(KQED) - About an hour south of Redding, in a tiny town called Vina, there’s a winery that’s definitely off the beaten track. A lot of people in surrounding Tehama County have never heard of it. That might be because this region’s better known for olive groves and cattle ranches than grapes. For these, vintners, though, it’s spiritual work.

When I visit New Clairvaux winery, two people are filtering wine, getting it ready for bottling. On the surface, they make an odd pair. One is Aimee Sunseri, the winemaker heading up operations here. The other is Brother Christopher, a monk. He grew up in Sonoma County, wine country, but never thought he’d make the stuff, until a religious conversion led him to the Abbey of New Clairvaux in 2004, just a few years after the brothers planted grapes.

“Actually the winery and my vocation have grown up together,” he says.

The brothers of New Clairvaux are Trappist monks, a subset of Cistercians that follows a strict observance. They’re cloistered — rarely leaving the property and live in a walled-off cluster of buildings.

“There’s people who don’t understand that. They think, ‘What are you guys doing? There are so many needs in the world, and here you guys are wearing your pajamas, singing in a barn,” he says with a laugh.

They wear long white robes called habits, and their plywood church is beautifully designed but unadorned. They spend hours every day in silence and prayer.

“I really believe that it’s important that there are people who are totally, 100 percent devoted to prayer,” Brother Christopher says.

But the monks need to work to survive. They live off their own labor — not donations — and winemaking is one of their efforts.

“You can almost see your progress in spiritual life by how you react to work,” Brother Christopher says, especially during times like the busy harvest, or the physically challenging days spent bottling.

“You’re tired, working with brothers, somebody’s got one way they want to do things, tensions can grow, you can almost measure your progress by how you react, or how poorly you react. It’s a real barometer,” he says.

Brother Rafael is in the abbey’s St. James vineyard wearing the work uniform of jeans and a navy sweatshirt to prune vines. When he came here from Ecuador 18 years ago he’d been seeking the right religious order for all of his adult life. He also had no experience with grapes, but he’s part of a long legacy of Cistercian vintners. European monks of their order have made wine for nearly 1,000 years, including at one of the most celebrated wineries in the world, Clos de Vougeot. For Brother Rafael this work and his vocation go hand in hand.