Varner

Varner
648 Menlo Avenue, Suite 5
Menlo Park, California
USA 94025
Phone: (650) 321-4894
http://www.varnerwine.com/

Contact: Jim Varner
Email: [email protected]

As two men on their own slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, tending their own vineyards to make their own wine, Bob and his twin brother Jim Varner have earned that luxury.

It is why they hire a 22-person picking crew to handle just 2 acres of grapes per day. Any imperfect clusters are dropped off the vines the day before harvest, and the small yellow boxes used by harvesters get an extra sorting to remove errant fruit. Once the Chardonnay grapes have been crushed, settled and pressed, the rule until the wine's ready to leave its barrels eight months later is simple: "No one touches a barrel but Bob," Jim says.

Not that either brother is anything close to a Luddite. Jim describes himself as the first student of wine scientist Ann Noble in her early years at UC Davis; his searches in the late 1970s for a cool-climate site to grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay led him past Carneros and Sonoma County to the more affordable Santa Cruz Mountains. Bob took a leave from his graduate studies in genetics at UC Berkeley in 1980 to help his brother plant the vineyard. They ran a wine import business, Park Wine Co., for about 15 years before selling it. They preferred to focus on their pristine fruit, and nothing else.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamievarner

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