Thirsty for Portuguese wine, Ron Silva could have scoured the shelves and bins of an adventurous wine merchant.

Instead, he chose a longer and more demanding way to quench his thirst.

He began to plant Portuguese grape varieties on his Galt ranch.

"I'm Portuguese. I wanted to have the wine my heritage would drink," says Silva, a stout and chipper teddy bear wearing a dense, white beard and a "Hollywood" baseball cap.

"What did my grandfather drink on Pico (an island in the Azores)? He drank verdelho," adds Silva, ambling out of the barn where he experiments with home winemaking.

As he heads toward a nearby block of verdelho, he pauses at a long and high row of compost, and points to a volunteer squash plant blooming from the manure and pomace.

"Look at this free squash," he gleefully shouts. "It's the spoon again."

Silva's ranch is named Silvaspoons Vineyards. "Silvaspoons" is a portmanteau word dreamed up by his longtime companion, Kathi Benassi, to recognize Silva's knack for succeeding almost by chance at whatever goal he sets for himself.

"She calls me 'Spoons' because no matter what I do it turns out," says Silva. " 'Whatever you do, you're lucky, like you were born with a silver spoon,' she says."

Since the turn of the century, Silva has become the go-to guy for Northern California winemakers seeking something novel for their portfolios, especially if it's a varietal associated historically with the Iberian peninsula.

Today, Silva farms 294 acres of wine grapes on his 800-acre spread, where he also runs 300 head of cattle, keeps a few horses and grows olive trees, alfalfa, and corn and oats for silage.

While his 20 varieties of wine grapes include such staples of the trade as cabernet sauvignon, petite sirah and zinfandel, about 40 percent of his vineyard is dedicated to such obscure Iberian strains as touriga francesa, tempranillo, tinto cao and souzao.

He may have been the first grower in the state to plant a commercial block of the green Portuguese grape verdelho, traditionally used on Madeira for white port but also capable of yielding a sprightly dry table wine, as it is being made in California.

And he almost certainly is the first vineyardist to cultivate torrontes, a green Spanish and Argentine grape recognized for producing perfumey white table wines.

While many of the varieties Silva grows remain under the radar of mainstream wine consumers, wines made with his Iberian grapes have been winning honors on the competition circuit since he began to harvest fruit early this decade.

Sonora attorney Richard Matranga was one of the first winemakers to take advantage of Silva's vineyard when in 2000 he made a verdelho under his brand Sonora Winery & Port Works, now dormant.

As a dry table wine, Matranga's verdelho subsequently won numerous high honors on the wine-competition circuit.

"I knew something was up when Darrell Corti called and ordered 100 cases," recalls Matranga. Corti, the Sacramento grocer, was a judge at the Los Angeles County Fair International Wine Competition, and he so liked the wine that as soon as results were announced, but before winning winemakers were notified, he placed his enthusiastic order with Matranga.

"Ron Silva had really just begun growing verdelho. Nobody in the U.S. was making anything out of it. Because of my Portuguese background I wanted to see what it was. The wine we made had this peachy, nectarine character. No other varietal had that," recalls Matranga.

"That wine was a testimony to his grape growing. He's a cutting-edge guy, and his fruit is high quality," adds Matranga.

Farming heritage asserts itself

Silva wasn't reared a farmer, but says "farming is in my blood," put there principally by a grandfather who immigrated to the East Bay from Pico in 1909. At Hayward he ran cattle and operated a grocery store, where he made and sold wine to the area's large Portuguese community.

As Silva grew up in Hayward, he raised rabbits, chickens and bees, and cultivated a garden. But at California State University, Hayward, he earned a degree in marketing, not viticulture, and subsequently pursued a lucrative career in property management, real estate and mortgages.

Contact Mike Dunne at mikedunne@winegigs.com.