November 10, 2024

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Monterey: Salvatore Rombi, one-man winemaker of Carmel Valley

He has 14 rows of Cabernet Sauvignon, seven rows of Merlot and two rows of still experimental Petit Syrah. two rescue dogs, a terrier named Alibaba and Bella the German shorthaired pointer, who like to tear up and down the rows keeping things interesting. at the tasting room he opened in Carmel Valley Village in August 2013, Rombi is the sole employee, pouring just two types of Bordeaux-style reds from behind the counter. Besides his website and tasting room, the only places that carry Rombi wines are three Carmel Valley restaurants: Will’s Fargo, Corkscrew Cafe and Bernardus Lodge; and La Mia Cucina in...

He has 14 rows of Cabernet Sauvignon, seven rows of Merlot and two rows of still experimental Petit Syrah.

[…] two rescue dogs, a terrier named Alibaba and Bella the German shorthaired pointer, who like to tear up and down the rows keeping things interesting.

[…] at the tasting room he opened in Carmel Valley Village in August 2013, Rombi is the sole employee, pouring just two types of Bordeaux-style reds from behind the counter.

Besides his website and tasting room, the only places that carry Rombi wines are three Carmel Valley restaurants:

Will’s Fargo, Corkscrew Cafe and Bernardus Lodge; and La Mia Cucina in Pacific Grove, a former family restaurant now owned by friends.

“This is for retirement; it’s not to expand,” says Rombi, a longtime Carmel Valley real estate agent who takes business calls on a cell phone while working in his vineyard.

Rombi and his partner, local radio station executive Kathy Baker, planted their backyard south-facing vineyard with drought-resistant rootstock in 1998.

Rombi read piles of books on winemaking, and then turned to the Monterey Peninsula guru of viticulture, Greg Vita of Big Sur.

Vita spent a dozen years making wine at Spring Mountain Vineyards in St. Helena, as well as wines for Frog’s Leap, Dunn, Philip Togni and Chimney Rock.

The Cachagua area (pronounced kuh-SHAW-wa) is favored by Carmel Valley vintners for its chalky, sandy soil that makes the vines struggle to produce fruit; for daytime temperatures that mimic Napa; and nightly coastal fog that reduces ripening time per day so the grapes hang about a month longer on the vine to create more rich and complex wines.

Rombi and Baker’s favorite way to market their wines is to have guests stay in their vineyard cottage, overlooking their grapevines to the north, and the westward vineyards of Heller Estate and Chateau Julien.

The cottage, which rents for $250 a night in the low season and $295 May through October, is a quiet big sky retreat, with knot-pine walls, a full kitchen stocked with Peet’s coffee, eggs and juice; a living room, a balcony with a barbecue, and a video and book library.

Below the second-story cottage is Rombi’s barrel storage and homemade lab, where he measures pH levels and hand labels his bottles.

“This one is young and jumpy, like a teenager,” he says, sipping a 2013 Cabernet from the barrel.

The X factor is in growing your own ingredients, the handed-down family recipes, the years spent learning to taste and seat-of-the-pants flavor correcting.
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