By Kathleen Sterling
When you’re Italian wine runs through your blood!
And you usually don’t make your own, unless you’re Andy Coradeschi of Agoura, one of the home-grown vintners we’re featuring this summer.
He grew up in New Jersey watching his father and friends make wine in a “48-hour party” every year, and got to taste and appreciate their efforts at a young age.
But he actually credits his wife Carolyn for the impetus. One night having a glass of wine on their patio she asked, “Why don’t we…?”
So they planted vines along their back slope in 2001, and bottled their first vintage in 2003. “Agoura is not a whole lot different than the Malibu AVA. They’re similar in climate,” Coradeschi explained.
At first he took classes at Woodland Hills Wine Makers Club, and learned about insects, irrigation and inoculation. He worked with them for five years, and then bought his own crusher and set up in his garage.
His father was an engineer by trade, and Coradeschi designs and builds cranes for motion pictures, so he is happiest “at one or two in the morning out tinkering in the garage. Winemaking is both art and science,” he said.
Out of their 30 vines, he produces about 25 cases of various reds, from pinot, syrah, cabernet to sangiovese.
Harkening his engineer roots, he didn’t have a label at first, but just stuck blue duct tape on it with the date is was bottled.
Down the line he designed the Coradeschi Vineyards label, but kept a strip of blue tape running across it. “All my friends know at parties to go to the bottles with the blue tape. It fits my nerd image,” he laughed.
He doesn’t sell his wine locally, but keeps it for said friends, clients and family. And the wine school? Students now come to him for advice.
Coradeschi is also familiar with another liquid – serving as president of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District Board of Directors.
A familiar face around town, next time you see him ask to sample his homegrown wares – I’m not a red drinker but absolutely loved it!
