Some new faces and new wines are likely to appear at the Home Winemakers Classic a few years from now.

About 30 people gathered among the vines in Copia’s demonstration vineyard recently for the Vines to Wine workshop, aimed at people who own a very small vineyard or are interested in making their own wine, or people who want to plant a few vines in their yards.

And although they found out from a vineyardist and a winemaker that it’s considerably more work than they thought, no one appeared to be deterred.

The seminar was the brainchild of Colby Eierman, Copia’s director of gardens. The program was a sell-out, with wine enthusiasts coming from all around the Northern California area.

Stan Zervas, of Silverado Farming Co., a vineyard management company, opened the program by telling the audience that winegrapes are unlike any other fruit or vegetable crop that people eat in original form, “You’re not growing grapes, you’re growing wine.”

Designing a vineyard

Zervas guided the group through an explanation of how a vineyard is designed, emphasizing the importance of matching rootstock and clones with the soil and climate to achieve the best results. “Look at the soil and see what you have,” he said. “Get a soil scientist, dig a pit and look at the depth and type of soil.” If you can’t hire a soil scientist, get some post hole samples and send them to a lab for analysis, he added.

Varietals ripen at different times and the location often dictates that, he said. Choosing a clone is “based on the climate and the winemaking desires,” he said, and pointed out that even within a specific varietal, different clones have different flavor characteristics.

He used Copia’s demonstration vineyard to show the types of trellising, explaining the importance of managing the canopy to foster quality in the grape clusters, and he discussed how a vineyard should be oriented so clusters on each side of the vine receive an equal amount of sunshine.

Zervas’ presentation was comprehensive, also covering irrigation, weed control, cover crops, pest control and pruning.

Burke Owens, Copia’s assistant director of wine, poured three wines for attendees — a 2002 Jordan cabernet sauvignon, and two 2002 cabs from Robert Mondavi Winery’s vineyard in Oakville, one made from grapes grown in a high vigor site, the other from grapes in a low vigor vineyard.

He guided the guests through the tasting, explaining what low vigor and high vigor means to the finished wine, thus emphasizing Zervas’ points about putting the right rootstock and clone in the right kind of soil composition.

He drew a laugh while explaining why vines should be stressed to achieve maximum concentration of flavors in the berries: “You want your vine to be like a super-model — you want it starved.”

Now that the group had learned what to do about their vineyards, attention was turned to making wine.

Turning juice into wine

Pat Watkins, of Napa Fermentation Supplies, took the group on a step-by-step description of the winemaking process, showing them equipment they would need as home winemakers.

Since winegrapes were still in the growing stages, he used Red Flame grapes. He used a refractometer and a hydrometer to measure the Brix level, showed a small crusher/destemmer and a basket press and pointed out that using the latter would be hard work — you have to keep pushing and pulling the lever to get the juice out of the grapes.

He talked about the use of oak barrels but pointed out that using a glass carboy with oak chips or sticks is an alternative to the more expensive barrels.

How to store wine was also on the agenda — 55 degrees is optimal, but for home winemakers, it can be “whatever you can store it at.” He suggested using natural cooling — putting a fan in the ceiling and a vent at the floor level to take advantage of the natural cool night air occurring in the Napa Valley.

He finished his presentation by showing a small three-unit bottling machine and a hand-operated corker, then explained how to let the wine sit to allow the cork to settle down and allow the air to work itself out through the cork.

And, “when all else fails, make vinegar,” he said. “But you have to have good wine to make good vinegar.”

Watkins said grapes aren’t the only fruit from which wine can be made — “You can make wine out of any fruit that has sugar content. You must have sugar to be able to ferment.”

The audience was quite enthusiastic about the program.

Marsh Wildman, of Sacramento, has 25 vines at his home and tried to make wine last year. “Today I learned I didn’t have the proper fermentation container,” he said. “I put the wine in bottles (to let it ferment) and after about 10 days or two weeks, I came home and found that it all disgorged all over my kitchen.”

He said he also learned that he wasn’t taking care of his vines in the right way. “I (now) know what I don’t know,” he said.

Gene and Tracy Rodig of Novato are thinking about planting some grapes at their home, so they enrolled in the program to see what they had to do. “I didn’t know how much work was involved,” Gene said. “It was good to hear all of this at one time. I’d rather hear it now than start (the vineyard) and find out later.”

Tracy agreed: “This gave us a lot of information in a precise way.”