4 b) Waldemar G Klee; Horticulturist, Winemaker-

I found this article about Waldemar G. Klee as a winemaker by searching on the Internet using the name WG Klee, which is the usual way Waldemar’s name was listed. I placed the relevant parts of the article below.

 The URL below should take you to the entire piece. I imagine that Waldemar must have been an essential man in the operation because of his botanical and horticultural knowledge that I described and documented in  4. a) Waldemar G. Klee, pioneer in agriculture and in the biological control of insect pests

It is no accident that the winery was in Santa Cruz, California, not far from Santa Clara where Waldemar’s Gravenstein Ranch was located. He lived there with his family and it must have been convenient for him to visit the Winery and presumably supervise the horticulture of grapes. Our family knew nothing about this part of the history, presumably because of Waldemar’s death in early 1891.

I will throw in another bit of information that is relevant to the ranch, but not to the winery. My late father, Bertel Bernard Klee (a son of Waldemar G. Klee), told me stories of riding horses on the ranch. He had no memories of his father because Waldemar died shortly after Bertel was born.               Gerald D Klee, Webmaster -                                                                                                                                                                            ____________________________________________________________________________________

Scotts Valley 's Past: Scotts Valley Winemakers (1855-1895)
http://www.cyber-times.com/newspapers/archives/00000190.shtml

By Eric Taylor

Good Morning Commuters! As you head north on Highway 17 for your daily commute, you pass by Vine Hill Road and Jarvis Roads on your right. The land on and around those two thoroughfares was once home to some of Santa Cruz County ’s very first vineyards. The area’s soils and climate adapted to the production of a wide range of wine grapes. Vineyards replaced the chaparral, chemise, oak and madrone.

…As California wine production was growing in the 1870’s, France and the rest of Europe was suffering from the phylloxera root louse, which was quickly destroying their wine producing capacity. The French reaction to this calamity was to adulterate and fabricate their wine. The California winemakers were at the right place at the right time and came into the world market providing wine to the French and the rest of the world.

The California wine growers moved to take advantage of their new role. In 1887 The Santa Cruz Mountain Winery was incorporated for the purpose of making, aging, and putting on the market Santa Cruz County wines. The stockholders and directors were J.W. Jarvis, President; W.H. Galbrith, Secretary and Manager with F. McMullen, Mrs. H.P. Gregory, Ed Fitch ,Waldemar G. Klee  and H.M. Hanmore. Together they controlled 200 acres of grape production.

In the late 1880’s, the Santa Cruz Mountain Winery built this state-of-the-art winemaking facility, which could store and age up to 200,000 gallons of wine. At the time, it was widely regarded as the best such facility in California .

On the headwaters of Branciforte Creek they built a state-of-the-art facility three stories in height with all the modern appliances to extract the juice from the grape and m ak e wine. The building was situated against one of the upper banks of the Branciforte Creek and had three tunnels dug into the soft sandstone totaling 360 feet in length, as wide as 24 feet and 18 feet high. These wine vaults could store 200,000 gallons of wine with the temperature not varying more than three degrees in a year. At the time this was claimed to be the best wine cellar in the state of California .                            ___________________________________________________________________________________________

There is currently an active Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard that is a direct descendant of the original vineyard and winery of that name discussed above. The most recent reincarnation of it took place in1974. As discussed below, the winery began in1863 under the name of the Jarvis Brother's Vineyard. By the time Waldemar G. Klee in the 1880s it was called the Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard. http://webwinery.com/SCMV/SCMV-History.html

Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard   Founded ("Reincarnated") in 1974

For 30 years, Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard was located at one of the oldest continuously operated vineyards in California , originally established in 1863 as the Jarvis Brothers Vineyard.

Ken Burnap, started the winery in 1974, setting out to m ak e the finest Pinot Noir possible in California . Ken had done years of research into what conditions were necessary to produce good Pinot Noir and the site of this historic Jarvis Vineyard met all those criteria. The first release under the Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard label was the much touted 1975 vintage.