Hecker Pass winery focuses on quality, not quantity
Published in the Feb. 5, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Vic Vanni in the tasting room at Solis Winery. His brother Mike Vanni is the winemaker. “We do small lots of wine, most of the lots we’re doing is about 300 to 400 cases,” Vanni said.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Vic Vanni has grown used to travelers on Hecker Pass who stop at his Solis Winery tasting room telling him of their surprise that there are quality wineries in the southern part of Santa Clara Valley.
“We hear it daily,” he said. “People will come in from Los Gatos or San Jose or Santa Clara and they’ll go, ‘I didn’t know there were wineries down here.’ I’ve had people walk in who are from Gilroy and they’ve been here for fifteen years tell me ‘I’ve never been here before.’”
Vanni is pleased by this growing awareness of wine drinkers discovering his and the other South Valley wineries. He looks at these people and realizes there’s an opportunity for wineries to share their vintages with many Silicon Valley wine lovers who have grown bored of Napa Valley and don’t want to trek to Paso Robles.
“Even people who are in our backyard don’t even know we’re here,” he said. “It’s sad in a way, but I also think, gosh there’s a lot of people, a huge market that’s open to us that’s right there in reach.”
Vic and his brother Mike Vanni, the winemaker at Solis, love their family tradition of making their living from the land. It started in the 1940s with his grandfather who started a cut flower business. His father David Vanni moved from Los Altos to Gilroy in 1980 to be nearer to the family’s flower nursery in Watsonville. David purchased property that was once the Bertero Winery in the Hecker Pass region to start his own small wine-making side business. In the late 1990s, David started wine-making full time. And in 2007, he retired and his two sons took over the family business.
The brothers decided to keep their enterprise focused on quality and not quantity.
“We do small lots of wine, most of the lots we’re doing is about 300 to 400 cases,” Vanni said. “We’re not looking at crazy expansion, but we want to keep the value good, production controllable and really just keep a grasp on what we’re doing rather than letting things get so big and uncontrollable that the quality may suffer.”
Solis Winery’s latest release is the Baciami 2010 Rhone blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah and Zinfandel. The name means “kiss me” in Italian, and it won a double gold at the New World International Wine Competition. Solis also produces estate wine from the Fiano grape, an uncommon varietal in California which is indigenous to southern Italy.
The winery has a series of pairing events during year, including this weekend its popular Hearts, Wine and Chocolate tasting extravaganza to get couples ready for Valentine’s Day.
Other upcoming events include a Member-Guest Barrel Tasting March 8, a Bottle Your Own Wine event April 12 and 13, and a Syrah & Sausage Grill cook-out May 24-26. Vanni said he and his brother have developed and expanded these events so that their wine club members and guests can enjoy their wine accompanied by cuisine.
“All of our wine events typically revolve around some type of a food because we believe wine should be part of a meal,” he said. “And that’s kind of how we were brought up.”
