On the Road: The Invigorating Wines of Santa Cruz Mountains
“… and legendary grape farmer Prudy Foxx. If you do a deep dive into the Santa Cruz Mountains, you’ll hear Foxx’s name repeatedly. The locals call her the Grape Whisperer…”
‘Wet vintage’ won’t dampen delight in a record rainfall
“As Prudy Foxx walked through rows of ripening fruit at several vineyards nestled among the Santa Cruz Mountains last September, she cringed at the spindly shoots rising from the stocky grapevine trunks.
“I was looking at the canes going into winter, and many of them were a little thin for my taste,” Foxx said. “They were the diameter of a No. 2 pencil and lacking in their protein component. I thought, ‘That’s a real issue.’ ” MORE…
Growing and making a great life
“The nurturing instinct of women brings a new perspective and quality to the wine industry. Our attention to detail, patience and emotional stamina coincide well with the painstaking winemaking process. Women are creators and their skills can bear rich fruit. It is a satisfying lifestyle from vintage to vintage.” MORE…
Grapes of Ash: How smokey air is polluting California’s wines
Like elsewhere in California, wildfires have become more destructive and common in wine country over the last decade.
That was especially true In 2020, when the catastrophic wildfire season led winemakers to cancel over $600 million in contracts with grape growers over fears that the smoke-exposed fruit would produce unsellable wine.
“It’s a huge problem for the wine industry,” said Prudy Foxx, a viticulturist in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Foxx said that labs that test wine for impurities struggled to keep up with demand in 2020, and returned results to winemakers that were often vague and hard to interpret.
Sometimes, the results were misleading.
One of Foxx’s clients — who she wanted to keep anonymous due to reputational risks — received results from a local lab that indicated their pinot noir grapes were smoke impacted.
The client ignored the result, and the wine went on to receive a wine critics’ score of 95, putting it in the highest bracket on standard 100-point wine review scales.
“There’s no detectable smoke impact in that wine,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
What Does a Wine Consultant Do (And How Can You Become One)?
Wine consultants for vineyards focus on the grape growing process from anagricultural perspective. This often means being familiar with the fruit down to amolecular level, with a goal of maximizing a terroir’s presence in the wine’s flavorprofile. This kind of consultant may also work with individuals planting a new vineyard.
California-based Prudy Foxx earned her degree in environmental science beforeworking as a vineyard manager, then as a researcher, biologist and practicingviticulturist. These experiences paved the way for her to found Foxx Viticulture 25 years ago.
“I make wine looking at the chemistry and what it is that brings wine to its fullpotential,” she says. Foxx uses the winter months to attend seminars, tasting panels andwine education classes. The rest of the year is spent visiting vineyards and talking withgrowers about how to improve their processes.
Grape Gospel : Viticulturist Prudy Foxx spreads the word on holistic vineyard management throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains
Viticulture consultant Prudy Foxx has a dirty little secret. In fact, it’s all about dirt. While the French term terroir is indelibly more romantic, it all comes down to the soil and all the life that is teeming inside of it. If the soil isn’t healthy, nothing that grows in it can be optimally beneficial for those who consume it. The food chain, wine included, depends on healthy soils.
Wine’s Most Inspiring People 2019: The Vine Whisperer
Anybody growing grapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains has heard the name Prudy Foxx. If they have a true love of the vine and all it stands for, they’ve hired her to help them grow the best grapes possible. Foxx is a well-known, well-traveled, and well-schooled viticultural consultant, helping vineyard owners decide the best varieties to grow and how best to grow them in their particular microclimate. And here in the mountains, everything is microclimate.
Lester Family Vineyard, Aptos … growing Pinot Noir for local winemakers
“Prudy Foxx is Managing Consultant for Lester Family Vineyards, also called Deer Park Vineyards. With over 32 years in the wine industry, she’s the grower for numerous key wine makers in the Bay Area. Pick up a bottle of Pinot Noir from the Santa Cruz Mountain area and it will often read, “Lester Family Vineyards.” That tells you the fruit was grown under her skilled care.”
