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Crave Wine Company’s rotating “Thirsty Thursday” event, next held on Oct. 15, will showcase six wines of local origin, including the debut release from Peneyra Winery, a 2023 Old Vine Grenache from Ness Peneyra’s home vineyard off Southside Road in Hollister.
For a first outing in what has become a very competitive wine scene, Crave’s Mike Kohne said the Peneyra release will easily fit most aficionados’ palates.
“It has that fresh, almost Pinot Noir-like, fruit-forward character,” he said, “but then it has a little weight, too, which people love. It’s just a really well-made grenache and a tribute to the region.”
The wine also reflects local winemaking history: The Peneyra Family Vineyard sits on part of the historic Almaden Vineyards, which operated for 70 years and once covered 100 acres in the area. Used as a testing ground for new varietals, only four acres of 60-year-plus grenache, grafted onto cabernet rootstock, remain of the original old vines on his property.
Peneyra’s path to vineyard and winery ownership was indirect: as a Silicon Valley computer science engineer for a Japanese company, he often entertained visiting executives with trips to Napa Valley.
“I found I got very interested in the way vineyards look and the taste of wine with the food,” Peneyra said. “I used to belong to V. Sattui Winery way back then, and they used to have dinners at one of their caves. The experience was really great, and that’s how everything started.”
After leaving the tech world in 2006, he founded Ohana Grill in San Jose.
“I was mainly babysitting a lot of the engineers,” Peneyra said. “I said, ‘No more tech for me, I’m going to try to get into another business.’ I opened the Hawaiian barbecue and had it for six years.”
Wanting to move into this area, Peneyra began house-hunting in 1980. But it wasn’t until 2013, while planning a family trip to Disneyland online, that he spotted the property and recognized its potential.
“I saw a house for sale with a vineyard,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is it.’ I didn’t even look at the house personally. I just looked at the description and the inside. I called up my agent and asked him to make an offer.”
While learning the ins and outs of vineyard management, including a course at UC Davis, Peneyra sold fruit to wineries from Napa to Paso Robles, including Ian Brand. He began tinkering with his own small batches of wine until, in 2023, he decided to keep the harvest to himself.
“I was not really making that much money selling grapes,” Peneyra said. “I thought if I could make a little bit more, I could make the vineyard sustainable and maintain it. And I’m an engineer, so I like challenges.”
The first challenge was finding a facility he could pay to crush his grapes. Most wineries in the area couldn’t accommodate his three tons of grapes, but Al DeRose of DeRose Winery agreed to help and to also blend the wine.
“I liked it,” he said, “because it’s an older, well-established grenache vineyard that’s been well cared for. They’re not looking to make huge production, so the focus has been on quality and not producing a wine that’s too overly complicated.”
And, as with the other wines he has produced for others, including Idyll Times Winery and the recently opened Gabilan Ridge, the results are exceptional.
“It’s nice and fruit-forward,” DeRose said, “with kind of a medium body. Very approachable. You could lay it down for six, maybe eight years, but it’s meant to be drunk young and enjoyed with food. It’s non-pretentious, and just a good, friendly wine.”
Numbering just 180 cases, the wine has limited distribution at the moment. It is available through Crave, where it is sold by the bottle, and at local restaurants, including Cosmos and Paine’s, which carry it by the glass.
For Kohne, one of the wine’s most distinctive features is that the grapes are presented on their own, as a single-vineyard vintage with literal historic roots in the county.
“It’s an interesting story with a lot of intrigue,” he said, “and it shows these old vines from a different perspective. They’re not put into a bigger blend the other wineries would do. This is a single-vineyard showcase, and those old vines really tell that story.”
Besides the Peneyra grenache, there are five more wines on the “Thirsty Thursday” lineup:
- As One Cru 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon, Paicines Project
- Ghostnote 2024 Grave Coast Blanc, Gist Vineyard
- Ghostnote 2024 Sagrantino, Siletto Vineyard
- Kobza 2022 Red Field Blend, Wirz Vineyard
- Schema 2025 Aligoté, Calleri Vineyard
Kohne said the wines he chose for the event represent some of the rarer, more unique recent offerings from Crave’s “The 20 Club,” a quarterly selection of wines sourced within 20 miles of the shop’s location in downtown Hollister.
“We are trying to be that home base for the wines that are made from grapes that are grown here,” he said. “It is our chance to be champions of some great things that many people perhaps have not had the opportunity to taste.”
The “Thirsty Thursday” event will be held on Oct. 15 from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. at Crave Wine Company, 616 San Benito St., Hollister. It is followed by “We All Fall For Bubbles,” a sparkling wine and food pairing with chef David Jamrock on Oct. 18 and a tasting on Oct. 22 with Blade & Talon winemaker Nat Wong.
For information on upcoming “Thirsty Thursday” or other Crave Wine Company events, including the Crave Book Club, visit the shop’s webpage.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
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