Sonoma County wineries offer ways for visitors to immerse themselves in harvest

Last year before the harvest, Thomas Bellec noticed a trail of green grapes blanketing the vineyard floor at Windsor’s Bricoleur Vineyards. The executive chef of the winery, who had just been hired, panicked.

“I had no idea that a ‘green drop’ was taking place,” he said.

In viticulture, a green drop is when grapes that are lagging in ripening are picked and discarded to ensure the uniformity and quality of the grapes on the vine.

“I thought it was a waste of fruit,” Bellec said.

So he scooped up the unripe chardonnay grapes to craft verjus (“vair-zhoo”), the French term for the juice made from unripe grapes.

This tasty concoction has been used for centuries in classic European and Middle Eastern fare. Today verjus is au courant, used in high-end restaurants and referenced by celebrity chefs. But while known among foodies and widely produced in France, Bellec said, he knows of only one other winery (Sonoma’s Scribe) crafting verjus in Northern California.

Bellec plans to use verjus again this fall, in a dinner at the winery to mark what’s a pivotal time of year in Wine Country — harvest season.

The dinner at Bricoleur Vineyards is just one way winemakers, wineries, farmers and chefs are offering for visitors to experience harvest. At Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma, for example, you can take an off-road tour through the vineyards with family member Rob Bundschu.

In the sidebar accompanying this story and in the story below on grape stomping, you’ll find more ways to experience this year’s harvest. But for now, buckle up for our ride through the vines as we take you from a harvest spectator to an insider.

The trail of verjus

“I love using verjus in a marinade, a salad dressing or a sauce because it’s subtle and floral and won’t interfere with the flavor of the wine it’s paired with,” Bellec said.

The chef plans to use the 2023 Estate Verjus in a marinade with bay scallops for the winery’s Seasons Harvest Dinner on Saturday. He’ll serve the scallops with the winery’s estate olive oil, braised leeks and pickled cauliflower in the four-course dinner that’s open to the public. (See verjus recipes at bricoleurvineyards.com.)

Workers at Bricoleur Vineyards pressed 400 pounds of chardonnay and pinot noir grapes in August. Verjus can be made from red grapes, white grapes or a mix of the two. Producing verjus is similar to producing wine except the grapes don’t go through a fermentation (so there’s no alcohol in it). The fruit is crushed, chilled in steel tanks and filtered before it’s bottled.

Inspired by Bellec’s initiative, this year the team at Bricoleur produced 12 cases of verjus in 375-milliliter bottles. This is a substantial increase from Bellec’s maiden voyage last year, producing just twelve 750-milliliter bottles. With a bigger pool of verjus to draw from, Bellec will use half in the kitchen and allot the other half for wine club members.

The verjus aficionado, now 51, began his messy love affair with cooking when he was a kid, playing with flour, sugar and chocolate. He experimented in the back of his grandparents’ Boulangerie-Patisserie in his hometown of Concarneau, Brittany, France. He began his apprenticeship with his grandparents when he was 14.

With his toque in hand, Bellec found his way to California in 2014 as the executive chef at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel. He joined Bricoleur in 2022, integrating his culinary skills in a winery setting after more than two decades with the Four Seasons’ chain.

Today Bellec embraces autumn, as wineries begin the dance of picking grapes they’ve pampered all year long.

“Harvest season is a very exciting time for me,” Bellec said. “It’s the tail end of summer and the start of fall. You still have the later-summer crops available to you and the fall products, too — the best of both worlds. It’s a bountiful time of the year.”

Take a vineyard tour

Bundschu joked that growing up on the estate at Gundlach Bundschu was like growing up anywhere else. The estate just had a bigger backyard.

Now 320 acres, the property has 270 acres planted to vines.

The sixth generation in the winery’s lineage, Bundschu is now a tour guide, giving visitors a chance to play winemaker prepping for harvest.

During the 90-minute harvest tour, for $105 per person, visitors will climb aboard the winery’s Pinzgauer, a Swiss Army transport vehicle, for an off-roading experience across the estate. They’ll snack on cheese and charcuterie along the way as they view a range of varietals: tempranillo, pinot noir, merlot, gewürztraminer and chardonnay.

When he stops at a block of pinot noir grapes on the tour, Bundschu passes around a refractometer, a tool that looks like a mini telescope. He explains that it measures the sugar content in grapes, the Brix measurement. Winemakers use the refractometer to gauge ripening; the Brix measurement signals the best time to pick grapes.

“We use it on the tour to see where our pinot noir and merlot are in its development,” Bundschu said. “I tell guests my dad (vintner Jim Bundschu) has been using a refractometer for decades in the vineyard.”

Understanding how a grape comes to full ripeness, he said, is a fundamental part of the tour.

“I share that as the grapes ripen, the sugars increase and the acidity decreases until they achieve a perfect balance and are ready for harvest,” Bundschu said. “I also like to explain how major weather events like excessive heat or rain can affect the ripeness and quality of a vintage.”

Delving into Gundlach Bundschu’s farming practices is also a key part of the tour.

In 2019, the winery began farming its land organically. Now, all of its vineyard land is in the process of becoming California Certified Organic Farming-certified.

“I tell our guests that in 2012 we became Fish Friendly Farming Certified, meaning we don’t put any chemicals in the soil that would adversely affect the creeks and tributaries around the property,” Bundschu said.

Visitors on the tour also stop at the water-recycling area, he said.

“For over 10 years, we pumped production water down to a wetlands in order to naturally filter through pea gravel and wet grass and then reused (the water) to irrigate vines,” Bundschu said.

Beyond water usage, Bundschu likes to give visitors a broad look at winemaking through the lens of American Viticulture Areas, or AVAs.

“We cover AVAs, including our own Sonoma Coast and Sonoma Valley,” Bundschu said of the tour. “We talk about how cooling influences from the Pacific Ocean and the San Pablo Bay just south of us create an ideal environment for growing cooler maritime varietals and styles of wine.”

At the end of the tour, Bundschu points out the journey of the grape beyond the vineyard. Grapes, he tells visitors, are trucked back to the crush pad where they’re pressed into juice. Then they’re inoculated with yeast for fermentation, the process that converts sugar to alcohol.

“Fermentation usually takes two to four weeks, and some of the new wine will be moved to barrels for aging, also making room in the tanks for more grapes to arrive,” he said. “Finally, after racking and fining at the end, the wine is bottled and stored for a period of time before being released to the public.”

Harvest brings visitors

September is a peak month for tourists in Wine Country, according to data compiled by Sonoma County Tourism.

The intrigue of a vineyard tour during harvest, Bundschu is convinced, is nibbling in the vineyard.

“I think it’s the fruit itself,” he said. “People love to taste the fruit on the vine. They get an opportunity to taste the fruit behind the wine.”

Bundschu’s first harvest memory was from when he was 6 or 7. He was riding in his father’s red truck with a 5-gallon bucket as they set off to pick grapes alongside vineyard workers.

“My dad was a farmer and to this day, he’s checking the vineyards every day,” he said. “Mother Nature is always throwing you something new.”

Bundschu said he likes to give visitors the full breadth of what it means to be a farmer of grapes.

“I like to give guests a sense of the blood, sweat and tears behind the wine,” he said. “When you buy a bottle of wine at a restaurant, you don’t get a behind-the-scenes look at it.”

You can reach Wine Writer Peg Melnik at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pegmelnik.