Pour One with Ann Kraemer

The vine tender of Shake Ridge Ranch talks agriculture, viticulture and the importance of instinct in winemaking.

WORDS Virginie Boone

The best grape farmer in California might well be Ann Kraemer, a trailblazer who found her viticultural paradise near the Gold Country town of Sutter Creek in 2001 and turned it into a gold mine of good grapes.

One of eight siblings that liked working in her family’s orange and avocado orchards in Corona in Riverside County, Kraemer went to UC Davis to study pomology and then took off for Guatemala for a year of development work. She then became the director of fruit and nuts for Berkeley’s Farm Bureau during the 1970s.

Another stint working with her dad at the family orange grove came next, but by then Kraemer was a bona fide Northern California girl and she found her way to Sonoma County to work with wine grapes. An internship and subsequent job at Sterling Winery in the Napa Valley doing pest management helped her discover all the great vineyard sites, many of them at high elevation.

She furthered her chops sugar testing and consulting for a vineyard management company, overseeing grapes for such well-known brands as Shafer, Paul Hobbs Winery and Calera. But what she wanted most was a vineyard of her own.

The search began. And ended in 2001, at a 46-acre site of undeveloped ridgeline between 1,650–1,810-feet elevation above Sutter Creek in the Sierra Foothills. Here, the days are hot, but the nights cool down, sometimes as much as 50 degrees, making it possible to grow high-quality grapes for top-notch wines. There’s ancient volcanic material in the soil, too.

She cleared the plot and planted half to Zinfandel, the rest to a good amount of Rhône reds, and Shake Ridge Ranch was born. The grapes go to a myriad of highly respected small producers, like Keplinger, Newfound, Tablas Creek and Bedrock; some also go into her own Yorba Wines.

Today, Shake Ridge grows sought-after Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Viognier, Barbera, Tempranillo and other grapes not called Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. And it’s Kraemer’s meticulous farming that pushes each one’s potential over the top.

Still, climate change is changing everything. A farmer can see it first.

Vineyards, insectary and the barn at Shake Ridge Ranch / Courtesy Shake Ridge Ranch

You come from a long line of citrus growers. Did you always know you wanted to be a farmer?

I did! I have seven siblings, and we all had jobs in the orange grove where we lived. Moving irrigation hoses, trapping gophers, spreading snail bait, pulling off frozen fruit after a bad frost—we made all the chores a game, but we would get the work done. Once old enough, we could get a summer job with our dad and the tasks got more interesting. I was hooked! Although my siblings went on to other careers, most have all come back to help farm at Shake Ridge.

You believe in the three Cs of viticulture—color, concentration and character. How do you farm for each of these at Shake Ridge?

I might need to change that line on our website as we’ve started to produce whites. We planted only reds in 2003, and those three “Cs” were desired by our winemakers. Our aim now is to make interesting reds, bright whites and delicious rosés and we can do that through careful farming in the vineyard. Each pass we make through the vineyard is to bring the vines into balance. Winter pruning is based on the previous year’s growth, spring shoot-thinning evens out that season’s vigor and summer cluster removal matches the crop load to the canopy’s capability. Then we tweak this balance depending on each wine­maker’s desires for brightness, concentration, character, etc.

You are among the most highly respected­ viticulturists in California, but you call yourself a “Vine Tender.” How is that different?

“Viticulturist” feels more scientific and specific. Although I do love and study the science of grape growing, the day-to-day care of a vineyard feels more like you are tending to its needs. We can do our best with pruning, thinning, improving soil nutrition and watching for too much water stress, all viticultural­ decisions. Yet I realize that Mother Nature is the one in control and just maybe I can intervene on the vines’ behalf to help them deal with what she throws our way.

You once told me Grenache is the smartest, Syrah is stupid and Mourvèdre is polite, that Grenache controls itself while Syrah just grows and grows and then it can’t support itself. Can you explain further?

