MARK WAITE / PVT Gretchen Loken, co-owner of the Pahrump Valley Winery, stands amid rows of newly-planted zinfandel and syrah grapes. Advertisement

The people attending the 2009 Grape Stomp at the Pahrump Valley Winery Saturday, may notice over 1,100 new grapevines that were strung up over Memorial Day weekend.

What looks like a lot of wires and plastic shoots now, will be burgeoning with grapes for producing zinfandel and syrah wines in three years or less. It will quadruple existing grape production, winery owners say.

The Pahrump winery is becoming less of a winery for show and more of a center for growing wine grapes now, particularly after the bottling of the first ever estate red wine in Nevada, a 2005 zinfandel unveiled in April 2008.

The winery already had about 600 zinfandel vines, they added another 500 over Memorial Day, winery co-owner and viticulturist Gretchen Loken said. Those were planted near the entry way to the winery and along Winery Road.

Farther back, behind the stage, 600 syrah vines are now growing.

"We trenched the soil down about four feet to loosen it up and then we put in one-year-old vines. So they've already had a year of growth on them. We're hoping maybe in year two we can get a little bit of a crop out of it," Loken said.

So why zinfandel and syrah grapes?

"Because they love the sunshine and we've got sunshine here in Pahrump, Nev.," Loken said.

"Pinot grapes like the cooler climate. Syrah grapes like the hot climate and that's really what we have to deal with."

Loken said the 2005 estate wine was entered in eight national and international wine competitions, winning medals at six of them. That includes three bronze, two silver and a gold medal at the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in California.

Following the 2005 estate wine, their 2006 zinfandel, bottled earlier this year, sold out. Loken said that could be due to the drop in price from $75 for the 2005 estate wine to $25.

"With the old vineyard, about 75 cases is what we could get off of that. So we're hoping now that we're going to be able to get closer to 400, 500 cases off of this," Loken said.

The grapes will be spaced more tightly with five feet between the rows instead of eight feet.

"We can maximize and get the most grapes that we can within the small amount of land that we have. Plus five by five is better for the desert. Every row is going to shade each other," Loken said.

The bottling season seems to come along quicker with each passing year than the 2005 vintage, which was aged in oak for 18 months to mellow out the wine produced from grapes grown in the hot climate.

"We'll bottle the 2008 in about four months. With the 2008 we are also going to bottle a Nevada cabernet and a Nevada merlot. Those are going to come out of the Amargosa and the Crystal vineyards," Loken said.

They will bear the same Nevada Ridge label, she said. So the winery will have three varieties of locally-grown wine to offer, including the usual zinfandel.

Growers include Bob Regan in Crystal and Jerry Nelson in Amargosa Valley. Between them they have about three acres in cultivation. A Sandy Valley farmer is also growing grapes but they aren't ready for cultivation, she said.

"At this point nobody has a lot of acreage planted. Everybody's kind of doing small vineyards to see how they're going to grow and what kind of wine they're going to make before anybody jumps off a cliff and plants a lot of acres," Loken said.

The Pahrump Valley Winery has won 185 medals since 2004.

The winery still has to import a lot of grapes from California to produce wine. Loken said they will be trucking in 15 tons of grapes from California right after the grape stomp.