By Kelly Garrett
This story first appeared in Vine Times magazine.

River Run, past the Eve and Adam towns of Freedom and Aromas, where Highway 129 swerves toward the shore at the bend of Monterey Bay, brings us by commodious vintners that produce some of the most compelling wine in re-circulation between Hearst Castle and the environs of the Golden Gate.

OK, let's translate that into de-Finneganized terms. River Run Vintners, tucked into the rolling foothills of Santa Cruz County's southeastern-most corner, is a tiny under-5,000-case winery, for which the term "family-operated," though accurate, grossly exaggerates the size and scope of the endeavor. River Run is no more or less than J.P. Pawloski, a Zin-and-Syr specialist, who makes wine the way Joyce wrote-home alone. Forget "boutique." This is ***auteur*** winemaking.

After all, his wife's got her own career. His teenage son's got homework to do. Who else is going to do it? Oh, he may hire a hand or two at crush or bottling time, but for the most part, Pawloski, a hip and youthful 56, runs a one-man show.

The show takes place in what's essentially Pawloski's backyard, between the family vegetable garden and some leased-out crop acreage fronting the Pajaro River. Amazingly, the place was already a winery-or, rather, ex-winery-when Pawloski bought it two decades ago, well ahead of the area's wine boom. What the purchase led to is the kind of personal and enological success story that makes our times such rewarding "vine" times.

When he was being shown the wood-shingled home, Pawloski had run rivers as a rafting guide in Northern California. He also had fond memories of his previous tenure in Santa Cruz County during the area's as-yet un-yupped cultural and political Golden Era of the 1970s. And he had a maturing talent for winemaking.

By 1982, he was looking at an affordable property named River Run in a beautiful and hidden corner of the county, complete with extant, if funky, winery facilities. What would you do?

You'd buy it and resurrect the winery. "The place was calling me," Pawloski said, mocking that mawkish cliché with a tinge of knowing irony, yet meaning it nonetheless. "Part of the karma is that 10 years before, as I was passing by the area on my way out of the county, I thought about how I'd like to have a winery here someday."

The next thing you'd do is to plant grapes. Unless, of course, the soil was full of oak root fungus, which would-be vineyard land in Santa Cruz County tends to be. That being the case, River Run joined the legions of small, high quality wineries that buy their grapes rather than grow them. This is a salutary development, multiplying the number of fine wine choices from the same field of vines. "We're heading toward a complete division between suppliers and makers," Pawloski predicted.

The oak root fungus turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Pawloski, since the grapes that he really wanted grow elsewhere anyway. "What grows here is Pinot," he said. "I love Pinot, but I'm a big Zinfandel guy. And I like to dabble in more esoteric things. They're all warmer weather grapes, so I go get them."

He means that literally. Pawloski doesn't wait for a hired truck to pull into his driveway with a grape delivery. He hops into his own truck and to pick up the grapes from the growers' premises–not from a loading dock. For 20 years, he's been going right out into the fields and actually points to the precise grapes he wants picked. One can imagine the sighs and rolling eyes of the pickers when Pawloski's truck pulls up.

"If I'm going to crush them and make wine out of them, they have to be the best grapes," he said. "So I have to be there at harvest to get the grapes I want. Nothing compares with actually being in the field."

It's what Pawloski does with the grapes when he gets them back to River Run that has won the awards and dazzled the tasters. Like a lot of Santa Cruz Mountain wine artisans, he's bigger on fruit than oak and manipulates the fermentation and pressing processes to bring the fruit flavors to the senses. "People have accused me of putting raspberries in the wine, the nose was so phenomenal," he chuckled.

Consider two of River Run's successful reds -the '97 Syrah from Ventana Vineyard grapes in Monterey County and the deep '96 Reserve Zinfandel from a selection of California growers. It can be argued that what makes them so memorable is only secondarily methodology. The quality originates in something less tangible.

Pawloski doesn't strut out enology degrees or UC Davis doctorates, because he doesn't have any. What he has can't be taught at UC Davis. "I'm a fabulous cook," he said, matter-of-factly. "I cook because I love to cook. So I can bring things out in wine."

Huh? Well, there's sense in that non sequitur. Individualists like Pawloski are artists whose craftsmanship is driven by creativity that may not be wholly rational. Keep in mind that gifted winemakers, like Pawloski at River Run, John Shumacher, the organic pioneer at Hallcrest, or Randall Grahm, the Rhone Ranger of Bonny Doon), are different animals than you or I. They remember for years tens of thousands of taste sensations that we wouldn't have noticed in the first place, no matter how much we like wine. Those with the ability and inclination to use their gift to explore taste possibilities will usually make wine decisions instead of business decisions. They're the ones who stand above all the good winemakers out there.

Pawloski makes wines he likes, and he doesn't have a marketing director to tell him not to. Nor does he have a bottom-liner telling him to jack up his prices, although some of the grape suppliers impose minimums to maintain their reputation. "That's the American mentality," he smiled. "What you pay for something is how quality is perceived. My downfall is I try to make an affordable bottle of wine." River Run's most expensive tag is $23 for the '97 Cabernet from Harvest Moon Vineyard grapes, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Like many an iconoclast, Pawloski is often ahead of the curve. He was Zin when Zin wasn't cool. He stuck with a dry Reisling for years when nobody was buying dry Reisling. Simply because he liked them, he got aboard early with such exotics as a Malbec, a Carignone, a dry orange Muscat.

As the big boys get bigger, the garage and backyard crafts persons keep astonishing us with new possibilities. Pawloski is one of them, having found a way a lone a last a loved a long the River Run.

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