Leah’s recent post about organic kosher wine made me think back to my visit to Four Gates Kosher Winery, which was now six and a half years ago.
In July of 2000, I spontaneously left New York City after living there some eight years, to try California (where I grew up) for a year. I immediately went to work at the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California – now called j. weekly.
After three months on the job, we got a call from a guy named Benyamin Cantz; he told my editor that he ran what he believed was the only kosher organic winery in the country, and the recent spell of hot weather was causing his grapes to ripen more quickly than usual. I think he was hoping that we would put a notice in the paper to recruit volunteers to help him pick that Sunday. They did no such thing. They sent me instead.

He was in the Santa Cruz mountains, and I was an alumni of UC Santa Cruz (known to many as Uncle Charlie’s Summer Camp), and I was so excited to go back.
That September Sunday, like September weather in general in Santa Cruz, was an absolutely gorgeous day. I remember driving up the mountain road off Highway 17 that I never knew was there, and thinking “where the hell is this place?” But when I got there, wow. There is something about the sight of the Santa Cruz mountains that I love; not only because I went to school among them, but because I went to summer camp as a child in them, too (UAHC Camp Swig anyone?)
When I reached the summit of this windy dirt road, and saw the view before me, I had one of those moments when I thought ““I can’t believe I’m actually getting paid to do this.”
That day was my first introduction to the Bay Area’s frum community. It may shock readers to know this, but there are a lot of frum hippies here in the Bay Area. That day I met Rabbi Yosef Langer, head of Chabad of S.F., a former Deadhead, who is known for riding his “mitzvah motorcycle.”
My organic awareness was not so developed yet, and admittedly, when Benyamin gave me his shpiel, I saw him pretty much as one of those “only in Santa Cruz” stories. A UCSC graduate who had never left, he lived alone in the woods, with only the vineyards to keep him company.
But at the same time, the whole scene was so amazing. I remember Langer taking out his shofar so we all could hear it; a commandment during the month of Elul. That shofar blast echoing throughout the vineyard and surrounding mountains was so powerful, that I opened my article with it.
I felt a million miles away from Manhattan and realized I was glad to be so. I think that might have been the beginning of the realization that my year in California would turn into much more.
My original article about Four Gates is here: www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/14472/edition_id/281/format/html/displaystory.html