Palos Verdes Farmer Jim

Winemaker Jim York. Photos by David Fairchild

People who drive around the southwest tip of Palos Verdes may be forgiven if they aren’t paying complete attention to their surroundings. PV Drive snakes along the rugged coastline, and there is the constant threat of an accident involving someone who was watching the scenery instead of the road. It is therefore possible that you might have passed the entry to Catalina View Gardens without noticing it. It’s marked only by a small sign next to a gate in a chain link fence. It’s not impressive and you might imagine that at the top of that steep driveway is just another private home.

If you go through that gate and to the top of the hill, you’re in for a shock. You’ll drive past a vineyard that produces 600 cases of wine each year, a commercial farm and chef’s garden, and an orchard with many varieties of trees before arriving at a startlingly beautiful event space.

Owner Jim York is familiar with guests at the property having a slightly dazed look as they wonder how they never noticed it.

“If they weren’t looking at the road, they were looking at the water. People usually go by at 45 miles an hour or faster, so they don’t really see anything. We have 94 acres of land here on a space that is now Catalina View Gardens, also known as Point View or the Lower Filiorum. That name came from when the Vanderlips owned this area, and it means “of the children.”

The Vanderlip family owned all of Palos Verdes beginning in 1913, and in 1916 they built their own home adjacent to what is now Catalina View Gardens. Since they had the whole Peninsula to choose from and picked this area for themselves, they obviously considered this to be the best location. They sold off most of their property over the decades, but kept a vast stretch of that prime real estate for themselves. When a big piece of it went on the market, York recognized its potential.

“In 1994, my partner and I purchased the 300 acre Vanderlip estate and the 104 acre Long Point property, where Marineland was located. We spent almost the next 20 years getting Terranea built. After that was open in 2009, my partner decided he didn’t want to deal with land ownership so we divided our property, and I ended up with these 94 acres. I thought, what am I going to do with 94 acres of Palos Verdes? I decided that I like growing things, and this would be a good opportunity. I looked into the history of this land, and I discovered that this property was farmed by the Ishibashi family until the early ‘70s. Back in those days the Japanese couldn’t own land – they had to lease it from the Vanderlips.”

The fact that the property had been fallow for over 30 years raised its value as farmland, because any fertilizers or pesticides in the soil would have long decayed. The soil was tested and found to meet the very strict guidelines to be certified for organic growing, a designation that was received in 2010. Organic produce sells for as much as twice the price of factory farm produce, which helps make an ecologically sustainable business economically sustainable.

“The first crop we planted was Hass avocados, which we have been selling to Terranea at the rate of 500 pounds per week. We still had plenty more, and two weeks ago a company called Eco Farms picked 12,500 pounds of them – that’s approximately 50,000 organic avocados. Those are being sold retail at Whole Foods Market.”

Besides the avocados, Catalina View Farms has been harvesting three crops a year of Meyer lemons, as well as seasonal items, including tomatoes, fava beans, peas, and radishes. Their neighbors at Terranea not only buy some of it, they have their own plot where the restaurant staff cultivate their own crops. Executive Chef Bernard Ibarra maintains a chicken coop and beehives for fresh honey, and his staff has been known to run up the hill to grab salad greens when demand is high. The relationship is close enough that things can be kept informal.

“Sometimes the chefs come here to pick avocados and lemons, and they’re on the honor system. They tell us how many they picked and we invoice them. They do all the work, and they enjoy it. Sometimes the servers come out and help pick. It’s critical that when you have a restaurant with a farm to table aesthetic that it isn’t just a phone-in. There’s nothing like a vine ripe tomato that a chef picks today and serves today, and we can do that here.”

Though local chefs, both commercial and amateur, prize that produce, the thing that Catalina View Gardens is best known for is their wine. After an expert determined that the best varieties for the climate and soil were Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, they planted 5,600 vines. They expect to get two bottles per vine this year, which is about 600 cases. Though they started winemaking using grapes purchased elsewhere, in 2015 they started to use their own grapes.

Jim York prunes a wine grape vine. Photos by David Fairchild

“In 2017 we had a big harvest of the Chardonnay, and it’s tasting great. We’re making it in the classic Burgundian French style and labeling it as estate grown. Ken Brown, who previously owned Byron, is our winemaker and I assist him. We harvest it when the sugar level is appropriate and age it in French oak barrels for nine months. We made it last August, and we will bottle it in June and age it for a year. The 2016 wine will be released this summer, and will be available at the three restaurants at Terranea, the Admiral Risty, Trump golf course, Friends of the Vine in Redondo, The Depot, and at Baran’s 2239 in Hermosa Beach. Right now our bottles just say that the origin is California, but we have applied for an American Viticultural Association called Palos Verdes Peninsula. The paperwork is still in process, but our hope is that we will get that AVA approved as a wine growing region.”

