New Winemaker Comes to Temecula Valley

by Susan Montgomery

George Bursick joined the Europa Village Winery team last fall as the winery's new winemaker, bringing a wealth of invaluable experience and exciting ideas for the future of Europa wines.  Europa is located in the Temecula Valley Wine Country, about an hour northeast of San Diego and also easily accessible from Los Angeles and Orange County. Europa already has a reputation for producing excellent wines, but with George on board plans are underway to take Europa’s wines to an even more impressive world-class level.

George’s distinctive career in winemaking spans several decades in Northern California.  He started out as a teenager packing gift boxes and dragging hoses at Beringer where he was inspired by winemaking legend, Myron Nightingale. After earning a Master’s in Enology from UC Davis, he worked as a winemaker for nine years at McDowell Valley Vineyards in Mendocino County, where he was responsible for the first varietal release of Syrah in California.

Next he accepted the challenge of designing and helping launch Ferrari-Carano in Sonoma Country, where he was Director of Winemaking for 21 years. During that time period, the winery became one of the big names in California winemaking. In 1986, the 1985 Ferrari-Carano Chardonnay was featured on the cover of Wine Spectator. Many more accolades and awards followed through the years.  In 2006, George started his own winemaking consulting business, which focuses on helping clients apply innovative, viticultural practices to produce outstanding wines.

When asked why he decided to work with Europa in Southern California, after such a prestigious career in Northern California, George says he is very excited about the untapped potential he sees in the Temecula region and at Europa in particular. He is looking forward to growing grapes in the rich, decomposed, granite soil, which he says is “great stuff” for producing wonderful grapes. He is also enthusiastic about bringing some new perspectives in winemaking, gained throughout his career studying winemaking all over the world, to Europa as the winery embarks on its vision for three world-class wineries. 

As an example of a new approach, he points out that new Europa vineyard plantings will follow the European style of much denser plantings, with vines much closer together, resulting in highly concentrated, high quality grapes. Other modern, innovative winemaking techniques will also be applied to the winemaking process.

He emphasizes that “ We will have state-of-the-art vineyards at Europa. I am very pleased that the staff is so willing and open to working with me as we explore new approaches to planting, harvesting, fermenting, and producing both traditional and new varietals. The staff at Europa has a passion for quality and I believe the result will be exceptional, first-rate wines in the European tradition.”

Photos by Todd Montgomery