and neighbor Bill Walter trasform the Buoncristiani garage into Chateau Mattina - which means "House of the Morning."
  It was a name Robert came up with years ago when he first started making wines in San Jose, taking the names of his first-born son Matt and a godchild named Tina.
  "We started out making Christmas presents for our friends," explained Robert. "It was a gift of love, then we started giving it away all the time."
  While still learning techniques for improving his wines, Robert proudly feels they would be priced in the $3-to $12 range if they were on liquor store shelves. Chateau Mattina wines have won numerous awards in local fairs, including the state fair.

The most recent prize was a gold medal at the prestigious Harvest Fair in Santa Rosa for his 1974 petite sirah. "Out of 1,000 bottles of that, I only have five left," said Robert, underlining the point that he makes wines for the enjoyment of drinking.
  Most of the equipment in the Buoncristiani garage is handmade, cutting the costs considerably. He reworked an $8 corker into one that works as well as a $100 model. The press using a small, hydraulic, hand-operated jack, was built for one season, but has lasted six. The crusher was copied after an Italian model called a Sipi that would normally sell for about $700. Robert's crusher cost a tenth of that.  While Chateau Mattina can't afford stainless steel tanks with refrigerated jackets, Robert and neighbor Bill have devised a cooling system using a couple of

old refrigerators and a lot of tubing to heep their white wines fermenting at a constant temperature.
  The barrels aging the wines are French, Canadian, and Yugoslavian oak. Each gives a different characteristic to the varietals inside.

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