolest on the property because of the way the air flows from Clear Lake, through the valley which accelerates it and whisks it through the High Valley. Planted in this block are the Pinot Noir grapes, which thrive in the cool air. In all there are 27 acres Pinot Noir, with a total of 20 different varietals on the property in several different blocks. Most are on the East side, however, there are some near the Round Mountain volcano.

Kevin echoed what I’ve heard from many other vineyard owners: the vision and investment into a vineyard requires a 7 to 10 year investment in time, labor and money into the vineyard and winery before there is a return. It takes a certain kind of passion to make those investments. “
“Making great wine is about the raw materials- if you want the best product, you have to have the best raw materials.” said Kevin. He further shared how they create that raw material (grapes). On the property there are patches of land that grow scrub brush and then there are parts that grow pine trees. The land that the pine trees grow on is too wet for grapes. Grapes that grow near a water source are too comfortable and don’t produce grapes well, they do produce beautiful canopies of leaves. Therefore, when choosing the land on which to plant, it is the land that is well drained and pretty rough to stress the grape vines and force them to produce delicious grapes that is preferred. Kevin explained that the grape vines are like animals, they don’t want to live where the ground is rough, they want to live by the water and nutritious soil. To accomplish this, the grape vines create the most flavorful grapes they can so that the animals will eat them and then deposit the seeds by the water sources. This was one of my favorite stories (next to the bears, which we will get to soon).

The Brassfield property has an abundance of water because of the volcano. Kevin told me about 92 year old bio-dynamic expert, Harvey, who went to the crater of the Round Mountain volcano and witched for water. He said there is so much water underneath that volcano that he had a hard time holding his dousing rods. He said he could feel the water running through the volcano in the rods.

There are two ponds on the property for frost protection.  The ponds are also a source of great fishing.  It is partly because of this water that there is also an abundance of wildlife on the property. Kevin lives on the property and often walks to work. He is always careful to not to walk at dawn or dusk for fear of becoming part of the food chain. Jerry hasn’t allowed hunting for 30+ years so the bears, mountain lions, deer, bobcats, bald eagles and other creatures live free. That part of the property is fenced and gated to keep people out.  Most of the fences are created to protect the vineyards while allowing the animals to wander through the property freely and through the green spaces and forests.

Jerry’s philosophy is that it is easy to create a vineyard and hard to create a forest, so they leave the forest and plant the vineyard else where.

We drove through the forest and up toward another vineyard that is high altitude and very rough soil. Kevin had no intention of ever planting on this soil until his vineyard consultant suggested it would be a good place to plant. Kevin said that he told the consultant that the land was shale, clay, windy, & would stress the grapes. The consultant said that is perfect for Syrah because they would compete with themselves and concentrate the flavors, and now, three years later, Brassfield will produce their first wine from that vineyard.

This vineyard also has the distinction of a visit from the Oprah Winfrey show.
The show was looking for a place that reminded them of the Alpine mountain scene from The Sound of Music. After consulting with the Lake County Marketing Commission, they were referred to the Brassfield Estate and taped the segment of the show on that part of the property with dozens of school children.

A South African film producer also stayed at the Estate for two weeks to produce a DVD with a National Geographic photographer which tells the story of the valley being created and of the property as it is now. Kevin and Jerry were proud to share the property and story for this beautiful video piece.

Now to the bears. The bears are the biggest menace for the vineyards. They tear down the fences and eat the grapes and then let the deer in to eat more grapes. Bears eat anything, including fences, so it is difficult to fence them out. They are working on creating a bear-proof fence for a vineyard on the mountain by putting an electric fence before the regular fence, hoping that will deter the bears and send them searching for more accessible treats. There is one vineyard that the bears decimate each year, it is known as the “bear share vineyard”. Kevin considered planting a vineyard just for the bears, however, the wildlife biologists asked him not to as it would encourage the bad behavior and make their plundering worse.

Coming back down from the Syrah vineyard, Kevin pointed out the different vineyards and the fact that the Brassfield property backs up to Mendocino National Forest which then allows the animals an even bigger sanctuary.

We emerged into a view of the valley that is breathtaking, a real WOW around every corner. It is formally know as the Brassfield Wow Factor, according to Kevin.

I left Brassfield Winery with a longing to go back again soon, to spend more time there and to try to capture some of their special kind of magic for my own.