Chateau de You
Making wine at home is a pressing concern
Vinny Capogreco's wine cellar isn't what you might imagine. It isn't in the basement of an opulent mansion, hidden behind a locked door with a carefully guarded key. It's not on the grounds of a sprawling vineyard. Capogreco built his cinderblock and concrete wine cellar, or "cantina," as he calls in Italian, in the backyard of his East Boston home. It's about the size of a garden shed, partially sunk into the ground to help keep the temperature stable.
Red wine pressed from zinfandel grapes ages in oak barrels in the cool, dry room. Homemade Italian hams hang from the beams of the low ceiling. Bottles holding past years' vintages line shelves, ready to flow during the family's many social gatherings.
Capogreco made the wine in the oak barrels during several weeks last August and September, when the best grapes began arriving from northern California. It will age in the barrels until next spring, when he will transfer it into glass bottles as needed to keep the wine flowing among friends and family.
"I make four or five barrels of wine every year," he said. "One barrel is enough for me. The rest I give away."
A native of Italy's Calabria region, Capogreco has made wine in East Boston every year since he arrived in America to get married in the early 1960s. The wine is a centerpiece of the family's life. His two brothers-in-law also make wine, as do several family friends, who often converge on the Capogreco's large kitchen to drink and compare wines over large dinners prepared by Capogreco's wife, Lina.
"We all think our wine is better than the next guy. And the next guy feels the same," said brother-in-law Frank Schirripa.
"I enjoy making it and I enjoy, even more, drinking it," said Schirripa, who has his own cantina behind his Saugus home. "Some people cook. Some people make wine."
Schirripa and Capogreco are among perhaps a few thousand home winemakers in the Boston area, part of a small but dedicated subculture around the country of people for whom winemaking is a family tradition. These immigrants -- and an increasing number of American-born winemakers -- shun commercial wines, preferring to make and age their own vintages in elaborate wine cellars, backyard sheds, garages, and basements.
Anthony Silvestro, owner of American Winegrape Distribution Inc. in Everett, who has supplied grapes to local winemakers for 40 years, said he has seen his customer base change with immigration trends.
"It used to be the old Italians and Portuguese," he said. Now, he sells to Albanians, Brazilians, and other South Americans. "We are getting an influx of younger people. The second and third generations are coming back to it. And they buy the best equipment."
No official figures exist on the number of home-based winemakers, but Silvestro calculates he sold enough grapes -- trucked from California to Everett in 48 tractor-trailers -- to produce about 3,000 barrels this year alone. (A barrel fills 18 cases, he said.)
Starting around Labor Day and running through October, customers start lining up at 6 a.m., especially on weekends, said Silvestro, who is semi-retired but continues to open his Everett warehouse, near the Chelsea produce market, for the grape season. One of a few local wine grape dealers, he also makes a couple of barrels of wine for himself each year. Among about 30 varieties he carries, red-wine grapes (zinfandel, merlot, barbera, and shiraz) are vastly more popular than those for white wines, though white zinfandel and chardonnay have a loyal following, he said.
"They go like in fads," Silvestro said. "Ten years ago, white zinfandel was big, then merlot. Now, they are into shiraz. But the zinfandel is the old standard."
Silvestro followed his father into the wine grape business starting as a young boy, working after school. He said he doesn't bother with imported grapes, but buys exclusively from vineyards in the Upper San Jose and Napa Valley regions of California.
"They are here about five days after being picked, which gets you a better yield and fresher, less banged-up grapes," he said.
Among his new-generation, American-born clients is Steve Ranere, a doctor from Belmont. Ranere likes to experiment with wine varieties, so he enlists friends and relatives to help
him with the labor-intensive lugging, grinding, pressing, and bottling. "Friends like the wine so they help," said Ranere, who is aging several wines this year, including a traditional blend using merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and cabernet franc grapes and a super Tuscan blend combining cabernet sauvignon and sangiovese grapes.
The process began in August, when he and friends transferred last year's wine into bottles. By September, he and his son had cleaned and prepared barrels for new wine, which they crushed and pressed in September with a little help from some friends. They transferred this year's wine into barrels around Columbus Day weekend. It will be ready for bottling next August, he said.
Stomping the grapes by foot went out of style, even in Italy, more than half a century ago, winemakers say. Now, makers use special home-sized grinders and presses imported from Europe, where many families still
cultivate vineyards the way New Englanders tend vegetable gardens. Home winemaking "is really the traditional way that wine was made going back thousands of years," according to Patrick E. McGovern, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. His book "Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture" (Princeton University Press) traces winemaking's origins to its first appearance during the Neolithic period from 8,500 to 4,000 B.C. in parts of what are today Turkey and Iran.
Winemaking began as a family -- or at least a tribal -- activity, according to McGovern, who said evidence of wine stores has been found in the ancient ruins of modest family homes. Today's commercial vineyard culture dates back to the Egyptian pharaohs and, later, European royalty, who developed a taste for imported wines and made the investment in spreading vineyards and wine culture from the Middle East to
Africa, Europe, and beyond, he said. Everywhere it took hold, McGovern said, winemaking trickled down to the family level. He said he has visited parts of the state of Georgia, where people harvest and make wine from grapes growing around their homes. In Philadelphia, home winemakers hold an annual testing festival each fall.
The Capogrecos hold a smaller gathering every Nov. 11, San Martino Day, a Roman Catholic saint day when Italian winemakers traditionally invite friends and neighbors to test the new wine and see how it is aging.
"Just about everyone walks in with a bottle or a gallon" they made themselves, said Schirripa.
Last November, among those who came simply to enjoy the family's hospitality was Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino. He rememberd that his grandfather selected grapes from a vendor who sold them from the back of a truck in Hyde Park every fall decades ago when the neighborhood had a large Italian population.
"There was a certain grape my grandfather would buy," said Menino, lamenting what he sees as a dying tradition. "In 10 or 15 years, we won't have this uniqueness."
Capogreco also worries that the tradition is slipping away. His son Pat, a city building inspector and political operative, said he wants to learn the process someday but is in no hurry. This fall, his father started training his son's friend, Paul Travaglini, brother of state Senate President Robert Travaglini.
"I feel good about it. I'm waiting to see what it tastes like," said Travaglini, a few weeks after making his first barrel. "I do think we will continue the tradition." 