Laguna Canyon Winery marks a milestone of producing award-winning vino in town.
By Sharon Stello
J.J. Huber’s passion for wine runs deep: From helping to pick the grapes in Napa and Sonoma counties to perfecting the blends, he’s been involved every step of the way at Laguna Canyon Winery, which started in 2003 and opened for tastings a year later.
This fall, the winery celebrates the 20th anniversary of its tasting room opening to the public. “It’s hard to believe how fast it went by,” Huber says of reaching the milestone. The Orange County Wine Society will help toast the occasion at a Nov. 1 party complete with wine tastings and cheese and charcuterie boards. And there are plenty of other ways to get involved, from dropping by for tastings to signing up as a member or attending monthly wine pairing dinners or a wine blending class.
Step into the newly remodeled tasting room and visitors will find self-serve wine-dispensing machines—a pandemic pivot that has proven popular among those seeking to taste at their own pace—and rock ’n’ roll presented on a 10-foot screen rather than live jazz.
Billed as OC’s first urban winery, everything is done on-site in Laguna Canyon, from the grape crushing to the fermenting and bottling. Every inch of space is used. Even barrels under the tasting tables often hold wine. Huber sees the wine-making process as a creative endeavor, making Laguna Beach, with its history as an art colony, the ideal location for his craft. “This is our expression of art, so it’s been really nice to be part of that,” he says.
The creative aspect of winemaking becomes evident, Huber explains, as people might buy the same grapes, but their wines each end up tasting different in the end. There are so many things that can be tweaked during the process to create your own style. His small-batch wines are unfiltered and made with high-quality grapes from low-yield vineyards. “We do it by hand, so you get a much better extraction and some amazing color as well coming from the skins,” Huber says, noting that larger companies often produce wines with a lighter or medium-bodied color. “… And ours are inky, chewy, jammy. So that’s part of the benefit of handcrafting something in small lots.”
Laguna Canyon Winery—which consistently wins awards at the OC Fair’s Commercial Wine Competition including lots of gold and double gold medals—offers 20 different varieties, from reds like pinot noir, syrah, petite sirah and a Super Tuscan to whites like chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio. Huber started with a focus on blends, but now also offers pure varietals. There isn’t one that’s the most popular. “Members will come in and buy a case … and there’s 12 different bottles in the case,” he says.
In addition to the Laguna Canyon brand, he also produces wine under the Purple Paws label, which is a tribute to his late poodle, Tierra (aka Terr Bear or Bear), and donates the proceeds to nonprofits helping homeless pets.
“So the story goes, I was here pressing pinot noir about 15 years ago and I brought her to the winery. We were in the back here pressing and there was wine all over the floor,” Huber recalls. “Her little paws got soaking wet with pinot noir and she came to the front and she was traipsing around in the tasting room and marking all these little … paw prints all over the tasting room floor and I said, ‘That’s it, Purple Paws Pinot.’ And so I’ve been donating a portion of the sales for homeless pets in Orange County for the last 15 years.”
Deep Roots
Huber comes from a ranching family in Canada, where he first caught the wine-making bug. He knew the ag life wasn’t for him, so Huber moved to Vancouver where he met Gianni Seminari, who would become his mentor. Huber crushed grapes for two years with this Italian wine master from the University of Milan, honing his skills. Eventually, Huber embarked on his own journey with much success. Huber and his brother established their first winery in the Vancouver area in 1993 and then the family opened a second winery in 1996.
But Huber felt pulled toward the renowned vineyards of Northern California, so he continued his wine science education under the tutelage of UC Davis professor Clark Smith. Over the years, Huber’s style has evolved, combining Old World and New World wine-making methods to create complex blends. After visiting a friend in San Diego and meeting a young woman there, he decided to stay in Southern California. She eventually introduced him to his future wife, who was from Orange County and chose the Laguna Canyon site for his third winery.
Huber and his brother grew the winery exponentially. At one point, they had an extra 4,000 square feet of space in the adjacent building and had 150 barrels going at one time. They distributed their wine in 15 U.S. states and exported to China for many years. Laguna Canyon Winery’s bottles could be found in Costco, Ralphs and Albertsons stores across Southern California and in some restaurants. Then, in 2019, Huber bought his brother’s share of the business, becoming the sole owner, and decided to downsize right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. When wholesaling, the winery was producing 5,000 bottles a year and, since downsizing, only creates about 1,000 per year now.
“Downsizing was the best thing I’ve ever done,” Huber says. “So now it’s really winemaking for passion more so than winemaking for profit. I’ve got my 500 members … and retail guests, we’re open six days a week as a public tasting room and I’m happier than I’ve ever been—no headaches and no pressure and no stress. I just love what I do and I’m able to meet nice people along the way.”
