UNCORKED

Kurt Hummel, Taste Wine Editor

A YEAR IN THE VALLEY
A Tale of Two Winemakers

Young Winemakers Studied Together, But Followed Different Paths to the Taste Challenge Finals

The Taste Challenge isn't a simple undertaking.

It's not just a wine competition. Plenty of people (including me) have pegged it as a David versus Goliath battle, as conglomerate versus boutique, or as a modern day Judgement at Paris.

They wouldn't be wrong. But it's also much, much more.

It would have been easy enough to draft the biggest of big names to compete in the blind tasting, but we were looking for something more, something that represents what Taste brings to its readers: cutting edge trends.

So as I vetted hundreds of wines to narrow the field to the 20 top wines, I looked for something extra — the next generation of winemakers who may just shape our palates for years to come.

Vintners from two of the wineries selected to compete in the Challenge exemplify that, and both presented wines distinguished enough to compete in both the red and white wine competitions — the only winemakers to achieve this honor.

Dalton Estate's 2008 Meritage may predate its chief winemaker's tenure with the storied winery, but it signaled an evolving style that made his hiring an inevitability. The wine defines "big red," a dominating blend of classic Bordeaux varietals. The Meritage is Dalton's signature wine, an in-your-face statement of Napa's prestige and powerful Cabernets. The St. Helena winery will also compete with its 2010 Reserve Chardonnay, as unsubtle as it is refined.

Isolated in the hills above Glen Ellen, Rhapsody Vineyards and Wine also secured spots in both the red and white finals with wines you may never have heard of before, and would be hard pressed to find for sale. Its 2010 Allegrezza Roussanne hints of spring flowers and grass, a delicate and bright Rhône wine. The winery's limited production Sotto Voce is complex, a layered and subtle Syrah blend that initially presents as one wine, but opens up and evolves into something entirely different.

(To readers who will seek out these wines to conduct their own blind tastings, a couple of notes: First, good luck. A couple of these wines are produced in very limited numbers and may not be available at your local wine retailer. Second, while we are releasing the identities of the final wines prior to the event, I will not publish my tasting notes on each wine until after the TasteChallenge, so as not to bias the judges at the Mondavi Center — or in your own tasting room.)

The vintners behind these extraordinary wines share common backgrounds, common bonds. Both are young, single and singularly focused on their goals. They started down the same path, but ultimately have taken very different roads to the June 15th Challenge.

They could not have landed in more different places, even if they are working only 20 miles apart.

Dalton Estate Winery hired Sebastian Smythe as its chief winemaker nearly three years ago in a bold statement intended to steer the venerable label in dramatic new directions. His plans for the renowned label are bolder still, with plans for expansion into new models, new products and new markets that some would argue outstrip the responsibilities of a vintner.

Catchy, perhaps kitschy, names? Smythe says "Sure, why not?" Single-serve wine? Absolutely, if it attracts a new market. Branching out to liquor and spirits? A distinct possibility.

His roots in the industry run deep, and may be the foundation for his audacious plans.

The son of Smythe Holdings Corp. founder J. Wellington Smythe, owner of JW Wines in the North Fork wine appellation, Smythe was raised in the business of liquor and spirits. He is the heir apparent of the winery, and his experience at Dalton is likely to be be training for a future as the head of the respected Long Island label.

A product of the eastern prep school and Ivy League elite, Smythe earned degrees in enology and agricultural economics from Cornell University, where he also captained the Lacrosse team. The competitive drive of team sports fuels his work to this day.

Smythe strikes an imposing figure at the winery, where he is as much chief marketer as head winemaker. Cut from a modern cloth, he looks to a future that relies as much on business acumen as it does on organic chemistry to tailor wines to both inexperienced and refined palates.

"The pool of oenophiles willing to fork over $150 for a bottle of Cab is aging and shrinking," he said. "We need to develop younger markets, get them drinking wine with products that are friendly to inexperienced palates and marketed to attract their attention. Once they develop that initial taste for wine, we build the next generation of wine connoisseurs."

