One of Santa Maria’s top vintners is dotting its i’s with a new set of eyes. As part of Bien Nacido’s plan to gradually replant two of its vineyards over the next several years, the Miller Family Wine Company recently enlisted Gregory Gonzalez to spearhead the project.
Gonzalez brings 15 years of viticultural experience to his new role as Bien Nacido’s vineyard director and director of agricultural operations.
“This harvest was really a passing of the torch,” the wine pro said over email.
Since the end of summer, he’s been working alongside his predecessor, longtime vineyard manager Chris Hammell, who Gonzalez credited with making the transition as smooth as possible.
“To have the luxury of working with Chris … makes things a lot easier in terms of getting to know the land, the clients, and the intricacies,” Gonzalez said. “I tried to soak up all of the knowledge that Chris has and ask him a lot of questions.
Gonzalez said the overlap period during harvest “has not only been extremely helpful for me, but also great for our team.”
“Chris and I share very similar management styles, and he built a strong team with great people that make my job a lot easier,” he said.
As Bien Nacido’s new ag director, Gonzalez will collaborate with local vegetable and fruit farmers who lease portions of the winery’s land to grow their crops. It’s a win-win scenario for all parties because the crop rotation rejuvenates Bien Nacido’s soil, replenishes important nutrients, and removes old vine roots.
“They cultivate the fields, which ensures we are consistently removing anything left behind,” Gonzalez explained. “They incorporate a lot of organic matter back into the soil. This creates healthy, active soil to then plant our vines in. Soil is a living, breathing thing, and we aim to maintain soil versus just dirt.”
Over the course of his 15-year career that includes roles with a handful of different vintners, Gonzalez has grown more than 38 grape varieties, while fallowing and rejuvenating countless acres of land “through use of row crops and other crops,” he said.
Gonzalez added that farming leases with Bien Nacido are typically about three years, depending on the crop.
“We have flowers, squash, strawberries, and raspberries that are currently farmed or will be farmed on the property,” he said.
Farming has been part of Gonzalez’s life since childhood. Raised on his family’s hazelnut farm in Oregon, Gonzalez first dipped his toes into the wine industry when he became a harvest intern at Scheid Vineyards in Greenfield.
During his 12-year stay at Scheid, he rose to the role of the vintner’s vineyard operations director, in which he managed more than 42,000 acres of vines across Monterey County.
His other prior jobs include roles at Foley Family Wines and Spirits in Lompoc and Coastal Vineyard Care Associates in Buellton.
During his time with the latter, Gonzalez helped scale a rapid growing operation, comparable to his latest initiative with the Miller Family Wine Company, as he’ll oversee the replanting and redesigning of Bien Nacido Vineyard (originally planted during the early 1970s) and its sister vineyard, Solomon Hills (planted in the late 1990s).
“This will be a collective effort between those who make wine, farmers, and those who purchase fruit,” said Gonzalez, who described Bien Nacido’s new chapter as a “collaboration with all stakeholders.”
“We are working this winter with our winery partners, most of which have been with the Miller family for many years. … It is important to get opinions of winemakers that source from our sites,” he said. “The vineyards have given us decades of excellent wine and they are ready for a replant.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is stomping on grapes and reading comments at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 7-17, 2024.