Los Gatos resident and Assistant Winemaker at Testarossa, Katie Abelson, has called Los Gatos home since she was 8 years old. She’d lived in Switzerland and Belgium prior until her engineer father moved the family to the Bay Area town she has grown fonder of with each passing year.
“When I left for college at Cal Poly after high school graduation, I thought, ‘I’m never going back, it’s so small and boring!’” Abelson admits. “But now, I really appreciate how beautiful, safe and vibrant the place is!”
Growing up in Los Gatos, she actually had no idea that Testarossa Winery even existed. After her father retired from Lockheed Martin, her parents began exploring the area and joined the Testarossa wine club. They were also members at Black Ridge, where Testarossa winemaker, Bill Brosseau, made wine for a time before the property’s recent sale.
Being an avid outdoors person, Abelson decided to work in the wine industry while at Cal Poly, focusing on the vineyard side of the business. After internships with J. Lohr Vineyards & Winery in Paso Robles, and with Gallo in Sonoma, she began leaning towards the winemaking side.
Testarossa’s longtime winemaker, Bill Brosseau, says Abelson’s dad approached him in the summer of 2014 about finding a job for his daughter. “I told her to apply for an internship,” says Brosseau. “And she’s been here ever since!”
“My first task was washing fermenting bins,” says Abelson. “But I loved the thrill of harvest, and doing anything that needed to be done. At J. Lohr and Gallo, I did the same thing every day, over and over again. Here, you wear a lot of hats and it’s big enough that you have a great facility and all the latest equipment, plus a great wine club.”
Abelson began working in the lab after harvest and slowly gained more experience in every aspect of winemaking. One of the most important parts of the process is putting the wines into bottle.
Brosseau says that with her cool head and attention to detail, she became the keeper of the bottling line. “We had different people in charge of it in the past, with varying degrees of success,” says Brosseau. “But Katie is on top of it constantly. Preventive maintenance is so critical.”
Abelson says that the bottling line has become a big part of her job, along with doing lab analysis on all the wines, and those all-important final chemistry checks before the bottling process begins.
“Bottling was a natural path from lab,” says Abelson. And since she is really good at Excel spreadsheets and is already tracking the wines from grapes to juice, it seemed natural for management to put her in charge of inventory as well.
Recently, Abelson says, they told her, “You should manage the warehouse, too! It’s actually a nice path that has made sense. It feels like home!!”
Abelson lives close enough to the winery that she can bike to work, and has even walked, although it took her over two hours to do so. That day, she asked her sister, who works in the tasting room at Testarossa, for a ride home.
She loves the wine community of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and after living in Redwood Estates for a bit, she discovered the back way to Scotts Valley, where she plays pickleball. As mountain residents quickly learn, you have to know your backroads to avoid Highway 17, especially during the summer. And the winter. And pretty much all year.
Driving down Bear Creek Road, she discovered David Bruce Winery as well as Byington, and then, the town of Boulder Creek. “I love going into Wild Roots Market to see all the interesting beverages they have in cans!”
Alternative formats are really popular with sports-minded, environmentally conscious outdoors folks like herself, and she’s found that one of the best formats for wine is the pouch.
“My peers in their early and mid-30s are exploring different formats, like cans and bags,” says Abelson. “I’m one of the few that are drinking wine. I find the pouches are very cool, especially for rosé. They really fit my lifestyle.”
Being in charge of shipping at the winery has also made her keenly aware of the cost of all the materials and the special care that glass requires. “One aspect of my job is shipping and not having to ship heavy bottles, really appeals. I like that bottles are trending towards lighter glass, but having cans for things like baby showers and graduation parties, where you can just throw it in a cooler, that would open up a whole new world to get the Testarossa wines in front of people.”
She says her grandma loves Testarossa’s Cuvée Los Gatos wines, which are bottled in screwcap. “Lately, she’s finding it really hard to open a screwcap,” says Abelson. “And forget using a corkscrew! Cans would be much easier. So would a pouch. Being an outdoors person, there are many places you can’t bring glass. I love the Maker wines in can. And all the RTDs like High Noon in can offer great lifestyle choices.”
Asked if her friends like hanging out at the winery, she says the winery’s Bistro 107 makes a great alternative to hang out in a beautiful spot. “It’s perfect for Mom’s night out!” As much as she loves the restaurant parklets in town, finding parking is frequently a drag, and at the winery, that is never an issue.
As is everyone in the wine industry at present, Abelson is gearing up for harvest, which might come early this year, due to the abnormally warm spring weather. They already have their harvest interns lined up, one of whom is returning for a second time. She’s looking forward to the insanity of it all.
“Harvest has a Friday night college life aspect to it,” says Abelson. “Only it goes on for weeks! Those late nights and long days really build bonds. We all in it for a common goal and helping each other is a big part of the fun. No year is ever the same. I’m excited for it!”
great article about a successful home grown person. Thank you