Santa Clara Valley Wineries Celebrate Spring

By Emma Krasov, photography by Yuri Krasov
Mid-Spring, California Wine Country turns emerald green with yellow, purple, and orange wild flowers framing its vineyards and rural roads. It’s time for barrel tasting and new releases. 27 wineries of Santa Clara Valley presented their latest pride and joy at the annual Wine Celebration and BBQ at Casa de Fruta Country Park in the town of Hollister yesterday. The event picked this reporter’s interest for two reasons.
First, Cinnabar (cinnabarwine.com), Fortino (fortinowinery.com), Rapazzini (rapazzini.com), Guglielmo (guglielmowinery.com), Casa de Fruta (casadefruta.com) and other well-established and favorite names were among the participating wineries.
Secondly, Hollister, founded by farmers and ranchers in 1872 on Calaveras fault line, lately made the news in the scientific community with its curiously mild and non-destructive earthquakes. While the entire Golden State is mercilessly split and criss-crossed with threatening fault lines that produce major, sometimes devastating, shocks once in so many years, Hollister’s creeping fault is continuously widening, gently rocking the town in a cradle of its chalky soil.


While there were very few passers by on sun-drenched city streets mid-day Saturday, Casa de Fruta Park was bursting with life (and wine), accompanied by live music of The Houserockers.



The weather was cooperating, so romantic couples and groups of friends of drinking age from Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Saratoga, San Martin, and Campbell were enjoying a steak-and-pasta lunch and dancing under the trees to show support for their favorite wineries.


Many visitors were wine club members or had special ties to local wineries, where they used to celebrate their weddings and events, or just had friends and relatives working there. In the upcoming summer months, there are many more exciting open-air events to come to the area: Morgan Hill Aquatics Center Mushroom Mardi Gras on May 29-30 (morganhill.ca.gov); Tourism Golf Tournament at Eagle Ridge Golf Course on June 18 (eagleridgegc.com); SBC Saddle Horse Show & Rodeo Parade in Hollister on June 24, and Annual Street Festival on July 17 (downtownhollister.org); Gilroy Garlic Festival on July 23-25 (gilroygarlicfestival.com), and Gilroy Gardens National Friendship Day on August 1 (gilroygardens.org).