Broc Cellars
Chenin Blanc off Frei Vineyard in Solano County, fermented on native yeast with little or no added sulfur. Chris Brockway has made wine on this corner of Fifth and Gilman since 2004.
Why go
Brockway went after the far corners of California before that was a category. The Chronicle's 2020 write-up calls him a champion of lesser-known varieties from far-flung corners of California
and points at the two Chenins, a still wine from Green Valley and a pet-nat from Paso Robles made in the ancestral method.1
Then he bought the farm. In 2023 Broc purchased Fox Hill in Mendocino after buying its grapes for a decade, which makes it one of the rare small independent producers in Northern California that owns its own land.2 Fox Hill runs 132 acres with 59 planted, and the block list is 25 Italian varieties, two Portuguese and one Spanish. It took CCOF organic certification in January 2024. Brockway is honest about the learning curve. On ungrafting a Primitivo from a Tokai vine: We did it during a drought and the vines didn't like it. They did not grow back. So, we're still learning.
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Order this / avoid
- Order: the Chronicle's pick.
The Chenin Blanc from Solano County's Frei Vineyard is a reminder that the Bay Area grows distinctive white wines in its backyard, beyond Napa and Sonoma.
1 Then the three Cs the same piece names, Counoise, Cabernet Franc and Carignane, whichtogether offer a unique cross-section of California reds.
1 - Avoid: expecting weight. The Chronicle is blunt about it:
you shouldn't expect rich, highly extracted wines here.
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What locals & experts say
- San Francisco Chronicle, 2020: the wines
are lighter on their feet, and can lean into territory that adventurers would call character but traditionalists might call slightly funky.
1 - Berkeleyside NOSH, 13 February 2024: on why the vineyard mattered, owning Fox Hill
meant he could finally control the entire process from grape to bottle.
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Good to know
- Bring food: the Chronicle says so plainly.
You can bring a snack, secure a bottle and linger in the cozy, Japanese-style wood-framed booths at the back.
1 - The wine bar: Bar Broc is the winery's own bar and pours by the glass.2
- Getting there: Fifth at Gilman, in the West Berkeley wine block, a short walk from Fieldwork and Donkey & Goat.
Verdict
should-visit — Two publications with different jobs both did real work here. Berkeleyside counted the Fox Hill purchase down to 59 planted acres, 28 varieties and a January 2024 organic certification. The Chronicle put a judgment on the wines that is specific and not uniformly kind, which is the harder thing to find and the better thing to build a rung on. The gap is time. That judgment is from 2020, three years before Brockway owned the fruit, so nobody has assessed what the estate vineyard actually changed. No award record exists either way.