Winery Amid Joshua Trees Offers High Desert Bouquet

As the pungent smell of fermenting fruit fills the air, Al Davis takes his turn at a grape press showing every bit of its 30 years of harvest labors.

His arms ride up and down on a worn metal bar as the grape press’ red contents come trickling forth from a cake-shaped mound of grape guts perched atop a juice-filled catch basin.

This is his second trip to the Antelope Valley Winery in several weeks and he’s reveling in the experience in all its sticky, messy, bacchanalian glory.

“I tried to convince my wife to scale fish or slaughter hogs,” jokes the burly 70-year-old, on the mend from recent heart surgery. “This is more romantic and my wife likes it a lot better.”

Davis’ zinfandel-stained profile and the vineyard seem out of place among the Joshua trees of the High Desert. But looks can be deceiving.

Winery owners Frank and Cyndee Donato say the wide range of temperatures make it a great place to grow grapes--comparable, say, to southern Italy. Or at least Paso Robles.

“People think of this place as desolate,” Frank Donato said. “But it has a lot of agricultural riches to offer to people who want to get in this business.”

The plentiful sunshine, and summer temperatures that range from 100 degrees during the day to 60 degrees at night, help create a robust and flavorful grape, Frank Donato said.

The Donatos split duties at the winery. Frank, 40, is an account executive for a title company and works at the vineyard part time. Cyndee, also 40, is the on-site manager--keeping the books, running the wine-tasting room and overseeing production. The couple have two children.

The Donatos, who grew up in Canoga Park, have been vintners in the Antelope Valley for more than a decade and residents for longer than that.

High Demand but Small Supply

Their foray into winemaking began in 1987 when they moved from Palmdale to Leona Valley, about a 10-minute drive from the the winery on Lake Elizabeth Road.

Influenced by his great-grandparents who grew grapes in southern Italy, as well as his aunt and uncle, who grew apples in Watsonville, Frank Donato began by planting 250 vines on their ranch property.

They took the real plunge in 1990 when they bought out their current wine master, Cecil McLester, by putting $25,000 down to buy his winery near Los Angeles International Airport, complete with all the necessary winemaking equipment.

McLester, a vice president at Motorola, still oversees the winemaking operation, including harvesting and bottling.

The Donatos’ winery began slowly. They initially opened a facility that produced 2,500 to 3,000 cases annually in an industrial building in Lancaster. Grapes were purchased from vineyards from Temecula to Paso Robles.

In 1996, the couple bought the current site near 20th Street and planted a quarter-acre of zinfandel grapes. They planted the rest over the next four years and opened their tasting room in May 1999.

The six-week wine harvest begins in mid-August.

Word of mouth, mailing lists and the Internet draw a dozen volunteers each weekend for the annual tradition. The group--including bankers, lawyers, accountants and tech workers--does everything but slosh barefoot through worn, grape-filled oak barrels.

Morning unfolds as wine master McLester’s skip-loader kicks up a cloud of dust as he angles it up to a “de-stemmer” he fills with Grenache grapes.

The crop includes 10 tons of zinfandel, merlot, sangiovese and cabernet grapes grown on 17 acres on the premises and another site a few miles away. The Grenache grapes are trucked in at daybreak after being plucked from vines in the Central Valley.

Finished Product Gets Winery’s Labels

After processing, the contents are dumped from bins into spacious vats where they are sprinkled with yeast. A week later the bounty of sugar has been consumed, creating carbon dioxide and alcohol amid a viscous mixture.

Once squeezed, the fermented juice is stored and later aged in 59-gallon French oak and American oak barrels. By the following spring, the finished product will be bottled under the winery’s labels, retailing for prices ranging from $5 for a chablis to $18 for the white zinfandel.

Don’t expect to see their Antelope Valley vintages appearing on every chain store shelf in the Los Angeles Basin, the Donatos say. At least not yet.

The winery only produces about 10,000 cases a year--paling in comparison with the big boys of Sonoma and Napa who can crank out 100,000 to 500,000 cases at a time.

Nevertheless, the home-grown wines are in high demand. The winery has sold 95% of the 5,000 cases it produces annually. First dibs usually go to local residents, restaurants and Internet shoppers.

Besides the warehouse storing the bottles, casks and winemaking equipment, the facility has a tasting room and space for outdoor functions, complete with benches and a gazebo.

As the wine is being produced out back, wine aficionados crowd the tasting room, which is stocked with the latest vintages and exotic meats including ostrich, venison and buffalo, the latter raised on the Donatos’ Leona Valley ranch.

That’s not the only place to sniff and sip. The winery also hosts a half-dozen jazz nights and wine-makers’ dinners, drawing about 200 valley residents on summer nights.

“People have no clue,” Cyndee Donato says. “There’s a lot of people who are really adventurous out here.”

Automation Will Increase Production

As demand grows the couple say they are about to upgrade to automated equipment needed to increase production. They realize some of the tradition may die with the move, but there will always be room for getting your hands dirty.

“The manual part is always going to be there,” Frank Donato said. “This is always a hand-on business.”

And that’s good news for volunteers like Davis, who says he likes the sense of making something from beginning to end.

“It’s very satisfying to drink the wine and think, I pressed it,” he says. “The three bottles I get just for helping out is frosting on the cake.”