Resurgent winery set to open tasting room in Modesto
By Tim Moran
Modesto Bee
Old-timers in Modesto might remember when there was another winery in town -- Mitch Cosentino and his Crystal Valley Cellars.
The winery was founded almost 25 years ago and gained a sizable following.
Cosentino went on to greater fame and fortune, moving to Napa and creating acclaimed wines under his Cosentino and CE2V labels.
He decided to return to the valley three years ago to revive the Crystal Valley Cellars brand.
The next step in that revival comes at the end of this month, when a Crystal Valley Cellars tasting room opens near Lockeford. A grand opening is planned for early April.
Cosentino has built a small, estate winery in the middle of a 70- to 90-year-old zinfandel vineyard. A farmhouse on the site has been converted to a tasting room and a winery production building was added.
"It gives us another bit of visibility that people can touch and feel," Cosentino said Thursday. "There's still a lot of interest from the old guard who knows us from the Modesto days."
Now they won't have to drive to Napa to pick up Cosentino's wines. The Napa wines will be available in the tasting room, but the focus will be on the Crystal Valley offerings. Those are more moderately priced, at $14 to $18 a bottle, than his other brands.
"We aren't the cheapest," Cosentino commented, "but we can be the best in that category."
The wines get the same Napa approach to winemaking that his other brands get, Cosentino said, which gives them a quality edge.
"The 2002 merlot and syrah, we've just been bottling and shipping. We've been out of the 2001s," he said.
The tasting room should boost interest.
"We are excited about getting open down there. We'll be a little more a part of the community," Cosentino said.
Details are sparse, but a spokesman for the winery says the new wine will be called Red Bicyclette, and will debut this summer at about $10 a bottle.
The wine would join Gallo's other imports, Ecco Domani and Bella Sera from Italy and Black Swan from Australia.
Perhaps that's a sign that the uproar over all things French in the wake of that country's disapproval of the U.S. invasion of Iraq may finally be fading.
Bell Wine Cellars, a Napa winery owned by Stocktonians Alex Spanos and Ron Berberian, is launching a major expansion of the winery and vineyards.
A 6,000-square-foot expansion of the Yountville winery is planned, including a barrel storage facility, new retail hospitality room, kitchens and a bocci ball court.
Berberian and Spanos also are developing a new, 40-acre vineyard property on Pritchard Hill to produce cabernet sauvignon.
The investment in the project is more than $10 million.
Spanos and Berberian have no plans to quit their day jobs, however.
Spanos is chairman of A.G. Spanos Cos., a land development firm that builds, markets and manages apartment buildings and planned communities. He also owns the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League.
Ron Berberian is the owner of Bank of Agriculture & Commerce and Berberian European Motors in Stockton.