Monterey County enjoys Old World winemakers and New World winemakers, biodynamic winemakers and hard-core conventional winemakers, winemakers who make a barrel’s worth and winemakers who produce enough to supply five wineries.
It has female winemakers who make masculine wines and male winemakers who do feminine wines.
It has fruit bombers and lean machines, cold-climate Syrah savants and Pinot whisperers.
It has a wild-haired winemaker who likes to swirl his wine while driving a windshield-free jeep through his vineyard while looking back to talk to his whiteknuckled guests in the back seat.
But it’s never had a winemaker quite like this.
Soft-spoken Salinas native Miguel Lepe is a first-generation American. His parents worked the fields when they immigrated from Mexico. Now his mother and father serve as a cafeteria attendant and mechanic, respectively. They are insanely proud of the fact their son, the first in his family to graduate from college, has his own wine label. At 28.
The funny thing about college for their kid: Lepe didn’t know you could study winemaking, as he ultimately would at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Originally he signed up for a vineyard production class at Hartnell College on a whim because he liked plants and gardening. When class field trips led to vineyards at harvest, something clicked.
“That really caught my attention,” he says. “I loved the class. When I found out universities offered it as a major I was like, ‘What?’”
He just introduced his first vintages under his own label, but not before working several internships with California wineries, namely Justin and Sylvester (now Le Vigne) in Paso Robles, and another in Chile.
“Now I draw different practices from each experience to create my own style,” he says.
In 2013 he interned with popular Peter Figge of Figge Cellars at his custom crush facility out in the dunes-adjacent boonies of Marina.
“When he came on board, I was thinking I don’t have a lot to offer, since I don’t have the experience of an oenology degree myself,” Figge says. “But even if he might be beyond me on winemaking, I told him I could offer the chance to make wine.”
Figge’s operation is fascinating itself. It’s tucked into an industrial park where the neighbors include motherboard makers and assembly-line builders. (The latter comes in handy when the winemaking machinery goes awry.) In addition to crafting Figge’s worthy wines, it also manages the winemaking operation for Mercy Vineyards of Carmel Valley and the custom crush work for the likes of Big Sur Vineyards and Swing Wines (of Carmel Valley Ranch).
After his internship, Lepe left to work with Viñas Casa del Bosque in Casablanca, Chile, then returned to act as Figge’s cellar master.
As they worked on various wines together, Figge told Lepe to find someone willing to sell them fruit and they’d split costs. From there Lepe would be “the shepherd” of his own creation: handling the grapes, writing the business plan, designing the brand, wrestling with the minutiae of labeling law.
He found some grapes he liked from Arroyo Seco and Santa Lucia Highlands for his first vintages, a Gewurztraminer ($20) and a Chardonnay ($20), respectively, and the results are consciously different than what’s out there (and on the Figge lineup of wines).
The Gewurztraminer, an uncommon varietal around California, brings a striking nose that’s aromatic, floral and even rubbery, with a lemon – and honey-touched taste on the palate and off-dry style. It seems predestined for picnics, oysters and the widening population of wine nerds into atypical whites.
He ages his Chardonnay in steel, so you anticipate an acidic edge. Instead it enjoys a smoothness and surprisingly long finish because he takes the time to stir the barrels and bring up the residual yeast settling in the bottom (aka “lees”) to soften and round out the body of the wine. The balance almost suggests a rich Sauvignon Blanc.
“What started as an experiential process is really working out for him,” Figge says. “He’s very passionate about what he’s doing.”
Lepe says selling the wine is the most challenging aspect of the multifaceted wine business. For now Lepe’s only available in a few places, Wharf Marketplace in Monterey, Star Market in Salinas and Max’s Grill in Pacific Grove among them. He’s aiming for Zeph’s One Stop next.
Maybe it’s fitting that there aren’t too many places to pick up his bottles yet, as Latino millennial winemakers are a rare find themselves.
But it’s safe to anticipate more of his wines – and more next-generation winemakers – in key Monterey County places soon.