Stars of the Santa Cruz Mountains
Huge in area at just shy of half a million acres, and comprised of thousands of little mountain tops and ridges, each of which has its own microclimate, the Santa Cruz Mountains appellation offers a wide-ranging panoply of varietals and styles. There are so many subregions to explore, each with its own unique set of characteristics. We’ve gathered shining examples from the Corralitos, Gilroy/San Martin, Saratoga Hills, Lexington Hills, Skyline, and Woodside subregions.
You can taste the place of origin in so many of these wines: the parched underbrush of warm foothills, bright orchard fruit, salty sea air, sun-ripened blackberries, tangy citrus, and pine-scented forest. Fill your glass with one of these wines and toast to your backyard.
Foxx Viticulture clients: Alfaro-Bates; Rexford-Regan; Nicholson Estate; Stockwell-Saveria; Silver Mountain-Bates; Therese Martin-Lester Family Vineyard.
McHenry family’s next generation takes over vineyard, winery
… But the family couldn’t let their little vineyard go. Brandon and Annalisa, and Henry’s nephew Ian are taking over.
“It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” says Henry. “OK, I will be their advisor… This is the first harvest I wasn’t there the whole time,” says Henry.
“We don’t have ambitions,” he says. “They are quite happy staying small. We all have to have day jobs.”
The long drought prompted some changes to the once dry-farmed vineyard.
“We needed to start irrigating more, and we needed to start dealing with the soil a little bit differently,” says Brandon, who’s enlisted the help of viticulturist Prudy Foxx, and an assist from Beauregard Vineyards. …
Wine Press: Pinot Paradise events showcase area’s signature grape
“I try to imagine the person at one of the better cocktail parties who’s having a conversation about wine. (And he or she) can actually go a little more in depth about the wine they know about that’s not just more folklore. That’s not about ‘oh yeah, limestone is great for pinot noir.’ Why the heck is that exactly? Is it true even?” she says. Foxx imagines a conversation filled with facts and exchanges of ideas.
Pinot Paradise invites participants to “become the terroir of pinot noir,” in a three-day reserve tasting, technical session, picnic and self-guided tour Oct. 13-15, focused on the signature grape grown in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Pinot Noir leads the way in a promising Santa Cruz Mountains fruit set
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Hives to wines: Bees benefit local vineyards
“Grapes are self-fertilizing, which means they don’t need bees to set fruit,” said Prudy Foxx, managing director of Foxx Viticulture. “However, vintners often consider the insects essential to the health of their vineyards and the quality of their wines. Bees can perform cross-pollination, which enhances diversity within the vine species.”
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The Vinguard – One Sip Ahead
An interview with Kristie Tacey, Tessier Winery…
PSB: How hard is it to source fruit?
KT: It was nice to have those connections from Lost Canyon Vineyard. I worked with Saralee’s Vineyard – Saralee Kunde, Dutton Ranch, and the Alegria Vineyard. I knew a lot of people in the industry and then I met Ron (Mansfield)*** through the assistant winemaker at Lavender Ridge. It’s who you know, but then also being a cool chill person. That helps to keep the relationships going. Prudy (Foxx)**** is such a cool and chill person, so is Ron. They just tell it like it is. It’s a pleasure to work with them. Plus, they have a lot of experience working with the vines. You can trust them. It’s nice because I can’t be everywhere at once. It’s nice to have good people in the vineyards.
Hop ‘N Vine festival is harvesting history
“Wine can be accessible to everyone,” says Foxx, a viticulturist who has been working with area winemakers for more than 30 years. “Learning about it can enhance your experience without destroying your pocketbook.”
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Into the Fog: Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir
This is not a wine region where you find sprawling vineyards. “40 acres is considered huge,” says local viticulturist Prudy Foxx, and most vineyards we walked were less than 10 acres. And there are few shortcuts from one mountain top vineyard to another: It can take 30 to 60 minutes to travel even a few miles as the crow flies, and the roads are dangerous.
