Current Issue Articles

by Sherrie Petersen

Not only does Jennifer Gehrs tend her own grapes and bottle her own wine-she even designs the wine labels herself. She also helps with sales at the Daniel Gehrs Tasting Room, which is owned and run by her family. And she does her share of traveling to promote and sell her and her father's wines.
(Photo courtesy Jennifer Gehrs)

Plump, ripe fruit, heavy with juice, cluster in stark contrast against brightly colored leaves. A woman walks through the vineyard, plucks a grape and places it in her mouth, rolling the juice on her tongue, measuring the sweet flavor against a mental catalog of past years’ tastes and smells.
So begins the harvest season, and for Jennifer Gehrs, the woman behind the bottle at Vixen Wine, harvest brings fond memories of the vineyard. “I can remember being five or six and helping at harvest,” she says.
The oldest child of winemaker Daniel Gehrs, Jennifer has practically grown up among the vines. Yet she fell into wine making almost by mistake when a family friend gave her some Syrah grapes and encouraged her to give winemaking a try. Five years later, she ís proud of what she has been able to accomplish.

  “My wines are really hand crafted from beginning to end. I’ve helped pick some of the grapes and I end up hand waxing a lot of the bottles,” she explains. She also designs the labels for her wines, putting her degree in Fine Art to good use. “I’ve designed labels for Daniel Gehrs and some others. It’s not my focus at this point, but it certainly helps to be able to do my own packaging!”
  Although Jennifer never had considered following in her father’s career footsteps, she did gain a lot of experience working for him. As the tasting room manager at Daniel Gehrs Wine for the past six years, she has been involved in wholesale sales, blending trials and marketing for his brand. But she has found particular satisfaction as a winemaker.
  “I enjoy having the ability to make every wine to my own specifications, to please my own palate,” she explains. “As a winemaker you have to hope that other people resonate with your own style and people have the same taste as you do.”
  Preferring to do small lots and label her wines as vineyard designates, Jennifer procures grapes from several sources. “I get some from several small, totally obscure vineyards, and some really large vineyards. But if the wine needs help from one of the other vineyards, then I will do a blend.”
  One of her newest blends, the 2005 V Cuvee, features grenache blanc, a grape that has come into recent popularity in the United States. “When it comes to Rhone whites, there aren’t a lot of options. Hardly any of this variety is planted in the United States,” she explains. “My timing was really good and I was able to get in before it became popular.”
  The wine was recently released and has been very well received. “I just had it for lunch today with spicy fried chicken wraps,” she laughs. “It goes well with spicy food.”
  With seven wines in her growing collection and her continuing role in her father’s business, Jennifer is one busy woman. Her enthusiasm for what she does shines through, whether you speak to her in person or read the pages of her website (vixenwines.com). “I’ve been fortunate to have really good response and really good reviews of my wine,” she says.

According to the Wine Institute, women consume 57 percent of the wine purchased in the United States, yet only about 15 percent of the winemakers are women. Their numbers are growing. Increasingly more women are enrolling in enology classes, and many are focusing on hand crafting premium luxury wines. Coming up through the ranks and gaining credibility in all areas of the wine industry, these women are making inroads in a traditionally male world. Helen Falcone, one of the people giving women winemakers a good name, has been assistant wine maker for the past five years at Rusack Vineyards.

Helen Falcone, one of the people giving winemakers a good name, has been assistant wine maker for five years at Rusack Vineyards. She tells us that she loves the world of wine "as much for its variety as for its varietals," and especially loves the exhilarating, excruciatingly busy harvest season. (Photo courtesy Helen Falcone)

In a world known as much for its variety as its varietals, fall brings the exhilarating, excruciating time of year that growers both dread and anticipate: harvest.
  “I just love harvest,” she says. “It’s my favorite time of year. It’s all consuming because you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature and the weather. You want to harvest your grapes at just the right time so it’s hectic and it’s stressful, but I love it. It’s what we’ve worked for all year.”
  One of a handful of female wine makers on the Central Coast, Helen has more than 15 years of professional experience in the wine industry. In addition to the wine she produces with her husband for Rusack, the pair have also begun their own private label using grapes from a vineyard they purchased and began cultivating seven years ago near Paso Robles.
  She didn’t always have wine designs on her mind. With a degree in Food Science, Helen had the background in microbiology and biochemistry that was applicable to winemaking. But it wasn’t until she quit her job at the New Zealand Dairy Board to work in the labs at Beringer that she started to consider a career in winemaking.
  “I like the variety of work that I get to do,” she says enthusiastically. “I’m doing anything from vineyard sampling to lab analysis, sorting grapes, rolling barrels around, mixing yeast, punching down fermenters.” But the work isn’t always fun. Sometimes it can be downright dirty.
  “Sanitation is a really critical part of making good wine,” Helen explains. “The floors, the barrel racks, the walls, the drains at the crush pad, they all have to be cleaned, often. It’s not glamorous but it is really important because if you get bacteria or mold growing, it can cross contaminate with your wine.”
  Even with the constantly changing technology and streamlined production processes, Helen believes that winemaking still comes down to people. “Nothing can replace the nose and the palate for quality control,” she says. “We taste each barrel, sometimes starting at 8:30 in the morning. People think that part of the job sounds like so much fun, and it is, but it’s not just fun. We’re taking notes and comparing. And even though we’re spitting, after 200 tastes you need some food!”