Like a Natural Woman

Text: R.H. Drexel

Photograhy: Christoffer Lomfors

The wine business is presently so obsessed about whether Gen Z and Millennials are drinking wine that they’ve forgotten to ask if any of these young people are actually making wine. Millennials are between 28 to 43-years old, while members of Gen Z are between 12- and 27-years old. Winemaker Justin Michelle Ward Trabue, 29-years old, straddles both demographics. 

"I’ve gotten many a job interview because people thought I was a man. And, then a Black woman shows up, and they’re like, Whoa!" Trabue, who identifies as a Queer woman, was conceived by wine-loving parents in Paso Robles, during one of their wine-tasting excursions in the early 90s. "In 1994, my parents took a road trip through California, stopping mostly in wine-growing regions like Napa, Sonoma, and Paso Robles. They visited Justin Vineyards & Winery on that trip. I was born nine months later."

I’ve met up with Trabue in Napa, where she lives full-time. She has asked me to meet her at a casual eatery not far from her apartment. When I arrive, I’m the only one there. The staff barely notices me when I walk in, a benefit of old age. My gray hair and wonky gait have rendered me nearly invisible, and I’m here for it. I like the breathing room. When Trabue enters, though, all heads turn towards her, mine included. She’s accompanied by a palpable, electric energy. The room itself seems to awaken from its slumber. 

"My motto is wines of joy, no fuss. That encapsulates me as a person," she says. Trabue is the founder of Ward Four Wines. Though she lives in Napa, she makes her wines elsewhere. "Custom crush fees are astronomical in Napa." She landed a small space at a custom crush facility on the outskirts of Sonoma called Obsidian Wine Company and has been making wine there since the founding of Ward Four Wines in 2021. 

Trabue grew up with wine on the table, but didn’t become interested in it until 2013, the year she graduated high school. When her parents asked her what she wanted to do for school, she told them she might be interested in wine. "They ended up having a sommelier come to our house. He was a Black man. I was like, cool, there’s someone who looks like me in the world of wine. I could do this! He told me, ‘Wine can take you anywhere. You can do so many things with it.’"

Fresh out of high school, she moved across the country to attend Cal Poly, in San Luis Obispo, along California’s Central Coast. "During the first three months of school, I had to choose between Wine Business, Enology or Viticulture. I didn’t want to do Organic Chemistry. And I didn’t want to be in the dirt. At that point, I was an 18-year-old woman coming from an urban jungle." But as she progressed in her studies, she discovered, "dirt is really cool. I really like this." She transitioned from the wine business to winemaking.

Her memories of her time at Cal Poly are mixed. “When I moved from D.C. to Cal Poly, I went from the Chocolate City to one of the whitest campuses in California. Less than 10% of the students at Cal Poly are black. "It’s more like 1%,” she tells me. In her program, she was the sole Black person in her year. "It was pretty isolating, but I found my community in other ways." During her junior year, she enrolled in a month-long program in Adelaide, Australia. "It was incredible because that was my first time going abroad for wine. That’s what really got me interested in harvest." Then, in 2019, having already graduated, she worked a harvest in New Zealand. That was the first time she worked alongside another Black person in the wine industry. "It took that long! He was South African. I was American. We both discussed how isolating and lonely it was." They developed a friendship. "His name is Marlin. He’s incredible. He still lives in New Zealand."

When she returned from New Zealand, she set about applying for grants and scholarships.  "Mine is a fully grant-funded winery." She attended Radical Exchange, a scholarship conference in New Orleans. "I needed to be in a community with people who looked like me. At this conference, almost everyone was Black or Brown." With funding from The Roots Fund, the Lift Collective, Dream Big Darling and other organizations, Trabue was able to create Ward Four Wines with a modest twenty-five thousand dollars. 

The launch of her nascent wine brand was delayed due to Covid, which, once again, left Trabue feeling isolated.  Not only was the pandemic isolating for countless others, but for people of color, the George Floyd murder added a layer of horror and fear to an already terrifying climate. "These terrible murders of Black people were happening. I mean, there have been consistent murders of Black people throughout the ages, but these were very intentional. Very terrible murders were happening. George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor. And nothing was being talked about within the wine industry. The wine and hospitality industry has literally been built on black and brown bodies, and you all weren’t saying anything."

Fraught, Trabue, and a friend, Simonnne Mitchelson, penned an open letter to the wine industry via their social media platforms. The letter generated plenty of attention and eventually led to Cal Poly establishing a BIPOC scholarship for students studying Agriculture. Trabue’s consistently sunny disposition takes a sudden detour towards a more reflective, ruminative state, and for a moment, our sunny breakfast becomes quiet. Still. She pauses, then adds, "Napa is still white-dominant, but there’s an incredible Hispanic community here. And there’s access and proximity to Oakland, San Francisco, Vallejo, and San Jose. Just more diversity in general." Her voice tapers off, but moments later, she is smiling again, undeterred. Looking ahead. She cites Nancy Ulloa of Ulloa Cellars in Paso Robles as someone who inspires her. "The way she’s growing and lifting others in the Latina and Latino community is incredible. This generation: we build each other up."

I cite a few recent articles that have appeared in the wine trade lamenting that her generation doesn’t buy wine. "We are buying. We’re just very intentional in what we’re buying. We’re not buying these large, corporate brands. We are more so intentionally looking for smaller producers. The larger ones already have a large customer base. We want to give our money to smaller companies. And, personally, I don’t just pair wine with food. I pair it with movies, television shows, and songs. And not because it will make me different, but because I love it. It’s another way for people who love the same things to connect with one another." In her latest letter to her customers, she pairs her 2023 Muscat Blanc with the movie JawBreaker (1999); the TV shows, My Hero Academia & HeartStopper; the song, Gimme Gimme Gimme, by Abba and a specific memory of hers. "Late nights and early mornings with my brother; downstairs playing Mario Galaxy, cellphone Chess, and Settlers of Catan. Our latest obsession is UNDERTALE on Nintendo switch, a game of monsters and humans searching through ruins."

For Trabue, marketing Ward Four Wines is a deeply personal undertaking. "I have wines for every drinker. My dad likes big, bold, intense reds, but I make them so I would like to drink them. My mom likes floral, fruity whites, and Italian Reds. My little brother likes playful and light wines. Accordingly, she makes a Petite Sirah to satisfy her dad’s palate, a Viognier and Barbera, to please her mom, and a bright, dry Muscat Blanc, in honor of her younger brother, who is ‘playful and light‘ like my Muscat." The next wine in Trabue’s line up? "A wine that I’ll make in memory of my grandmother. I’m not sure what it will be yet." She sources fruit from Mendocino, Paso Robles, Contra Coast, Sonoma, and Napa. "I am reaching out to customers who enjoy the same things I do. I’m very much a theatre kid. I love the Arts. I love museums. I love films. Gaming. I’m reaching out to clubs and organizations that enjoy those things."

Last October, she poured her wines at a Dungeons and Dragons-themed haunted house. She pours at Board Game clubs, and hands out fun free stickers at consumer tastings, about which she’s discerning.  She chooses events that don’t require vendor fees, and asks herself, "Is everyone going to be hammered? Will I be able to get mailing list sign ups? Are these people who I want to hang out with? That’s the biggest consideration!"

She’s especially fond of events like the Big West Wine Fest in Guernville, California. It features Natural Wines and is Queer owned. Trabue pulls out her phone and shows me photos of the event. People dressed as fairies and forest nymphs and just regular folks, too, heading into a thick forest, foregrounded by a flowering meadow.  "It was incredible," she says. "So fun! We poured under the Redwoods. After any event, I crash. I don’t have a voice and I’ll sleep for two days. I put my all into those events. I want to be intentional, and I want to really listen, really pay attention to each person who comes to my table. I reset in the cellar or at home, enjoying someone else’s wine." In addition to sustaining her wine brand, from cellar work to sales---she does it all---Trabue also works full-time at Scribe Winery in Sonoma. "It provides me with the money to be able to do what I want to do. Ward Four is not making a profit yet."

At home, Trabue also resets by caring for her two pet rats. "I’m a proud rat mom to Dolcetto and Pinot Gris. I love them so much, but they have short lives. They only live three to five years. Each time I lose a rat, it’s heartbreaking." And she enjoys winetasting on her days off. "I’m still willing to pay around $100.00 for a great tasting experience. That’s a lot, but if it’s a great experience, I’ll pay it. But a lot of places in Napa are $200.00 to $500.00, just to taste and for everyday consumers that’s just not fair."

 The tables have turned a bit for Trabue and her parents. "It’s cool because they’re the ones that got me into wine, but now I get to share wines with them they’ve never heard of. They will often buy better-known wines they’ve read about in wine magazines, so I enjoy introducing them to small, obscure producers making interesting wines from lesser-known grape varieties." Trabue and her mother recently watched Godfather II together, their favorite movie, with a bottle of Ward Four Barbera.

