‘There’s a certain kind of base character about wine making that I like’

If Doug Braun were a contestant on the television game show “What’s My Line?,” he could rightly say he’s a farmer, a scientist and an artist. Specifically, the 30-year-old La Mesa resident is the sole wine maker for Thomas Jaeger Winery, a 35-acre spread just east of the North County Fair shopping mall. Braun is responsible for crafting the many Chardonnays, Cabernet Sauvignons and Gamay Beaujolais the winery sells to local restaurants and stores. Starting as a wine steward in Honolulu more than six years ago, Braun developed a true passion for enology, the study of wine making, and has worked for such California wineries as Cribari, Elliston and Olive Hill in Fallbrook. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Braun among the huge, wine-filled French oak barrels, and Don Bartletti photographed him.

Growing up, we had a large yard and we grew every kind of fruit tree imaginable. Tangerines, oranges, grapes, peaches. My family wasn’t particularly agricultural, but my dad was just planting all the time. I think I felt at home with that.

I think, too, I was spurred on to wines by working in restaurants and being involved with wine service. I took what was supposed to be a short vacation to Hawaii and I lost my return trip ticket so I ended up staying there. I got a job at a restaurant in Honolulu and became a wine steward. I decided then that I’d go back to school and get a degree in wine making.

I attended UC Davis and Fresno State to get my degrees in enology and viticulture. Most of the people in my class came from families that were really involved with wine. It was odd in the sense that, I was not necessarily a black sheep, but I didn’t have any roots. It wasn’t like, “After school, I’m going back to farm on my grandfather’s farm.”

A lot of what I do is agricultural. I don’t think you can make a good wine unless you are someone who has a really, really good hold on the vineyard. Because if you don’t get good fruit, you don’t make good wine and that’s the bottom line. It happens in the vineyard before it happens in the winery.

What makes wine making interesting is that you’re not following a recipe. Say you made a a nice wine one year and thought, “Well, I’ll duplicate it again next year.” You couldn’t do it.

You couldn’t do the same things and reach the same type of wine. Every year is different because of the vintage and the weather conditions of that vintage. So, every year you’re fine tuning things. You’re trying to mess with the varietal characteristics of the grape to try to move it in a way you want it to go.

In the winery, it’s important to have keen senses. So everything I taste here, I spit out. When I’m going through and tasting wines, for obvious reasons I can’t drink or I’d be completely sloshed by the end of the day.

If I’m tasting barrels, which I do every so often, it’s important to try to keep my senses intact so that I can judge the first wine the same as the last wine. I’ve already got things going against me because after a while, I get palate fatigue. It’s important to have a really critical palate.

On the liking side of this job, I really like crafting the wines, working with the fruit and working with the vines. There’s a certain kind of base character about wine making that I like.

The reason I took this job was because it was just riddled with challenge. Before Paul Thomas and Bill Jaeger bought this winery, it had been ill-managed and the wines were going downhill fast. I had been offered another job up north, but I stayed here because of the challenge. I wanted to do the best of what I could do here.

The end product, bad or good, is there. It’s something you’ve done, so if it’s horrible, it reflects what you’ve done along the way. But if it’s good, it reflects your hard work. It’s kind of nice.