The genesis of this story is in a bottle of wine shared one evening at Zuzu by members of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers and wine writers from the Register.

A question came up: Why do some growers call themselves winegrowers? Isn’t this a peculiar notion that gives rise to an image of grapevines sprouting green and gold bottles?

“I’ll get into trouble for saying this,” said Jim Verhey, “but there are winegrowers and there are farmers.”

Trouble? Little did he know. In short order Verhey, managing director of Silverado Winegrowers and a board member of Napa Valley Grapegrowers, had been persuaded to volunteer his own vineyard to be the subject of a series of articles for the Register that will follow the growing season through harvest.

Starting this week, with bud break imminent, we’ll follow events in the 16-acre parcel Verhey owns in the Oak Knoll region just south of Yountville, where he grows sauvignon blanc grapes.

The vineyard

Fifteen years ago wheat was growing on this land, Verhey said, as he led a tour through the two side-by-side vineyard parcels, one growing grapes destined for Honig winery and the other for Duckhorn.

“There’s something about land,” said Verhey, who grew up in St. Paul, Minn. “I grew up with land; I love the concept of working with land.”

Verhey came west in the 1960s to study at Stanford University, where his roommate was Tim Llewellyn, a graduate of Napa High School in an obscure valley north of San Francisco. Verhey recalled, “One day he said to me, ‘Do you want to go taste some wine?’”

But Verhey ended up in Los Angeles. “I’m an old Price Waterhouse accountant,” he said, laughing. “I’m also still associated on a part time basis with Kaiser Steel.”

If land is in your blood, however, it’s hard to get away from it. In 1982 Verhey bought his land in Napa; in 1996 he and his family moved here. Silverado Winegrowers, he said, is a large independent grower in California that owns more than 2,000 acres in Sonoma, Napa, Monterey and Lodi. “In Napa we have more than 500 acres,” he said

But this parcel is his own personal vineyard where he lives with his family, two red-tail hawks, barn owls and assorted other creatures. He named it Ryan’s Vineyard for his 16-year-old son, a student at Justin-Siena. Fourteen acres are planted to grapes, but he’s also growing a fledgling fruit orchard near a giant old oak that is home to a bee hive.

Originally Verhey planted merlot and sauvignon grapes on the 14 acres. After eight years, they switched entirely to sauvignon blanc. “We could make good merlot, but not great,” he said. The quality of the sauvignon blanc grapes raised here, however “is A-plus,” he said.

“We farm on a sustainable basis, but not an organic basis,” Verhey said. “Sustainable farming, which is surprisingly close to organic, probably represents 95 percent-plus of the vineyards in Napa. ... My vineyard includes sustainable practices such as permanent cover crops, owl/raptor boxes, minimal pesticide use, natural compost, etc. Organic farming is hard for small, individual farmers who sell their grapes to wineries because of the higher costs and potential risks.”

The bottom line, he said, is “It’s so much fun. When I see the grapes growing, I’m just so happy.”

The team

Winegrowing: The concept is that the wines that have made this valley famous begin in the vineyards, and every step along the way is planned to nurture the highest quality. “If you wait till harvest it’s just too late,” Verhey said.

 This is no simple undertaking. Verhey’s vineyards are farmed by Al Buckland Vineyard Management. Touring the vineyard with Verhey were the two key members of the team: Juvenal Magdaleno and Garrett Buckland. With 23 years of experience working in vineyards, Magdaleno supervises all of Buckland’s Napa vineyards, including Verhey’s.

Buckland, a UC Davis graduate who “grew up driving a tractor” for his father, Al, is vice president of Premier Viticulture Services, a company formed five years by Verhey with Al Buckland. The purpose of this company, Verhey said, is “to help me bring new technology to my vineyards and to interface with my winery clients.”

The company “has been hugely successful,” Verhey said, and now also provides services to clients like Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Cakebread and several others.

A key concept is working with wineries and wine makers. “Fifty percent of quality is communication,” Verhey said. “One of the biggest problems we have is wineries don’t communicate.”

Under the Premier approach, Garrett Buckland is in charge of strategy, working with the wineries to determine what they want and coming up with a plan. “In all our meetings with the wineries, we encourage Juvenal to be there, too,” Verhey said. “If he understands what the goals are, it’s easier to carry out the plans.”

Verhey used a football metaphor to explain the structure: If he’s the owner, then Buckland is the coach and Magdaleno is the quarterback. Working with Magdaleno is a crew of six to eight men. “They work on all of Buckland’s vineyards, the same six to eight guys. We try to spread everything so we keep a smaller group employed most of the year — the same guys have been doing my vineyard for five years.”

One begins to get an idea of why a bottle of Napa Valley wine costs what it does.

Pruning

The crew has just finished pruning, which Verhey describes as “always one of my favorite times of year.” The effect of the strategies worked out with the wineries is evident in the different appearance of the two vineyards. Different styles of pruning have been used during the dormant winter season. For the Honig grapes, the workers prune using the cane method, leaving four long canes from the first pruning; the cordon method, for the Duckhorn grapes, has all the canes cut levelly from the first pruning. The different techniques will “dramatically affect the styles of wine” made from the same varietal at Honig and Duckhorn, Verhey said, noting that the Honig sauvignon blanc is more distinctly floral, Duckhorn more citrus.

“Pruning is the most important step. Period.” Verhey said.

The outlook

With pruning complete, the vineyard team waits for bud break, which Verhey estimated will be the week of March 19. “You have to wait until the soil warms up to about 55 degrees,” he said. “Right now the buds are starting to push; they’re literally pushing through the outside of the bark. We’re going to be in full bud break next week.”

Then begins a time of watching the sky. “We have two concerns,” Verhey said. “It’s early.” The danger of frost in the valley isn’t usually gone until mid-April. Frost after bud break is something no one wants.

The other worry is rainfall. “This year we’ve only had about 14 inches of rain,” he said. “Last year we had 40. The average should be around 25. We would have liked more rain — we just like a normal rainfall, but we’d like all of the rain to occur prior to the end of March.”

If there’s not enough rain, there’s not as much moisture in the soil, Verhey said. The moisture in the soil from last year’s heavy rains was a factor that many felt helped minimize the damage from the intense heat waves in July.

Without the moisture in the soil, “the vines may start to be stressed from heat earlier, and that doesn’t portend well. We’ll have to irrigate earlier.

“If we don’t get any more rain it’s an irrigation issue. On the other hand if we get a lot of rain two or three weeks or a month from now that’s going to give too much water to vines and we’ll have to slow it down.

“If we get rain, that’s bad because the wines are already growing. Once you get into bud break and bloom you want the soil to start drying out. If you get too much rain, the plants go wild. You need the canopy early on but then you want the vine to stop growing and focus on the fruit. It’s hard to get the vine to slow down.

“That’s where we are now,” Verhey concluded. What’s ahead, no one really knows. “Last year we had 10-11 inches of rain between March 11 and April. If we don’t have any rain then this year is like 1997, and that was a killer year, one of the greatest years we ever had in terms of quality and quantity.

“But we know it’s not going to be ’97,” he added, because no year is an exact repeat of another.

In the upcoming months, we’ll watch the vineyard as it goes through its season — bloom, when the vines flower in May; set, the time when the grapes form, in June; veraison, when the grapes change color, in July, and finally harvest, as summer draws to a close — and we’ll see what Mother Nature has planned for this year.