Before we say our goodbyes, I agree to caravan with Trabue to her apartment nearby, where she’s forgotten a bottle of her Muscat to share with me. On our way out, I comment about a movie theater across the parking lot that I’ve heard has a good line-up of wines by the glass. "That’s what I do when I’m having a bad day," she interjects. "I go to that movie theater. I get to escape into a movie and afterwards, it’s like, everything’s going to be okay."

The Unrelenting Call of Charbono 

Text: R.H. Drexel

Photograhy: Johan Berglund

Matt Morris is on a mission. He has pinned his hopes on Charbono, an obscure red grape variety that claims only sixty-five acres of plantings in the entire United States. 

"In food, people view the unknown with excitement. In wine, they view the unknown with fear," Morris tells me as we tool around Napa in his beat-up Jeep. He’s undeterred, though, having found a willing audience for his nearly opaque, aromatic, layered wines among the wine cognoscenti. Later in the day, we’ll swing by The French Laundry, a Michelin-starred restaurant in nearby Yountville, where Morris will be dropping off a couple of cases of Charbono on order. 

Though his Charbonos are popular among sommeliers and the geeky wine customer set, Morris is perhaps best known for his work as a photographer and filmmaker. He counts among his clients many of Napa Valley’s top wine producers. "The funny thing about Napa is that everyone tells the same story, so it’s so hard to tell who is genuine. There are people in Napa making high-end wines together who hate each other. They’re doing it solely for money, and their story is the same as people who do it because they love it and are in love with their vineyard. Everyone is going to say, ‘We’re expressing terroir. It’s not about us.’"

Morris explains that the only way to tell the difference is to immerse oneself in the dynamics of the valley. He is now able to discern which producers are issuing a long narrative of lip service versus those who truly care and are wholly committed to their lives in wine. Morris prefers to work with genuine producers simply because of the quality of the work produced. "My work is better for the same reasons their work is better; because they really care. I’m trying the same amount. It’s not like I’m going to try less or phone it in because it’s a corporate winery or a high-score-and-cash-grab. But naturally, you feed off the energy of people who genuinely love what they do. And that’s infectious to everyone involved. You have no choice; the work is just going to be better."

Bearded and professorial in bearing, Morris is wearing a button-down shirt and jeans. He navigates the valley floor with ease, driving between vineyard sites as we get to know each other. We have to speak loudly to hear ourselves above the din and rattle of his old car.  

He fell in love with wine while he was studying film at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time any spending money he had went directly into the coffers of a local wine retailer. There, he’d buy mostly champagne and Napa Valley wines, which he had learned about from his father. The retailer, Todd Wielar, would stay at the shop late to answer the younger Morris’ questions. "I got lucky in that there were some good distributors working in Chapel Hill at the time, so we had access to some pretty great grower Champagnes. I could pick up a grower Champagne for 20 bucks, so I got really into those. I bought a case of Dom Ruinart from the 1970s for 60 bucks a bottle. Now it’s 500 bucks a bottle. I had this amazing Champagne education before I got priced out of it."

While at university, he tells me, "I realized one day that I was spending all of this money on wine, and I wasn’t even a real person yet. So I stopped." He stopped visiting wine message boards online, quit the mailing lists he was on, and decided instead to focus on filmmaking. 

His subject became a barber shop in North Carolina in a "tiny furniture town in the middle of nowhere. There were eight buildings on main street, six were abandoned, and only two of them were open," he says.  At the end of the street was a barbershop with two barbers; one had been cutting hair at that shop for 60 years, the other for 45 years. Every weekend, there was a Bluegrass jam session with about 20 guys packed into the back of the shop. The jam sessions would last for hours. Inspired, Morris made the documentary about the shop called "Pickin’ and Trimmin’" and traveled the festival circuit promoting it. Sun Valley. Telluride. Ojai. While on the festival circuit, he met Manfred Krankl, the legendary winemaker and artist behind Sine Qua Non. 

"I was fascinated by Sine Qua Non and Manfred’s artwork and labels. This was before they had a website, so I emailed him and told him how much I loved his wines and labels.," he says. Morris lamented to Krankl, though, that the only way he could explore the labels was on wine auction websites, where the labels were shown in thumbnails too small to truly enjoy. He asked Krankl for scans of their labels, but Krankl, not having any handy, sent Morris leftover labels instead.

"That was super kind of them. They’re the sweetest people." Morris scanned all the labels and sent them to the Krankls. When they asked him how much he would charge to do more of them, he told them he’d gladly accept wine as payment. From there, they became acquaintances. "The wines of Sine Qua Non are just one thing that makes the Krankls interesting. We talked about everything but wine. Art, music, cars, motorcycles. They’ve always been a North Star for me, the kind of person I’d like to be. They have multiple interests. They live full, creative lives and aren’t really tied up in just one particular thing."

Morris was considering moving to Los Angeles at the time, but the competition among photographers and filmmakers there was, and remains, fierce. Instead, his thoughts turned to moving to Napa. He had made friends there over the years, filming and photographing them for fun during harvest, then gifting them his work. Morris’ work got passed around, and people began inquiring about his rates. "That’s when I realized ‘I know wine, and I know who I would want to work with.’"  He moved to Napa in 2013, where he landed his first client: Realm Cellars.

Realm Cellars was undergoing a rebrand under the creative direction of Byron Hoffmann and Alex Chrisman, and they utilized Morris to provide photography for Realm’s new website. They then retained him to work with other cult producer clients. 

He credits Chrisman and Hoffmann with revolutionizing the aesthetic of the Napa Valley. At the time that Morris moved to Napa, he says, Napa wineries were realizing they had to take their websites seriously. "I joke that the standard for grape growing and wine production was really high when I moved here, but everything else was done like it was this little, tiny farmer town. The wines were amazing but if you looked at websites in the early 2000s, they were like farmer’s websites. Not well-designed, not modern." 

Then, he tells me, cult Cabernet Sauvignons began to appear, and websites followed suit. "It was that single-image look. Everyone was trying to do that Screaming Eagle thing. One photo and a P.O. box. But then a shift started to happen. People were saying, ‘Show me something. Tell me something. What am I getting for my money?’ I kind of landed right during that shift."

Hoffmann and Chrisman spearheaded a trend toward transparency. If wines were going to be expensive, then wineries were going to explain to customers why. Websites became highly visual, layered, and informative. When I ask Morris if he thinks the advent of highly stylized websites may have been an overcorrection, away from the understated, he says. "Oh no! That’s exactly what I would have wanted from a consumer standpoint."

Now that Morris was living in the Napa Valley, his interest in and pursuit of Charbono deepened. His favorite wine at the time was a Robert Foley Charbono he was buying regularly for 19.00 a bottle. One day, he shared a bottle with winemaker Benoit Touquette of Realm Cellars and Touquette took a shine to Charbono, too. The two began making Charbono together in 2014, and Matt Morris Wines was born. 

In 2017, Realm Cellars decided to discontinue any custom-crush work. Morris suddenly found himself without a winemaker or a place to make wine. "I thought it was over." When he shared his woes over the phone with famed consultant winemaker Francoise Peschon, she told him unequivocally, "Don’t worry. If you can’t find a place, I will be your winemaker, and I will find you a place to make wine." Morris had met Peschon years earlier through a series of serendipitous events. One day, in the mid-aughts, Morris had a bottle of 2002 Araujo Cabernet Sauvignon. It became a touchstone for him, and he took a photo of the bottle and sent it to Araujo’s info@ email address. One of the employees forwarded Morris’ photo to Araujo winemaker, Francoise Peschon. She, in turn, spontaneously donated to Morris’ Kickstarter for a short documentary he was making at the time. 

When it came time for Morris to deliver some of the swag promised to donors, he decided to deliver his in person to Peschon. He showed up at Araujo without an appointment, and wasn’t allowed in to taste, much less meet Peschon. A decade later, during a harvest photo shoot for a winery client, he stayed behind to help sort fruit. While standing at the sorting table, he saw another pair of hands join in. "I looked up and I thought, ‘Holy Shit! That’s Francoise Peschon!’ So, I said to her, ‘Hey, you donated to my Kickstarter ten years ago!’ That’s how we got to know each other."

