Native grapes? This winemaker\'s just wild about the idea

Tag : Jelly Filling

He and his wife, Sylvia, tend 80 vines of cabernet sauvignon andmerlot on rolling oak woodland in the Christian Valley area on thenorthern outskirts of Auburn.
But that isn't the vineyard he couldn't get to two years ago –the one that again could be jeopardized by fire this summer.
In fact, that vineyard isn't so much a vineyard as a curtain ofwild vines cascading down an exposed slope of Mosquito Ridge alongthe American River east of Foresthill.
The long, ropy vines claimed by Moore climb trees, spill down wallsand creep along streams in riparian woodlands from one end ofCalifornia to the other. Uncultivated, these vines have beengrowing with abandon for who knows how long.
They're vitis Californica, California's native wild grape. Anyonewho has grabbed a woody stem dangling from a tree limb to swing outover a creek before letting go likely has vitis Californica tothank for the thrill.
Vitis Californica's generally uninhabited territory isn't asfiercely protected as land set aside for commercial varietals.
As significant as vitis Californica is to the state's naturalhistory, it's rarely cultivated, and then generally for ornamentalrather than commercial purposes, given the propensity of its large,round leaves to blaze with fiery colors in the fall.
If anyone is harvesting the grapes of vitis Californica for acommercial wine, he or she is keeping pretty quiet about it.
Moore hadn't given vitis Californica any thought for his homewinemaking until he stumbled across the unusually large andflourishing stand while strolling to the American River to fishthree summers ago.
"There it was, this whole hillside covered with wild grapevine,loaded with grapes," Moore recalls.
"It's an hour-and-20-minute drive to get there," says Moore, andthat's about as specific as he's going to be about the preciselocation of his find, other than to acknowledge that the spot is onpublic land.
That first summer, he returned to the plot a couple more times witha refractometer, a device to measure sugar content in the juice ofripening grapes.
In the meantime, he also contacted rangers for permission toharvest the grapes. "They said, 'If you can beat the bears, birdsand deer to the grapes, you're welcome to have them.' "
When he concluded that the fruit was sweet enough to make wine, hebegan to pick, filling a 5-gallon bucket with grapes and hauling itabout 50 yards to his car.
That was as close as he could drive to the slope. He completed theround-trip hike several times, accumulating about 200 pounds ofgrapes during his one-day harvest.
He dumped each bucketload into a 35-gallon, food-grade tub in hisvehicle and covered the fruit with wet towels.
"I ran the air conditioner all the way home to keep those grapes ascool as possible," says Moore.
"What I get is what I get," he says of his random harvests. Andwhat he gets are grapes quite a bit smaller than customary winegrapes, with thick skins and little juice. His yearly harvestsyield only about 60 bottles of vitis Californica.
"They tasted pretty decent," Moore says of the raw fruit he foundthat first year. "The seeds are big and the grapes have less pulp,but they're pretty flavorful. I sat in the middle of that vine andjust picked."
He'd only just started to make wine, and his home vineyard wasn'tyet producing much fruit, so the vitis Californica beckoned. Healso was undaunted by warnings from a commercial winemaker he'd metat a tasting who conceded that while vitis Californica can producean OK jelly, it isn't recognized for producing pleasant wine.
"I figured I'd have fun anyway. It would be a good experience, andI'd learn something. I wanted to ferment something," says Moore.