Denis Hoey of Dragonfly Cellars
Ξ October 9th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Reign of Terroir is pleased to introduce a new series, Young Winemakers. The effort will be to interview up and coming winemakers, our next generation of creative producers.
First up is Denis Hoey, 25, owner and winemaker at Dragonfly Cellars located among the Surf City Vintners group here in Santa Cruz, California. Denis graduated from UC Santa Cruz with degrees in Economics and Business Management. During his last year at the university he met Jeff Emory, the highly regarded owner and winemaker of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard who graciously took him under his wing.
The rest is history.
I caught up with Denis at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard’s winery where Dragonfly shares space.
Admin Tell us how you began making wine?
Denis Hoey I began at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard. I was introduced by one of my teachers at UCSC to Jeff Emory, and he gave me the opportunity to come in and learn, the old apprenticeship style. And I continue to work at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard to this day. From there is was exploring the UC Davis library, reading year in and year out until I felt like I was ready I started Dragonfly Cellars.
I studied very, very hard about an individual grape variety, Durif, found about its origins, how it’s been treated in the past, what has worked, what hasn’t worked. I pieced together a bunch of different winemaker’s methods so as to create my own. That’s the origin of my winemaking.
Are there other grapes besides Durif that interest you?
DH Durif is one of my main focuses. I’m trying to do mostly Santa Cruz Durif. I think it is a wonderful grape that can grow well here. It has a tremendous expression of smoke, spice, and beautiful flavors that is brought out here in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. So I’m working very closely with some growers who are just getting some vineyards online. And that’s going to be my main focus. However, I also like to play with Cabernet vineyards. The last few years have been fun. I don’t ever have a contract, it’s just through my friends I get a great vineyard source and I make great Cabernet from them. One vineyard source one year and one vineyard source another year, and that’s been a fun thing. So I’m kind of getting back into the traditional bit with the Cabernet. I also have the opportunity to work with alot of Santa Cruz Mountains [AVA] Pinot seeing that I work for Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard, so I’m also making a Santa Cruz Mountains [AVA] Pinot blend. I working with Pinot, Cabernet and Malbec.
Speaking of smoke I’ve heard reports of smoke from this year’s summer fires affecting some vineyards in Northern Napa and Mendocino. Have you detected it in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA where we too had a number of fires?
DH I have not noticed anything as of yet from my vineyards. I could very rarely, if ever, smell the fires from my vineyards or seen any ash in my vineyards. So, therefore, I haven’t seen any problems for myself. I know of alot of vineyards that were very close to the fires where that could be an issue.
And the sources of your fruit, are they from all over Cali?
DH Yes, but as of 2007 I will be about 75% Santa Cruz Mountains AVA.
Your case production?
DH Case production as of this year will be 600 cases, so very, very small. We started with 65 cases, went up to 100, went up to 350 (laughter), and now were up to 600! So were growing about 100 per cent every year. There’s been a wonderful response and make me feel, like, “Ok, I should be making more wine!”
You hear various reports about the quality of this year’s crop, that there is a reduction overall and some quality issues. How would you estimate the quality of the grapes you’ve seen pass through your doors?
DH The grapes that first appeared, I was highly skeptical because they were coming in so fast and so early. But the flavors that I’m getting from the finished wines that are now in barrel are wonderful. I didn’t feel as though I had as much control this year due to the heat because you can only pick one or two vineyards a day. And when they’re all coming in in a three or four day period, you know, some of them get away from you, from optimal. But on the whole I’m enjoying the flavors. The yields have been very, very low. Alot of our vineyards are coming in 50 to 60 percent low. That’s a big hit to a winery. I know I would have produced alot more wine this year had some of the vineyards I was working with hadn’t come in so shy.
But as far as the quality of the fruit, I think the quality has been quite good from the vineyards we’re getting from. From year to year I’ve been noticing that guys right next door can have a bad year just due to the microclimate not only in Santa Cruz but in other appellations. I’ve worked with two different vineyards and have enjoyed the fruit out of one but not the other. They shared the same growing techniques but it was just the different microclimate.
