One-woman revolution

A rattling rhythm fills the air—the industrial punch of cork compressions and vibrating glass that jangles like loose teeth. Passersby look around for the commotion. Hidden in an alley off 29th Street, a Willy Wonka-like truck is pumping wine through massive hoses, firing it with nitrogen, hitting it with filtered gas and then jetting it into glistening green bottles.

The gears and hydraulics move like clockwork. Robotic hands tag each vintage on the conveyor with a label. Near the truck’s front, a small puddle of mourvèdre is shining on sun-blanched pavement. At the back of the truck, cases of wine are roaring down a set of rollers.

Colleen Sullivan pauses to watch the ordered spectacle. Then she grabs shrink wrap and begins racing around a mound of cases on a pallet. She loops five times, the chalkboard screech of elasticity growing louder. When her co-workers glance back, she just smiles. This is the life of a city-centered winemaker: It’s Midtown dreams and back-alley bottling. It’s not the kind of vino vignette the area’s known for.

Sullivan is out to change all that. She may be one of the region’s youngest barrel masters, but her free-range ability to work with grape farmers from any appellation offers true liberation around a 4,000-year-old art form. With her fan base on the rise, she’s become Sacramento’s new face of urban winemaking.

Sullivan works as the chief viticulturist at Revolution Wines, a winery at S and 29th streets that shares its patio with the original Temple Coffee. The business was started in 2005 by Joe and Gina Genshlea, who moved it into Midtown two years later. The couple saw potential in this quiet, tree-lined pocket, and these days the addition of the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op and Pushkin’s Bakery has made the corner a culinary microhub. It offers locally roasted coffee, locally grown food and locally baked pastries. And, thanks to Revolution, the first locally made wine since before Prohibition.

“Everything around us is small businesses,” Sullivan observes, “and we’ve been growing together as Sacramento grows.”

That kind of neighborhood synergy is what Sullivan was looking for when she moved back to her hometown after college in 2011. She started working in Revolution’s tasting room, immersing herself in what its winemaker Craig Haarmeyer was creating. Sullivan eventually began apprenticing for him, an experience that taught her just how innovative a Sacramento-based operation could be.

Most California wineries are located in designated appellations. A winemaker on a specific trail is under pressure to use as many estate grapes and nearby vineyards as possible. Hence, a vino virtuoso in Amador County has the soil gods with her when making zinfandel and barbera, but could struggle if trying to produce a cabernet sauvignon. A winemaker in the Anderson Valley can conjure pinot noir with a punch, but risks challenges when attempting tempranillo.

Revolution’s aim is to find grapes for each varietal it’s making at the appellation with the best fruit for that style. From there, the magic happens in its cavernous Midtown barreling room.

A year-and-a-half ago, Haarmeyer departed Revolution, and Sullivan was promoted to its new head winemaker. She still uses grape farmers whose land ranges from Calaveras to the outskirts of Elk Grove, and she’s enjoying every minute of it.

“We work closely with the growers, and that allows us to do what we want,” Sullivan says.

So far, the approach has paid off, especially with Sullivan’s zinfandel. Made from Amador County’s Aparicio Vineyard, the wine is memorable for its warm raspberry base simmering with clove reflections and tingling traces of tobacco. Like all good zins, it has a vibrant kick.

Another hit for Sullivan is Revolution’s Albarino, a rare white Spanish varietal made from grapes in north Yolo’s Dunnigan Hills. Light and elegant, its soft apple essence offers hints of buttermilk riding under cool hues of vanilla. Its profile is the talk of the tasting room.

Revolution makes more than 15 red and white varietals, but its most famous bottle to date is the chenin blanc, culled from grapes in nearby Clarksburg along the Delta. In 2014, Wine Spectator’s Harvey Steiman mentioned this chenin blanc as one of the top white wines in the nation for pairing with oysters. The chenin blanc is currently sold out, though Sullivan is working on a new vintage.

“Clarksburg is one of the best spots in the world for growing chenin blanc,” she observes.

But whether Sullivan is using chardonnay grapes from Lodi or roussanne grapes from Placer, she and the Genshlea family keep their focus on highlighting top California soil near the capital. Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles grapes don’t make an appearance here, and they don’t need to.

“We want to showcase our region as much as possible,” Sullivan says. “Amador is basically our backyard and Clarksburg is just down the road. We want to show off what we have from vineyards that are mainly within an hour drive.”

Sacramento’s first winery since the Jazz Age may have space for barreling and fermentation, but not for a full bottling plant. That’s where Harry Hakala’s Mobile Wine Line comes into play. On this scorching summer morning, the crew on Hakala’s truck works with Revolution’s own staff to convert vats of vino into bottles for the tasting room. Hakala’s state-of-the-art vehicle can crank out 350 cases in an hour. If he pushes its gears to ludicrous speed, the truck can launch 4,000 cases in a day.

“It was all my mom,” Hakala says, carefully working the controls. “She came up with this idea back in 1978. There are probably 40 different trucks working in the industry now, but we were the very first, back when my mom had the idea.”

Tales like that are the reason Sullivan finds so much inspiration in the region’s wine scene: from Gold Country to the Delta, vineyard legacies are still built around small families. Merging her own skill set with those back stories are the challenge—and reward—that drive her.

“I just love the story that a wine can tell,” Sullivan says. “And I get to meet so many people who have been part of the business for generations. For me, it’s so cool to be part of the pride that they’re passing on.”