That designation will raise the value of the wines, and will be applicable to all wine made in the area. At this time there are eight grape growers on the Peninsula, though only two are currently making wine on a commercial basis. Jim expects more people to enter the market, and explained that even within such a small region there can be microclimates that are suited to different varieties.

“The north side of the peninsula has the same soil, because the geology is the same, but it’s warmer. The LaCaze vineyard produces a wonderful Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. That’s good for me, because when we do wine dinners right now we’re limited to using my Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and we have to supplement those with things from other wineries to have a wider selection. To the extent that we can get several different local wines, it will show people the range of what we can do in this area. Once we get the word out we think that restaurants in the South Bay will be eager to start carrying our wines.”

Jim York, owner of Catalina View Gardens, drives a tractor around the largest winery on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Photos by David Fairchild

You might wonder how a farm and vineyard in Palos Verdes finds local workers who are experienced in agriculture. When asked about this, Jim answered that they can’t.

“That’s why I had to steal our farm manager Nick Zetts, who was working as farm manager for Mustards Grill in Napa Valley. He takes care of the entire property, and when our vines are ready to be trimmed we bring in a team from Napa Valley who spend a week. It’s critical that this be done right so they’ll produce fruit for the next season. For the harvest we have another group of people from Ventura County who come down. In 2015, we had a picking party where we brought in the harvest in the morning and then my wife made them a fabulous lunch. Strangely, after the food and wine, they didn’t want to work anymore. Since then we’ve had a professional crew do the job.”

Farm Manager Nick Zetts poses in front of the vineyard with a view. Photo

In some parts of the country, farmers rely on students to help bring in crops, but for various reasons including labor laws that isn’t practical here. Instead students are involved via a class that takes advantage of the only farm that is an easy drive from the campus.

“We have been doing a lot of outreach to bring local schools and community groups out here to learn about agriculture. We have an annual spring event for Las Candalistas, and one of the beneficiaries of their donations helps South Bay families with eating problems. We teach them about eating healthy foods here in a garden by the sea. We bring people in small groups, and Nick often goes around the community and and talks to school groups.”

Besides those programs, Catalina View is involved in the community in other ways.

“We have a big summer event called Chefs & Cellars, that benefits the Palos Verdes Art Center. We have also been supporting the Peninsula Education Foundation, and Chef Michael Shafer [of The Depot] auctions off a dinner for 20 people with 20 courses and 20 wines. The bidding ran to something like $40,000 last time, and he decided to do two of them. We have also run things that benefited the Aquarium of the Pacific and the Catalina Conservancy, so we’re not just focused on the Peninsula. We have a limit on the number of events we can do each year, or we’d be busy every week.”

If you don’t attend those events or come as a student, your only chance to see the farm at Catalina Gardens is to have an event here. The coast view and seclusion make it particularly popular as a wedding venue.

“The only other places in greater Los Angeles where you can have an event in a coastal farm environment are in Malibu. We have one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, and with the gardens here there’s beauty anywhere you turn. Our wedding season started in May and runs through October, and we’re limited to a total of 30 each year. We already have 26 booked this season, and we haven’t ever had one rained out.”

The view from the event area is likely to change over time, because York has a permit for 25-1/2 acres of agriculture and they have only planted eight. Any expansion will be carefully considered, because each new cultivated space will use precious water that the farm buys at market rate. Still, since the bumper crops of organic vegetables are selling at a premium and the wine is in demand, it seemed worth asking whether he thinks that his example will inspire other landowners to devote some of their land to farming. His first response was a rueful laugh.

“You’ve made the assumption that I’m making money. I’m not, and I never will. The agriculture and the vineyard and winemaking are money-losers. We had a strawberry farmer who looked at a piece of land that was available. He figured out that even if we let him use the land for free, he couldn’t make a profit because of the cost of water. People sometimes ask why my wine costs $40 a bottle. Well, it costs me $200 dollars a bottle to make. The revenue from the weddings and other events almost offsets the cost of running the winemaking operation.”

Though Catalina Gardens isn’t contributing to Jim York’s bottom line, it is contributing a lot to our community. It’s a place where memories are made for couples tying the knot, an educational destination for students, and the place where succulent fruits and vegetables are grown in the place where they flourished a century ago. The ground beneath our homes and malls was patiently tilled in our grandfathers’ days, and Jim York’s passion for farming has made it so that a tiny percentage still bears fruit. Pen

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