Located in the rugged Santa Cruz mountains at an elevation of 1100 feet, the winery is tucked into the north slope of the hillside under the house.

In addition to barrel fermentation and aging, the bottling of Ahlgren wines takes place in the cellar.

Views from the winery work pad reach south across Val's garden and "Greyhound Run Vineyard".

Open Top Red Wine Fermentors

Granddaughter, Sarah Ahlgren Huntley, dumping boxes of grapes with Dexter in 1999.

Crusher - Destemmer in action.

Dexter punches the "cap" on fermenting red wine

Grandson Aaron helps load the press. Vintage 1999

Crush Pad & Terrace

The Ahlgrens, Dexter and Val, built this redwood post and beam house in 1975. Designed by Sim van der Ryn, the lumber was milled on the site by the Ahlgrens using an Alaskan Mill.

The cellar is approximately 1200 square feet, the stacks hold about 200 French and American oak barrels. Fermentation and aging of the white wines takes here in the barrels. Red wines undergoe secondary fermentation and aging here as well.

Rootstock, budded to three French lones of Pinot Noir (June of 2002), overlook the redwood, live oak and madrone forests of the upper San Lorenzo Valley watershed.

To the north, looking beyond the fermentors, coas redwoods form a lush backdrop.

Grapes are now picked into small bins by vineyard crews and trucked to the winery by Dexter. The red grapes go directly into the crusher, and white grapes go to the press.

From the crusher, red grapes, juice, skins and all go into open-topped fermentors for primary fermentaion where yeast turns the juice into wine.

During the fermentation process, the yeast produces carbon dioxide that floats the skins to the surface of the fermentor. 3 - 4 times a day, the mass of skins ("cap") are punched down and stirred into the fermenting must to assure extraction of color and phenols and to prevent any drying out of the cap surface.

When sugars have been converted to alcohol and other complexities of fermentation have reached the optimum point, the new wine is pumped off the skins and the skins are bucketed out of the fermentors and dumped into the press where the remaining new wine is gently squeezed from the skins, leaving behind the pomace which is then composted for the garden.

The Crush Pad doubles as a tasting terrace Saturdays 12 - 4 and is the site of special tastings and picnics.