She’s been the head winemaker at one of the largest wineries on the Central Coast for a decade, and yet there are people who are surprised to learn a winery could be led by a woman.
Denise Shurtleff, Cambria Winery’s winemaker, recently shared with me this astonishing conversation that unfortunately she’s had on more than one occasion: “It’s funny when you go somewhere and they ask where you work and I’ll say, ‘Cambria Winery in Santa Maria.’ ‘Oh, so you work in the tasting room?’ ‘No. I work in production.’ People will say, ‘Oh, so you’re the assistant winemaker?’ ‘No. I’m the winemaker,’ ‘Well, who’s the head winemaker?’ ‘I am.’”
Shurtleff was among California’s early women winemakers. While attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, majoring in dietetics and food administration, the Visalia native worked part-time in an Edna Valley wine tasting room.
The winery had just been sold, so a new staff was coming on board, and the name was about to change to Corbett Canyon Winery.
After graduating in 1983, Shurtleff was hired as a laboratory technician at Corbett Canyon, under the direction of fourth-generation winemaker Cary Gott.
A great group of mentors there took Shurtleff and the other newly hired 20-somethings under their wings.
“We did whatever we were asked to do, whether it was working on the bottling line, operating the crushing equipment, grape sampling. I mean, we cleaned floors. We cleaned drains,” Shurtleff said. “But at the same time, we got a lot of experience working with these people who had been in the industry for a long time. And they made us taste and they really set a good foundation for good basic winemaking skills.”
At first, Shurtleff enjoyed the industry but didn’t aspire to be a winemaker.
“I’m like, ‘Are you crazy? This is a lot of work! This is ridiculous, you know!’ But as time went on and you learn more and became more involved, I became a lot more passionate about it.”
Shurtleff moved up from lab tech to lab supervisor to bottling supplies purchaser, then enologist, and finally winemaker.
In 1999, her former colleague, winemaker Fred Holloway, convinced her to come with him to Cambria Winery in the Santa Maria Valley. By 2003, she was head winemaker.
Shurtleff recently gave me a tour of the state-of-the-art Cambria Winery, which, at 200,000 cases, represents the largest wine production in Santa Barbara County.
Inside the winery we gazed up at 100 stainless-steel fermentation tanks, smelled 3,500 oak barrels holding fragrant red wine, and watched cellar workers topping barrels in another chilly building that stores 10,000 oak barrels aging mostly chardonnay.
Shurtleff oversees it all.
“What’s kind of the beauty about Cambria is that we do produce a lot of wine, but we also do a lot of small lots,” she said. “People give us a bad time about being large, but because we can do small lot production, we can translate those methods into our large lot production, and I’ll challenge anybody that we can make more wine better than they can make small lots of wine!”
Cambria Winery, founded in 1986 by Kendall-Jackson Winery owners Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke, produces five chardonnays, pinot gris, viognier, seven pinot noirs, and a syrah, all under the Cambria Winery label.
“All of our wines are estate bottled; we’re surrounded by the vineyards. We don’t purchase any grapes for the Cambria brand,” Shurtleff said while strolling past the estate’s 1,600 acres of vineyard. “We’re in charge of all the farming, so we have total control over the raw material, and that’s huge!”
Cambria’s crew is catching its collective breath after a long 2012 harvest. Workers started picking grapes on Aug. 31 and didn’t finish until mid-November.
“We literally worked every single day,” Shurtleff said. “When we’re at the height of harvest, we have to operate 24 hours a day.”
Shurtleff and the winemaking staff works 90 to 100 hours a week during harvest. Even during bottling, it’s not unusual to put in a 60-hour workweek.
I asked Denise if she thinks the public is aware how much time and effort, of the blood, sweat, and maybe even tears that go into making a bottle of wine.
“No. You don’t want to be a martyr about it, and we’re doing it because we like it,” she said. “But no, they don’t.
“Being in the wine industry, it’s a job,” she noted. “But I think it’s the type of job that has to be your hobby and you have to be very passionate about it—otherwise you’re not going to be successful.”
Shurtleff, who’s also a wife and a mother of a son in college and another about to leave the nest, said the No. 1 reason she pours her heart and soul into her job is because she likes and admires the people she works with.
Employees stay with Cambria Winery for decades and have great pride in the product; the average tenure of a Cambria cellar worker is 13 years.
“There’s that glue that holds you together and makes you happy to come to work and work with each other every day,” Shurtleff said. “And it takes a lot of people to make wine.
“And if you’re willing to have stains on your hands, or fingernails as a woman, it’s a great lifestyle!” she added. “And I really like the food and the wine.”
Sun food and wine writer Wendy Thies Sell really likes food and wine, too. Contact her at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 24-31, 2013.