Dream fulfilled

<p>Even in the dead of fall it’s a long way from the wilds of Wisconsin to the reddish-orange hues of Dry Creek Road. Hard-core weather, a road-building business and close-knit family are among the things Debra Mathy left behind in pursuing her long-held dream of owning a winery.</p><p>She landed in Healdsburg, but Mathy, 40, didn’t follow a straight path to get here. Born and raised in the Midwest, she left the brutal winters at age 17 for the warmth of Arizona, where she earned a degree in education at the University of Arizona and taught elementary school. Feeling restless and unchallenged, she eventually left for Colorado, where she studied nutrition at Colorado State University and nurtured her love of cycling and other athletics.</p><p>All along, her love of wine was sustained by visiting the world’s great wine-growing regions and taking wine and viticulture correspondence courses at UC Davis. In the back of her head burned the dream of one day owning a winery. Two years ago, Mathy’s wish came true and she moved to California, spurred by a sense of determination inspired by her dad’s battle with cancer. She realized all too clearly that time is short and one must do what one loves.</p><p>“At first financially it doesn’t make sense. You look at a winery and then you go away,” she said, revealing her practical nature. “I got serious when my dad got sick in 2002. He said, ‘Let’s do this together.’ We set out hard.”</p><p>Mathy first started thinking about getting into the wine business in 1994, but kept telling herself it would be a bad investment. Her keen head for business had been instilled by her dad, who ran a very successful asphalt, fuels and road-building operation.</p><p>Enthused by her passion, he supported his daughter’s goal until his death in 2006, just months before Mathy first sat down with the owners of Dutcher Crossing Winery on Dry Creek Road and convinced them to sell to her.</p><p>“Immediately, when we stepped on the property, it felt very casual, very welcoming. The wines were really good, affordable. It was the whole package,” Mathy explained.</p><p>The winery hadn’t been for sale. But during the Winter Wineland event of January 2007, Mathy convinced founders Bruce Nevins and Jim Stevens that Dutcher Crossing was exactly what she had been looking for. She made an offer and, intrigued by the chance to retire, the owners agreed. Escrow closed within 40 days.</p><p>Nevins and Stevens co-founded Perrier North America in the late 1970s, buying the rights to distribute the French mineral water in America. Nevins had long owned a vineyard in the Alexander Valley. Together they started the winery in 2001, naming it for Dutcher Creek, which crosses into Dry Creek alongside the winery’s estate vineyard. Mathy figures she came along about 10 years earlier than they had planned, but it was the right fit.</p><p>For her, it was the culmination of an exhaustive five-year search around the world for the right spot. During her search, Mathy’s requirements were clear: she wanted an existing winery that was already making premium wines, had a community focus and, crucially, a viable business model. She wanted no empty plots of land needing development, beckoning as a false field of dreams.</p><p>After eliminating Europe (too far), Washington state (too remote) and Oregon (even more remote), Mathy narrowed her search to St. Helena and Healdsburg, falling in love with the towns and the wine-growing regions around them, as well as being impressed by the number of people regularly coming through to taste and buy wines. Dutcher Crossing fit the bill on all accounts.</p><p>“It’s hard to find,” she said. “This is everybody’s dream and they get to live it while they’re with us.”</p><p>To that end, Mathy takes the hospitality aspect of her job very seriously, rising early every day to correspond with hundreds of wine club members, post messages to her followers on Facebook and otherwise give anyone who is a fan of Dutcher Crossing a chance to feel like a part of things. She’s equally present in the tasting room, eager to greet visitors in person, her soft yellow Lab, Dutchess, always by her side.</p><p>“I just don’t have enough hours in the day to do everything that I want,” she added. “I’m still excited to come to work every day. I can’t get here fast enough. If I’m up at 4 (a.m.), logic says I should be here by 5 at the latest.”</p><p>Her family is as involved as they can be. Her mom travels out several times a year from Wisconsin to bake goodies for wine club shipments (she makes some 2,000 cookies during Passport weekend alone) and accept the many invitations to lunch and dinner that pour in when she’s in town.</p><p>“She corresponds with 300 or 400 wine club members,” Mathy said of her mom. “They write letters back. She goes and sees the growers and gives them a hard time, tries to negotiate prices down — ‘You should give my daughter a discount.’ She was a big support behind my dad being successful and it’s been that same concept, her helping us be successful.”</p><p>Mathy’s older brothers, Steve and Scott, who run the family business back home, also love to come out to the winery, finally convinced that the wine business is a real business, with real work involved.</p><p>“Steve (asked me), do you really work?” Mathy recalled. “Then he tried to find me on a Saturday morning and I was at the office at 6 a.m. He said, ‘Oh, you’re not kidding. You just don’t think anybody works, it’s so pretty out here.’ He got to see there’s work behind the scenes. It’s not just parties and fun and events.”</p><p>Mathy has already grown the business from 4,000 to 8,000 cases a year with 98 percent of the wine sold directly through the tasting room and its popular wine club, an enviable way of running a winery but one that requires a hands-on approach.</p><p>“She’s an incredibly hard worker,” said Tina Maple, co-owner with her husband Tom of Dry Creek Valley’s Maple Vineyards, which supplies zinfandel and petite sirah to Dutcher Crossing. “She asks the right questions. She’s very respectful of our grape-growing and trusts us implicitly, which is nice. She’s a good friend as well.”</p><p>The Maples are among the growers that have helped Dutcher Crossing become a noted producer of single-vineyard cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel, chardonnay and two signature cab-syrah blends, with winemaker Kerry Damskey behind the barrels since the winery’s first harvest. He has happily remained Mathy’s winemaker as well.</p><p>Earlier this year, Mathy and Damskey replanted some of the estate with a blend of grenache, syrah, mourvedre, cinsault and counoise. They call it their Chateauneuf-du-Pape vineyard in homage to one of their favorite winegrowing regions in France.</p><p>The wines’ labels were also given a new look, showcasing a vintage high-wheel bicycle. It was the last Christmas gift Mathy received from her dad, a symbol, she says, of “the guiding power of my father’s imagination.”</p><p><em>Virginie Boone is a freelance wine writer based in Sonoma County. She can be reached at virginieboone@yahoo.com or visit wineabout.pressdemocrat.com.</em></p>