Beyond the Fruit Bomb: The New California Wine by Jon Bonné
Today, he says, winemakers are looking for great places with great soil that “just happened to have been overlooked in the past,” places like the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. One of the people Bonné profiles in the book is Bonny Doon Vineyard alum Prudy Foxx. She’s been nicknamed the “Grape Whisperer.” She specializes in discovering neglected plantings, helping farmers improve their technique, and matching grapes to the right winemaker. Bonné writes Foxx is determined to get the region back on the map, but her day to day life is about solving problems for local winemakers. “Nobody calls me because they’re happy,” she tells him.
Tom Brooks Winery 2013 Petite Sirah Saveria Vineyards
This dark petite sirah from Tom Brooks Winery is packed with berry flavor. Good structure, a lingering finish and a great mouth feel shows Santa Cruz Mountains fruit off to its best.
The Grape Whisperer. How Prudy Foxx helps clients make great wines
However, there are plenty of wine consultants who don’t travel around in fancy cars creating pricy cabernets for plutocrats. Take, for instance, Prudy Foxx, whose farming talent has earned her the nickname “The Grape Whisperer.” In contrast to transcontinental winemakers like Rolland, Foxx works in just one region, the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, and focuses on what happens in the vineyard rather than the cellar. Foxx is a viticultural consultant, advising vineyard owners on the grapes they should grow, how best to grow them, and how to keep their vines free of disease. In the process, she is helping raise the profile of an area that has long been overshadowed by Napa and Sonoma but that is arguably the sweetest spot for California winemaking.
Moist, foggy mornings during bloom highlight importance of proper canopy management for Santa Cruz Mountains growers
As vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA continued to flower into the second week of May, the 2016 bloom appears to be more uniform than last year, reports Prudy Foxx, a viticulture consultant based in, Santa Cruz, California.Given the recent weather, it’s earlier than she had been expecting.
“For weeks we’ve had cold, foggy mornings with light drizzle,” she says. “I’m surprised that hasn’t slowed vine development very much.”
Chardonnay was the first variety in her vineyards to bloom. Flowers begin opening on the west side of the mountains the third week of April. The bloom was in full gear on the east side in the first week of May, Foxx notes.
Over the Mountain: The Flip Side of Santa Cruz
We head west, over the mountains and down to the Pacific Coast Highway, driving south from Santa Cruz, then inland, passing a few lichen-frilled apple groves in the vales below the second-growth redwoods. Then, as we turn onto Pleasant Valley Road, grapevines suddenly appear.
Foxx first came to the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1989, leaving a job in Washington State to work for Randall Grahm at Bonny Doon, and later held state and county agriculture posts in the area. When she opened her own viticultural consulting company, one of her first projects, in 1998, was helping Dan Lester plant his pinot noir vineyard here. It was a wine off that vineyard that first focused my attention on this side of Santa Cruz: Bradley Brown’s 2011 Lester Family from Big Basin, a delicate pinot noir, aromatic and lithe, a wine that felt like it came from a special place…
Wine: Santa Cruz’s grape expert Prudy Foxx dishes on vines
It’s the thick of harvest, and Santa Cruz Mountains viticulturist Prudy Foxx is making last-minute adjustments to her schedule. We were supposed to meet at Lester Family Vineyards in Corralitos, then head to another vineyard to check sugar levels in the grapes. Change of plans: It’s Day 3 of a mid-September heat wave, and Foxx has determined that a client’s chardonnay vineyard needs to be picked now…
Santa Cruz Mountains crop comes in light on tonnage but heavy on flavor
“It’s absolutely unheard of to be finished that early here. Even the wine makers are in shock.”
Instead of walking vine rows and checking grape clusters in early October, as she has for the past three decades, viticulture consultant Prudy Foxx is pondering whether to go sailing in nearby Monterey Bay or take to the Santa Cruz Mountains trails with her bike…
Following an unusual start Santa Cruz vines settle in for a more normal pace of development
“We’re looking at a classic year, where you just can’t predict things too early.” she says.
