Flashback Time

I'm in a holding period between the Grenache fermentation and the syrah harvest. The syrah is the crux of the whole venture so naturally I'm a  little tense. Combined with the stress of the financial collapse and various family issues I'm all atwitter these days.

 

Sal has revised his opinion of the Grenache somewhat, from "bubblegum" to "I'm liking it much better". This is good news, assuming a substantial qualitative upgrade from "bubblegum" to "much better" than bubblegum.

 

Roger my Syrah contact emailed me yesterday with his outlook on the pick date: at least 2 more weeks, maybe 3. As long as it gets there it's fine with me - I just want some ripe syrah at this point. Roger has asserted repeatedly that the syrah grapes have to be shriveled to really be ripe. Shriveled is really one small step from itty bitty raisins so it's a fine line.

 

I have never personally harvested syrah. I have harvested cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese, pinot noir, chardonnay, merlot and a bit of pinot grigio. Admittedly my experience with harvesting firsthand is very shallow - of all the grapes that  have fallen to my deft clipper moves Sangiovese is the only one I have personally harvested more than once.

 

The best grape I ever personally picked, in terms of market value, is without a doubt the Kathryn Kennedy cabernet sauvignon. Kathryn Kennedy Cab sells for around $150 a bottle by now I think and at the time (1998) it was already well over $100 per bottle. All of my harvest experience is directly related to either my experience with Kathryn Kennedy Winery or the AHC winemaking course.

 

The history of the Kathryn Kennedy winery is unique and iconoclastic. Some time ago Kathryn Kennedy divorced her wealthy developer husband. I don't know the terms of the settlement but I do know she received their home in Saratoga. More than a home, though; it's a home on about 12 picturesque acres, in the heart of one of California's most desirable "town and country" communities. Saratoga is a very wealthy community of rolling hills dotted with what could be described as gentleman haciendas - large ranch estates dotted with fruit and nut tress, vineyards, and one or several very nice houses.

 

Kathryn Kennedy received one of these in her divorce settlement. She decided to plant a cabernet sauvignon vineyard on 7 acres on the lower part of the estate. She had decided to reinvent herself as a winemaker. Within a few years Kathryn Kennedy winery was operating out of a building on the estate and it was essentially a one or two person operation for many years. The winery only produced one wine: a 100% estate bottled Cabernet Sauvignon. It was very expensive. Production was very limited. That's about what I know of the original history.

 

Kathryn Kennedy Winery came to my attention because I was such a fan of Ridge Winery and their ATP wine club. Since I came up every year for the 4^th of July wine club party I stayed overnight in the area and spent the next day tasting at the other local wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There were not very many, and still aren't.

 

When I first started coming up for the Ridge event I had studied a map of the local wineries to see where there was additional tasting for "Day 2 - Santa Cruz Mountain Debauch". In the mid 1990's there were perhaps only about 7 or 8 wineries with tasting rooms, and a handful more that had no tasting rooms. One of the ones that captured my attention was Kathryn Kennedy Winery, essentially due to its complete mystery: There they were, on all the maps of The Santa Cruz Mountains appellation but:

 

There was no public tasting room

There was no tasting or touring by appointment

There was possibly no retail distribution

There was one wine - the hyper expensive Cabernet Sauvignon, as pricy as the Ridge Montebello Cab. The Montebello is the most pedigreed wine in the appellation by a good margin, not only going back 40 years but even selected for the famous 1973 Paris tasting.

 

Thus the name Kathryn Kennedy stuck with me over the years. Every time

I looked at an updated vineyard map of the area (there are new winery and vineyard operations popping up in California constantly) the story for Kathryn Kennedy stayed the same. There they were on the map, but: no tasting, no looking, expensive cabernet.

 

I became connected to Kathryn Kennedy Winery through their Syrah. Syrah? I thought they only made Cabernet. When I had last checked in on them that was the case but a few years later I was reading something or other on wine (perhaps on the internet) when a passing reference was made to the 1996 Kathryn Kennedy Syrah, in very complimentary tones. Kathryn Kennedy! I couldn't believe it. I still had a deep curiosity about this mysterious place. The syrah was $38, so although definitely high priced, much less than the triple digit cab. I called the winery and spoke to winemaker Marty Mathis, who is Kathryn Kennedy's son.

 

Kathryn Kennedy had recently retired after years of turning out her Cabernet and Marty had taken over. Marty had ambitious plans for the winery operations. Kathryn Kennedy was already middle-aged when she started the winery but Marty was in his early 30's and had grown up essentially at the winery. It was time to spread their wings.

