Winemaker Mitri Faravashi of David Bruce Winery enjoys a sample of one of the 2,400 barrels in his winery. Los Gatos winery recently announced it was sold to Michigan-based Hillsdale College. (Photo by Laura Ness)
On the 60th anniversary of its founding, David Bruce Winery announced that it was sold to an out-of-state university.
Located on Bear Creek Road in Los Gatos, the 40-acre parcel became David Bruce Winery in 1964. The site, which rises between 1,800 and 2,200 feet above the Pacific Ocean 8 miles away, is planted with chardonnay and pinot noir, along with small amounts of Riesling and Syrah.
Bruce, a dermatologist, was enamored by a college tasting of a 1954 bottle of Richebourg Burgundy and founded what became one of the most iconic names in Santa Cruz Mountains wine history. Bruce died on April 28, 2021, shortly before his 90th birthday.
Many rumors emerged as Bruce’s health worsened, but the company appears to have its sights set on the future, even as the wine industry faces its own challenges. David Bruce Winery has rejoined the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association and is participating in events including the Surf City Wine Walk in Santa Cruz on Sunday, June 9.
At a recent tasting of older vintages of chardonnays from David Bruce Winery in honor of the anniversary of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, it was confirmed that the winery is now owned by Hillsdale College, a private, conservative, Christian liberal arts college in Michigan. , founded in 1844 by members of the Free Will Baptists. Pat Sajak, the longtime “Wheel of Fortune” host who is about to take his final turn, has been president of Hillsdale’s board of directors since 2019.
The deal came about because of Bruce’s relationship with another Hillsdale board member, who was a big fan of the winery and an avid collector.
The university describes itself as “a classical liberal arts curriculum, necessary to preserve the benefits of civil and religious liberty.” Hillsdale has an endowment of $972 million, compared to Stanford’s endowment of $36 billion. Santa Clara University, with the second largest donation among our local universities, reported $1.47 billion in 2022.
The winemaker of record at David Bruce is Mitri Faravashi, whose family was forced to flee what was then called Persia during the Iranian revolution of 1978. The family fled first to India, then to Spain and finally to the United States. Faravashi attended San Jose State and was planning to become a dentist when he ran into a professor who was teaching a wine appreciation class and his life path suddenly changed. His family had always made wine in Iran, so it was a natural fit.
His first job was at Mirassou Winery in San Jose as a winemaker, working for renowned winemaker Tom Stutz, a long-time San Jose resident. After Gallo purchased the Mirassou name and inventory in 2002, the winery became La Rochelle and moved to Livermore.
Faravashi then landed at David Bruce, where he was encouraged to follow his passion and worked with Tony Craig, Ken Foster, Deb Ellissagaray, Greg Stokes, Eric Glomski, Michael Sones and briefly, Dean DeKorth, who moved on to Bernardus. Faravashi was one of the last people standing after a restructuring that occurred at David Bruce in 2003.
Faravashi says working with Bruce was always exciting, as he loved to experiment. But Faravashi’s tastes gravitated toward riper, higher-alcohol wines, which wasn’t always possible on the estate.
“At one point, he came up to me and said, ‘Could you please make some wines that I can drink throughout my life?’” Faravashi recalls.
Getting the tannins to soften sooner rather than later became Faravashi’s goal, and he was able to achieve this primarily through careful vineyard management. Additionally, there are certain tricks that can be employed in the winery, such as reducing daily bashing, removing less lees, pressing at approximately 0.5 Brix (not completely dry), and using a gentler pressing cycle.
As the winery continued to grow, they sourced more fruit from Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Barbara, Santa Lucia Highlands and Russian River. They also acquired a vineyard in Sebastopol, which the company was forced to sell and now wants to recover, but the current owners want to keep it. Faravashi now sources its supplies from a vineyard next door.
Faravashi says it’s interesting to see where younger consumers gravitate. “They want purely and simply; They don’t want a lot of oak or complexity. “They don’t seem interested in aging the wines.”
This explains why David Bruce sources from other areas and performs tank fermentations to keep the Edna Valley and Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnays distinctly different from the estate’s wines, which are barrel-fermented. An example is the David Bruce Estate Chardonnay 2019.
A 60th anniversary pinot noir tribute is rumored to be in the works.
The David Bruce Tasting Room at 21439 Bear Creek Road is open Thursday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For reservations, call 408-399-5800 or email wineclub@davidbrucewinery.com.
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