Peninsula Winemaker’s Prize Back-Yard Vintages Pop Experts’ Corks

It’s a long way from “Falcon Crest” to Rolling Hills, but you wouldn’t know it from Don Thomas’ back yard. There, spanning four verdant acres down the face of a terraced canyon, the grapes are ripening under a stately sun for another batch of Thomas’ prize-winning wine.

Thomas, 60, is a civil engineer by trade, the owner of a Carson firm that manufactures satellite receivers and two-way radios. But in his spare time, he is the proprietor of Chesterfield Ranch Vineyards--the name he dreamed up for the amateur winemaking hobby that has consumed him for the past four years.

This summer, Thomas’ Cabernet Sauvignon earned a double gold medal--known in wine parlance as “best of breed”--in the wine competition held annually in advance of the Orange County Fair. His Sauvignon Blanc got honorable mention. And he’s kicking himself for not having entered his Petit Sirrah, “because it’s at least as good as the Cab.”

“I had no intentions of entering anything,” said Thomas, who until recently shared the fruit of his vines only with family and good friends. Then, two months ago, a friend and fellow winemaker invited him to a banquet sponsored by the Orange County Wine Society.

“He said, ‘Bring along a bottle of your Cabernet,’ so I filled up a split,” Thomas said. Midway through the banquet, the friend introduced Thomas to Jerry Mead, a syndicated wine columnist, and offered Mead a taste of Thomas’ Cabernet--without showing him the label.

Mead pronounced the wine “wonderful,” Thomas recalled, adding that it was young but had great potential.

When the friend revealed that the wine was Thomas’ homemade brew, Mead urged him to enter it in the Orange County Fair.

Now three ribbons--two bright gold and one snow white--hang on the brass lamp that lights Thomas’ basement wine cellar, over the table where he keeps the slim Italian-made bottles that will hold his current vintage when he takes it out of the casks this fall.

They’re a source of pride to Thomas, who has invested thousands of dollars and countless hours in his home winemaking operation.

“It actually all started when we bought this house, and were going to plant avocado trees to make a nice view down around the back of the house,” said Thomas’ wife, Peggy. “Don said, ‘If we’re going to do that, we ought to plant fruit.’

“Well, one thing kind of led to another, and before I knew it, we’d planted 500 trees.”

The orchards--which bear fruits as mundane as apples and as exotic as bananas and macadamia nuts--naturally led to other pursuits, Peggy Thomas said.

“Don is one of those guys who doesn’t do anything unless he does it well,” she said. They still harvest honey from the beekeeping hobby he started several years back; their Christmas baskets feature Don’s seedless raspberry jam (he spins out the seeds with a centrifuge he keeps in his basement); and friends are clamoring for a bread-slicing machine he developed during a passion for baking homemade bread.

Consequently, Peggy Thomas knew what to expect when her husband began to wax enthusiastic about wine several years ago. The couple had attended a gala wine auction in the Napa Valley, and “fell in love with the place,” Don Thomas said.

They immediately decided to buy property in the wine country. Meanwhile, however, Don drew up a plan to begin planting grapes among the fruit trees and in the back yard.

Around the turn of the century, he notes, grape growing was popular in Los Angeles County, from Carson to the area of downtown Los Angeles where Union Station now stands. Pests, diseases and development gradually reduced the crop, and only a few wineries--commercial or otherwise--are left in the metropolitan area.

But in Thomas’ back yard there are now 2,000 vines, more than a half-dozen varieties of grapes and a winemaking laboratory into which he estimates he has poured more than $5,000. It’s an unusual investment for most home vintners, who usually buy their grapes already grown and ferment their brew in large, cheap containers such as garbage cans.

Last year, Thomas said, he fermented about 60 gallons, five times the amount he bottled the year before. The harvest, he noted, is considerably short of the 200 gallons amateur winemakers are allowed by law to bottle annually.

It is illegal for amateurs to sell their wine, even when it is as highly praised as Thomas’. But, he adds, he has no plans to go commercial with his enterprise.

“I get a real kick out of sharing a hobby with a friend or neighbor, and knowing that they’re enjoying something I’ve been able to create,” Thomas said. “I think you can really ruin something you love by making it a business.”