Lightheart Cellars makes rare mead, the ancestor of fermented drinks
Published in the April 16-29, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Photo by Marty Cheek
Lightheart Cellars owners Sheldon Haynie and his wife Jane Mika-Haynie in their backyard vineyard.
Located in a home in a quiet San Martin neighborhood, Lightheart Cellars isn’t your typical boutique winery. In the back of the house at 305 Roosevelt Ave., guests find a casual “tasting patio” overlooking an acre of backyard vineyard. Lightheart is also unusual in that it’s the only South Valley winery that produces mead, a honey-based beverage that is considered the ancestor of all fermented drinks.
“The winery is literally in our garage so we’re a Silicon Valley garage concept here,” said Sheldon Haynie, co-owner with his wife Jane Mika-Haynie, who serves as Lightheart’s winemaker.
“We’re not a place you need to dress up to go and we’re not fancy,” he said. “We’re not known for exotic landscaping. We put our energy into our wine.”
The couple got started in the wine-production business when they visited San Martin’s Creekview Vineyards in 2007 and enjoyed the backyard wine tasting they discovered there. When they got into the car after that visit, Jane said the fateful words: “We can do that.”
The couple planted their backyard vineyard and made their first wine in 2009, Sheldon said. They realized they had a love for wine-making and expanded their operation with a “strategy of sharecropping” other people’s grapes. Now Lightheart farms 20 acres throughout Santa Clara County, growing grapes on a variety of terroir, trellis and micro-climate environments.
It manages six vineyards in the Santa Clara Valley for Bordeaux and Rhone varietals, Colombard, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Syrah, and Petit Sirah.
“When we opened, we really wanted to have a mix of whites and reds, so we started off with two whites and three reds,” Mika-Haynie said. “And then we expanded into rosé two years ago. We went to Europe and tasted a lot of rosés that year and made our first rosé out of Merlot that fall. And then we’ve released our second rosé, which is a rosé of Zinfandel, so we have two rosés now as well as numerous whites and reds.”
Mika-Haynie is particularly proud of Lightheart’s 2011 Lioness red wine that won a silver medal in the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition recently. It’s a blend with 50 percent Cabernet, 30 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cab France.
“It’s all local wine. This is the first wine that we actually fermented the wines separately and blended them afterward,” she said. “We do have other blends, but they’re what we call ‘field blends’ which is a sort of a happenstance of the grapes that kind of get mixed in when you’re out in the field picking them. We have a Merlot-Zin blend and we have a Merlot-Cab Franc blend as well.”
Seeing the fun his mother had making wine, Mika-Haynie’s son Noah James also got into the alcohol beverage business. He partnered with his friend Joan and together they make three types of mead under the Alderin’s Meadery label sold by Lightheart Cellars. Its strawberry mead is particularly refreshing during springtime family get-togethers.
Lightheart has a wine club in which members receive two bottles of wine every quarter at a 20 percent discount from retail price on single bottles or 25 percent discounts on cases. Members can also attend special functions, such as acoustical concerts performed on the small stage next to the tasting patio.
Lightheart’s wines can also be found at Rocca’s Market in San Martin and the Morgan Hill Cigar Company and Wine Shop in downtown Morgan Hill.
Mika-Haynie, a former nurse who now works in application support for hospitals, and Haynie, who works as semiconductor engineer, have found their passion in wine-making with Lightheart Cellars.
“I’m really getting to the point where I’m just getting to know the region,” Mika-Haynie said. “I’m getting to know the winemakers and the grapes we can produce in this area. We’re new at this. I’m still learning. It’s not something I’m doing from years of experience, but I’m dipping my toes in the water and learning as an ongoing craft.”
Lightheart Cellars
Location: 305 Roosevelt Ave., San Martin
Hours: Noon to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday
Contact: (408) 475-8463 or www.lightheartcellars.com