All 12 of our varieties have personalities in the vineyard. Grenache is amazing how it controls its water use and crop load, whereas Syrah just seems to go for broke with spring growth, creating a large canopy in need of water, and then will crash if we don’t intervene, say with an extra irrigation. Mourvèdre on the other hand is a bit stoic, grows straight and tall, naturally produces a great light-filled canopy, yet will try to overperform, producing too much fruit.

Harvest Action / Courtesy Shake Ridge Ranch

You have worked with so many wine­makers from Napa, Sonoma and beyond:­ Steve Edmunds, Annie Favia and Andy Erickson, Hardy Wallace, Helen Keplinger, Morgan Twain-Peterson, Angela Osborne, Ken Bernards, the list goes on. How have these relationships­ helped you grow as a farmer and how have your tremendous viticultural instincts helped them develop as winemakers?

It has been a tremendous privilege working with such a variety of great winemakers who care so much! They have distinct requirements for their fruit, and at the same time, are willing to work with me to try out various methods in the vineyard to achieve their goals. To then get to sit down and taste the wines with them, discuss what worked, what needs tweaking, what we could do to make the wines better for the next vintage, is a wonderful collaboration. And besides, they are my friends.

Shake Ridge is often called a small village­ of vineyards rather than one contiguous site. Is this how you look at it?

I love puzzles and Shake Ridge is a master puzzle. The ranch has a dizzying complex of aspects and slopes, cold air drainage, wind patterns, and more to give us all sorts of microclimates. On top of that, at planting we introduced as many rootstocks as we could, as well as clonal selections. And you can taste the differences from the same variety on a rocky, south-facing slope compared to a more vigorous, eastern swale. Having fruit from both blocks is what gives the complexity that winemakers cherish.

When you first started planting Shake Ridge you had never worked with Grenache or Mourvèdre before. And you didn’t have neighbors you could ask and were nervous, so you made a lot of educated guesses. How much of your farming is instinctual?

I had also never worked with Barbera, Tempranillo, Graciano, Greco di Tufo, Primitivo, and spent very little time with Viognier or Zinfandel. After 25 years, it’s ironic that I planted all of these, yet I had never worked with any of these varietals. I loved science as a student, and learned early on the value of research, trials and studying facts. But you are right, a lot of my decisions are instinctual. Despite my expertise and knowledge, nature can get the best of me. I realize that trusting my instinct must go hand-in-hand with using the science.

You’ve said that, when you found it, Shake Ridge was the right elevation, but with the challenges of climate change, you’d go higher. How so?

It is not just elevation,­ but I’d be looking for a cooler site if I were to look for vineyard land now. The Foothills are interesting as weather reacts with the topo­graphy, cold air drainage, sunlight on west- and south-facing slopes; all of this impacts the actual microclimate the fruit experiences.

Things are changing and I must face these facts and learn how to deal with new climate patterns at Shake Ridge. After 20-plus years, I have blocks that need replanting, and I am searching out varieties that might do better in our changing climate. But I’m not going anywhere, as I love this land and we just need to adjust.

You launched Yorba Wines along the way, naming it after a brand name your family used for its oranges and to honor your great-grandmother, Angelina Yorba. Tell me more about the Yorba wines and why you created them.

When we planted, I wanted wines to show winemakers what Shake Ridge fruit could be. I enlisted the help of my dear friend, Ken Bernards, who I worked with for years at Domaine Chandon and then with his own Ancien Wines. Ken has a very deft hand to show off the fruit without stamping a “style” on it. He’s made our wines since 2005 and literally, there’s never been a one that I’m shy about pouring for anyone.

They are wonderful examples of wines that are made to age. Fermented gently, with minimal barrel time and full of very tightly wound tannins, they are wines that need time to open up, but when they do, fantastic! Now this isn’t a recommended marketing plan by any means, but we have very small production, and we sell almost all our wines from our tasting room in Sutter Creek. Our customers can taste the wines and understand that the years in bottle have improved the wines, not degraded them. It’s a joy to serve a taste of a 10-year-old wine to someone who is amazed with the vibrancy and liveliness­ of the wine.