A local family discovers the work and satisfaction their home vineyard brings.

By Christa Gala                       

Learning the land

            The family vineyard isn’t the family business, however. Pam, 36, is a stay-at-home mom to the couple’s two daughters. Tam, 37, works at Cloer Nursery in Apex, started by his parents in 1979. The vineyard, says Tam, is a hobby that simply grew in huge proportions—perhaps even a little crazily.

Primarily, the Cloers grow three types of grapes: a French hybrid called Chambourcin, a Cabernet Franc (similar to a Cabernet Sauvignon) and a Seyval Blanc.

            In addition to the thousands of vines growing in the vineyard, the Cloers have two 256-gallon stainless steel fermenting tanks in a small barn-like shed behind their house. Recently, family and friends gathered at the remodeled farmhouse, built in 1914, to bottle the wine that had been fermenting in a wooden barrel for 14 months. The Cloers usually give away many, if not most, of the 360 bottles as holiday gifts or for other occasions. As it turns out, they’re not huge wine drinkers.

“We like wine and drink wine, but I’m not a connoisseur,” Tam says. “I couldn’t sit down and do blind tastings, but I can tell you about the anatomy of the grapes. We like this more for the agricultural aspect, more from the farming standpoint.”

Tam, a graduate of North Carolina State University with a BS in horticulture, is especially intrigued by figuring out what will grow well in the local climate and soil.             “An ideal growing environment for a grape is a very hot day followed by a very cool night,” says Tam. “And here we don’t have cool nights. So the complexity and structure of the grape can come apart a little bit. However, the way science has evolved the last 15 or 20 years, just in agricultural research, you’ve got chemicals and you’ve also got clones—varieties of plants that actually thrive under certain conditions.”

            The varieties Tam plants tolerate the heat and mildews of North Carolina. While the quality of the California climate is hard to match, North Carolina is quite kind to certain types of grapes.

“I would bet that in the next 10 to 20 years, North Carolina will be one of the top five wine producing states in the country. I absolutely have no doubt about it,” Tam says. He could be right. As it stands now, according to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, the state ranked 12^th for wine production in 2002, producing wine with an estimated value of $30 million. Currently, North Carolina is home to 250 vineyards and 25 award-winning wineries.

Hard work

            Growing grapes is not a weekend pastime or a lazy man’s hobby. When asked how much work it requires, Tam says: “Let me put it this way. Your wine is made in your vineyards. There are not shortcuts.”

Tam and a Cloer Nursery employee named Sabino Soliz (known as ‘Newly’ to his buddies), start tending the vineyards in March, pruning for about two weeks, cleaning up and then setting trellis wires. Newly, like Tam, is very experienced and helped Tam plant his very first vines. The summer months are especially busy, and the two men often work the vineyards three days a week, pruning, spraying, and thinning the vegetation, which is necessary if heavy rains cause an overgrowth and prevent the fruit from getting adequate sun. Harvesting generally takes place in September or October. Then the process moves inside.

“As far as equipping the winery, a lot of this is experimental,” Tam says. “But the equipment that we have bought to experience with has been good equipment.” The jacketed fermenting tanks he installed two years ago contain the grapes and also have refrigeration capability. The cost of such tanks varies widely, ranging in price from $4 to $12 per gallon, depending on the size of the tank purchased.

Tam’s 256-gallon tanks would be considered rather large for homeowner use, but adequate for a small commercial winery. “But if you were a larger winery, they would be like a soft drink-sized can,” he says.

A few years ago, Tam tried to figure out how much his hobby cost him.

           He fiddled with numbers per acre and per vine, but he still hasn’t come up with a reliable figure. It doesn’t matter to him though. What’s important is that he and Pam enjoy it. The grapes bring family and friends together—whether in planting, harvesting, bottling or canning.

Enjoying it

            When the Cloers bought their property in Apex, the farmhouse was hard to find, with a winding dirt road providing the only access. Subdivisions were scarce, and the only grocery store was several miles away on Highway 64. A lot has changed.

“We couldn’t afford to buy this out here now, believe it or not,” Tam says. “It’s gotten a lot more expensive over the last five or six years. When they paved this road about six years ago, that actually increased the values of the properties out here.”

            But the Cloers have no plans of moving. They’re doing just what they’ve always wanted.

“There’s no big business plan. Pam and I have always just wanted to enjoy it,” Tam says. “It’s just a hobby. We had the land, and I wanted to plant some grapes.”

Tam admits he’s probably through planting new vines for a while, but suggests to anyone who’s interested to call the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (see related sidebar). Planting a vineyard doesn’t have to break the bank.

“You could plant a really nice vineyard for less than $500 or you could plant an extravagant vineyard for $50,000,” Tam says. “In fact, a lot of good wines are simply made.”

Christa Gala is a freelance writer living in Apex.