And, indeed, as promised, Peschon stepped into the winemaker role for Morris and arranged for him to make wines at Almacerro, high above the valley floor, where she is also consultant. Morris and I weave our way through circuitous mountain roads on our way to taste his Charbonos, which are also aging at Almacerro. When we arrive, we’re greeted by Almacerro winemaker Matilda Scott, bright-eyed and boisterous, with a thick Australian accent. She grabs us some glasses as Morris scans his barrels, deciding which ones we’ll taste out of. "It’s been so much fun," he says, emptying an impossibly dark Charbono from a glass thief into my wineglass. "Working with Francoise and Matilda was a natural extension of the direction I was moving in already. What I really love is Francoise’s aura as a human being. The way she makes wine is very aligned with me and my personality in general," he says. His affection for Scott is also apparent, and there’s a friendly ease between them.  "There was this one day when I got to the winery to do a punch down, and Francoise was here. And, she just had her hands in a puncheon. She was just stirring the grapes with her hands, and she smiled, looked at me, and said, ‘Aren’t we lucky?’ She is such a good teacher and guide. She’s like Yoda. She wants to understand what you want to accomplish."

Morris sources his Charbono from two historic sites; Tofanelli and Shypoke. Both vineyards have been family-owned for about a century, and the gnarled Charbono vines with which Morris works are, on average, about 40 years old. He pours me his Tofanelli Charbono out of the bottle, "This is a single-vineyard Charbono. You may want to wait two to three years before you open this. Francoise stopped bringing Tofanelli to blend sessions because we don’t need to touch it. We played with Malbec, added a little in, and nothing happened. Then we added Malbec to Shypoke, and something magical happened. Tofanelli is like, ‘I don’t need it.’"

The wines Peschon and Morris make are a revelation. As someone who grew up tasting predominately Cabernet Sauvignons from the Napa Valley, it’s refreshing to observe Napa Valley terroir through the prism of another grape variety entirely. Charbono had a rich history in the Napa Valley from the late 1800s all the way up until the early 1970s. When the profile of Cabernet Sauvignon rose in the mid-70s, Charbono plantings waned in popularity and were soon torn out altogether. Today, only forty acres of Charbono remain in the Napa Valley. It can be a powerful wine, deeply colored with bold aromatics and flavors. But there’s a refinement that courses through Charbono, rendering it especially nuanced and compelling. Thematically, Charbono tends to play in the arena of deep, dark blue fruits, violets, and some distant echoes of wet earth and cedar. Texturally, it needs cellaring or decanting, but once it’s opened properly, it’s an arresting wine. The Matt Morris Charbono’s have quite a bit of structure and length. There’s no question they’re age-worthy, and I am looking forward to tasting these twenty years from now if I’m still lucky enough to be around. 

In 2020, when smoke taint from wildfires ruined much of the Napa Valley’s harvest, Morris considered sourcing fruit from areas that weren’t plagued by wildfires and the subsequent threat of smoke-tainted fruit. Because Charbono plantings are so limited, he considered working with other grape varieties.  He phoned up friend and winemaker Maggie Harrison (Lillian, Antica Terra) to ask her what she thought about Syrah- was it difficult to make well, what was it like, and what could be expected? And where might he source some if he needed it at this late date? 

Harrison sent him to view her blocks of Syrah at Bien Nacido Vineyard and White Hawk, both on California’s Central Coast, directing him to "‘just take my fruit.’ She told me she had survivor’s guilt and insisted that I take her fruit. The Bien Nacido rows were the original rows that Manfred Krankl started with and the ones he gifted to Maggie so she could go out on her own and make ‘Lillian.’ (Maggie Harrison worked at Sine Qua Non before departing to begin her own projects.) I not only never thought I’d be making wine, but I also certainly never thought I’d be making Syrah from Bien Nacido. And this was Francoise’s first non-Bordeaux varietal wine she’d made since the 1980’s. The problem with making something like that once is that you want to do it again!" Morris texted Harrison and asked if he could source the same Syrah the following year. She agreed. 

Though his namesake project takes up much of his time, Morris still maintains a robust photography business. Now that he’s in the business himself, he’s developed a profound understanding of its inner workings and the people who keep the cogs turning. 

"Half the time I get an email about photography, it’s a wealthy person from some other industry. They’re buying the fruit you know they’re going to buy. They have the consulting winemaker that you know they’re going to have. And I get disappointed with that. But then there are people like Julia Van der Vink, who’s doing her own thing on Mt. Veeder. She and her boyfriend, Rob, are trying to do something special. They’re not using that checklist that says, ‘This is how you make wine in the Napa Valley.’ She just planted her vines and I know the wines are going to be great. The first time I talked to her was six years ago, and she had this dream of making wine on Mt. Veeder. And now she’s got her vineyard there. She has a real sense of purpose and place. She has a point of view."

He regards Van der Vink and others like her as the type of people who make Napa Valley what it is. "Everyone talks the talk at the beginning. You have to get into it with them to see how they behave, how they act. To me, I’m not necessarily disappointed if people are just in for money. I mean, this is Napa Valley. Anytime you’re in the epicenter of a high-end industry, there are going to be people doing it for money. That’s not surprising to me. I just get pleasantly surprised when I meet the type of people who made Napa Valley what it is. There is still a population of people here who really care about this place. Nigel Kinsman of Kinsman Eades; he’s doing powerful Napa Cabs, right? But his approach to the nuances of wine, to age-worthiness and his perspective on his sites is really special. He is that guy who is greatly passionate about Cabernet. And he has a perspective. He’s got a take.  If you talk to him for five minutes, you know he’s different, and he really cares about what he’s doing."

I ask Morris if he has enough of a community around him to maintain his deep commitment to his Charbono project. After all, as a photographer, he’s often amid situations and people he patently finds uninspiring. "Napa doesn’t always want to show its personality. It wants things to be seamless. But you find your tribe. You find the people who care. You find those little pockets, and that’s what’s so fun. Those people are out there. Sometimes they’re celebrated, and sometimes they’re not. They may not be that exciting, but they’re the real deal, and if I can help tell that story, then that’s great. I’m more than happy to."

Morris is most intrigued, it would appear, by producers who "embrace the narrative of failure and struggle. Maggie Harrison is one of those winemakers, and it makes you want those wines more. It makes you love her more. When other winemakers say that every year is a perfect year…the best vintage we ever had, it rings false and hollow. If there’s a bad vintage, it’s like, ‘well, it was challenging for some, but not for us.’" The non-interventionist narrative that some winemakers espouse doesn’t resonate with Morris. "All these people love to talk about being farmers. But, just waiting for your grapes to miraculously arrive without having to do much to them… that’s not the reality of being a farmer. Massive losses, uncertainty, struggle. That’s the narrative of a farmer’s life. Do you hear that being discussed in Napa? No? I mean, they’re being forced to talk about challenges now. Like with the wildfires because they’re so visible. You can’t not talk about it. So now some wineries are having to talk about struggle, but they should have been talking about that all along."

Setting the Right Pace

An Afternoon with McPrice Myers

By R.H. Drexel

Dressed from head-to-toe in solid black Dickies and a black baseball cap, vigneron McPrice Myers stands beneath a Ted Lasso-inspired, hand-made sign that hangs above the cellar door in his eponymously named Paso Robles winery: "Believe," hand-drawn in Sharpie ink. AC/DC’s "Highway to Hell" blasts through the speakers as a forklift revs by with a barrel aloft.

Myers waves me through the cellar and outside again, where his vineyard truck is parked out back on the crush pad. He motions for me to hop in. He’s cordial but a bit reserved at first. When Myers gets behind the wheel, I get the sense it’s the first time he’s been off his feet since daybreak. He heaves a deep breath as he puts the truck in gear. "Most of this ranch is east and north-facing, which is what I prefer. It’s part of why I fell in love with this property." We are entering his hillside estate vineyard in the Adelaida district of Paso Robles. "It took longer to rehab this vineyard than I’d anticipated, but that’s okay." Though Myers, 48, is now in his 23rd harvest, he’s relatively new to this estate, which he acquired in 2017. 

Discovering the vines had been neglected, he had two additional wells dug at the property, though he’s quick to tell me that they only water the vineyards "as needed. Just enough to have healthier vines and good shoot growth. The freshness and vibrancy we get in the wines now is really nice," he says. "There’s structure here. Density. Power, but there’s all the freshness in the background that keeps it honest." 

I first met Myers back in 2002 when he was in his twenties, a young buck just starting out at the then collegiate and popular Central Coast Wine Services in the Santa Maria Valley of Santa Barbara County, making wines with his buddy, Russell P. From, under the Barrel 27 label. I’d often swing by to visit friends making wine there, but I never conversed much with Myers. He was quiet and kept mostly to himself. 

"Back then, the CCWS was an incubator of talent. You had Paul Lato (Paul Lato Wines), Lane Tanner (Lane Tanner Wines), Curt Schaclin (Sans Liege), Gary Burke (Costa de Oro), the late Seth Kunin (Kunin Wines), Joe Davis (Arcadian), Frank Ostini and Gray Hartley (Hartley-Ostini Hitching Post Wines), all there making wine. It was the perfect situation," he says. "That was going to school. I’m so grateful for my time there."