That is one of the strenghts of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA.
DH I think so.
Here in the winery would you tell us a little about your barrel regimen?
DH I had the privilege of working in a brewery for about a year and a half. My brother is a brewer. And when I was commuting back and forth, my fiancé at the time, now my wife, was going to school up in San Rafael, I needed to get a job where I could work part time for Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard and also work up there. So I got a job at Bison Brewing. I learned breweries have to be alot cleaner than wineries have to be. Wineries produce more of a stable product. But in breweries you’re constantly fighting microbiological warfare due to the nature of beer. Beer is prone to infection. No pathogens can live in alcohol. By infection I mean producing off-flavors, you know, basically ruining what you’re trying to create. I translated that experience to the winery. So I work under brewery’s regime of cleanliness. I sanitize everything; no water rinses. It is always organically sanitized and neutralized. Nothing touches the wine that hasn’t been cleaned.
There’s a saying in the industry that brewers are neat and tidy, wineries are a little messier, and distilleries are disgusting! Because nothing can live in high proof alcohol. Distillers don’t have to worry about infection or things like that. That’s the pecking order of who’s more stable.
But to get back to the point, the wines I work tirelessly to have clean…, clean, perfect wines going into the bottle. So I can’t look back and look at myself and say, “God, I messed that one up”.
We have about 300 barrels in the winery. My regime is to top routinely, clean each bung because that is a major source of infection, and to taste every barrel at least every one to two months. Otherwise your barrel can start to have its own micro issue that you can nip in the bud. If you’re tasting often and you know you might have a problem, you can fix it before it becomes a problem.
How did you come up with your beautiful label illustrations?
DH I bumped into a nice lady by the name of Gilli Wolf, she is my graphic designer. She just came up to the table and said she wanted to design a wine label and I said, “You’re in luck. I need a wine label designed”. So I sent her a scrap that I knew I wanted the feel of the label to be. I told her it’s Dragonfly Cellars, I’d like Celtic knots in the wings, make it look a little nouveau. She took it from there and knocked it out of the park in the first two or three tries.
That’s for sure! I love the label.
DH I am really happy and blessed with the label. It really all came together.
The origin of the name of the winery is my wife and I were sitting in a field at a brew festival with my brother. We were wondering what we were going to call the winery. There were thousands of dragonflies flying all around us in this field. I said, “Dragonfly Cellars!” But then I said, no, somebody will have that name. I went researching and found nobody really had that name. So I threw it through the TTB, it got approved, got my bond, started the winery. Now it’s all trademarked. Its been a wonderful growth and we’re blessed even to have the name.
Plans for the future?
DH I plan to hopefully stay at an 800 case level. I’ve got a preview program that’s slowly growing. I’ve got a whoppin’ 35 members! We’re still in our infancy stage. What I’m working on is working with organic growers for the vineyards I work on personally and farm myself, on sustainability, towards doing the majority of my winemaking from grapes of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, just trying to work local and as green as possible. In the wine industry we have to use certain things like sulphur just because that is a tried and true method to produce quality wine. At least from my research thus far. I’m always open to having my mind changed!
But for the future, I want to create very balanced wines. My wines are all about balance, all about accessibility; they’re wines that I design where people can come to the winery, buy a bottle of wine, and go home and drink it. But you can also age it for 5 or 6 years, which is good for people who have cellars. That’s what I do! So I’m trying to play on both ends instead of having these hard lines where people come in and taste it and go, “Umm, I don’t like it right now.” I want them to come in and say, “Wow, this is balanced; this has everything I want now. I can only imagine what it’s going to be in 5 years.”
That’s the ultimate goal.
It’s just my wife Claire and myself. We do everything, everything there is to do at Dragonfly. We have no employees. It is just us.
Absolutely delightful. Thank you very much, Denis.
DH Thank you.
Admin
