New Scotts Valley Winery to Debut Wines at Weekend Festival

When there is good wine, good friends and good times are usually not far behind. And that is especially true at Scotts Valley’s newest winery, 37th Parallel, where the winemaking business is truly a labor of love and a family and friends affair.

Scotts Valley residents Les Wright and Michael Curtis started 37th Parallel in 2005 as something fun to do on the side. Curtis, 62, who is a physician, was making wine in his garage as a hobby. When the need to move out of the garage arose, Wright, 58, who is the CFO of a Silicon Valley social
gaming startup, had the perfect place in mind to expand Curtis’ hobby and get involved himself.

“I like wine, but had never thought about or had the desire to make it,” Wright said. “But it seemed like something fun to do, and it’s really taken on a life of its own.”

Now, under the 37th Parallel label, which is named for the latitude line that runs through Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, the two are making wines in a small man-made cave under a quaint little red house on Granite Creek Road. The home was built in the 1930s by Giaccomo Thiella, a northern Italian immigrant and grandfather to Wright’s wife, who raised his entire family there.

When the home was built, it was surrounded by 13 acres of plum and apple orchards owned by the family. But Giaccomo also loved wine and carved out a wine cave from shale under the family home with a pickax and made began making zinfandel from a small vineyard on the property on the side.

Now, over 75 years later, things have come full circle and wine is once again being made in Giaccomo’s cave.

“Michael swears that we are channeling Giaccomo,” Wright laughs. “There definitely is something about this place that is special.”

The winery, which was bonded in 2009, makes about 300 cases a year. Wright says each year they make a pinot and chardonnay, then alternate
other varietals, such as dolcetto, merlot, sauvignon blanc, syrah and cabernet sauvignon, making about four to five different varietals a year. The grapes come from several places, including the Santa Cruz Mountains, Napa, and Calaveras County.

“It’s nice to have the variety, even when you’re a small winery,” Wright said.

Wright says the foray into winemaking really did start as something fun for the two men to do, but at some point the idea to start selling it came up.

“It was around 2008 that somebody, I can’t remember who, I think one of our wives, said maybe we should start charging for it,” Wright recalls. “We are not trying to build a wine empire. First, we want to be able to pay for what we do and if we  can make enough to have a sort of small business that might fund a trip to the French wine country or something like that, then we’ll take it.”

When they started, Curtis had some winemaking experience but Wright had none. Over the years, he says it has been a fun learning process filled with a lot of firsts.

“People ask me all the time how I learned to make wine and I say for the most part, trial and error,” he laughs.

The winemaking process has also brought together many family and friends who are always willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands
purple.

“When we bottle, all of our family, friends and neighbors come out to help,” Wright said. “The reality is that it would be more efficient with three or four people, but we’ve had as many as 10 to 20 before. It slows the process down a little but it makes it way more fun.”

When it comes to the wine they make, Wright says the two try to stay true to the varietal, although in the beginning, it wasn’t by design.

“We didn’t start out as enologists,” Wright said. “We were trying to make good wines that we enjoy and we didn’t have the experience to really experiment or bend the wine to our will in some ways. We sort of stumbled onto this, ‘be true to the variety,’ thing and at the same time make very enjoyable wines. Our whole desire is to make good wine that is affordable
where you’ll know what grape you are drinking.”

For the first time, 37th Parallel with be pouring wine at the 13th annual Scotts Valley Art & Wine Festival and Wright, who grew up in Scotts Valley, says he is excited to debut his wines at a hometown festival.

“This will be the first time we are really doing a lot of tasting and exposing a lot of people to our wines,” he said.

37th Parallel will be pouring its 2010 Pinot Noir, 2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay, 2010 Calaveras Chardonnay, 2009 Santa Cruz
Mountains Merlot and 2009 Syrah.

The Scotts Valley Art & Wine Festival is at Skypark, 361 Kings Village Rd., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Aug. 11 & 12. Admission is free but there is a fee for wine tasting.