We drive through slippery vineyard roads, past a dense forest that surrounds the estate, and emerge atop a hill where he’s eager to show me their new VIP tasting digs, shipping containers painted in earth tones to better blend into the natural setting. The view is spectacular from the top of the estate. Myers deftly points out the territory below, a vast country expanse that includes "San Miguel. Ranchita Canyon. Hog Canyon," he says, listing sites and sub-appellations enthusiastically. "Estrella. There’s J. Lohr winery, the Power Road corridor. Hwy. 46 east. Geneseo. Past that, it’s the Shandon District. Over here, you’ve got El Pomar. That’s Black Mountain. And, on this side is Creston. And there’s Templeton Gap. You can see all the way to the Eastern Pinnacles in Monterey County."  

"The first time I came up here, I was like, Holy Shit!"

He’s animated as he describes the landscape below and beyond. "The first time I came up here, I was like, Holy Shit! You don’t realize the view until you come here. It’s amazing. It’s steep terroir," he continues, "with not much topsoil, so yields are low. The vines are responding well to just simple things. Enough water. Compost. Little things to give them a little extra, and they’re grateful." 

As we wind our way back down towards the winery, he points to a mountainside where he hopes to dig caves. "That will probably begin in 2027. It will be 5,000 feet of barrel storage." He plans to expand his production area, as well. "We’ll have more vessels that will be more conducive to what we want to do. I love small open-top fermenters, just because that’s where I started, and I do appreciate them, but having more concrete, even for aging, and more stainless steel; that will be a game changer production-wise. Our growth is measured and thoughtful. We want to make sure that what we do we do well and right."

When we reach the winery, Myers walks ahead purposefully, waving me in and pointing to a table and benches. It’s a busy day in the cellar, with a bottling date just around the corner. He talks to his staff for a bit, then grabs a few bottles from storage for us to taste. 

"Stress is a good motivator."

Myers has about 20 employees. "We’re all rowing in the same direction, and it’s a good feeling, but there’s a tremendous amount of stress. Stress is a good motivator. You’re always really paying attention to the details because there’s so much riding on the decisions we make. I still pinch myself that I get to do this for a living. I didn’t grow up in the wine business. I wasn’t the son that was going to take over. Back when I started, I thought, ‘If I could just make an honest living, pay my bills and be able to do this.’ That was all I was hoping for. Sometimes it’s hard to believe. I pinch myself. Am I really doing this?" We are joined at our tasting by his Associate Winemaker, Adrian Perez, a former McPrice Myers wine club member and organic farmer whose family maintains an organic farming business on the Central Coast. When he was hired, he had no previous winemaking experience. There’s a jovial yet respectful vibe between them. 

Myers was born in Bellflower, California, to Irish parents. His family roots are in County Cork, Galway, and Waterford. Myers pays tribute to his roots with the Claddagh symbol, which was present throughout his house growing up. It now appears on his wine labels and is painted on the side of his winery. Though his mother wore a broach of the Claddagh symbol, he didn’t start paying attention to the symbol until he became a winemaker. "I like what it stands for. Love, loyalty, and friendship. You have to love what you do. You have to be loyal to the process and craft. And grateful for the amazing friendships wine creates; whether I’m there or not, a bottle of wine is the best thing when sitting around and having a chat with friends. It just is." 

He was raised in the suburban town of Whittier in Southern California, where his father worked for the youth authority (a now-defunct organization). "All the government workers had their kids at Kaiser Hospital. Me, my brother and all my friends were born at the same hospital. We were a bunch of wild kids running the streets. It was the city version of "Lord of the Flies", but maybe not that violent. Skateboarding, BMXing, playing sports. I enjoyed my childhood. My parents’ generation was the generation where we were kind of let go of. We were wild children. Go outside when the sun rises and come home when the sun sets. You were gone all day, and there was no contact. Now, if I don’t hear from my son by the time he gets out of school at 3:05, I start to panic." 

When he was growing up his parents didn’t drink wine, but he says of his vocation, "I had this need to do this. I don’t know where that came from, but I was completely intrigued by wine." At the age of 19, while working at Trader Joe’s, he began learning about wines. "This was when they were a small company and had an incredible selection. My boss thought I had a passion for it." By the time he was 21 years old, he was visiting wine shops all over Southern California, from The Wine House to Hi-Times. "I would leave a wine shop with a case of wine and maybe a wine book to read. I was just saving money like crazy so that if I had the opportunity to make wine, I could do it." 

When he was 24, he and his now-wife began dating, exploring Paso Robles and Santa Barbara Wine Country. "She was very supportive. It’s such an unobtainable thing from the outside. Who can just go and make wine? I just didn’t know how to go about it."

Then, fortuitously, an acquaintance showed him a contract for custom-crushing at Central Coast Wine Services, and after learning that he didn’t need credentials or to be vetted to lease space there, he bought a few used barrels and purchased a little bit of fruit. By the time he was 25, he was making wine full-time. 

The first red wine he ever made was the 2002 Larner Vineyard Syrah, from Santa Barbara County’s Ballard Canyon appellation. He still makes that wine today. "I was super intrigued at that time with single-vineyard Syrahs from the Northern Rhone. I was entrenched in that world. Syrah sang to me. I remember the first time I had the Jean Louis Chave, St. Joseph, Offerus. I was like, ‘How can a wine taste like this? Lavender. Violets. Cured olives. Then I started to get into 100% Grenaches. From the Colombis by Famille Isabel to Janesse "Chaupin," to Bosquet des Papes, Gloire de Mon Grand-Pere—I love those. They’re so inspiring." Once Myers became enchanted with the Northern Rhone, he also discovered Condrieu.

"I had a Condrieu, and I thought ‘Oh fuck! Viognier is an insanely unique, singular grape. It’s captivating. You can’t get your nose out of the glass." 

Myers has never taken classes for winemaking and admits that he is sometimes plagued by imposter syndrome. "I’ve heard this so many times from people who haven’t gone to traditional school for this or didn’t grow up in a wine family; they sometimes get imposter syndrome. Just like with some actors and comedians…they don’t feel like they’re part of the club. It’s a common thing to think about: ‘If I’m not book-trained or classically trained, I don’t have a certain knowledge they have.’ What I do is purely intuitive. I’ve educated myself, but ultimately, it’s more of a feeling. People ask me all the time if I use more science now than I did at the beginning. No. It’s the same. It’s taste and feel. That’s something you can’t learn. You can go to school until the cows come home, but if you don’t have a great palate, and if there’s not an intuitive element to it, it’s really an uphill battle. Either you have it, or you don’t. When I smell, taste, feel something, and when I watch it grow, it’s very natural to me." 

When I tell Myers he’s articulate and that I enjoy his engaged manner of speaking, he says, "I’m barely high school educated, and I quit college at a very young age, so that’s not one of my strong suits, in my opinion."

"Once you become rigid, it’s so hard to begin to think about solutions."

As we taste through his vineyard-designated wines, his estate wine, and his "Beautiful Earth" brand, an affordably priced lineup of fresh, crunchy, lively wines, he constantly has vintage variation in mind. "Being dogmatic in any way, especially with winemaking, is the death knell. Being nimble, being able to take every block, every variety, for what it is, and trying to do your best in every vintage, that is where it’s at. We know that we have so many issues with climate change. Once you become rigid, it’s so hard to begin to think about solutions. The profession of winemaking, if you follow history, is all about being stewards of wine and doing what you can to make sure that wine stays pristine. From pruning to the bottle, your job is to limit the mistakes. Those are the principles I cherish about winemaking. It’s a lifetime voyage, but still, you want to get better with every vintage. You never want to say, ‘This is what we do. We perfected our process, and that’s it.’ That’s a silly thing to do with a living product and, now, with climate change."

The wines Myers makes range in price from $ 20.00 to $ 100.00. He tells me his pricing philosophy has always been simple. "I never want anyone to have a bottle of my wine and say, ‘Holy Fuck! I paid $50.00 for this?’ I need it to over-perform. I got into wine because I was able to get wines that were well-priced that I was able to learn from, and that got me into drinking wine. Even if a bottle is $100.00, it’s got to over-deliver. And I do think I’m leaving money on the table, but I’d rather have that feeling of over-delivering. I had a $300.00 bottle of white wine---a Rayas white, which is a unicorn---that I still think about today. I got it on the cheap for $300.00. It was a life-changing experience with white wine. It over-delivered for the price." 

"In the wine business, success means you’re still here."

I wonder aloud how he measures his success these days. "In the wine business, success means you’re still here," he says, laughing. "It’s important to me that people realize that if you don’t have good people, it’s never going to work. In any successful organization, that’s what it’s all about. And it’s important to be a part of the community. It’s all about the community. It provides a great support system for everyone and lifts up the area. That’s why people are so intrigued by Paso Robles right now. I travel all over the country, and it’s really becoming well-known. And I attribute a lot of that to the people here. They put Paso first." 

