Fruit of His Labors

Mark Beck drives home to Pasadena from his L.A. office, whips off his tie, throws on his jeans and hikes down to a hillside wreathed in grapes. And presto--the buttoned-down top dog at the law firm Beck, DeCorso, Daly, Kreindler & Harris becomes Beck the vintner, master of the crush and press.

“It takes just minutes for me to leave the world behind,” he says, adding that thanks to cellphones and Blackberrys, he’s linked to his job almost 24/7. But among the grapes, or in the cool storage cellar he has built for his homemade elixir, he’s not at all plugged in. “I get lost in the details of fermentation and taste,” he says. “I’m shut in a room chilled to 58 degrees, utterly quiet and intoxicating with the aroma of wine ready to be bottled.”

On the hill behind the wood-and-glass house he shares with his wife Bonnie Saland, a psychoanalyst, his 170 leafy grapevines descend in tidy rows, each climbing its own stake but linked companionably to its neighbors by a drip irrigation system. The ripening grapes have a special resonance for Beck, who loves wine and has made it from his own fruit since 1999.

“In vino felicitas“--”In wine there is happiness”--read the labels on the Beck Family Vineyard bottles, which explains how a white-collar criminal defense attorney who works 60-plus hours a week finds the energy to come home and prune vines or lay down redwood mulch. And how he sometimes plays hooky on harvest day to pluck and process the fruit of his labors. “It’s very rewarding, especially sharing the final product with our friends,” he says.

Nevertheless, it’s a long leap from drinking wine to making it, and an even longer one to planting a backyard vineyard. For Beck, these possibilities arose slowly, beginning eight years ago as his two children entered their teens. With a bit more free time on his hands, he was casting around for a meaningful, stress-relieving hobby. The Becks lived elsewhere in Pasadena then, and one day he saw a newspaper story about a grape-growing neighbor whose vines were visible from Beck’s house. Intrigued, he contacted the man--who has since become a commercial winemaker--and quizzed him about the process.

The more Beck learned, the more inspired he became. He began reading magazines and books on grape growing and wine technology. He also began hanging around a Woodland Hills store, the Home Beer/Wine/Cheesemaking Shop, which supplies hobbyists and sponsors the Cellarmasters, a wine-crafter’s club. Beck even flew to UC Davis, which has a noted viticulture program, to take Saturday classes on growing grapes and making wine. Finally, he hired his Pasadena neighbor as a consultant, who advised him to grow Sangiovese grapes and referred him to a contractor to do the planting.

The first vines went in in 1997, and in 1999 he made his first small batch of wine, as well as “a lot of mistakes.” The next year, as his harvest and know-how improved, he made more and even bought frozen grapes so that he could boost his yield. “Anyone can do this,” he maintains. “The resources are out there.”

According to Brad Ring, publisher of WineMaker magazine, 750,000 Americans currently make their own wine. What’s more, he says, 72% of his publication’s nearly 110,000 readers either grow or plan to grow grapes themselves. Of these, about 2,700 are Southern Californians, Ring says, and the numbers are increasing. “I’m seeing more and more interest from hobbyists wanting to experience winemaking from start to finish. Owning a vineyard has cachet. It identifies you as truly passionate.”

Beck bottled wine from three harvests at his first Pasadena vineyard. Then in 2003, in anticipation of their last child leaving home, he and his wife downsized to a smaller property. Though it was hard to leave his vineyard before it fully matured, the move gave him a chance to start anew by planting Zinfandel grapes, a favorite among Southern California vintners in the 19th century. At the end of his 2004 season, he had picked enough grapes for 3 gallons of wine, which he’s just about to bottle. And after his second harvest this fall, he expects to wind up with more than 10 times that amount.

Tending vines, Beck says, is easy. “All you need are a piece of land--ideally an unused slope--the right grapes, enough sun and a bit of water in the hottest weeks.” In his roughly 100-by-80-foot “field,” he grows his vines as freestanding plants, eschewing traditional trellising. He skips fertilizer (grapes aren’t greedy) and prunes surrounding oak trees to let in light. He doesn’t water until August, then gives each plant a mere 1 1/2 gallons a week. His pest problems have been minor, though he says it’s best to avoid planting near citrus or non-chlorinated ponds to discourage one of the grape’s chief California foes, the glassy-winged sharpshooter. Powdery mildew, the scourge of crowded plants in humid weather, can be held at bay by thinning the leaves. He uses nets to protect fruiting vines and broadcasts recorded birdcalls help discourage hungry birds.

