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It’s been a little more than a year since the Santa Clara Valley Wine Trail was inaugurated. At Lion Ranch Vineyards and Winery Aug. 29, a celebration of the one-year anniversary took place, with local wine-makers proclaiming the trail is a proven success, bringing in an increasing number of customers who want to get away from Napa Valley and other over-commercialized regions and instead discover a re-emerging California wine country.

In the Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill region, there are about 25 wineries — some of them long-established such as Guglielmo Winery and Morgan Hill Cellars and other relatively new such as Paradise Valley and Castillo’s Hillside Shire Winery. With many of them still family-run (Guglielmo for 90 years!), they offer a far different experience from other regions’ wineries glutted by tourists attracted by heavy marketing.

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For their first big adventure as a newlywed couple in 2009, Todd and Kim Engelhardt decided to dive head first into the South Valley wine industry. Living in San Francisco, they took the daring step to move to San Martin where they found a five-acre piece of land north of the community. It proved to be the perfect place for their newly opened Lion Ranch Vineyard & Winery.

One of the first things they did was to search out their property’s history. In Santa Clara County title records from long ago, they found out that 6,000 acres of the land were once known as the Lion Ranch, named after a French man whose last name was Lion. Monsieur Lion’s moniker seemed to be the perfect name to christen their winery, the couple decided.

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Lion Ranch, a new winery in San Martin, is gearing up for its grand opening celebration next month.

The proprietors, Kim and Todd Engelhardt, may be transplants from San Francisco, but they are no strangers to the local wine industry. Kim Engelhardt spent a few years working at Sarah’s Vineyard in Gilroy learning about every aspect of the business, from grapes to sales.

For three harvests she apprenticed in the cellar and winery learning how to make wine and the rest of the year in the tasting room. She says that this time was integral to her skills and the development of their own winery, and the support of the local industry in their endeavor has been phenomenal. “It has been a community of encouragement, cooperation and support,” she said.’

The couple fell in love with the wines of the Rhône valley, and especially Viognier from the area of Condrieu, on a trip to France in 2009…

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