Got a fun winemaker story?

[Jenise]

A friend in L.A. just wrote that she has an appointment at Williams Selyam winery in Sonoma, so I shared the story below. Having written it up, I thought it would make a fun thread starter. Read and add your own!


As I wrote it to the friend: I'm a big fan of Williams Selyam too. It's now owned by someone other than Bill Williams and Ed Selyam, but back when they were THE penultimate cult status pinot noir maker, I was on the waiting list to get onto the mailing list and finally, finally after a few years I finally got a tiny allocation of 3 or 4 bottles and of course sent off my check. So one night a few months later we're at our home in Anchorage, Alaska and the doorbell rang. Actually it might have been afternoon but there was snow on the ground and it got dark by 3:00 at that time of year, and I do remember it was already dark. I opened the door and there stood a pixie-ish gray-haired man with a box.

"Hi," he said, "I'm Ed Selyam."

I nearly keeled over. Turned out Ed and his wife had a second home in Homer, Alaska, and he brought some Alaskan deliveries up with him. I don't know that he hand-delivered all of them--and I was surely the least qualified customer he had for that kind of treatment--but we lived on the southern edge of town half a mile off the road to Homer so maybe that was why. It is true that the one guy I'm certain he would have called on in town knew where we lived and could have suggested it.

Anyway, a great experience, and SO Alaskan. 'Northern Exposure' wasn't completely fictional!

[David M. Bueker]

Neat story. I have sat next to a couple of winemakers on airplanes, but that was about it.

My wife and I ,along with our daughter and son in law were flying to California to run the Wine Country Half Marathon and while waiting on line for the bath room, I spot a guy wearing a Merry Edwards winery shirt..So I say to the guy, "excuse me, sir..I've never tasted any Merry Edwards wines but I have heard good things about them..What was your impression of the wines?"(I thought the shirt was one of touristy things you buy at a winery gift shop)
He replied that he thought they were quite good but that he was kinda biased in that he was Merry's husband..He gave me his card, which did indeed give his title as "merry's husband" and invited us to come over for a tasting..which we did while we were in Sonoma..

Shortly after we were married, but before we had any kids (lid-1970's), my wife and I went to the Finger Lakes for a weekend. Among the the wineries we visited was Dr. Frank's. As we left the tasting room heading for our car, we walked passed a garage. The garage door was open and an old man was sitting inside, next to a card table with a few bottles of wine and some glasses. He waved for us to come in and join him, so we did. It was, of course, Dr. Frank himself. He offered us seats and poured some of his best wines for us (more generous than the tasting room). He talked to us for about a half hour, telling us about growing up in the Ukraine, growing grapes in Soviet Georgia and his views on grape growing. He was the one most responsible for proving that vinefera could be grown East of the Rockies. He also warned my wife to never drink wine made from hybrid grapes, as they form birth defects. At the time, I thought he was a bit nuts, but a few years later, I read about a flawed study from the 1960's that said compounds in hybrid grapes could cause birth defects. While later disproved, this paper was cited as one of the reasons for banning hybrids in Europe. So, he wasn't really nuts, just mis-informed. Before we left he gave us a couple more bottles of his wine. It was very memorable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Frank

[Jenise]

Good story, Howie. You remind me of this:

A friend and I were visiting the Santa Barbara area and saw an old wooden sign indicating a winery up ahead. We pulled in, and there was a modest house and a big old wood barn. The barn door was ajar; we stepped inside. Around us were tanks and barrels in the old style, nothing particularly technical, no 'UC Davis graduate' looking stuff. And no sign of humans, no tasting bar, just a dim 40 watt bulb kind of light toward the back. We were about to leave when suddenly we heard a gruff, old voice coming from the direction of the light.

"Goddamn it!", said the voice. in the manner of someone mumbling to himself. We looked at each other, frozen. "God DAMN it! These fuckers are CRAZY!!", it went on, quite angry. Then, "HEY! Hey YOU!", came from the top of a head that now appeared over the top of some barrels, obviously talking to us. "COME HERE!"

We crept forward with some hesitation, but did as he bid. When we got around the other side of the barrels, we found the old man, an open frosty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and an article freshly torn from some newspaper--a critic's review of his wines including that Sauvignon Blanc. He poured two Libby tulip glasses and shoved them at us. "TASTE!" We did. Then, "Do you taste any fucking jalapeno peppers in there? I don't, but this asshole," he said, waving at the article, "says it tastes like jalapeno peppers! That's BULLSHIT!"

