Crush the grapes! At Franklin's La Cantina, wine making is a family tradition

FRANKLIN — When Phyllis Vozzella was a young girl, she was the one always at her father’s side. Together they made sausages and put up jars of tomato sauce. They also made wine every autumn.

Now the wine-making tradition started by the late Ottavio Zappitelli in the basement of his Union Street home — a tradition brought over from his hometown of Santa Maria del Molise, Italy — continues with a new generation, and with a bigger group made up of  family and friends.

Phyllis’ son Bob, and his wife, Anna, are proprietors of La Cantina Winery, where they welcome anyone with an interest into Ottavio’s one-time backyard and cellar to learn the age-old skills of winemaking.

Recently, as autumn wine making began, members of La Cantina’s co-op — which gets winery patrons involved in the process of making their own wines — gathered under Ottavio’s pergola, wound with nearly 60-year-old vines dripping sweet, green grapes.

It was time for the biannual "crush," and thousands of pounds of grapes — 16,000 pounds, or 8 tons, to be exact — awaited. Grapes from California arrive in October, and grapes from South America arrive in May.

“Essentially, we’re going to be picking through the grapes looking for MOG — material other than grapes,” Bob Vozzella told the group gathered for the fall crush last Saturday. “So any leaves, sticks, you take out.”

And then the work began, with everyone taking their places along the edges of long tables, pulling on orange disposable gloves for the work of sorting the grapes ahead of dropping them into a machine for de-stemming and crushing, then funneling into one of 13 barrels inside the cellar.

“We work with a vineyard in Suisun Valley in California,” Vozzella explained as he manned the machine with his dad, Bob Vozzella Sr., and uncle, Ron Vozzella. "It’s owned by a family of four Italian brothers, the Lanza family.”

The root stock was brought from Italy and planted in California. From these grapes, he said, “we will produce over 6,000 bottles.”

As part of the festivities of the big "crush" day, everyone got a chance to jump into a wooden half barrel and crush some grapes with their bare feet in the fashion made so famous by Lucille Ball in one of her "I Love Lucy" episodes.

“It’s a good photo opportunity, but we won’t use them in the wine,” said Vozzella. “It’s just a lot of fun to kind of get in there and experience. It’s a texture thing.”

Vozzella predicted the 2021 vintage will be a great one, and from the cheerfulness and passion that went into the crush, the wine is sure to be a work of perfection.

Kelly Cimmino, of Franklin, participated in her third crush.

“I just love the people, and the wine,” she said about what keeps her coming back to help out.

For Vozzella’s cousin Dominic Zappitelli, of North Attleborough, the crush has been an annual event since childhood. 

“This has always been a pretty fun operation,” he said. “My grandfather Ottavio Zappitelli came here in 1963 and started making house wine and we are still doing it.”

Dale Hodgdon, of Franklin, has been helping out for four years — ever since the winery, founded in 2015, first invited folks in to participate.

“I never knew this winery was here until four years ago, my wife and I were out for a walk and we saw it. I said, ‘Let’s go in and have a drink.’ The people were nice and we had a good time. Four years later, here we are,” he said.

Joining the group for the first time this year were Kim and Mike Aswell, of Norfolk, who brought their infant twins, Amelia and Charlie, and their son, James, 4.

Mike Aswell said he loves how family-oriented everything is, and the tradition of it all. So does Kim.

“So we figured we’d give in a whirl,” she said.

Famiglia is the focal point of life at the winery. For the crush, Phyllis was there beside her son and nephew, her husband, Bob Sr., and her brother-in-law Ron — as she once was beside her father, Ottavio, from the time they emigrated from Italy when she was 17.

“Hey! Buongiorno!” she called out as helpers arrived, pausing to give out hugs between giving advice about the grape sorting and insisting that no grape go to waste because “that’s a glass of wine!”

For five hours everyone worked on the sorting and crushing operation -- at one point slowed down by a pallet of plump, purple grapes that had clusters of tiny, unripened green orbs among the ripe fruits -- each one of which had to be meticulously plucked out so as not to spoil the taste and color of the final product.

“There are lots of green ones," Phyllis remarked as she carefully pulled the undesirable elements from the densely packed bunches. "They’re so deep down, they’re hard to get."

Another pallet had clusters interspersed with stems of overly dry fruit, on the verge of being raisins, that also had to be removed.

Work first, Phyllis insisted as the crush progressed, and then a glass of wine as a reward at the end.

As she and the others sorted, she recounted the days when it was just her and her father making the wine. Her sister, she said, never showed an interest. But Phyllis, being "a daddy's girl," wouldn't miss out.

“My father and I used to make the wine. Every year,” she said. “We went down to Providence and we used to walk the docks when the ships came and we’d try all the different grapes, and then we’d pick out the best ones we liked and buy some. Then we’d put them in our wine. My mother was upstairs cooking."

She is proud to see her son take up the tradition, and share it with others.

Bob Vozzella, the younger, not only learned at home, but he went on to get an education in wine making from the University of California, Davis, acknowledged as the “Harvard of wine making,” and has a passion for wine making the real Italian way. The best and most important ingredient is possibly the family — the love, the laughter, the tradition and the pride that is distilled into each bottle.

“It’s what I love. The family wine making,” he said.

Don Carlucci, who joined the La Cantina crush for the first time this year, knows all about that.

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” he said. “Everyone around here used to make wine when I was a kid. Back then, we did it to save money, because for the cost to buy a bottle of wine, you could make a barrel. “

Carlucci particularly enjoys the wine produced at the winery, which he says is exceptional.

“It’s full and soft. I don’t know … there’s just something about it,” he said.

Amy Forman, of Holliston, couldn’t agree more.

“I think the wine that he (Bob Vozzella) makes is really high quality. Being able to participate in the process of producing such great wine is just really fun,” she said. “This is the crush. And in two weeks we’ll do the press.”

In a year, after it has spent some time aging in French oak barrels, the wine started last Saturday will go into bottles.

Forman said it’s great to have Napa Valley quality wine coming out of Franklin, going to local stores and restaurants, but also earning accolades at international wine competitions.

Bob Vozzella, the elder, said he’s ry proud of what his son and daughter-in-law have done with Ottavio’s wine cellar — "la cantina," as he called it, where he'd send family members to fetch "a couple bottles of wine" for the Sunday dinner table.

“This is perfection in wine making. It’s a family tradition,” he said.

His twin brother, Ron, echoed the sentiment simply with: "Family is forever."

At La Cantina, that's now a famiglia that includes more than just the immediate Vozzella and Zappitelli clans. It's truly a community. La Cantina, after all, is the place in Franklin where — as they like to say — everyone comes in as strangers and leaves as friends.