AmericanWinery.com

The first time I tasted the Waugh Cellars Zinfandel, I knew there was something special about what winemaker Ryan Waugh was doing. At the ripe young age of 30, Ryan Waugh already has 6 vintages behind him and is one of the youngest winemakers in the Napa area, yet his wines taste like those of an experienced vet. Even though he’s extremely busy with projects like Soda Canyon, he recently took a few minutes to sit down with me (virtually, of course) and answer some questions. See the interview below.

Lindi Kauer: It is said that you are from Willamette Valley in Oregon, another popular wine destination. Does anyone else in your family share the passion for winemaking?
Ryan Waugh: No. My entire family is actually in real estate in Oregon. I was not exposed to wine until my freshman year at Santa Clara University. A girlfriend’s Dad and I shared a couple bottles of 1976 Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon Lot 2 and I was blown away. I went to work for a small winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains and later made my way to Napa. I have worked for quite a few wineries and vineyard managers. My folks love to come down for all my bottling and release parties. My family has a hard time comprehending what I have accomplished in the wine business at such a young age and all they know is they are proud that I am living my passion.

LK:  What other winemaking regions have you explored, if any?  What areas would you like to explore/learn more about?
RW: I lived and worked in Australia for a year. I mainly worked in the lower Hunter Valley, but I spent a lot of time in other regions as well – Barossa, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and others. One of the wineries I worked for was Tower Estate, which was established in 1999. They sourced particular varietals from wherever they grew best all over Australia and never produce more than a 1000 cases of each wine. It was phenomenal to see different fruit from all over the country. It really got me thinking about location, location, location in regards to grape growing.

I have also spent some time in Bordeaux, which is a fascinating place. The generations they have spent trying to understand their environment and doing whatever it took / takes to grow the best possible grapes. It is a very inspiring place, especially from a grape growing stand point.

My favorite wine in the world is German Riesling, and a close second is French Burgundy. I hope to spend a lot of time in each of these regions exploring someday.

LK:  What made you choose the regions in which you are growing grapes?  Is it determined by the grapes you want to grow?
RW: After my first trip to Napa in 1995, I wanted to live in Yountville and make wine in Napa. The trip to Australia really made me think. I looked at the wines I really wanted to make, Cabernet, Zinfandel, Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir. You cannot grow all these varietals well in Napa. So I slowly started to look for areas that Mother Nature would give me the best opportunity at producing a balanced grape. I do not like to do crazy winemaking techniques to my wine. I really like the vineyards and the vintages to speak for themselves.

LK:  If you weren’t a winemaker what would you be doing?
RW:  I would probably have finished medical school and be a neurologist. Although, if I had to stop making wine now and do something else I would probably go into the space program and see if I could somehow make it to space. I really want to go into space for my 50th birthday, but my wife is not too happy about that.

I would also like to be a skydiving instructor.

LK:  What do you drink when you are not drinking your own wines?
RW:  Grey Goose, Soda and a Lemon!!!  German Riesling, French Burgundy or Champagne (I love bubbles)

LK:  What are you opening this Saturday for “Open That Bottle Night?”
RW:  We are leaving for Hawaii on Friday and will be by the pool sipping on a cocktail on Saturday. My wife is 7 months pregnant with our second baby and she would kill me if I opened up anything really special. We already shipped over 2 cases of wine to have for the 10 days we are there, but who knows what we will open.

LK:  Any other exciting news on the Soda Canyon project?
RW:  The fact that someone in my tax bracket is actually going to have a facility like this in the Napa Valley is astonishing. We are so thrilled to be able to share it with as many people as possible. It is going to be an incredible place to make wine and to visit and taste and learn about wine. You should come out and visit the site. Watch a video about the construction of Soda Canyon Cellars.

***Watch Waugh Cellars’ “Straight from the Source” Video Short***

There is never a dull moment in the life of a winemaker. Making unique, high-quality American wine is a full-time job in itself, yet many winemakers also take on sales and marketing duties, pour wine in the tasting room, and offer themselves up to winemaker dinners and events across the United States.

With that in mind, we know that we can’t always go all “Barbara Walters” on a winemaker with our interviews. Sometimes we gotta be quick and dirty. Without further ado, here are a few quick questions with Purple Cow Vineyards’ winemaker, Jon Armstrong.

Stacy Buchanan: Tell us about the creation of Purple Cow Vineyards. How long has your winery been in operation?