In September, as the sugar content of the grapes rises, Beck’s outdoor work space resembles a science lab full of 5-gallon glass bottles, corks with airlocks and yards of plastic tubing. He devotes his free time to checking supplies and hauling equipment from deep storage. Out come his fancy electric crusher, his hand-operated presser and his 1,000-liter stainless-steel mixing tank. He puts his longtime vineyard helpers, Jose Gallegos and Jim Pardus, on alert.

On the day the sugar content reaches the proper level, the three spring into action shortly after dawn, snipping off ripe clusters and picking out crushed or green berries and leaves that could contaminate the juice. “Harvesting is a labor-intensive process,” Beck says, describing their crawl dragging heavy plastic buckets between rows under a beating sun. Once the fruit is off the vine, and before it can grow mold or attract bacteria, it must be gently crushed to release the juice. This perfumed slurry of skins, seeds and sugary liquid is then ready for transformation into wine.

In simple terms, adding yeast to a solution containing sugar causes fermentation, which converts the sugar into alcohol. Right after the crush, Beck adds a special wine yeast to the slurry in his buckets. On day two, he mixes in a second yeast, and by the end of day three, having stirred his bubbling solutions twice a day throughout, he has a liquid with 13% alcohol. A few days later, he pours it into his press to squeeze the liquid from the solids. He stores his young wine in the huge bottles called carboys, applies the airlocks and, two days later, siphons the wine into other carboys. This process, called racking, progressively clears the wine of sediment. After another week and a second racking, Beck sends a sample to Vinquiry, a Northern California testing service, to be analyzed. A year later, it’s ready for bottling.

Beck’s early efforts, he admits, yielded “a pretty rough drink.” The first year, he allowed air into his carboys after fermentation, producing an insipid brown brew. Another year, he picked his grapes too green, and the resulting wine tasted tart. He also has presided over alarming explosions, when he pressed his wine too soon before fermentation was complete. “I measure my progress,” he admits, “in the decreasing number of my mistakes.”

Records of these, along with sugar readings and cultivation and production notes, fill his vineyard notebooks, neatly filed in his home office. There too are the prizes he has won as he’s improved, including a 2004 gold medal from the American Wine Society and a silver medal the same year from the Orange County Fair. Nor has his hobby cost a fortune, despite the $1,000 mixing tank and the equally expensive crusher. “You can spend much less,” he says.

John Daume, who sells everything the aspiring vintner needs at his Home Beer/Wine/Cheesemaking Shop in Woodland Hills, estimates that good wine can be made for as little as $4 a bottle--even without the vineyard. The minimum cost drops further if you use a winemaking kit (which includes grape juice)--to less than $2. He also sells fresh grapes and offers his customers the use of winemaking equipment at his Daume Winery in Camarillo.

A hundred pounds of grapes make about 7 gallons of wine, which yields 35 bottles. Federal law allows a single home brewer to make 100 gallons a year for personal consumption, with a 200-gallon maximum for two-brewer households. Beck this year expects to press 30 gallons from his grapes; two years from now, the number should more than double. And after that? “My only plan is to keep doing what I’m doing as a hobby,” he says. “It’s satisfying and relaxing. It gets me away from the phones at night and into the garden. It’s a continuing challenge. Because with wine, you can always do better.”

*

Resource

grape vines | Vintage Nurseries, Wasco, Calif., (800) 499-9019, www.vintagenurseries.com (minimum order, 25 vines per variety); Sunridge Nurseries, Bakersfield, (661) 363-8463, www.sunridgenurseries.com (minimum order, 50 vines)

Supplies and information | Home Beer/Wine/Cheesemaking Shop, Woodland Hills, (818) 884-8586, www.homebeerwinecheese.com

Clubs | Cellarmasters, Woodland Hills, www.cellarmastersla.org Orange County Wine Society, (714) 708-1636, www.ocws.org

Magazines | Winemaker, (802) 362-3981, www.winemakermag.com (subscriptions, [800] 900-7594); Wines & Vines, (415) 453-9700, www.winesandvines.com

Vineyard & Winery Management, (800) 535-5670, www.myvwm.com, (subscriptions, [707] 836-6820,

ext. 102)

Books | “From Wines to Vines,” by Jeff Cox (Storey Publishing, 1999); “Winery Technology and

Operations Handbook,” by Yair Margalit (Wine Appreciation

Guild, 1990)

Winemaking classes | UC Davis extension, www.universityextension.ucdavis.edu/winemaking

Wine analysis | Vinquiry, www.vinquiry.com