What do his parents think of his winemaking career? "In the beginning, they were just happy I was putting my energy into something positive. I was getting in a lot of fucking trouble, and they saw my personality change when I got into wine. When I discovered wine, I spent all my free time learning about it, tasting it. My parents felt my passion for it. The furthest thing from their minds was me being a winemaker, but they love it now, and, as parents, they love that I’m doing something I love." His father, Pat, often works the room during wine club events. "He loves to chat people up." 

Observing the many opened bottles we’ve tasted on the table, I’m impressed with how unfatigued my palate feels. My tongue isn’t tired and numb but energized and ready for lunch. "We don’t want our wines to be cumbersome," Myers says. "There may be some that lean a little bit more on power, density, and depth, but there’s still an underlying energy that keeps it all lifted."

"People don’t think about the pace of a wine. How does it flow? Some wines are very quick. They zip by too fast. And there are some wines that linger too long. They’re heavy on the front. But, when you hit the pace right, and the height, it brings the wine together."

And the results can be assessed thus:

 

QPR 10 = The Bargain of a lifetime

QPR 9 = Outstanding value

QPR 8 = Excellent value

QPR 7 = Very good value

QPR 6 = Good value

QPR 5 = Above average value

QPR 4 = Fair market price

QPR 3 = The price is a little steep

QPR 2 = Expensive for what it is

QPR 1 = Forget it

Thus, the formula looks like this: 

 

(Wine Score ÷ Retail Price in $USD) + Bonus = QPR Rating

 

For the QPR bonus calculation, add 0.5 bonus points to a score of 90 and then add an extra 0.5 to each score above 90 until 96 points. At 96 and above, scores receive an incremental 1-point bonus. So, the scoring bonuses are:

 

87-89: No Bonus

90: add 0.5

91: add 1

92: add 1.5

93: add 2

94: add 2.5

95: add 3

96: add 4

97: add 5

98: add 6

99: add 7

100: add 8

Under $25

 

2020 Marjosse, Bordeaux Rouge – 94 / $14 / QPR 9.21

2021 Marjosse Blanc, Entre-Deux-Mers, Bordeaux 91 / $13 / QPR 8

2019 Fourcas-Hosten, Listrac-Moulis, Bordeaux - 93 / $19 / QPR 6.89

2020 Fontenil, Fronsac, Bordeaux – 95 / $25 / QPR 6.8

2020 Château Alcee, Castillon-Cotes de Bordeaux – 93 / $20 / QPR 6.65

2020 Marsau, Francs-Cotes de Bordeaux – 94 / $23 / QPR 6.59

2020 Les Trois Croix, Fronsac, Bordeaux – 94 / $24 / QPR 6.41

2020 Les Gravieres, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux – 94 / $25 / QPR 6.26

2020 Montlandrie, Castillon-Cotes de Bordeaux – 93 / $25 / QPR 5.72

2020 Grand Village, Bordeaux Superieur 93 / $25 / QPR 5.72

$26-50

 

2020 Laroque, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux – 97 / $39 / QPR 7.48

2021 Casanova di Neri Rosso di Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy – 94 / $27 / QPR 5.98

2020 Clos Lunelles, Castillon-Cotes de Bordeaux – 94 / $27 / QPR 5.98

2020 Villemaurine, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux – 96 / $49 / QPR 5.96

2020 Poesia, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux – 95 / $33 / QPR 5.88

2021 Podere Grattamacco Bolgheri Rosso, Tuscany, Italy – 94 / $29 / QPR 5.74

2021 Materra Chardonnay, Oak Knoll District, Napa Valley – 94 / $30 / QPR 5.63

2020 Grand Corbin-Despagne, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux – 95 / $37 / QPR 5.57

2021 Orma Passi di Orma, Bolgheri, Italy – 94 / $32 / QPR 5.44

2020 Grand Village Blanc, Bordeaux – 94 / $33 / QPR 5.35

$51-100

 

2021 DuMOL Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay, Los Carneros, Napa Valley - 99 / $83 / QPR 8.19

2020 Larcis Ducasse, Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, Bordeaux – 99 / $100 / QPR 7.99

2020 La Gaffeliere, Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, Bordeaux – 98 / $91 / QPR 7.08

2021 Flowers Camp Meeting Ridge Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast, California – 98 / $95 / QPR 7.03

2020 Suduiraut, Sauternes, Bordeaux – 97 / $70 / QPR 6.39

2022 Penfolds Reserve Bin 22A Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills, Australia – 97 / $80 / QPR 6.21

2021 Penfolds Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz, Barossa Valley, Australia – 96 / $58 / QPR 5.66

2020 Phelan Segur, Saint-Estèphe, Bordeaux – 96 / $60 / QPR 5.6

2020 Doisy Daene, Barsac, Bordeaux – 96 / $62 / QPR 5.55

2021 CARO, Mendoza, Argentina – 96 / $62 / QPR 5.55

$101-200

 

2019 Château Canon, Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, Bordeaux - 100 / $170 / QPR 8.59

2020 Andremily Mourvedre, Santa Barbara County, California – 100 / $170 / QPR 8.59

2019 Montrose, Saint-Estèphe, Bordeaux - 100 / $200 / QPR 8.5

2021 DuMOL Pinot Noir Finn, Sonoma Coast, California – 99 / $130 / QPR 7.76

2019 Pontet-Canet, Pauillac, Bordeaux - 99 / $137 / QPR 7.72

2020 Haut-Bailly, Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux - 99 / $159 / QPR 7.62

2020 Belair-Monange, Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, Bordeaux - 99 / $176 / QPR 7.56

2019 Salvestrin "Three D" Cabernet Sauvignon, St. Helena, Napa Valley – 99 / $198 / QPR 7.5

2019 Pichon Baron, Pauillac, Bordeaux - 99 / $200 / QPR 7.50

2020 Léoville Barton, Saint-Julien, Bordeaux – 98 / $109 / QPR 6.90

$201-400

 

2021 Aubert Larry Hyde & Sons Chardonnay, Los Carneros, Napa Valley – 100 / $240 / QPR 8.42

2019 Spottswoode Cabernet Sauvignon, St. Helena, Napa Valley – 100 / $255 / QPR 8.39

2019 Saxum James Berry Vineyard Rocket Block, Paso Robles, California – 100 / $272 / QPR 8.38

2021 Aubert Lauren Vineyard Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast, California – 100 / $269 / QPR 8.37

2021 Giaconda Chardonnay, Beechworth, Australia – 100 / $278 / QPR 8.36

2020 Figeac, Saint-Émilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, Bordeaux – 100 / $289 / QPR 8.35

2020 Trotanoy, Pomerol, Bordeaux – 100 / $369 / QPR 8.27

2020 Vieux Chateau Certan, Pomerol, Bordeaux – 100 / $400 / QPR 8.25

2019 Vangone Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley – 99 / $201 / QPR 7.49

2021 Bibi Graetz Colore, Toscana, Italy – 99 / $204 / QPR 7.49

Classic styles are not surprisingly classic blends of at least two, or perhaps all three of Champagne’s primary grapes: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier. In a general sense, these are vibrant, fruit-rich, and supple wines that should be crowd-pleasing and very attractive, and not just because of price. These include, in no particular order:

 

·       De Sousa 3A and Paul Bara Brut Millésime 2016 both possess incredible fruit purity and poise.

·       Philipponnat Royale Reserve Brut and Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut offer refinement and finesse.

·       Lanson Black Creation 257 and Gosset Grand Reserve Brut both deliver exceptional quality for the price.  These are fresh and fun choices for a party.

·       Nicolas Maillart Platine Premier Cru, Henri Goutorbe Cuvée Millesime 2013, and Joseph Perrier Cuvée Royale 2013 Brut are all three elegant, refreshing and drink above their price point.

Lively styles are mostly Blanc de Blancs, though not exclusively, that are fresh and ebullient, a little racier and energized on the palate but not at the expense of balancing fruit intensity. Sophisticated and smart value suggestions include:

 

·       R.H Coutier Blanc de Blancs NV 

·       Varnier Fanniere Cuvee Saint Denis

·       Laherte Brut Nature Blanc de Blancs NV

·       Guiborat Prisme. 18 NV

·       Egrot et Filles Millésime 2016

·       Franck Bonville Pur Oger Blanc de Blancs 2016

·       Henriot Blanc de Blancs NV

Opulent styles are just what the word suggests – wines with a rich presence that are textural, weighty, and are often Pinot Noir or Meunier dominant, perhaps vinified in oak barrels, and likely have extended aging. These wines have wonderful amplitude and power that is well-balanced by excellent freshness:

    

·       Billecart-Salmon Brut Sous Bois NV 

·       Dehours Grand Reserve Brut NV

·       Bruno Paillard Cuvée 72 Brut NV 

·       Henri Giraud Hommage au Pinot Noir NV

Rosé is defined categorically more by color than actual style, given that producers make them in different ways. I’ve selected five that I think represent the four styles above:

 

·       Laurent Perrier Cuvée Rosé Brut NV (Classic)

·       Gosset Grand Rosé Brut NV (Classic)

·       Varnier Fanniere Rosé Zéro NV (Lively)

·       Charles Heidsieck Rosé Reserve Brut (Opulent)

·       JM Labruyere Anthologie Rose 2018 (Gastronomic)

Winemaker Duncan Harmon caught the wine bug when he was just 11 years old. During a family vacation in Florence, Italy, he found himself asking questions of the wine director at a local restaurant. Amused by the inquisitive young boy, the wine director offered to show him the wine cellar, and the young Harmon’s imagination was sparked. He looked around and saw "well-dressed people enjoying wine. I remember thinking this is super cool. That was the AHA moment. There was this elevated culinary experience that caught my attention."