The tasting room exudes a comfortable, homey feel that’s at once modern and rustic with huge wrought-iron chandeliers, farmhouse-style pendants and wine barrels holding up the tabletops. Behind the counter, a large, dark wood cabinet—built by Huber’s father—displays wine bottles and medals from the fair. Ceramic flooring was replaced with polished concrete and the walls went from a dark clay color to a brighter off-white. And Huber’s office was converted to a private event room, which is great for special occasions like bachelorette parties and birthdays. “It really turned out nice and I think now it’s timeless,” Huber says of the remodeled space.
From Vine to Wine
When it comes to making the wine, Huber travels to Northern California in a rented van to get his load of grapes at harvest time. For pinot noir, that’s usually in early September.
“And I’m picking grapes in the vineyard so I still have that connection to the land,” he says. “I’ve still got that agricultural spirit, really enhanced, that I love so much. It’s great to be able to be an urban winery and not a vineyard-[based] winery. I contract with vineyards throughout Napa County, Sonoma County, Lake County, even Paso Robles [and] Monterey. And, in doing that, I’m able to integrate different soil compositions and different terroirs into my wine portfolio so that they all are unique and different in their own ways.”
In addition to loading up his bins of grapes at harvest time, Huber goes to the vineyards two or three times a year to maintain his relationships with the growers. When choosing vineyards for his supply of grapes, he has four criteria: hand picked, low yield, sloped fields and no machines. “If it doesn’t meet those four criterias, I’m not really interested,” he says.
For the best picking conditions, he gets to the vineyard in the middle of the night. “We pick at usually 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning,” he says. “And it’s great because the Budget rent-a-vans are air-conditioned, so by the time I get [back to Laguna], … they’re still …cold. It’s an eight- or nine-hour drive, sometimes 12 hours, from Lake County.”
Upon returning to the winery, it takes two or three hours to crush a ton of grapes. “So I’ll do an email blast and some of my members and retail guests will come out and kind of watch us crush and maybe throw a fork or two in there and help crush a little bit and kind of get the experience, which is fun.”
After crushing the grapes, yeast is added and fermentation starts, he explains. The yeast eat the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, the latter of which rises to the top, bringing the skins with it and forming what’s known as a cap. Huber and his team punch that cap down several times a day to extract more color and tannins, and flavor compounds and enzymes from the skins as opposed to large wineries with massive tanks that pump the wine over that cap.
Once the crushed grapes ferment for 12 days or so and the juice has been pressed off the skins, then the mixture continues to ferment in the space behind the tasting room. The red wines also go through a second fermentation called malolactic fermentation. “That’s where I’ll inoculate the wines with bacteria. It will eat the malic acid [and] it will convert it to lactic acid, so it gets rid of all those harsh tannins,” Huber explains. “And then it will sit there. So pretty much from the time we receive the grapes until the time they get in the oak barrels, it’s about two months. And then pinot noir and sangiovese will come around pretty quickly in the oak barrels, usually a year, whereas cabernet sauvignon, syrah, petite sirah, they’ll take upwards of two years.”
Huber has been bringing on more people to help oversee his winemaking program, including a UC Davis enologist and now the former head winemaker from Joseph Phelps Vineyards in Napa Valley.
“I’m 62 years old this fall,” Huber says. “I’m kind of getting up there, so I’m just stepping back a little bit and letting my team do a little more and me do a little less.”
When it comes time for bottling, that process has been done in the tasting room for the last 20 years. “We send the glass to a company in Paso Robles and a 1,200-degree oven heat inks on the labels [instead of using a paper label],” Huber says. “… [It has] just a really nice, clean, elegant look to it.”
Interestingly, in addition to his Italian technique and mentor, all of Huber’s equipment is Italian, from Tuscany: the filling machine, corker, spinner, crusher and press. Even his automatic dispensing machines (for tastings) are from Tuscany. “I’m the first winery in Southern California to get them,” Huber says.
Visitors get a card loaded with a pre-set amount of money, then insert the card in a machine to dispense a taste of wine. Staff are still on hand to answer any questions.
“Right now it’s all through the machines, but we’re talking about introducing a secondary tasting program where we would still pour at the bar,” Huber says. “That would be a little bit different price point and more educational and more one on one. We’re talking about it right now. … That would be something we’re looking at maybe a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or just Saturday and Sunday. We’re not sure, but we’re looking at it right now.”
For a more immersive introduction to the winery, which has become quite popular, guests can sign up for a two-hour premium wine and barrel tasting experience on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. “That’s one on one with me as the owner, winemaker and sommelier,” Huber says. Guests receive a glass of Champagne, then Huber gives a talk about the winery and presents a video about his wine-making process, followed by premium wine tastings from the machines paired with a cheese and charcuterie board. And, finally, the event ends with tastings straight from the barrel. “It’s just really educational, really engaging and really a lot of fun,” Huber says.
Whether you like reds, whites, blends or single-varietal vino, Laguna Canyon Winery has something for every taste. And if, for some reason you don’t find that perfect sip to please your palate, there’s a wine blending class to try your own hand at mastering the art of winemaking.
