Not far from today's busy,
often disconnected world, you'll find
a farm community,
striving to do what's right.
Not only for themselves,
but for neighbors, the land,
and for generations to come.
What got me interested in making wine? My father
had been a home winemaker years before so
I had a crusher and a press so I had
some basic equipment and basically I was in need of
alcohol. So I decided to learn how to make wine.
Meet one of Lodi's more
eclectic winemakers, wine grower
and Hayden aficionado.
My name is Tom Hoffman, and I own Heritage
Oak Winery started in 1985.
The only book I had the time was a
little paperback book called "The Art of Home Winemaking"
and I followed that book and it
had so much bad information in it. Then I got involved
with a bunch of fellows that were also making wine and we
formed a club. It was the Lodi Amateur Vintners
Association. We called it LAVA and we
started bringing in speakers to
talk about making wine. We got involved in
educating ourselves about how to make wine.
I believe you have to make the best fruit possible.
You have to do everything to bring the
most color, flavor into the
fruit. My job is to bring out that varietal
character out in the vineyard.
I think one of the things that really shined a light
on that for me was working with the Mondavi's; the better your
grapes and the more you do to make good wine
gets results in the winery. What parallels
do I see between farming and
music? I would have to say that you need
to achieve harmony in both. You have to have a
balance. The vine has to be in balance the treble and
the bass have to be in balance.
The first big
things I had to get over when we opened the
winery was I was just kind of afraid that people weren't
gonna like my wine. I remember
realizing that hey, maybe they do like
it because people were signing up for the wine club. And that was
a kind of a time that I realized, maybe this might work.
For Tom and his many followers harmony and
balance are indeed the keys to
success. And here we are,
45 years later.