At 14, Harmon visited his first winery in Montelcino and sipped a Brunello di Montelcino from his mother’s glass. "I was tasting wine at a castle," he says, bright-eyed. From that day forward, he began perusing wine lists whenever the family dined out, asking questions of wine directors and, in later years, choosing wines for the table.  

Harmon and his mother, Dalita, own and operate Terre et Sang winery in Santa Barbara County, California. I’m usually hesitant to write about brand-new producers. The business is fickle, and wineries come and go. But, right out of the gate, Terre et Sang has garnered favorable reviews from top critics and attracts a steady stream of visitors to its small tasting room in Los Olivos, California. Though the whole family enjoys wine, the winery and tasting room are owned solely by the mother-and-son duo.  

Harmon, now 33, credits international travel and being surrounded by fine wines since his youth as inspirations for his vocation. As a young man, "he didn’t talk about pursuing wine," Dalita says. "There was nothing intentional until towards the end of college." At Penn State, Harmon says, he studied "having a good time. I went to that school to have the experience of going to that school. It was interesting and fun, but as soon as I was done, I was done." He graduated as a communications major.

When he was in his early 20s, his interest in wine accelerated after visiting his mother in Arroyo Grande, in San Luis Obispo County. "I flew out, landed at night. When I woke up in the morning, I could see Alban Vineyard from my mom’s living room. I realized during that trip that the Central Coast is the place for me." At 24 years of age, Duncan decided he wanted to be a winemaker. 

He found work nearby, holding down a couple of part-time jobs, one at a real estate office and the other at a wine bar next door. For the following two months, nearly five days a week, Harmon tasted throughout Paso Robles wine country whenever he had a chance. "It brought back everything I remembered about Italy. The food and wine scene. I got sucked in." He became a "gate crasher," he tells me, standing outside hard-to-get into wineries like Saxum and L’ Aventure. "I’d ring and ring until they’d buzz me in." 

Dalita and Duncan Harmon launched Terre et Sang in 2019. Duncan was 29 years old when he first tried his hand at winemaking. "We started doing this for fun in 2018 and then seriously in 2019. We approached it with a mindset that was serious," he says. He’s had no formal training and has learned the ropes from a series of mentors, both in the vineyard and the cellar. "A lot of the people I’ve learned the most from I’ve never met," he says. "I have never met Manfred and Elaine Krankl. However, I have done every bit of research, reading everything I can to pull snippets out about what their X factor is. And, with them, it’s attention to detail. Nik Krankl, of Fingers Crossed, told me, ‘Dad once said, the trick is to do to all the things all the other wineries say they do.’ It’s not just the decision you make but how you execute it. You learn from the greats that it can be fun, but the seriousness and intention must be there." 

The first meet-up with the Harmons is at Kimsey Vineyard, a little gem of a designate at the intersection of where the cool and coastal Sta. Rita Hills appellation breezes meet the influence of the more temperate and inland Ballard Canyon appellation. His mother tells me that "Duncan was constantly asking questions. He was deep-diving into methodologies and putting them together. And that enhanced my commitment. He very quickly established some great relationships with some great winemakers. One of the best surprises in all of this is how open people were with Duncan. How willing they were to help. But I give Duncan a lot of credit for having crammed a lot of knowledge into his head, such that he could engage and understand what they were saying. Then it’s about tweaking. Someone can tell you, ‘This is exactly how you make wine,’ but then there are other decisions that are ultimately up to you that give you the wine you want." The day is bright and clear as Harmon and Dalita walk the vineyard rows delegated to them. They exchange knowing glances as they observe their blocks but don’t say much to each other. There’s an easy, comfortable silence between them. 

Harmon credits vineyard owner Michael Larner of Larner Vineyard in Ballard Canyon with helping them enter the wine business. "He was the first person to take a chance on us," he says. "We had had the 2015 Homage to Steven Larner by MacPrice Meyers, and I thought, ‘I need to go to Santa Barbara.’" Following Larner, they quickly forged relationships with other vineyards in Santa Barbara County, including Bien Nacido (Santa Maria Valley), Kimsey (Ballard Canyon), Peake (Sta. Rita Hills) and the Moulds Vineyard in the Napa Valley, from which they produce a Cabernet Sauvignon, the only non-Rhone-varietal wine in the Terre et Sang lineup. 

Dalita was raised in rural Indiana. "My mom’s from Crawfordsville, which is a town of about 12 people. I grew up in Newmarket and Lafayette, near rural Indianapolis. My dad was a stock car racer back in the day, so I went to the Indy 500 a lot. I grew up racing and sitting on a tractor. We grew all our own stuff. I’m an Indiana farm girl. So, the growing side of this really appealed to me and struck a chord with me."

The first wine Harmon made was from fruit off his mother’s vineyard in Arroyo Grande. The vintage was 2018, and they managed the vineyard and the harvest entirely on their own. "It was an exploration," Dalita says. "By this point, Duncan was interested, so we were testing ourselves. We had a backyard vineyard, and we started enjoying the farming side of that. We got some other grapes from Happy Canyon (in Santa Barbara County), and we made a Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc from there, and from my backyard vineyard, an estate Blanc. We loved it, loved everything about it, especially talking to vineyard managers." 

Harmon is tall and lean, with dark hair and a youthful yet intense aspect. He listens intently as his mother speaks, but he’s anxious to add his own thoughts. "All of the work was done just by us," he says. "We had to learn it all. We wanted it to be good, whatever it was going to be, so all the shoot-tying, pruning, spraying, soil nutrients everything became a research project for us. Then it’s the application, and we did it! One of my favorite days was when we were shoot-tying and doing a green drop and playing Black Sabbath and having a great day in the vineyard. It was 90 degrees, and we were sweating, and just talking, having fun. We very much enjoyed the work and realized that we loved it. You have to love it. Otherwise, it’s just too much work."

The next time I meet up with the mother-son duo, they’re awaiting me on the front porch of their tasting room in Los Olivos, one of Santa Barbara County’s small agricultural towns. It’s just a couple of doors down from the town’s only market. Sleek and modern, the interior was designed by the pair, who have similar aesthetic sensibilities. "We’re always pursuing something that’s extremely well-made," he says. "We’re obsessed with denim. We’ll research how a place is making their denim. It doesn’t matter what it is. We are the kind of people who love things made by hand, with intention and attention to detail. We love finely made things. The craft and dedication to things." 

When they’re not visiting their vineyards or working out of their small winery located off the Santa Rosa Road corridor of Sta. Rita Hills, not far from the famed Hilt Estate, Dalita says, they "travel to Napa frequently. We’re there doing homework. Checking out wineries, vineyards, tasting rooms. We’re always on the hunt to add to our knowledge," she says. Harmon adds they’ve just recently returned from a trip to Napa to "see Shawn Johnson at Amulet because they’re making single-vineyard designated Cabs that are all made the same way. They’re a kindred spirit. That same afternoon, we saw Graham and Alex McDonald. We go with purpose, and we love to meet growers and winemakers who have done things in an organic way." 

Dalita adds that "everything that got us here was an organic process. We looked at the great wines we loved and recognized what it was about them that we liked. All our decisions are based on our palate. It’s been just a trust of that, a trust of knowing what we want to make, and we’ll figure out how to make that by testing all these theories and applications and ways of doing things. I’ve always believed that if you feel you have an instinct, trust it. If you go through life doing that, you learn to trust it more and more as you go along. You reinforce your ability to trust your instinct. When you go forward and trust your instinct, that’s what makes the difference."

They are perhaps best known for "Kissing Vipers", their critically acclaimed Grenache from Bien Nacido Vineyards. It’s grown on Block 39, a southeast-facing hillside comprised of mostly Monterey shale and loam. A lush, rich wine, it also shows restraint and balance and an impossibly long finish, suggesting age-worthiness. More recently, they’ve locked down Z Block, formerly sourced by both Adam Tolmach of Ojai Vineyard and Manfred Krankl of Sine Qua Non. When they were informed that they’d get Z Block fruit, Dalita tells me, "Duncan started crying. He was so happy. We had lobbied for it constantly." 

