Santa Rosa Junior College alumni Christopher Wills has been interested in making wine since he was in grade school. He started experimenting with plums in a mason jar and moved onto grape juice concentrate in high school. Little did he know he would be the next winemaker for Korbel Champagne and end up at SRJC Shone Farm.
After high school Wills attended SRJC while working at a retail store. He was offered more hours at his job and left school for three years. He soon realized that retail wasn’t for him and went back to college, but found himself unsure of what he wanted to do – until he learned about the wine studies at UC Davis.
By the time he transferred to Davis, Wills still didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he took courses in winemaking, brewing and biotech. What he really wanted was to intern with a biotech company, but companies didn’t want an intern with a fermentation science degree. However, Korbel offered him an internship in the summer of his junior year, during which he fell in love with the wine industry.
At age 25 Wills had a full-time job before he’d even graduated. In June 1987, Wills graduated from UC Davis on a sunny Saturday and then moved on Sunday back to Santa Rosa to start working at Korbel Monday morning.
After two months as a field enologist and only three months out of college, Korbel sent him to the Central Valley.
“It was this baptism by fire moment, because here I am fresh out of UC Davis and they gave me the keys to a rental car, a list of where the vineyards are, contacts and said, ‘There you go. Take off!’” Wills said. “At the time it was tough and it was a very steep learning curve but I swam and didn’t sink.”
Wills oversaw the production of 5,000 tons of grapes as the go-between for the growers, custom crush winery and Korbel winemaker.
In January 1991, Korbel bought Master Cellars, a winery formerly owned by Budweiser, which had experimented with a wine on tap system. While none of the Korbel winemakers wanted to move to Bakersfield to work at Master Cellars, Wills saw potential in the wine on tap system and told Korbel that if he could become an assistant winemaker, he would move.
When he arrived in Bakersfield, the winemaking team was the plant manager and himself; they had to rebuild the winery and hire people for production.
“It was another sink-or-swim type of deal because I have never managed people before,” Wills said.
By the end of July they were able start production on crushing grapes for brandy. However, he faced another challenge when his cellar foreman and 60 employees quit a week before crush to go work for the winery across the street. He singlehandedly oversaw the crush of 47,000 tons of grapes that year.
After four wineries and a brief stint in Arizona real estate, he got a phone call from Korbel offering a full-time winemaker position.
When Korbel bought Lake Sonoma Winery a few months later, Wills explored the different options in winemaking.
He also won a sweepstakes for a 1996 Chardonnay at the Harvest Fair, where he got a kiss on the cheek from Gary Hick, the owner of Korbel.
“That was one of the great things about working for Korbel. If you could sell them on it, they would let you do it,” Wills said.
And so he made four different Zinfandels, a cabernet sauvignon and a port. While Wills was there, Lake Sonoma Winery grew from a small brand that only made about 1,000 cases a year to 20,000 cases a year.
At the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition in the barrel room of Lake Sonoma Winery, Wills talked to Bob Fraser, then a SRJC wine studies instructor. He told Fraser that he didn’t learn anything about winemaking at SRJC and that they should have hands-on winemaking classes. Fraser agreed and started the winemaking program at Shone Farm.
SRJC president Dr. Chong supports everything Wills brings to Shone Farm. Chong also wants Wills to start a beer brewing program under a food science technology program. With the food science technology program, Wills can also create cheese, pickle, olive oil and jam-making programs. He would be able to source all the vegetables and dairy straight from the farm to the classroom and teach hands-on.
Another program that Wills has started is the SRJC Wine Club. The shipments help fund the Shone Farm winery.
“I try to add fun to my teaching,” Wills said. “In the classes, you have all levels of winemaking in the classes from people that know everything to students who don’t know anything like how I was. You just need to try to get everyone on board and get them as fired up about it because it is such a fun business to work in.”
Wills is also the manager of Shone Farm Pavillion where he is the only full-time employee and sometimes the only one present. He finds Shone Farm a really fun place to work and loves the great view that comes along with his job.
“I love working here. I plan on being here until I retire or drop dead, either one. I really want to see this farm take off and see it become its full potential,” Wills said.