 

Marty was affable and happy to chat about winery things in general. I had been so curious for so long that all of my dormant interest was now reawakened, and I quizzed him about winery stuff. We chatted for a bit and he remarked that, yes, the syrah was just great. He got the grapes from an old farmer who had a large parcel of farmland right above the Kathryn Kennedy Estate. The farmer was a distant cousin of the Mondavi family and at one point he'd been advised by family members who would know that he should tear up some of those low income nut tress and plant sangiovese and syrah. He had done so a few years ago and now Marty was getting some nice syrah grapes.

 

I ordered a bottle and awaited it with great anticipation. It showed up in a week or so and I took over to my parents' house. They both like a nice glass of wine and my mother is a top cook, in a hearty Central European (i.e. Czech-Slovak-Hungarian) kind of way. I don't recall what we had for dinner but I still recall the taste of the Kathryn Kennedy 1996 Syrah, Maridon Vineyard. Let me put it this way: The Kathryn Kennedy 1996 Syrah, Maridon Vineyard is possibly the best California syrah I have had, and a world-class red wine contender, in my world at least. My stepfather, who was 83 at the time, usually limited himself to 1 glass of wine per meal; he over 2 glasses. This sounds trivial but I can assure you that he stuck to his 1 glass rule religiously (usually). I in fact enjoyed bringing a whole parade of killer wines over, to try to move him into that second glass (it did happen, but very rarely) but although his compliments were copious, his will was strong. With this syrah he poured himself a third glass. He and I were murmuring about the towering quality of this wine through the whole meal. My mother thinks this sort if wine geekery is silly, claiming to not know the difference between various levels of quality. She didn't turn any down either...

 

My interest was even more piqued. I ordered 2 more bottles. Now, even today a $38 California Syrah is definitely a slightly pricy (although, alas, not at all uncommon) item. In 1998 it was, for all I know, the priciest California syrah, certainly one of the dearest at least. KK would never be a cheap date. And I couldn't afford to go crazy on the quantity, although there are always wines you look back on and say "yeah, it cost a lot but I sure wish I'd gotten (2? 3? 20?) times as much".

 

The next 2 syrahs were, yes, great, prodigious, amazing. By this time I wanted to experience this operation firsthand. I had spoken with Marty again subsequently and we were on familiar terms so I called him and offered my services for the upcoming crush. He readily accepted my offer of free labor.

 

I rented a motel room in Cupertino for Friday and Saturday night and rolled up bright and early at 7:00 AM Saturday morning. I was quickly put on grape picking duty - Marty had specified that weekend because the lynchpin estate Cabernet vineyard was to be picked and crushed. Off I went to the estate vineyard, picking the grapes along with a for-hire crew of Mexican farm workers.

 

Marty was running pretty lean for his crush operations. He had one full time employee at the winery, who was there to supervise the picking crew, ferry bins back and forth, prepare for the crushing and fermentation, etc. In addition there was an old friend of the family, a man in his late fifties, who helped out every year. And me.

 

Throughout the course of the day I picked grapes. And more grapes. Marty brought in a nice lunch, accompanied by various Kathryn Kennedy wines. In the last few years he had expanded the winery's offerings considerably, by now offering a pair of whites, some additional cabernet and cab franc blends, a malbec blend and of course the syrah. He would also be taking some of Charlie (syrah) Maridon's sangiovese that year. The lunch tasted great, as it always does when you've been doing manual labor all morning, and the wines were generously poured. In the afternoon it was off to the Maridon vineyard to pick sangiovese. I was by now tired of picking grapes (at this writing I am permanently tired of picking grapes. It doesn't take long) and wondering if I had trekked up just to spend a weekend as a migrant worker.

 

Thankfully by mid-afternoon the grapes were all picked and waiting in several bins outside the small winery building, a barn like structure roughly the size of 2 suburban garages. Marty's permanent employee left at 5:00 or 6:00; in the few hours leading up to the welcome dinner break Marty's friend and myself moved carboys (Sparkletts bottle sized containers frequently used for keeping topping wine or aging small experimental batches), rearranging barrels and yakking about Kathryn Kennedy Winery. Following dinner the crush would commence - roughly 12 tons of cabernet grapes.

 

Dinner tasted as good as lunch, since I was even more  tired now, and we drank more tasty Kathryn Kennedy wine - all the offerings were very good, although not up to the standards of the syrah. We were not offered any of the syrah or estate cabernet with the meals, nor would I expect any.

 

The three of us had a relaxing dinner, capped off by tasting barrel samples of something or other (Malbec Port seems to stick in mind but I don't really recall). It was dark by now and Marty cranked up the floodlights and hard rock. Time to go back to work. The bins were waiting outside the winery building: the crushing took place outdoors.

 

The winery had a very small, slow crusher. Marty told me that this assured gentle handling of the grapes. It also assured slow handling of the grapes. Marty assumed the position near the top of the bin and shoveled grapes into the crusher. The family friend and myself were positioned at the crusher to make sure things didn't jam, pulling stems out of the apparatus and crushed grapes, etc.