Though they work closely with vineyard managers, they call their own picks "100% on taste," Dalita tells me. I’ve now had a couple of vintages of their core wines, and, refreshingly, they’re not monochromatic. When I tell Dalita this, she says, "We enjoy vintage variation. We let them be what they are." Harmon credits vineyard managers like Chris Hammell at Bien Nacido Vineyards with teaching them how to yield the best results from their vineyard blocks and vine rows. "We ask him questions. We don’t tell him what to do. It’s collaborative. He has a huge wealth of knowledge, and he’s also fun." Harmon says. 

The duo is keen on experimentation and are currently playing with Chardonnay and Roussanne they harvested in 2021. "We might make a white blend of some kind." Though the rest of the family remains uninvolved in the day-to-day operations, they find ways to be helpful. "Fred, my husband, brings pizza and drinks out to us when we’re working late. And sometimes family will help on the sorting table. I love it more than I ever expected. It’s grueling, but I love it so much. And doing it with Duncan is meaningful. People say we’re intense, but I think we’re passionate. With what we’re trying to achieve, I think it takes a level of intense passion."

2023

Harvest

Northern California

Photo Essay by

Svante Örnberg

Although the harvest is late, it’s shaping up to be a winemaker’s dream in terms of wine style. The fruit thus far remains pure and bright with good acidity. Yet many sites will require more hang time to achieve full phenolic and flavor ripeness. Meanwhile, the brix levels suggest that alcohols should, for the most part, come closer to 14% than 15%.

Optimal ripening conditions are holding out thus far. And yields are looking good for Napa Cabernet, but it was essential to drop fruit early to match the moderate sun and heat resources. It is just this week (first week of October) that the Napa harvest has gained momentum, and next week promises to be even busier, especially since we have a few warm days coming up at the end of this week and over the weekend. Still, the way things look, some Napa and Sonoma vintners will likely be harvesting into November.

Our photographer, Svante Örnberg, was in Napa Valley and Sonoma County in mid-September and beautifully captured some early harvest images and emotions. Enjoy!

2023

Harvest

Bordeaux

Photo Essay by

Johan Berglund

Doing
The
Right
Thing

The MAHA Estate

Cris Cherry is on a mission. He’s offered to cook lunch today, and we’re in his electric truck headed to a couple of different businesses in Paso Robles, where we’ll procure ingredients for lunch. First stop: Etto, an Italian marketplace known for its homemade pastas and broad selection of Italian goods, owned by locals Stephanie and Brian Terrizzi. They’ve got their own Cal-Italian wine brand called Giornata. "She’s such a sharp, holistic viticulturalist," Cris tells me of Stephanie, who’s known on California’s Central Coast as an intelligent grape farmer.

Inside, he’s greeted with enthusiastic hellos from the staff and from Matt Dusi, Janell Dusi’s (J. Dusi Wines) brother and a local multi-generational grape grower. They shake hands and catch up briefly while Cris picks up some freshly made spaghetti noodles. He tells me he’ll be making us tuna poached in olive oil with pasta. 

Back inside his almost too-quiet electric truck, he puts on some music. "It Runs Through Me," by Tom Misch, featuring De La Sol. "I’m really into this guy." We make our way to Pier 46, a locally owned seafood market, where we’ll pick up the tuna. "They have a lot of wild-caught stuff, and they’re good people. And I like to support good people."

Afterward, we wind our way back up the foothills of Paso, leaving downtown behind for lush, heavily forested Peachy Canyon Road, home of the MAHA Estate, where he and his wife JoAnn reside and where they make the Villa Creek and MAHA wines. Another favorite of his comes over the stereo, Rufus du Sol. His playlist includes "a lot of 80’s dance shit, New Wave, Althouse, Thievery Corporation, Polo, and Pan. We love to see live music."

I’ve been keen to talk to him for some time now, as I’m intrigued by artists who continue to forge new pathways and refine their craft. His wines have evolved over the years, from big and extracted, to bright, balanced, and fresh. This is particularly true of his brilliant MAHA estate wines. They’re among my favorites from the United States, and his Clairette Blanche, called BAE (Before Anyone Else) is a revelation of floral and feral aromatics. Clean and balanced, yet somehow wild and unexpected. 

"Our early wines were 16% alcohol, all day long, with maybe a little bit of sugar to cover up that booze. And, out of the shoot, those wines are showy, flashy, and sexy. But that’s a short fuse. Wines like that are good until they’re not. If there’s sugar, it’s just a matter of time…it’s not if, it’s when. ‘Finesse is elusive and restraint is hard to practice.’ The thing I’m most pleased about is that the MAHA estate and Villa Creek wines are elegant. Our early wines may have been considered big and monolithic. At this point, I am striving for complexity and nuance with the wines showing their sense of place."

When we pull up, Cris hops out of the truck energetically. At 57, he is tall, lean, and confident, with closely shorn hair and an impish grin. Land prices in Paso Robles, as is the case in most of California, have risen dramatically in the last decade. "The opportunity we had to acquire this piece of property on the west side of Paso Robles is gone. We were so fortunate."

We’re greeted at their front door by JoAnn Cherry and a herd of dogs she’s trying to corral as we enter. Tall herself, warm and winsome, she welcomes us in. 

They met in San Diego during their first year of college. "It was love at first sight for sure," she says. But she’d just left a boyfriend at home and didn’t want to get into another relationship right away, so, after dating briefly, they parted ways but remained friends. No romance blossomed for a decade. "We were never single at the same time. I was seventeen when we first met, and we got back together when I was twenty-seven," she adds. 

The interior design of their home is not unlike the aesthetic behind their MAHA Estate wine labels. JoAnn, who is the designer behind both aesthetics, favors a minimalist approach, with a tendency towards outsider art. "I’m not much into trends," she says. A pleasant, fragrant blown-grass breeze enters through an opened window as we congregate around the island in their kitchen. He busies himself preparing lunch. 

Cris has recently returned from Chateauneuf where he was on a barrel junket with Anthony Yount, Don Burns, and a handful of other producers. "We tasted some old Pure. Had a nice visit with Anne Charlotte of Font Du Loup. But the highlight was half a day with Louis Barroul. A Grenache master, for sure, in Gigondas."

The Cherrys met Barroul in 1998, before they started making wine. At the time, they owned a popular restaurant, also called Villa Creek, on the square in downtown Paso Robles. "That was our first trip to France together," JoAnn says. This was when their son, Henri, was 2, and Camille, their daughter, was 4. "We went to Louis’ place, and he had a field of grass in his front yard as big as a soccer field, and his kids were similar in age to ours. He said his neighbors questioned his judgment because he hadn’t planted that space to vines, but he told us, ‘Our kids would have no place to play.’"

Cris grew up in the restaurant business in Colorado. After getting "sick of the snow," he moved west to attend University of San Diego. His parents followed him out to San Diego and purchased a restaurant there. "I decided to get into the family business when all of my friends were wearing suits on a sunny day like today, and I thought to myself, nah…"

The Cherrys moved to Paso Robles in 1996 and opened their restaurant two years later. The 2002 earthquake, during which the entire Paso Robles town square was cordoned off with chain link fencing, set their business back some, as did the economic downturn of 2008, just a few years later. They’d heard that Paso is "the next Napa," but that’s been slow to happen. "Napa is a brand. Tulum, where we were last year, in Riviera Maya, is a brand," he says. "Paso Robles is becoming a brand, but it’s not there yet." JoAnn adds, "Maybe when it becomes a brand, it loses its charm?"

"Paso Robles is becoming a brand, but it’s not there yet."

When they still lived in San Diego, they both got into wine. They enjoyed eating out and exploring wines at the fine dining establishments that popped up in San Diego, but those spots were fleeting. At that time, Cris says, "People weren’t eating out a lot in San Diego. They were spending their money on bikinis and running shoes." Neither of them grew up "in the wine business or on a farm or anything like that," she adds. "We had a half-acre with a garden, but winemaking was never something we thought we could get into. I always just thought, you’re born into it."

When they moved to Paso Robles, the wine business suddenly seemed doable.

Their friends Justin Smith and Matt Trevisan started making wine with some left-over James Berry Vineyard fruit while they were still cellar workers. She says, "We started helping them out. We’d grab the kids, and it’d be 11:00 o’clock at night. It was amazing. We got the bug."

Friends helped the Cherrys acquire a little local fruit, and they ordered their first barrel. "One barrel turned into seven," he says. They secured some Grenache from Denner Vineyard on the advice of Justin Smith. "All of a sudden, I had more Grenache than anybody in the area. I was an outlier." The first Villa Creek bottling was 2001. 

