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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Feature: February 2007
Sweet Dreams Come True
Clarksburg’s long-slumbering Old Sugar Mill gets reborn as a wine hub
Story by Douglas Curley
As a child, John Carvalho Jr. enjoyed taking long summer-afternoon fishing trips with his dad and grandfather. A Sacramento native who grew up in the Pocket area, John spent many of his formative years exploring the meandering waterways known as the Sacramento River Delta.
It was during this childhood daze that the young Carvalho first noticed the foreboding — yet elegant — brick structure along the shores of the Delta near the town of Clarksburg. Built in 1935, the Old Sugar Mill was a bustling hub of sugar beet processing and a major regional employment center for nearly six decades. At its peak production, the mill processed more than 840,000 gallons of liquid sugar and 1 million 100-pound sacks of granulated sugar annually. Due to economic pressure from sugar imports, the mill closed in 1993.
By the time the last sack of sugar came off the conveyor belt at the aging Clarksburg facility, the onetime Delta wanderer had become a successful Sacramento area commercial real estate developer. In the late ’90s, he was working with a firm that was putting together a lending package for a group interested in purchasing the Sugar Mill property. When that deal fell through, Carvalho stepped in.
“As I walked the property and through the old buildings, I could visualize the mill at its peak. With thousands of workers processing tons of sugar beets brought by truckloads from farmers throughout the region, it truly was a central hub of activity,” Carvalho recalls. “It was my belief I could bring back that mix of activity and service to local farmers.”
His vision for the 44,000-square-foot structure and the surrounding 105 acres of property was to create a mixed-use, fully self-contained project including elements of residential, commercial and industrial development.
After six years of doing little else, Carvalho opened Phase 1 of his vision for a gateway Delta destination in late 2006. The renovated brick structure now houses the tasting facilities for three local wineries, a couple of art galleries and gift shops, and a storage and crushing facility. This first phase can also host private receptions and features an adjacent patio and lawn area.
Just as he had to take the ultimate purchase and redevelopment of the project upon his own shoulders, Carvalho also had to become a trailblazing vintner in order to attract others to his newly rehabbed brick structure.
“I began buying crush equipment in 2002 with the hopes of providing a crush facility for regional grape growers,” he says. “Although local farmers lauded the idea, my timing proved to be terrible as just then Two-Buck Chuck was ripping through the local industry.”
What Carvalho refers to is the $1.99-a-bottle rollout of Charles Shaw wines that gained much attention and acclaim from discount-minded wine drinkers, but gained nothing but disdain from local grape growers who saw their revenues plummet. But Carvalho figured this too would pass. He was also determined to attract local wineries to not only crush at the facility, but also to establish tasting rooms in the halls of the old mill, alongside art galleries and eventually eateries.
“I received a lot of interest from established and startup wineries,” he says. “But nobody wanted to be the first. Several wanted to be the second.”
It became obvious developer Carvalho was now to also become winery owner Carvalho.
With the expert guidance of winemaker John Alexander Hills, Carvalho Family Wines now has four crushes under its belt. The 2003 crush took place at a Lodi facility, the past three at the Old Sugar Mill. All grapes purchased by the winery are grown locally. Today, Carvalho Family Wines’ portfolio includes a growing list of regional varietals, including a 2004 Chenin Blanc (see review) that received a gold medal at the 2005 California State Fair competition.
Besides making award-winning wines and attracting grapes to be crushed from Clarksburg-area farmers, Carvalho’s Old Sugar Mill is now also home to two more wineries: Heringer Estates and Todd Taylor. Carvalho hopes to have as many as three more taking up space along the halls of the spacious first-phase facility by the end of the year.
The Heringer family has been farming Clarksburg acreage for six generations. The local farmers have 120 acres in vineyards, and for years have been selling to wineries throughout the state. Mike Heringer, who represents the sixth generation of farmers, is the first winemaker of the clan. After graduating five years ago from Fresno State with a degree in agricultural business, the young Heringer cut his wine teeth at Raymond Vineyards in Napa. In ’02, the family farmers officially entered the wine business with their first crush.
