Hi there. I have taken you out of Santa Cruz County and we are just on the outskirts. Actually, are we in Santa Cruz County? Or are we in San Martin, which is not Santa Cruz County. Cut!
Hi, we are at Clos LaChance, which is a fabulously beautiful winery in San Martin. It’s just outside of Santa Cruz County. In fact, it’s on the outskirts of Watsonville and this beautiful venue captures the essence of nature, and beauty, and fabulous wines as well. They are a winery that is a venue or a venue option for weddings as well as wine tasting. They also sometimes have concerts in the summer. I’ve been here, I’ve toured it, I’ve drank their wine, I highly recommend it. We’re gonna go inside and check it out.
I’m Shemeika Fox, your Santa Cruz real estate expert, and I’ve stepped slightly outside of Santa Cruz but it’s all within the fabulous area of where we live and love. How did you get into this? Like this is so specific. Yeah. I grew up around it. My parents drank wine. My dad would always pull a pinot noir and say, “Smell this, tell me what you smell.” “All right, smell this cabernet.” “What do you think it smells like?”
When it came time to go to college. Everything kinda came back. I started in that and just absolutely fell in love. Was your dad so proud? Oh absolutely. Went to Cal Poly, got my degree in wine-making. I got out of college, spent some time down in the Paso area, up in Sonoma making wine. I got a really unique opportunity to go down to Australia and make wine. After I’d bounced around a lot, I knew I wanted to come back to this region. Started working here almost 13 years now. Dang! I know.
What’s your specialty here at Clos LaChance? Beautiful, well done. Here at Clos LaChance Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Wine Region, we have actually 18 different varietals. So we have more Bordeaux varietals, Rome varietals, we have all five Bordeauxs with Cab, Cab Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Merlot, we have Zinfandel, we have white varietals like Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Semillon, Marsanne. In the Santa Cruz mountains, it’s mainly Pinot and Chard. There’s quite a bit of mountain Cabernet as well, which does really well depending on where your location is, so we have the great opportunity of having the climate that can stand a lot of different varietals.
Do you have a favorite? No, that’s like saying you have a favorite child. Don’t you, though? Yeah, of course.
You’re for hire. So, like, say that I just bought a house in the Santa Cruz mountains and it was always my dream to have a vineyard. So you’ll, like, come in, and what? What do you do? So that’s actually how this winery was started. The Murphy family, they had friends start saying, “Hey, I want a vineyard in my backyard.” From there, it grew into a large-scale winery, but we still kept that core model. So we still manage over 45 vineyards throughout the Santa Cruz mountains. We still do installations, and essentially, the process is really simple. You don’t have to do anything, essentially. Once the installation is complete, we’ll partner up on a maintenance contract, so we’ll maintain the vineyards as long as you want to keep us coming out to take care of them. We love people that are hands-on, so if you have an interest in helping, be it pruning or weed whacking or what have you, you can be a part of it. So if you want a private vineyard on your house, call Jason.
We’ll give you his phone number, his private, personal phone number, or his website. Or both. Or both, and I highly recommend it, and I also recommend coming out and checking out Clos LaChance Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Wine Region. It’s beautiful out here, and I have drink, drunk, drinked, drink- Drank. Drank the wine before, not today. I’m sober today, but it is fabulously delicious, so check it out, and if you want to have a wedding out here, that’s also an amazingly beautiful venue. It’s so good, Jason!
To Install a Private Vineyard in YOUR Home, Contact Jason: Phone: 831-212-3991 Email: jason@clos.com
Jason Robideaux is Clos LaChance’s VP of Winery and Vineyard Operations, overseeing all activities that take place on the production floor. These include all wine movements, treatments and adjustments that may take place in the crush pit, tank cellar and/or the barrel cellar as well. Jason also helps manage bottling schedules and supply inventory for CLC products. He joined the Clos LaChance Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Wine Region team just prior to the 2007 crush, after recently returning from the Hunter Valley in Australia’s beautiful Wine Country, where he worked the 2007 Harvest Season as a Vintage Winemaker for Rosemount Estate. Prior to working the 2007 crush in Australia, Jason has worked all over the state including Valley of the Moon Winery in Sonoma and TAZ Vineyards in Templeton, where he focused most of his duties on Lab and Cellar work. Jason attended Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where he received his degree in Wine and Viticulture emphasizing in Enology.
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