It kicked off with an unusually early and isolated budbreak. Buds on a few vines here and there began to break well before the rest in the blocks, she reports.
In early March, for example, a fast-growing Nebbiolo vine in one vineyard touched the tips of the fingers of a client standing with his arms stretched high. Elsewhere, a Pinot Gris vine displayed set clusters in mid-March, she notes. In January, she even saw fruit forming on an apple tree.
Santa Cruz Mountains harvest features a fast, flavorful ending
It may not have been a photo finish. But to Prudy Foxx, the end of the unusually early 2014 Santa Cruz Mountains harvest sure looked like a horse race.
“It was as if the grapes had rounded the far turn, smelled the oats and were headed for the barn,” she says. “The finish to the season was incredibly fast and intense.”
Her company, Foxx Viticulture, Santa Cruz, Calif., works with growers throughout the 1,500-acre appellation, situated between Monterey Bay and the Santa Clara Valley…
Santa Cruz Mountains
Some vines and vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains were off to a quick start in mid-January, but vineyard consultant Prudy Foxx, who manages several properties in the area, said those were fairly isolated cases and in general things have slowed down a bit. She said because the region is close to the ocean, and most vineyards enjoy good air drainage, a serious frost is rather rare. However, she said it’s common for growers to double-prune Pinot and vineyard locations that are susceptible to frost…
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Bay Area Bordeaux: Tasting Santa Cruz Mountain Cabernets
The Santa Cruz Mountains AVA (American Viticultural Area) was approved in 1981 and was unique in several respects. Though it seemingly was placed smack dab in the middle of both the San Francisco Bay AVA and the boundaries of the huge Central Coast AVA, Ridge winemaker Paul Draper never fails to point out, given the chance, that it is actually a separate AVA and is technically not contained within those neighboring AVAs (which were established later). While it is easy to see this as a technicality, the nature of the AVA’s definition may provide some indication of why Draper presses this point. The Santa Cruz AVA was one of the first in the United States to be defined not strictly by geology, watersheds, or county lines, but by elevation, marking it as decidedly different than its neighboring regions.
Surveying the Santa Cruz Mountains with Vineyard Manager Prudy Foxx
“The Santa Cruz Mountains is all about hills, and valleys, and slopes, and how the slope really captures light and heat. The direction of the slope influence what light the vineyard receives, and the heat it has to absorb. Different soil types absorb heat at different rates, so influence what the vines receive.
“Grapes can grow almost anywhere, in almost any conditions. That’s why it’s one of the oldest forms of agriculture. But one of the things grapes hate is wet feet. It’s one of the worst things you can do to a vine, wet feet. We don’t have that problem here [thanks to the elevation and slopes].”
Uncorked: The grape whisperer — viticulturist Prudy Foxx aims to make vineyards thrive
Working as a viticulturist is much like rearing a family. It takes a steady hand to guide the sometimes unruly, a nurturing nature that can see the best in those she loves and the flexibility to try a new course when the one she’s on has gone sour.
In local vineyards, viticulturist Prudy Foxx serves as mother, a position the Midwestern native couldn’t have imagined while studying biology and environmental science in the early 1980s at Washington State. Straight out of college, she knew she didn’t want a typical 9-to5 job, so she took a position at a small vineyard in Bellingham. It was instant love…
the fog comes in and just kisses the vineyards
“There are three things that make this area special,” Pamela says, “the climate, which is warm but not scorching, really good soil and Prudy Foxx.” A master viticulturist who cares for many of the vine- yards in the Corralitos area, Foxx says the play of sun and coastal fog is one of the factors that make it so perfect for grape growing.
“Pleasant Valley is at just the right elevation, about 600 feet, so that the fog comes in and just kisses the vineyards. Almost like dew, it moisturizes the skin of the grapes and makes everybody happy, then goes away by 10am practically every day,” she explains. Since the flavonoids in grapes lie close to the skin, this process allows complexities to develop.