Take Me Out to the Ballpark Vineyard

A day at the ballpark may conjure up images of fountain drinks and frosty beers, but the next time you attend a Sacramento River Cats baseball game, you’ll see something surprising from the outfield: a vineyard.

Thanks to Clarksburg’s Bogle Vineyards, the River Cats (a minor-league baseball affiliate of the San Francisco Giants) now have a vineyard just outside the right field wall.

Planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, the vineyard measures 85 by 16 feet. They are anticipating fruit by 2019 and, as Bogle Vineyards President Warren Bogle says, 2–3 years after that the grapes will be destined for the bottle.

So how much wine could come from this vineyard? “We planted enough grapes to make one barrel,” Bogle says.

He adds that it’s too early to tell whether the wine will be bottled separately or blended into their existing Cabernet. The deciding factor will be whether the quality of grapes coming from the vineyard merit what would essentially be a reserve bottling.

But the mission for the vineyard is clear. “We want to emphasize this is a living vineyard,” Bogle says. “We’re going to do everything we do to our estate vineyards.”

“It’s great to have the vineyard in a venue like that for people who might not get to see how a vineyard works. They can see the changes in the vineyard and say, ‘Hey, that’s where wine comes from.’”