JoAnn and Cris have worked side by side since establishing their restaurant and later, their winery. At times, he says, "we’ve driven each other crazy." During the restaurant years, JoAnn says she was "as involved as I could be. We didn’t have any family here and I didn’t want to leave my kids with anybody. I was the pastry chef. I did the website, the menu. Cris was doing the wine-buying. I was still breastfeeding, so couldn’t really drink a lot, so I was watching him evolve in his wine knowledge and I was just getting left in the dust. I had a lot of catching up to do."

When they started making wine, she did punch-downs at night while he was working at the restaurant. "We had occasional conflicts. Creative differences, but for the most part, we vibe off each other," she tells me. "If we’re ever disagreeing about something, we eventually find out we’re on the same page. We’ll go, ‘Why are we even arguing about this?’"

She references these differences as part of their creative exploration. When their kids went off to college, she could finally work a harvest all the way through. "I came in and started asserting my opinion on how I thought certain protocols could be improved. Cris didn’t so much care for that but eventually we found our groove." JoAnn says with a chuckle. 

Some of those creative differences included their approach to blending. She was of the mind that they needed to be "more systematic about blending. We needed to take notes." She seems to have won that argument, and they now blind taste every barrel, judiciously taking detailed notes on each wine’s elevage. 

"We taste differently. We cook differently," he says. JoAnn likes recipes for inspiration, whereas Cris cooks by feel. Here, he jokingly mimics some of the more boastful winemakers, "Well, you know," he says, in an intentionally exaggerated professorial tone, impersonating them, "we blend over 7 weeks. And we taste meticulously. And 1/3 of 1% of this viognier changed the whole thing. 1/3 of 1%!" He laughs. "I think across the entire food and beverage platform there is a baffling amount of bullshit. It gets so annoying. The douche factor is something you have to navigate."

"There are no magic techno-wizard winemaking tricks."

Camille, 29, now works full-time for the family business. "It’s just the three of us in the office, JoAnn says. "During Covid, Henri was here. Henri is me. Camille is Cris," she says while Cris laughs in the background. "It was nice to have an ally when Henri was here. Now I’m outnumbered, and it can be challenging, but we are always working on improving our communication skills."

When the Cherry kids were growing up, they were always around the winery. "They know what it is to be in the family business," she says. They were "both feral children and ran around in the dirt a lot and were always out in nature. We always had a garden." Both kids, she says, are creative. They did alternative schooling, attending the local Montessori school, but Camille didn’t find her academic groove until she went to public school. She likes structure. She’s a plant lover and studied landscape architecture at Cal Poly and is the in-house landscape designer. "Henri was more adaptive when it came to academics," she continues. "He now lives in Santa Barbara, where he attended UCSB on a volleyball scholarship, works for Patagonia, and has his own small natural wine brand called Daft Punch, under which he makes pet nat and piquet. He is also a talented musician and continues to add songs to his Spotify portfolio under Julian Cherry."

Villa Creek shot to notoriety early on. "That surprised us for sure," he says. "We got a "New Wines, New Faces" article in the Wine Spectator (like any well-tuned couple, they finish each other’s sentences frequently.) "The phone started ringing off the hook," she says. "We didn’t even have a mailing list, so we started taking down all of these numbers."

They sold the restaurant in 2017 to focus exclusively on wine. He tells me that, in hindsight, they’d do things differently today. They started at very low-price points just to gain exposure to the wines. "It took us 12 years to get our wines priced to where everyone else’s were." With the MAHA Estate wines, they’ve entered the market with higher price points. Still, their BAE Clairette Blanche, even at $100.00 a bottle, over-delivers at that price point and may be a benchmark in the making. 

More recently, they’ve launched Cherry House, an entry-level selection of wines priced at about $25.00 a bottle, made from organic grapes. "I love that it’s all organic and well made at an affordable price point," JoAnn says. 

We move outside to enjoy our lunch al fresco. We’re joined by Camille, who is the Director of Customer Relations, and Oliver Mikkelsen, whom they’ve recently promoted to winemaker (Cris remains Director of Winemaking). Young, energetic, and polite, they catch up with each other briefly, discussing Camille and her husband, Kenton’s, next Dungeons and Dragons game. She and Kenton also enjoy cosplay, attending Renaissance festivals as their schedules permit. Married late last year, they produce mead and organic honey together at the MAHA estate under the name Maddox Meadery. 

We enjoy a few Villa Creek Cellars and MAHA Estate wines with lunch. For all intents and purposes, these wines could be classified as natural, at least according to the requirements of the Natural Coast Wine Festival in Santa Barbara, which they’ll be attending in a few days. According to the festival’s website, "all wine must be farmed organically as a minimum. Whether certified or not, vineyards must be farmed without any synthetic pesticides. Certification from CCOF, Demeter Biodynamic, etc., is welcome and appreciated. All wines must be fermented natively - whether spontaneously or using a pied-de-cuve. Sparkling wines may be accepted when fermented with non-native yeast if noted in the technical information. No sterile filtration, no fining. Absolutely no additives except for SO2 with a maximum total SO2 below 70 ppm, regardless of wine style. No magic techno-wizard winemaking tricks. This includes reverse-osmosis, cryo-extraction, spinning cone filtration, etc. None of these rules are negotiable."

Playing the Long Game

A Visit with Sea Smoke

The city of Lompoc is idiosyncratic.

It’s an amalgam of worn-down strip malls, cannabis dispensaries, donut shops, nail salons, coin laundries, dry cleaners, and neighborhoods that range from tidy and quaint to dicey and neglected. The only movie theatre of note, The Lompoc Theatre, hasn’t run a movie since 1987, when it closed; despite numerous fundraising attempts, it remains shuttered. At the opposite end of town, a long-defunct Drive-In screen stands in a field of overgrown weeds. 

It’s home to the Vandenberg Space Force Base, a federal correctional institution, a diatomaceous earth mine, and the La Purisima Mission, one of the least manicured yet beautiful missions in all of California, with a working farm, extensive hiking trails, and numerous mission buildings. An urban wine trail nearby draws some attention, but the sister city to Namwon, South Korea; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Inca, Spain; Lake Placid, Florida, and Locarno, Switzerland, is an otherwise economically challenged, often over-looked agricultural and military town. 

On the outskirts, leaning into the city, is the Sta. Rita Hills winegrowing region, one of California’s most celebrated coastal appellations. It stands in stark contrast to Lompoc, with its lush, oak-dotted hilltops and vast canyon lands, alive with bobcats, roadrunners, mountain lions, coyotes, redtail hawks, and owls. The roster of producers making wine in this region reads like a Who’s Who of fine wine producers: Eleven Confessions (Sine Qua Non), The Hilt (Jonata), LaBarge, Melville, diatom, Brewer-Clifton, Donnachadh, Joy Fantastic, Tyler, Pence, Peake Ranch, Sanford & Benedict, and Sea Smoke, among others. 

"I’m a child of the world."

"Farming organically and biodynamically, you have to be nimble, flexible, aware of your surroundings at all times because no season is the same."

"Do one thing and do it right."

The same could be said for Schroeder, who is private and rarely attends larger wine events, save for the World of Pinot Noir, the only public wine festival at which Sea Smoke is poured. 

We next taste through a couple of vintages of the trifecta for which Sea Smoke is best known: the Southing, Ten, and Botella Pinot Noirs. Each wine is different, expressing with great transparency and purity of fruit the terroir of its provenance. Each wine is an exercise in balance, length, energy, and tension. We finish our tasting with the estate Chardonnay. His style is best described as minimal intervention, with the quality of fruit highlighted more than the human hand. As a result, the wines are site- rather than style-driven.

He credits Sea Smoke’s vice president and general manager, Victor Gallegos, with their consistency. "He’s always saying, ‘Don’t rock the boat.’ Do one thing and do it right. Every new year is an opportunity to develop a more intimate relationship with the vineyard. No amount of winemaking expertise can compare to the connection you gain working with the same vineyard year after year consistently. Over 85% of my career has been dedicated to this vineyard, and I have been fortunate to walk through the vines in the early years with Kris or bump into Billy Wathen (of Foxen fame) as he jogged around our vineyard and gave his insights." The Kris he refers to is winemaker Kris Curran, who was the first winemaker at Sea Smoke. 

The Sea Smoke team is small, and Schroeder tells me, tight-knit. "Julian, Victor, and I all have a great work relationship, and we all think alike when it comes to quality improvements. We have weekly meetings as a team to go over everything going on, and the vineyard is always a large focus. Our entire team has great synergy together, and we are all discussing potential tweaks and improvements frequently. Ultimately, it comes back to strong communication channels, which is the reason we have one main office with everyone’s desk in the same room."

"You inevitably to consider yourself a steward of a magical piece of dirt."