THE CALIFORNIA CONNECTION

Some University grads who caught the vintner fever have started their wineries in a more traditional wine region.

Albert Brounstein, a 1942 business grad, settled in Calistoga, California, after a 25-year career in marketing and sales. On 70 acres of canyon-country, he established the Diamond Creek Winery, which produces award-winning Cabernets that the Wine Spectator calls "some of the finest, longest-lived and most complex in California." While his winery produces only about 3,000 cases a year, some of his wines sell for nearly $300 a bottle and have what some critics have described as a "cult following" among Napa Valley devotees.

Brounstein acknowledged, when interviewed by Wine Spectator in 1990, that his wines are not typical fare. "When you're as small as I am, you don't have to make wines that please everyone," he said. "That's the beauty of this business: everyone can make their own style of wine."

Kent Rosenblum, a 1968 Vet Med grad, originally moved to Alameda, California, to open his veterinary practice and ski every weekend in the nearby mountains. But before long he found himself unexpectedly attracted to the wine business.

In 1970 Rosenblum and his wife, Kathleen, went to dinner at an upscale restaurant in San Francisco and enjoyed a bottle of Riesling wine, compliments of their neighbors. The two novice wine drinkers (Rosenblum says he had tasted wine only once before) began following the trail of Bacchus, visiting wineries and tasting thousands of different varieties. A few years later, they even traveled to France to learn European wine making techniques.

"Somewhere along the line, I realized I had some talent for the business," Rosenblum says. "I've always been able to smell things miles away that no one else could smell."

In 1977, the couple opened their winery, called Uniquely Rosenblum, and sold small quantities of wine which featured a rose in bloom on the labels. Today their winery employs 24 full-time people and produces 60,000 cases a year. And Kent Rosenblum is now more vintner than vet; he works only two days a week at the animal clinic and reserves the rest of his time for wine making. Still, he's grateful for his experience and education in hard science. "At the University, I had more chemistry and biochemistry than most enology students," Rosenblum says. "So when it came to studying fermentation science, I was very well prepared."

--A. B.