Michael’s father, Stephen, describes the Old Sugar Mill opportunity as a “deal made in heaven.
“It was like a homecoming for our grape-growing business,” the elder Heringer explains. “I live a mile away. During crush, it makes it very easy for Michael and I to do quality-control monitoring.”
Heringer Estates bottled 2,000 cases of local varietals last year, and while that number will gradually grow, a vast majority of its grapes — a whopping 98 percent last year — will continue to be sold elsewhere. Stephen’s brother, Duke, notes his family members are still grape growers first, winemakers second.
“We want to establish a reputation for developing premium wines with premium Clarksburg grapes at Heringer Estates,” Duke says, “but we also have an ulterior motive. We want to help the Clarksburg vintage appellation grow.”
Joining Carvalho Family Wines and Heringer Estates at the Old Sugar Mill in January of this year was Todd Taylor. The first-generation family-owned winery crushed its first 40 tons of grapes at the facility in the fall of 2006. It bottled 2,500 cases in January, and opened a tasting room soon thereafter.
Location had a lot to do with the wine’s namesake, Todd Taylor (who is still fully employed in the packaging industry), setting up shop at the renovated Clarksburg plant: He and his young family reside in nearby Rancho Murieta.
Taylor’s entrance into the wine business had mostly to do with evolving tastes. The Bay Area native and his childhood friend began making beer — Taylor’s drink of choice at the time — when they were in college.
“As I got older, my tastes changed. I only drink wine, red wine, now,” Taylor says.
After five years at the University of California, Davis, Taylor says he developed a winemaking style that catered to his personal taste and favorite varietals: Cabernet, Zinfandel, Sangiovese and Syrah. Unlike his Sugar Mill wine mates, all of Todd Taylor’s grapes come from outside the immediate area, mostly from Monterey and Amador counties.
The original plan for this startup was for Taylor to be partnered with a longtime friend; in the end, it became exclusively a family business.
“My wife and I decided this was a dream worth pursuing,” he says. “It truly is a family business, as the only employers are my wife, my son and I.”
It’s Carvalho’s dream that the Old Sugar Mill not only become a self-contained community with retail, restaurants and residential, but also that it becomes a beacon for the entire Delta region.
“The Delta, with narrow, winding roads and heavy winter fog, can be intimidating to some,” he admits. “But this is the largest industrial site in Yolo County. It is the jewel of southern Yolo County. At the same time, it is the northernmost point of the Delta.”
Carvalho believes the Sugar Mill, just 20 minutes from downtown Sacramento, can become the gateway to the Delta.
“With the ongoing development of the Clarksburg Wine Growers Association, the historic towns and shops located along both sides of the river, and the natural beauty of the Delta and surrounding area itself, we have something very special here,” says the developer who once fished the waterways with Dad and Grandpa.
Standing in the middle of the spacious, towering brick hallway that now houses wine-tasting rooms and shops alike, Carvalho points to the windows that span the top of the west wall of the onetime sugar sack storage facility.
“Through those windows, almost every day, you can see the most gorgeous sunsets in the area,” he says.
An appellation like no other
Enfolding 64,640 acres of rich farmland spanning Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties, the Clarksburg appellation (clarksburgwinegrowers.com) is surrounded by the cooling waterways of the Sacramento River Delta. Sixteen miles long and 8 miles wide, it has more than 9,000 acres of vines.
With poorly drained clays and loam soils, this appellation combines arid conditions with a nutrient-rich base. Summer days are warm, but in late afternoon, cool breezes from the San Francisco Bay roll into the
Sacramento River Delta, preserving acidity in the ripening fruit. The air mass keeps the Clarksburg American Viticultural Area an average of 9 degrees cooler than neighboring Sacramento. More than 30 grape varietals currently thrive in the Clarksburg AVA.
Bordered by Interstate 5 on the east and Sacramento’s deep-water channel on the west, the Delta serves as the centerpiece to the Clarksburg wine area. Weighted drawbridges and swing bridges provide access to the lush agricultural lands. Small historic towns dot the riverside, and wine grape vineyards are nestled among the farmlands of row, field and orchard crops.
