Wargin Wines’ Assistant Winemaker Brenton Jones says he is ready to shake up the wine industry.
“When I look at the industry as a whole… it’s pretty set in its ways,” Jones says. “It gets stuck in a box—especially when you look at what breweries are doing, or the current hard seltzer boom.”
This has led Jones, 24, to create a new wine using Wargin Wines’ Greco di Tufo and infusing it with hops. Jones came across a home-brew section in a local liquor store, and eventually he and winery owners Mikael and Denise Wargin began to experiment.
“I’ve wanted to do a hopped Greco for a while now,” Jones says. “When the current lockdown hit, we thought, ‘Well, we have nothing else going on.’ So we got to work.”
The winery has since done four different versions of the Hopped Greco. Each one has a different level of hops, and thus changes the taste, Jones says.
“I’m learning a lot more about beer and how hops can affect flavor,” he says, adding that he is looking into doing a blend with red wine as well.
For now, though, the Greco di Tufo—which is made from Greco, an Italian wine grape—has worked.
“Greco works really well for this kind of experiment,” Mikael Wargin says. “It’s a dense, citric white that really stands up to the hops… it’s not overwhelmed.”
The Hopped Greco has led to another new addition at Wargin Wines: refillable growers. Wines can now be purchased in 750ml glass growlers—the equivalent of a standard wine bottle—and then brought back to be refilled. Customers receive a $5 deposit whenever they return the growler.
“It’s pretty cool,” Wargin says. “It started with just the Hopped Greco but then we thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is a really cost efficient, easy system.’ So we started filling [the growlers] with other wines.”
The growler program has been dubbed “Vino Sfuso,” which literally means “loose wine” in Italian. Wargin says that it is a common practice in Italy, with customers filling up home containers for the week.
“It’s much more of a direct transaction,” he says.
As for the future of Wargin Wines’ Hopped series, Jones said they have no plans to stop experimenting.
“Wine needs to be more interesting,” Jones says. “For young people, especially… they might start forgetting about wine, preferring other things. I want them to see its possibilities.”
Wargin Wines is open for outdoor tasting at its Watsonville and Soquel locations, by appointment only. For information and to place wine orders visit warginwines.com.
