Valdez carrying on family tradition
Elizabeth Valdez may have grown up in the family wine business, but she didn’t always want to become a part of it. About three years ago, Valdez, now 26, was living in Southern California when homesickness got the better of her.
“I started working again in the cellar and then I realized this is what I wanted to do,” she said.
Valdez Family Winery was founded in 2004 after Ulises Valdez transitioned from vineyard management to winemaking, though his Valdez and Sons vineyard management company is still a going concern. It was Ulises’ relationship with other winemakers through his management company that provided Elizabeth with her first education in the art of winemaking.
“Jeff Cohn of JC Cellars specializes in zinfandel and Roman-style varietals and he has really helped me out, and for pinot and chardonnay I worked with Mark Aubert of Aubert Wines in Napa. He has been a good friend of my Dad’s for a while,” Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth took over winemaking duties in 2016, and she makes chardonnay, pinot noir, zinfandel and a small amount of syrah, but she does have a slight favorite. “I really like the Silver Eagle Pinot that we do. It’s all made with fruit my Dad grows, so we are getting really good fruit to start with and it’s really, truly family,” she said.
Elizabeth grew up in Cloverdale (and the winery is still located there — their zinfandel grapes grow behind St. Peter’s church) and she currently lives in Sebastopol. Last year, Valdez Winery opened a tasting room in Healdsburg on Mill Street. Her entire family — including sister Angelica, 25, and brothers Ricardo, 19, and Ulises Jr., 24 — is involved and they are focused on taking the winery to the next level.
“I’m excited, because now it’s really just all family run and operated,” Elizabeth said. “We’re really trying to get our name and our brand out there. I work in the tasting room sometimes, and for the last two years my sister and I have been more involved in reaching out to distributors and getting our brand out there so we can be more well known, build our following and get direct to consumers.”
While she loves all aspects of the business, Elizabeth still loves the hands on work. “I love the whole process of harvest,“ she said. “I’m creating something that’s alive and that people are going to enjoy with family or friends. It’s a way of sharing the wine and the process of something that my dad has worked hard to produce.”
She admitted: “It can get a little stressful, the pressure of it. The hardest thing is, I don’t want to let my family down. But, I have really great mentors so it’s been okay. Mistakes happen, and when it does, it’s stressful, but overall everything else outweighs that.”
Elizabeth’s training up until this point has been strictly hands-on, but starting last fall she started expanding her education by entering the oenology program at the Santa Rosa Junior College. She’s found the class work has only strengthened her skill set and one class in particular has really expanded her mind and her mouth.
“Part of the curriculum is a wine tasting class, like a judging class. So, we tasted different wines from different parts of the world and worked on training our palate. It’s a really good class to see different styles of wine and to know what to look for. Even if you may not like the varietal, there are certain characteristics of a quality wine that will shine through,” she said.
Still, if she was giving advice to someone thinking they wanted to follow in her footsteps, time spent in hands on work is the key. “I think a big part of it is getting experience,” she said. Even if you work one harvest, if you are interested in getting in to the industry you’ll get a lot of experiences in how to go through the process that will help when you take classes. They do offer a class at the JC that is a hands on harvest — they have their own vineyard and it goes through the whole process, so that would be the number one class to take. Even if you don’t have experience, it will show you’ve done a harvest and can work in a winery.”
