And Now: Dixon's Other Winery -- Purple Pearl

Unlike the Jess Jones winery I wrote about earlier, where the Jones set up a vineyard and winery from scratch near Dixon, Rory Horton and Brenda Inman bought their operation intact, naming it the Purple Pearl winery.  

They were real estate partners in 2004 when they purchased 32 acres of vineyards and winemaking apparatus from a dentist, Giulio Binetti, who made wine on the side. In fact, 6,000 gallons of already-made wine was part of the deal.

One might wonder how Rory and Brenda came up with the name Purple Pearl. The year before they bought the winery, they’d visited Tahiti, where black pearls are a major industry. Later, Rory saw a bottle of Black Opal wine from Australia in Safeway, and somehow the two products coalesced into “Purple Pearl.” After all, a lot of pearl-shaped grapes are purple. “People always remember the ‘purple’ of our name,” said Brenda.

At first, the vineyard grew just five varieties of grapes (merlot, syrah, valdiguie, muscat and chardonnay). Later they added pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, viognier and five varieties of table grapes.

Rory handled most of the vineyard work and winemaking (with Brenda helping out in the fields sometimes) while she managed the tasting room and all the marketing and business aspects.  

Both came into the business with little winemaking experience, so there was a steep learning curve. In the vineyard, their major challenges were pests (birds and insects) and mildew. Unexpected “things started happening,” said Rory.

For example, during the first year or so, when sunflowers ripened in a nearby field and the plants withered and died, spider mite insects there migrated over to the vineyard to cause leaf damage. Rory used chemical sprays to subdue them.

Mildew also caused a large loss of grapes during their first year so they learned which sprays would control it.  

Hungry birds arrive not long before the grapes are ripe enough to pick. He has problems with finches (which peck into a grape) and robins, which make off with entire grapes. One robin, said Rory, can eat a half-pound of grapes in a day. It’s been an endless challenge for him to find new devices to keep the birds at bay. Lately, he’s been using balloons with big eyes on them, dangling reflective streamers.

“The first few years, it was all reaction,” says Brenda. “Now it’s proaction.”

Presently, they use 10 percent of their grapes for winemaking, sell another 10 percent to home winemakers, with the remainder being sold to other wineries.

The dentist they bought the operation from got Rory going in the fine arts of handling and fermenting the grapes to make wine – to a point. Rory also read books, experimented, and used a consultant  from Modavi wines for two seasons. Presently, Rory ages wines in a large number of oak barrels, and sometimes uses oak chips to add flavor. After aging, he stores wine in large stainless steel containers.

Sometimes he uses double fermentation (yeast and malolactic) and sometimes not. Volunteers often help with bottling wine and receive wine in exchange.

Because they don’t have all the labor-saving equipment large, high-end wineries have, they’ve had to contribute more elbow grease to make the business work.  

They entered several wine competitions and received high scores for their muscat blanc and syrah wines.

Their winery location is a bit off the beaten track (about three miles north of Dixon along Currey Road) but their hand-lettered, purple, Burma-Shave-like signs seen near Walmart in Dixon and near Pedrick Produce (and elsewhere) bring in customers, as does their Web site.

What customers buy the most is their low-priced “value wine,” a blended red table wine that sells for $9 per bottle. Their other wines are generally in the $12 to $14 range, with a red dessert wine going for $35 a bottle. Purple Pearl wines are also sold in several small stores and fruit stands along the I-80 corridor.  

The tasting room also sells table grapes and it’s open from Thursday through Sunday from noon to five. There is a $3 tasting charge.

At the conclusion of our interview, I asked Rory and Brenda what changes were in the works for the future, and that’s when they said the winery has been listed for sale since February.

Contributing to their wanting to move on are the increasing costs of labor and chemicals, but mostly the realization that, as Brenda put it, “It was too much for too long. I’m just tired. It’s been 10 years.”

They are willing to make either of two sales: the vineyard and buildings, or the entire operation.

Rory said that they had to go into debt during their first years because they didn’t have contracts to sell grapes to other wineries, but now is a good time to sell because there’s so much demand for grapes. Also, as the recession recedes their wine sales have been increasing.

As part of their going out of business, they are now selling cases of wine at 60 percent off their usual price. That means 12 bottles of red wine for $70 or $60 for a case of white wine.

Their Web site is www.purplepearlvineyards.com and they’re located at 9177 Currey Road, Dixon, Calif.

If you’ve ever wanted to own your own vineyards on some of the best soil around, and run a winery, here’s your chance. Your teachers could be Rory Horton and Brenda Inman, who themselves learned by doing. The name Purple Pearl will probably become part of Dixon’s history.