The Future of Boutique Winemaking
Has Already Arrived at Wise Villa Winery
The making of a fine wine is an age-old story about the winemaker interacting with nature. But as the wine industry has moved toward mass production, the original story has been lost, obscured by big advertising and even bigger business. However, a new generation of winemakers who not only know the story of winemaking by heart but are adding new addendums has arrived.
Sustainable, organic, vegan wines are the future of boutique winemaking. This trend is exploding in places you may not traditionally think of as famous wine regions. Yet, it is because these exciting winemakers exist outside commercial wine culture that they’re able to rewrite how fine wine should be produced, sustainably and in small batches, for the love of the wine.
Wise Villa Winery at the base of the Western Sierras in Placer County is one of the progressive wineries retelling the story of wine, one organic varietal at a time. Since 2011, this family-owned winery has excelled at single varietal wines, producing satisfying vintages in small batches grown in the unique terroir of the Sierra Nevada. But as the winery gained notoriety, head winemaker and founder Dr. Grover Lee realized Wise Villa Winery was poised to continue for generations into the future.
“As the patriarch of a three-generation winery, I want to be a responsible steward of the land,” explains Dr. Lee. “As the younger family members entered the business, it became apparent that this could easily become a fourth- or perhaps fifth-generation business, which was not something anyone considered just 10 short years ago. With that realization, the determination was made to ‘do no harm’ to the microenvironment where we work and live and, to the degree possible, leave the ecosystem healthier than we found it.”
Ensuring that future, while producing the award-winning wines for which Wise Villa is known, became the winery’s top priority. Starting in 2018, Wise Villa Winery set out with three crucial changes to the way wine was produced at their vineyard: solve the wastewater dilemma of winemaking, change soil treatment to be more sustainable, and create a carbon-neutral, fully eco-friendly winery. First was tackling wastewater at the vineyard.
“Most people do not know that for every gallon of wine produced, the process creates 12 gallons of wastewater,” says Dr. Lee. “As with nearly all wineries in North America, we had no eco-friendly way to dispose of the wastewater we were creating.”
A search for cutting-edge technology led Wise Villa to consult with the agricultural experts at UC Davis, who coincidently had been working on solving the same problem. The solution UC Davis proposed — piping the wastewater downhill to a three-level natural filtration system — at first seemed crazy.
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“To be honest, we walked away from the initial meeting contemplating the validity and sanity of their proposed solution,” laughs COO Ernie Bayless. “But after several days of working through our misgivings, we were able to wrap our minds around the concept that is best described as ‘primitive and simplistically brilliant.’”
The “simplistically brilliant” filtration system uses three filtration levels to remove over 99.8% of particulate waste matter without using chemicals. The first layer of pine wood chips mimics the decomposition properties of a forest floor and removes large solids such as grape leaves, skins, seeds and stems. Level two is ordinary soil, which filters out anything left from level one.
By StoryStudio on February 24, 2022 11:19 AM
"As the patriarch of a three-generation winery, I want to be a responsible steward of the land."
-Dr. Grover Lee, Founder & Head Winemaker
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The third level, however, is where things get interesting. The final stage of filtration is a layer of soil consisting of millions of earth worms. Why earth worms? Because earth worms consume microscopic, suspended solid particles, leaving the water clear and odor free. After the worms have done their jobs, Wise Villa pumps the water into their irrigation pond, where it is continually aerated by a system developed by the Agriculture Department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Wise Villa is now one of only 20 wineries in the world using the BioFiltro worm-powered wastewater treatment system, earning them the status of a certified California Sustainable Winery and Vineyard.
The second innovation of growing vineyards without pesticides, herbicides or commercial fertilizer proved trickier. To keep soil organic requires not using any chemicals on the vines themselves. Figuring out how to keep insects and rodents away from the vineyard without poisoning them became the goal.
“At the time, we knew that our days of using chemicals would soon be coming to an end,” Dr. Lee recalls. “Our primary concern surrounded the reduction of pesticides and herbicides, which would cause a lower harvest yield, ironically forcing us to purchase grapes from distant producers who are likely to be applying the very chemicals we were eliminating.”
Four years later and the progress of Wise Villa’s sustainability mission speaks for itself. Sure, they’re already recognized by California as certified sustainable, and they continue to win awards, such as being named “Winery of the Year” by Gov. Jerry Brown, #1 Best Winery in the Region by Style Magazine seven years running, and most recently, receiving a Best in Class designation for their 2021 small lot Sauvignon Blanc.
Ultimately, the goal is to create approachable yet complex wines that pair excellently with cuisine. Techniques like meticulously selecting grapes by hand from the vine, triple-sorting the grapes after harvest and cold fermentation that slowly draws out the juice from the grapes create balanced wines that share four qualities that make their wines a cut above the rest: lower sulfites to reduce headache, fresh fruit varietal character to increase natural acidity, softer tannins for approachability and lower alcohol content ideal for food pairing. The use of sustainability practices to achieve a truly organic and vegan product only enhances these four qualities.
Experiencing the product for yourself is the best way to appreciate Wise Villa’s special, small-batch wines. Set against the backdrop of the lower western Sierra Nevada mountain range in Lincoln, CA, Wise Villa Winery is a destination, harkening back to an Old World charm while maintaining the traits of a progressive boutique winery: a friendly and knowledgeable staff, a vibrant tasting room and a Tuscan-style Bistro on site.
Take a short tour of Wise Villa’s beautiful, idyllic property and see why more and more people are joining Wise Villa’s Wine Club and making a visit to Wise Villa Winery with friends or a partner a must-do this spring and summer.
Be part of the story of sustainable winemaking by visiting https://wisevillawinery.com to make a reservation, book a tour or event, join the wine club and purchase Wise Villa’s award-winning limited edition wines.
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Once again, a primitive and simplistically brilliant solution emerged: a multi-faceted soil management plan and a little help from nature. Wise Villa now employs a herd of sheep to help sustain soil quality. The sheep eat the weeds and produce natural fertilizer for the vines, which biodegrades, thereby refreshing the mineral and nutrient quality of the soil without ever having to use commercial fertilizer, which can harm the soil and the environment in the long run. Bees housed in bee boxes around the 35-acre vineyard assist in pollination. And as for the rodents? Wise Villa’s barn owl population keeps them out of the vineyards with ease.
The biggest challenge is one the boutique winery is still tackling: building a fully eco-friendly winery from the ground up. The project began in 2020 by investigating alternative sources of electricity production, from solar to wind, to power the storehouses that keep the wine at a cool 60 degrees even when outside temps soar over 100. But net zero emission wine storage cannot be accomplished by offset electricity alone. That’s why Wise Villa’s new winery is being built into the side of a mountain. There, the facility will be kept naturally cool by earthen walls that radiate cool air into the winery year-round using no electricity at all.
“The new winery will be twice the size of our existing facility,” says Dr. Lee, “but in spite of doubling its size, we expect to reduce our cooling related energy consumption by 60% below our current usage.”
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Dr. Grover Lee and his family