Sierra Foothills Twist: Spanish Varieties Shake Things Up

There's a California Blue Oak tree atop the property at Twisted Oak Winery in Murphys, California. It’s not exactly twisted, beaten ruthlessly by winds or somehow malformed from earthquakes or lightening strikes, but it’s beautiful nonetheless. The name of the winery however, is more fitting for owners Jeff and Mary Stai (pronounced “stye”) and their renegade and irreverent brand of wines, than for a tree.

Launched in 2003, Twisted Oak Winery takes its philosophical cues more from Monty Python than UC Davis. "We wanted to be simultaneously fun, family friendly and have a great product," Jeff Stai says. That's exactly why rubber chickens adorn the tasting room and why they make a white wine called “Sierra Foothills %@#$!” (a blend of roussane and marsanne, also know as Potty Mouth White) and a red they named “Calaveras County *%#&@!” (a blend of mourvedre, syrah and granache also called, you guessed it, Potty Mouth Red). Twisted Oak also occasionally produces a port, affectionally called Pig Stai. Twisted Oak even started the official Take Your Rubber Chicken to Work Week, where diehard wine fans get prizes for the photos they submit when the rubber chicken shows up in the workplace, probably to the dismay of bosses everywhere.

Jeff and Mary Stai, originally from the Los Angeles area, were looking for a vineyard property near Santa Barbara. But it was the allure of the Gold Country, the Sierra Foothills that drew them to eventually call the 1850s mining town home. "The wines up here thrilled us,” Stie told me. “It was always in the back of my mind to find a place here someday.” That someday arrived when they bought 120 aces as an investment property in 2001. "I always thought, this would be a cool place to live," Stai said.

Jeff, working as an electrical engineer wasn't planning on leaving L.A., not just yet, though there were long term plans to escape the big bad city. "Being in the engineering field, I knew a few engineers who were also in the wine business. One guy I knew had four acres of zinfandel in Morgan Hill, south of San Jose." Stai was invited one day to a winemaker dinner. "They were serving these wines that were fantastic. They had all these flavors going on, it blew my mind. That was a pivotal moment." He started going to any tastings and wineries he could find. He and Mary would visit wineries and comment that, "If we had a winery we would do this, or we wouldn't do that. But I never had the desire to ferment anything. However, I found the wine business to be really interesting." he said.