Chris McGilvray, a Soquel-based filmmaker who grew up in Los Gatos, didn’t know much about wine when he got a Santa Cruz Winegrowers Association grant in 2015 to make a film about four wineries.
He’s learned a lot more since then — and found a story that’s kept him filming for seven years. Set to premiere March 9 at the Cinequest Film Festival at San Jose’s California Theatre, his new feature-length documentary, “Eden,” explores life at Saratoga’s Mount Eden Vineyards, as longtime winemakers Jeffrey and Ellie Patterson decide what will happen to the winery when they retire.
With artistic cinematography by Isiah Flores, the film offers a glimpse into the hard work and rugged beauty that define winemaking in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“From an experiential standpoint, it’s a pretty amazing feat to see what it feels like to be in the midst of harvest,” McGilvray says.
Initially, McGilvray had hoped to build a documentary that followed the winemaking process for the vineyard’s 2017 vintage. But it quickly became clear that the film needed a more engaging human story at its heart. When he began interviewing the next generation of the Patterson family — Reid and Sophie — he knew he’d hit on something. Growing up on a mountain with a life that felt rural but still close to all that Silicon Valley offers, they talked about how their childhoods had sometimes felt isolating and how hard their parents worked. Returning to carry on the family winemaking legacy wasn’t a given.
“This is one of the few remaining bastions of that lifestyle. You go up to someplace like Mount Eden, and it feels trapped in time,” McGilvray says. “It’s amazing to have this insight into an agrarian, rural experience, and it’s five minutes from downtown Saratoga.”
He draws a comparison between bottling wine and raising children: Both have a long waiting period before you know how things will turn out. “It really is unknown what the experience is going to be like, until you open it years later,” he says. “You have indicators of what it’s going to be like, but a lot of times, it will completely surprise you.”
Details: “Eden” will screen at Cinequest Film Festival at 4:30 p.m. on March 9 at the California Theater, 345 S. First St. in San Jose. Order tickets ($14) at https://cinequest.org/. Mount Eden Vineyards offers tastings by appointment; mounteden.com.
