When I arrived at Roudon-Smith Winery to watch the bottling operation, Bob Roudon was facing a conveyor belt holding a long tube in his hand from which he extracted foil caps to place on each newly filled bottle as it passed by. His eyes never left the bottles. Jim Smith sat like Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea, eyeing each bottle of wine that passed in front of him, as if keeping the ship upright and steady while "dreaming the wine" and watching for the errant barracuda.

Bottling proved to be a four-man operation. The helper, Abundigo was loading the conveyer belt with bottles. Like slope-shouldered translucent green soldiers, the bottles filed obediently around the conveyer to the filling tank; then the corking machine, before being foiled by Roudon, labeled by still another machine, and finally boxed by assistant winemaker Mike Walters. The room was cool, concentrated, and heady with wine bouquet.

Later, outside the bottling room, Jim Smith leaned against an aged golf cart and lit a Swisher Sweet cigar as a small black dog settled at his feet. He told me that before starting the winery, "I couldn’t afford to buy the kind of wine I liked, so I had to start making my own."

June Smith, spokeswoman and driving force for the winery arrived and signaled it was time for lunch. The six of us sat in the sun beside the "show" vineyard in the middle of the Smith property on Bean Creek Road in Scotts Valley. An idyllic setting that set off my chronic condition of vinus envy.

The setting was French-like, but our lunch was eclectic-American. Smith was having a Stouffers microwaved macaroni and cheese. Roudon, fried chicken from a white plastic bag brought from home. Abundigo a ham sandwich on white bread. Walters, trail mix from a plastic bag. June Smith was having a glass of water. I had Stoned Wheat Thins and little barrels of white cheese.

Walters popped open a bottle of 1999 Syrah. Unlike many Syrahs, which are often "jammy," this wine is light, almost silky on the palate and very food friendly. Roudon-Smith wines are "approachable", Roudon said, meaning that the wine is quaffable (as we shortly demonstrated), and one does not have to wade through layers of obtuse and closed flavors to get to the point.

Noting a slight pepper flavor, I asked the winemakers how nonfruit flavors, often described as chocolate, leather, tobacco or butter, make their way into wine?

Walters, (who is a UCSC graduate in geology) has been working at the winery since 1989. He and Roudon answered me with a rush of information that went something like this: flavors are the product of molecules, and no leather (like an old horse collar) need be laying around the vineyard for a wine to exude a hint of it. The most common example is the buttery flavor most associated with Chardonnay, which is created by the chemical molecule diacetyl acid. Roudon said that this is the effect most sought after by California Chardonnay wine drinkers who like to "be hit right between the eyes with it." The effect is considered undesirable in traditional white Burgundies, indicating a "mistake" was made, or that the wine is out of balance.

The only estate wine (wine made from grapes grown on the property) at Roudon-Smith is Chardonnay. The five-acre vineyard is named "Anna Maria’s" after Roudons’ late wife, a founding member of the quartet that abandoned Silicon Valley in the late 60’s to start the winery. Jim Smith was actually Bob Roudons’ supervisor at Amdahl Computers where both worked as mechanical engineers.

We chased the Syrah with a bottle of 2000 Merlot set aside from the bottling line because, fortunately, the cork splintered. The Merlot, like the Syrah was also quaffable, and we disposed of it in short order. Wines like these should come in liters, not fifths.

This is a quiet time of year in the wine trade. Bob Roudon and his wife Kay were leaving in a day or two for Nice, France. Jim and June Smith were heading for Tahiti. About their assistant Walters, Smith said warmly, "He doesn’t get time off…if he did, we couldn’t go anywhere."

Roudon-Smith Winery
Tasting room: 2363 Bean Creek Rd. Scotts Valley, is open 11:00-4:20 Satuday, and by appointment on Sunday. 438-5123

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