Mission Wine Has Found Its Time
By Dana M. Nichols, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Nov. 5–MURPHYS — Rocco Malvini’s desire for a taste of his childhood is helping to keep a piece of California history alive.
Malvini, 74, grew up in an Italian neighborhood in San Jose watching his father make wine from the same variety of mission grapes that first came to California with the Spanish padres in the 1760s.
Now he is one of the few winemakers in California who produces the wine commercially.
Rocco’s Com E Bella Winery — “com’e bella” is an Italian exclamation meaning “how beautiful!” — produces several wines, but his mission varietal is all but unique.
“When I first started making the mission, I wanted to call it Mission Impossible,” Malvini said. He called Paramount Pictures and was amazed to learn that the studio had not trademarked the Mission Impossible name.
So he applied for the trademark himself and says he would have gotten it except that he made the mistake of calling the studio to ask if Tom Cruise would sign one of his bottles.
He made the call during the 30-day protest period during which people and corporations with rival claims can object to a trademark.
“That’s when they jumped on me,” Malvini said. “They threatened to take me to court,” he said.
So much for the snappy name. Now it’s just labeled Mission Wine.
Malvini, a retired plastering contractor, makes his wine in a small shed next to his home in Mountain Ranch and sells it in a tiny rented tasting room in San Andreas.
Farmer Lori Kautz grows 2 acres of the mission grapes for Malvini in Vallecito, just a few miles from the tasting room.
Kautz planted the vineyard with cuttings taken from vines growing near Fiddletown, Malvini said. “They were 120 years old.”
Andy Walker, a professor of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis, said that mission grapevines are rapidly disappearing in the state.
“Now we are down to about 500 acres,” Walker said.
That’s because it is easier to make commercial-quality wine with the European varieties that began to replace the mission vines starting in the 1830s, Walker said.
“It is a funny grape. It is very sweet and has very high tannins,” he said.
The Spanish missionaries who came up the California coast from Mexico used the wine for both the table and altar, as did generations of Californians who came after them.
But the high tannin content can create a bitter flavor and makes the grapes a challenge for commercial winemakers. Some have to boost the sugar content of the fermenting mash to hide the flavor, Walker said.
Malvini said he doesn’t fortify the wine with extra sugar, but he is careful not to harvest the grapes until they are at peak sweetness — about 25 percent sugar.
This year, a cold spring delayed that until this week. Today, Malvini said he’ll be in his winery mashing 4 tons of the mission grapes.
Although the 2002 vintage he’s now selling for $14 a bottle in his tasting room has a rich bouquet somewhat like a cabernet, the taste is much milder and has no hint of bitterness. That’s the flavor Malvini says he remembers from his childhood.
Walker says that Malvini should be proud of what he’s producing.
“It’s a historical achievement,” he said.
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