Jon Armstrong: We first planted in 2000, and first sold wine in 2006.  We celebrate our birthday at Thanksgiving, as that weekend in 2006 was when we first opened to the public.  In the six years that span the gap between planting and selling, we had several years of nursing young vines, followed by finally getting a commercial-sized crop, followed by another year of wine-making before the first products were ready.  Our first year showcased estate Pinot Noir & Marechal Foch, with a barrel-fermented Chardonnay sourced from another vineyard in the Willamette Valley.  Our product line has diversified quite a bit since then.  As we reconciled ourselves to the idea that we had more wine than we could drink and share with family/friends, we started considering a name for our business.  We looked hard at merging a bird of prey with a geographic feature, common in the industry, but it was our youngest daughter who had the answer.  As she played with a little plastic toy in the bath, it was obvious that she (18 months old) already recognized that being a Purple Cow (she pronounced it “Purkle”) was inherently remarkable.  Thus the genesis of the name.  My wife was not too happy about it at first, but she’s come around.

SB: What winery/winemaking experience (or education) did you have before opening your own winery?

JA: I don’t have a wine education- computer science is pretty far from it.  Books, on-the-job training, and industry networking go a long way.  I must credit my mother and step-father for a lot of free training in viticulture.  They started a vineyard several years before I did and I learned a lot by volunteering on the establishment and care of that vineyard.  In the winery, books and experimentation drove my experience level.  As we embarked upon commercial wine-making, I sought consulting from an excellent wine-maker, Bill Musgnung, to come by and double check that our products were healthy.  His mentoring was very valuable.  I also think the high quality of our fruit from the vineyard has helped us avoid many of the challenges one can face in the winery.

SB: Oregon is well known for its outstanding Pinot Noirs. In your own words, specifically with your wines, what makes this region ideal for this grape?

JA: I could give you the same speech about Terrior (soil, climate) that has been voiced by many more decorated industry members than I.  Personally, I don’t think Pinot Noir and Oregon need be monogamous.  I think the soil and humidity makes Oregon idea for all kinds of varietals, but the temperatures limit most of us to growing Pinot Noir as the only viable red Vinifera.  The innovators in Oregon have made Pinot Noir great by practicing best-known viticultural techniques, limiting our yields, and generally behaving in a way that sacrifices everything else in order to drive quality.  I think Oregon can support other reds as well.  As we learn to adjust our methods to it, Marechal Foch is going to become a very attractive wine and will shake off the stigma of lower quality.  I’ve invested in Tempranillo, and have witnessed a growing interest in Baco Noir.  I have a couple more projects going, but I’m not going into great detail about them until the experiments have been completed.  Oregon could be in for a rough period if someone made a movie like “Sideways” that bashed Pinot Noir in favor of some other variety.  Thus diversity is very important to me.

SB: What have been some challenges for the winery over time?

JA: Infant mortality is my greatest obstacle.  Summer drought or winter ice that breaks grafts can really delay your production ramp.  It’s something different every year.  You just have to learn from the risks you took that exposed you, and jump back into the struggle.  The 2nd biggest obstacle is our local government and getting past its land use department for construction of facilities.  The final one is investing and financing in a scenario where you live on the property that produces the raw materials for your product.  It’s amazingly complicated from a liability protection, ownership of assets, and financing standpoint.  I realize these challenges are a little dry, but it’s the truth.  I think the most romantic challenge is balancing that temptation to grow your business fast enough to make it profitable, but retaining the detailed control that made your product successful.

SB: Is there anything that you’re particularly proud of with Purple Cow Vineyards?

JA: Ask anyone that visited us, you learn 5 times more about viticulture and winemaking when you visit our tasting room than you’ll learn anywhere else.  Everyone here who works in the tasting room also has production responsibilities and that expertise is free for the tapping.  It’s a real joy to take people out and show them what is happening in the vineyard or explaining the interaction between rootstock, soil moisture, root depth, and ripening progress.  I think we’re even pretty good at slowing down before we overwhelm our customers with information.

SB: What’s new or coming up at Purple Cow Vineyards?

JA: I hinted at this earlier.  I am thrilled that we picked our first commercial vintage of estate-grown Tempranillo in 2008.  I’ve been working on that project since 2001, so it’s nice to get to the part where you get to share it with enthusiasts.

***Watch Purple Cow Vineyards’ “Straight from the Source” Video Short***

Lindi Kauer: You were going to law school in Texas before you dove into the wine trade.  What kind of law were you studying or did you want to specialize in when you graduated?

