Local Vintners’ History Featured At Los Gatos Museum
Ξ June 15th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
This last weekend of the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association (SCMWA) Vintners’ Festival featuring Eastside wineries, I was looking for something different to do, something other than swim the crowds at the AVA’s participating wineries. Looking over the brochure I noticed a simple listing for a museum in Los Gatos.
About a month ago a local winemaker passed along a note which in part read,
“The Forbes Mill History Museum in Los Gatos is seeking memorabilia and photos representing the history of local vineyards and wineries (in the Santa Cruz Mts. and Santa Clara Valley). This is for an exhibit this summer about the local wine industry.”
I thought is might be interesting to see whether they had met with success. I was not to be disappointed. The History Museum of Los Gatos, affectionally known by the locals as the Forbes Mill, has begun a program of revolving exhibitions dedicated to the history of wine and its production in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley.
I spoke first with Elke Groves, Executive Director of the Museums of Los Gatos.
Elke Groves: “We decided when we looked at this exhibit that we wanted to do the history of the local vintners, focussing primarily on the Los Gatos scene; but we’ve actually spread the exhibit a little bit farther than that. We thought it might be an interesting exercise to pair it with a wine tasting to bring examples to the museum, and that way it just starts to attract a different crowd to the museum. We thought it would be a perfect crossover. And we’ve actually found that a lot of the traffic that we’ve had is because we’re part of the Vintners’ Festival. People have been surprised to find a museum here. They’ve enjoyed walking through the exhibit as they do their wine tasting. It’s basically given us a little more exposure in the community, which is wonderful.
“We were very fortunate when we began to set this up that we had these extraordinary cask lids in our collection. And these were purchased from the Almaden Winery when it closed down. And they are just beautiful examples. We’re delighted to have them. And so we’ve acquired some other pieces working with mostly the Novitiate Winery, Testarossa, Paul Masson, and several other wineries, to try to amass artifacts and bring in physical specimens to view. We have photographs, written materials, wine labels, wine bottles, that type of thing. I think it’s going to be an interesting exhibit.
“We’ve structured it so that we’re going to have sort of rolling preview, if you will. This weekend (June 13th and 14th) was the beginning. We’ve got another opening on July 11th. And we’ve got our official opening on July 19th. And on that date we’re also going to have the Library representatives here, we’ll have a book signing, we will also have historic figures dressed in costume that will be telling stories of having lived in Los Gatos in their day. It will be a very action-packed afternoon. We’ll also have some more wineries serving. We’ll be going into August and September as well, with yet more wineries joining us for those days.”
I asked after an old wine press sitting just inside the museum doors. I next spoke with Ken Vogel, the museum’s volunteer coordinator. The wine press is from his family.
Ken Vogel: “The wine press has been in my family a little over one hundred years. They were home winemakers. And I just found out recently, since I was telling the family about its loan to the museum here, that I’d thought none of the wine ever left the property, but I just found out that he was also the official winemaker for the Church in New Jersey. This is actually where this press came from. It’s a great press. And my grandfather when he got it it was old! I’m not even sure its full history.
“I’ve made wine out of it and family members have made many hundreds of gallons of wine out of it, some of it legal, some of it not! We believe it came from Germany. As we’ve been finding out, much of the equipment did come from Germany. The corker over there is from Germany.
“My family in New Jersey had a small vineyard. I was a little kid. We always drank out of mason jars. That’s how we drank the wine down in the basement! In New Jersey, when it did become legal, that you could make it, my dad had been making wine. He went down for his permit to make the wine. In that year he made only 50 gallons of red and 10 of white. So he went down for his permit and the gentleman asked him how many gallons are was planning to make? He said that he had made 60. So he said, ‘You made 60?’ ‘Yes.’ Bam! He slapped him with a fine. (laughs) They caught him! It had only become legal yet he had already made some.
“The way that they would catch people is that part of our recipe we had to add sugar because our grapes weren’t as sweet as what you get in California. We had to add sugar. They kept track of people who bought sugar! So we’d have to go to different stores, buy a pound here, a pound there. (laughs) So we wouldn’t get caught. But he ended up ‘turning himself in’. And they acted as if they had caught him! (laughs).”
I next spoke with the museum’s curator.
Laura Duncan Hubby “Speaking of Prohibition, Paul Masson was one of the people in the country to have a license to produce ‘medicinal Champagne’. We may well have a label for the show. The background is that they probably needed Champagne for state dinners and that type of thing, to serve to dignitaries. They wanted one that was from the United States. Paul Masson was up and coming, so he was the only person to have that honor. The Novitiate Winery was, obviously, allowed to produce sacramental wine all during Prohibition.
“For the opening we’re focussing on a number of bigger wineries, Martin Ray, Paul Masson, the Novitiate, many others; ones that have come and gone, people who are larger than life characters who helped improve the over-all quality of the wine in the region. So we’re doing little spotlights, sort of like biographies of the people from the different wineries, and what they did to influence the future of it. And Ridge, we’re going to have a short video on them, what they’ve been doing.
“The new winemakers who’ve come into the [Santa Clara] Valley in the 1970s roughly, they are still around. We’re hoping to have them physically represented either pouring or present in some way in the exhibits. But for the history we’re focussing on Mission Santa Clara; that’s sort of where it starts. And then the 1850’s, there a little bit with Charles Lefranc and Almaden; and then the 1880’s and 1890’s, the wine boom. Then onto Prohibition and the aftermath of the Second World War. That’s what we’ll be focussing on. The Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Clara Valley. A huge region, so we’re picking and choosing. It is not a huge space, the museum, so I want to do it justice.
“We’ve also been collecting commercials. We’ve one from the Novitiate, I’ve got one from Orson Wells for Paul Masson, and a couple of others. There is one of Orson Wells more famous than the commercial! We’ll have plenty of images. I’ve been going around and getting images from the California History Center, the Novitiate, and some of the various wineries, and some the people in Los Gatos have dropped off, wine labels, bottles, machinery, equipment…
“We’ll also be focussing on Home Winemaking. Something I didn’t realize is that before Prohibition there were something like 20,000 Bay Area families already making wine at home. You could make 200 gallons for your own personal use. that’s what people did! They would buy the grapes, make it themselves, and they thought nothing of it. That gets lost if you only focus on the big wineries.”
All in all I had a fine afternoon. I encourage readers to visit their site as July 11th approaches. The museum may be small, but it has a big heart. The museum’s hours are 12-4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday.
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