He was the first winemaker I ever met. I was inexperienced and had no clue how to taste jalapeno peppers, and clearly no other answer would do anyway, so Vic and I agreed that was "bullshit" and went on to taste everything he had. Basically, he just seemed to need some drinking buddies, and his wine was very good so we were happy to fill that need. It was a wonderful afternoon.

The next time I went back to that area, I went to look him up. Gone was the handmade sign and the old barn, and in its place was a bona fide winery tasting room of some elegance, a parking lot full of cars, and hired pourers. Progress by some measures as the winery, Zaca Mesa, was obviously prospering now.

But a disappointment to me. I wanted to sit in that old barn and hear my old friend cuss.

Frank never missed a chance to denounce hybrids or to offer his views on procreation. One time a group of our graduate students took my suggestion to visit the winery. When they came back the thing the women talked about was not the wine but how Frank lectured them on the evils of birth control!

"God DAMN it! These fuckers are CRAZY!!", it went on, quite angry. Then, "HEY! Hey YOU!", came from the top of a head that now appeared over the top of some barrels, obviously talking to us. "COME HERE!".

BWAHAHAHAAAAAA! Greatest wine story you'll never read in a ParkerCo Publication. That was awesome, Jenise. Too bad it's gone, but at least you got to see it before it went.

My own favorite meeting was less colorful. In the late 80's I guess, when I was only a few years into the biz, I took my one and still only trip out to CA. I was accompanying my then girlfriend, who was in SF there on business. On the weekend we rented a car and did a tour of wineries I wanted to visit. We were lucky that we arrived during the crush, so it was a lot less torpid than most winery visits I'd been to.

The one winery I really, really wanted to visit at the time was Sequoia Grove, which had just been crowned "Winery of the Year" by one of the trades. We got there right after visiting hours ended, but the vintner who was turning everyone away let me in after I shamelessly let slip that I was a HUGE INFLUENTIAL WINE INSTRUCTOR/WRITER/GOD back in New Yawk City (*cough*). It was Michael Trujillo, and he gave us a personal tour of the entire operation. Afterwards he invited us to join the outdoor lunch they'd prepared for the field hands - complete with wines, natch. After that we went back to the tanks and he poured us glasses of the just pressed varietal juices, and finally....dum dum dummmmmmmm.......we got to his back office, where he pointed to a small wooden barrel on the floor.

"I'm experimenting making port" he said. "This has been in wood just over a year, and I'll probably bottle it after the crush. Wanna try it?"

I almost fainted. He popped the bung and dragged out a glass pipette for each of us. Oh. My. God. Why that nectar isn't more popular in a nation obsessed with all tastes sugar is beyond me. That was as good as any Portugal port I'd had to that point, and still far and away the best domestic version.

Then, finally, as if that wasn't enough - and I have no idea why it wasn't - he presented me with two bottles of cab. One was their regular multi-vineyard blend, the other was the single vineyard "Estate" that had garnered the award. That one he signed in gold marker down the side.

It was the single greatest wine day of my life, and remains so to this day. I still have those two bottles in my cellar, too.

My story doesn't really live up to the others here (although I did share a taxi in Nantucket with Paul Draper.) I did a Volksmarch near Saarlouis in Germany (a Volksmarch is a 10 or 20-kilometer organized walk along marked trails--you can do it at your own speed and there are refreshment or beverage stops and a small prize for completing it, sometimes a decorative plate or medal on a ribbon or a stein. In an official booklet you can record the number of walks and kilometers you have accomplished. Some Volksmarches are flat and easy but others are hilly or even somewhat mountainous.) After the walk I was driving back to Darmstadt or Heidelberg or wherever I lived at the time and spotted a sign for a wine cellar tasting. I was already in love with Mosel-Saar-Ruwer wines so I pulled in. The winemaker/owner gave me a private tasting in his garage from basic Riesling through Spatlese and Auslese and I bought a bottle of two of the Spatlese and Auslese and continued my journey. It's been so many years ago that I don't remember the producer's name but I liked the idea of a private, spur-of-the-moment tasting.