Dear Friends,
This weekend we celebrate 5 years of wine tasting at Great Bear Vineyards!
Our story started as a simple passion for wine and food, and a desire to grow produce in harmony with nature. The original plan was to make “2 or 3 barrels for family and friends,” but then Jenny became a great winemaker, so we opened our home and garden one day a month to share her wonderful wines with a larger group of friends. After a couple of years, along came COVID and we realized how lucky we were to be able to safely host and serve people our wines, so we opened our doors a few more days a week to share our space and wine. We now make and sell around 100 barrels, 2,000 cases or 20,000 bottles a year.
Our passion, Jenny’s training at UC Davis, the support from many of the UCD viticulture and enology professors and staff (including continuing winemaking advice from Andrew Waterhouse), and a sound winemaking philosophy have allowed GBV wines to win so many awards. Some of the highlights:
Double Gold medal for Cabernet Sauvignon, Clone 6, in the most expensive Cab S category at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
96-Points for Albarino
93-Points for Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Reserve, and 92-Points for The Graduate
91-Points Chardonnay & Roussanne from the Wine Enthusiast Magazine
We have been lucky enough to host special celebrations for many guests: from weddings to birthdays, graduations, Bar Mitzvahs, retirements, and Celebrations of Life. At some point our courtyard garden became too small for all our guests, so over the 5 years we have expanded to the Palm Garden, the Dance Hall, and the Great Barn & Picnic Lawn.
And celebrations of love...
We are passionate about wine and that is where we excel, but we also love food, so we have pairing events - cheese & wine, chocolate & wine, donuts & wine! There are fabulous Farm-to-Fork dinners and Food Truck Fridays. Our Wine Club dinners and lobster boil events are really special for us, as we join in as guests sitting family-style and sharing conversations. Great wine, great food and great company! These are wonderful evenings.
We are family owned and family run. Jenny is the winemaker, Marcus drives the tractor and leads the night-time harvests, Holly runs the website, Cara the Instagram and photos, Ruth the artwork, and Michael drives the quad bike at harvest.
Everyone helps with harvest, including Grandma...
Of course, we now also have a great team of people who help us. We have grown from Jenny, Marcus, and the kids to 3 fulltime staff and an amazing crew of Tasting Room Associates, vineyard workers, and harvest helpers. Kathryn, our Tasting Room Manager, just celebrated one year leading the team!
Great wines start in the vineyard. We are able to grow premium grapes thanks to our Rincon loam soils, warm days, and nights cooled by the delta breeze. Our vineyard and management practices were designed by Mike Anderson (retired from UC Davis Research Center in Oakville, Napa) to ensure our grapes are the best they can be, using techniques such as deficit irrigation and permanent cover cropping. The vineyard is hand-tended at each stage, from pruning to harvest to ensure each bunch is grown to perfection. We use organic techniques and will be certified later this year. And, we were recently recognized by the agricultural industry for our sustainable agricultural practices, winning an international award in Brazil earlier this year!
We grow harmony with nature. Throughout the year you can find wildflowers surrounding the vines and orchard. There are jackrabbits, bunnies, squirrels, foxes and coyotes, as well as frogs, lizards, and snakes (friendly gopher snakes that is!). We have breeding pairs of barn owls, great horned owls, kestrels, hawks, swallows in the atrium, and tiny hummingbirds nesting in the vines.
In addition to the vines, we grow olives and lavender, and have an orchard of mixed fruit trees. Our lavender is in bloom and especially beautiful to behold-come pick a bunch. Our fruit is picked by community harvest for distribution to local people and charities.
We are especially proud of our exquisite olive oil. We pick the olives early, when they are still 70% green, so the oil tastes fresh and slightly peppery. It is sold in small gift bottles, as it is much too tempting to have in one large bottle.
Beyond the wine and food pairings, we also love a good activity: we regularly invite musicians, yoga instructors, florists and artists who host paint & sips. Look out for the sunflower Paint & Sip coming up later this month – it’s a delight! A special shout out to David Kyle is much deserved – both as a solo pianist and as part of a full jazz band, who kept us singing and dancing throughout the pandemic when most places were closed. Our personal favorite is the now infamous New Year’s Eve party…which is always such a fabulous way to ring in the new year!
And the music...
To celebrate our 5th anniversary, we have a fun packed weekend planned!
Please buy tickets for each of the events in our website store: Reservations & Shop
Friday, noon-8pm, June 9th
6-7pm - Salsa Dance Class with Karla
5-8pm - Food Truck, 5-8pm: Sahara serving gyros, kebabs & more. No outside food at this event – please support this local business.
7-8pm – Raices, an all-women Latin band, will be playing one straight hour of cumbias, so get your dancing shoes ready!
Saturday, noon-4pm
Come celebrate with us with special offers on glasses, bottles and cases of wine!
$5 glass of Rose
$40 bottle of bubbly
Enjoy a cheese or charcuterie box from Mabel’s Farm or bring your own picnic
Sunday, 10.30am-3pm
New Orleans- style JAZZ BRUNCH
The Tiptop Trio & Friends Jazz Band will be playing two sets from 11am-1.30pm New Orleans Blues and Jazz standards from the 1920s to the 1970s
Nola’s Food Truck 10.30am-2pm serving seafood gumbo, chicken Jambalaya and other New Orleans favorites! No outside food at this event please.
Thank you to all our guests, friends and helpers for your patronage and support over the past 5 years. We couldn’t have done it without you! It has been a pleasure to host, serve, and meet you all.
Living the dream!
Jenny & Marcus