 

By about 8:30 Marty had run out of energy and I took over the grape shoveling. It was terrifically strenuous work but I enjoyed doing it (at first). It felt good to commune with grapes in this way, and have a direct hand in initiating the winemaking process.

We finally finished after 10:00, music still blaring (I guess the neighbors were used to the crush time noise levels), all of us completely exhausted. The next day I was to rendezvous with Marty at a separate facility up the road in the mountains where he made his whites and stored his barrels. It was to be another full day of hard work.

 

Since I wasn't coming back to the winery Marty gave me a case of wine for my hard work; I really had expected only a bottle or two but he was more than generous. Included in my booty were 2 bottles of 1995 estate Cab (!) and 3 more of the magical 1996 Syrah, as well as a nice cross section of the current releases.

 

I slowly drove back to the motel wondering how I would muster the strength for another day; I really felt the exhaustion deep in my bones. After a predictably sound night's sleep I managed to be up bright and early the next day; Off I went to the to the remote facility. On my way out there it started raining and by the time I got there it was a full deluge. Since much of this facility's operations took place outside, the day's activities were cancelled. I felt like I'd gotten a reprieve from the governor, as just driving out there had reminded me how tired I was from the day before.

 

Thus I really only worked 1 day on the Kathryn Kennedy crush, and received a handsome package of wine. I felt slightly guilty about this (but not too guilty). I developed a hernia shoveling all those grapes, which helped to assuage any bit of guilt I might have felt.

 

In addition to my souvenir hernia another result of my weekend with Marty was the termination of my corporate IT job when I came in Monday morning. I had been slated to be let go for some time, and the person who had been hired to "re-engineer" the company (a popular and abused term in the nineties) had been treating me as persona non grata since he'd arrived six months previously, I had skipped work Friday and had only told my assistant of my general whereabouts. Apparently re-engineering guy had flown into a rage when hearing about my wine crush weekend. I'd been waiting for the axe to fall so it was no great shock to finally get fired; between my first crush experience, the hernia and the firing it was quite a weekend.

 

Before the Kathryn Kennedy experience I'd never really handled wine grapes close up. Cabernet grapes are very regal - handsome small bluish-purple globes that feel velvety to the touch. I was struck by the contrast between the Cab grapes and the Sangiovese I picked later in the day. In contrast to the deluxe Cabernet package the Sangiovese really were just ... grapes. They didn't look any different from table grapes; even the color was banal - a typical dark shiny purple you might see at your local grocery store compared to the impeccable bluish pastel of the cabernet.

I though about these and other grapes when Roger told me about the mandatory shriveling required for ripe for syrah. Yes, they're all different. Any skepticism I might have towards this shriveling idea was mitigated by a few bunches in the vineyard that had already shriveled. Lo and behold, these forlorn looking specimens tasted much better than the healthy, fulsome grapes that dominated the vines - the shriveled shall inherit the Earth.

 

About this time I had dinner in a much touted local wine bistro in Glendale, near my house (I live near the Los Angeles - Glendale border). Myself and a friend had taken a third friend out to a birthday dinner. The wine list featured syrah from , yes, Michael Larner's vineyard. My teacher, whose name I had been dropping until fairly recently, was represented. The syrah was excellent and it turned out to be a label run by the bistro's wine director - the bistro features a wine shop and attendant wine bar in addition to the main restaurant. We called him over to compliment him on the wine and of course I remarked that I had taken a class from Mike Larner a few months ago (there I was back to dropping that name. At least it was legitimate this time). He knew Mike's family and had gotten a line on the grapes a few years ago, so we chatted about Santa Barbara grapes in general and dealing with the Larner Vineyard grapes specifically. The wine director / winemaker guy mentioned, sure enough, that he had learned in the last couple of years that the syrah grapes had to literally shrivel up before they could achieve full ripeness and be ready for harvest; since I got this tidbit of knowledge directly after visiting the vineyard the week before I continue to be optimistic about the ultimate ripeness of my syrah grapes.

 

As a postscript to the Kathryn Kennedy experience, all of the wines in my case ranged from good to superb, with the exception of the estate Cabernet. As has happened to me so often, I was sorely disappointed by a highly touted Cabernet/Bordeaux , both bottles not showing much of anything. I even waited until 2003 to open the first cab, just to let it age a bit. My expectations were low by the time I opened Cab number 2 two years later and it tasted identical to the first one - my first impression was no fluke.

 

The 3 syrahs Marty gave me were all fantastic. The following year the price was hiked to over $60, thus ending my relationship with it. I did go up to the winery a few years later for one of their rare public events and managed to taste the current syrah offerings. It was a blisteringly hot day, so tannic red wines were not really hitting the spot. The event was outside and my whole time there what I really wanted was a cold beer.

 

 I just took a quick look at the Kathryn Kennedy website and sure enough the Maridon Syrah continues to be on offer, at $65.