Kevin Holt: I actually had no idea.  To be honest with you, I was in law school for the lack of anything better to do with a degree in English.  I never had any pressing desire to be a lawyer, it just seemed like, with a degree in liberal arts, what do you do?  I didn’t want to become a teacher, so I thought “oh that would be cool, I could be a lawyer.”  I actually liked going to school.

The law school experience was interesting, it was hard but what happened was the summer after my first year I took a clerkship in a law firm – as most people do – and I just decided that I really didn’t like the work.  There is nothing wrong with it necessarily, I don’t have anything against lawyers I just didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life so I decided to go a different way.

LK: So what happened at the wine shop to make such a huge change in your original career decision?

KH: Well, I got that job on the strength of what little I had learned in a wine appreciation class that a friend of mine twisted my arm and made me take when I was an undergrad.  I just thought I would do that for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do with myself.  It’s the thing that happens to pretty much everybody that’s in the wine business in one way or another, it just took a hold of me and wouldn’t let me go.  I tasted and I read and I read and I tasted and I worked with the customers there and I made friends and had great dinners revolving around wine and it just turned out to be that that’s what I wanted to do.  I thought I might work there for 6 months or so and I was at that first shop for 4 years.  I obviously changed directions later but I just found wine endlessly fascinating in a way that nothing else had really been for me at that point in my life, and I just felt that this was what I wanted to do.

LK: Wine does have a way of capturing people doesn’t it.   I even think sometimes, “Maybe I’ll make wine someday…”

KH: You know, I didn’t think about being a wine maker for a long time either. It didn’t really occur to me that it was something I could do or that I’d be good at.  I mean a big part of the reason that I majored in Liberal Arts the first time I was in college was because I THOUGHT I didn’t like or wasn’t any good at science.  Turns out it wasn’t true, but I didn’t find that out until later.  So, it wasn’t until I had been working in retail for a while – I got a job for a wholesaler in Dallas and it was during that year that I was with them, we took a trip to Northern California to visit a number of our winery suppliers.  I was born in Southern California and that was the first time I’d ever been in Northern California.  And it was certainly the first time I’d ever been in (what I would call) a real winery.  I mean, I had been to a winery in Texas – no offense but that didn’t really strike me as being the real deal.  I was blown away!  It was one of those things where “being there and going to different places and talking to people and seeing what it was really all about” that it occurred to me that this is something that I can do too.

I’m sure you’ve been in wineries – there is just something about the way a winery smells. . . for those of us that have the right gene I guess – it just takes you over.  The funny thing is that every time I give a tour now, the first thing that happens when people walk into the cellar is they say “Oh that smell!”  But you know what – I don’t even notice it anymore!  It’s just that way it happens. . . I guess it just becomes the background.  It’s not like my sense of smell is diminished, I smell things that I want to smell when I’m evaluating wines but that sort of background pervading aroma that you get in a barrel room it just. . .I mean, I can smell it if I think about it but it’s not the first thing that hits me when I come into work.   Its just part of what I do now and it was a big part of how I decided I wanted to do this.

As soon as I got back from that trip I began plotting and scheming. Basically, “OK, how can I get out there and how can I make this work.”  I knew it would require going back to school in a pretty serious way, but by that time I was ready to be serious about it. In Dallas I met the woman I would eventually marry and the two of us came out here together.  I got yet another job at another wine shop here and then in the meantime I went to school at night, taking all those science classes I had avoided like the plague the first time I was in school in order to qualify for the graduate program at Davis. And low and behold it turned out I was actually pretty good at it! All the chemistry and physics and microbiology and all the things that are required.  I did well enough and got accepted into the grad program and two years later I was working making wine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Vitek

Many folks in the wine industry have a full-time job in addition to their responsibilities at the winery they either run or own. But, unlike others with this level of involvement, Brian Vitek of Carlsbad Coastal Winery is not content to stand on the sidelines and miss all of the action. Here he shares some thoughts about what it takes to be an executive, winery co-owner and winemaker, all at once.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Glase

Balboa Winery is located in Walla Walla, WA and uses grapes from the renowned Columbia Valley appellation. Having firmly established their presence with some outstanding wines, particularly their ‘06 Merlot, ‘06 Cat’s Meow (red blend), ‘06 Syrah and ‘06 Cabernet Sauvignon, I’ve been eagerly awaiting their 2007 vintages which were just recently unveiled at the beginning of September. In preparation for imbibing, I conducted a quick and quirky Q&A (how’s that for alliteration?) with owner and winemaker Thomas Glase of Balboa…

Read the rest of this entry »