He splits his time between the lab, the winery and a well-appointed office in the iconic winery building, the site of presidential visits and countless weddings. As tuned in to the business of Dalton as the winemaking he spearheads, Smythe's workday uniform is designer business casual, and seems to help him slip undetected through Dalton's well-heeled tasting room crowd.

He has little time or patience for tourists, and is unapologetic for his ambition and for his brash style. He is also, without question, a talented winemaker and smart businessman whose skills made him a natural choice to lead Dalton into a new era of winemaking.

"Maybe it's a product of my upbringing," he said. "But if it works, and we successfully produce and sell good wine, who really has a right to complain? We make some of the world's finest wines, and I intend to tailor new looks and tastes for emerging markets in the global wine business."

Perhaps his chief rival in the Taste Challenge is Rhapsody owner Blaine Anderson, who comes from a background that nearly mirrors that of Smythe, but could not have ended up in a more different place.

Like Smythe, Anderson is a product of prep schools and the Ivy League. But Anderson moved west for his post-graduate education, studying at UC Davis while slowly nurturing a small parcel of hillside land outside Glen Ellen into the bucolic vineyards of Rhapsody Wines.

He shunned opportunities that would have had him mirror Smythe's meteoric climb among Napa's elite to cultivate a small but respected business as an artisan vintner, specializing in Rhône varietals and méthode traditionelle. 

Anderson is a quiet but passionate winemaker who has put his heart before his market share. A small producer, his wines have a dedicated local following that make it difficult to find Rhapsody vintages for sale, even by the country's most exclusive retailers. The winery, a large but modern barn, is private and the facility does not accommodate visitors.

Anderson's talent and passion for music reflect both the thematic names and the winery's logo: a Claddagh with inverted treble clefs omnipresent to every bottle of Rhapsody's vintages. The wines include Allegrezza, Mezzo, Appassionatto, Fortissimo and Sotto Voce. Each name is selected to reflect characteristics of the wine that bares its name, Anderson said, from the brightness of the delicate Roussanne to the subtle complexity of the extraordinary Sotto Voce Rhône blend.

Anderson had once planned to pursue music as a career, but economic reality steered him toward an education and career in the world of science. As a chemistry student at Cornell, he discovered the viticulture and enology program. After earning degrees in chemistry and enology/viticulture, he joined the UC David graduate EVO program and spent weekends planting the small swath of hillside with Syrah and other Rhône varietals.

He eschews the label "Rhône Ranger" that he and others specializing in wines of the French appellation have earned.

"I'm not trying to make a statement by producing Rhône varietals," he said. "The terroir of Rhapsody is very similar to that of the Rhône region, so it only made sense to specialize in wines of that region. It's important, I think, for winemakers to understand the geography, the climate and the nature of the land where they source their grapes. It will influence the character of the wine, its personality for lack of a better word, for years to come."

Anderson splits his time between winery and vines, working alongside a small vineyard crew during harvest and pruning. His work uniform is a t-shirt and jeans; his constant companion is a sheepdog.

Unlike large-scale wineries like Dalton, much of the work at Rhapsody is completed by hand, without any automation. The signature Sotto Voce blend is produced in the most artisanal of styles: a free run of juice from the most select vines in the Rhapsody vineyard, fermented naturally, and bottled by hand in a all-night push of work by Anderson and his chief assistant.

On a recent night, the two worked feverishly to finish bottling Sotto Voce until nearly two o'clock in the morning. Anderson then commenced with final production of a new blend, as yet unnamed, until well past sunrise.

Why doesn't he simply hand off his instructions to a production team?

"It's why you become a winemaker — to create something. Why would I turn that over to someone? That's a part of the art of winemaking, and it's why I got into this in the first place," he said. "As a winemaker, you pay attention to the vineyard, you listen to the vines. They tell you when they're ready. And the same goes for the wine itself. It's basically a living, breathing thing. It's my job to nurture it and help it along its way."

Perhaps a product of competing styles, the two winemakers are not close. Much like the two neighboring regions that they represent, they not only subscribe to the officialone for all Wine Country mantra, but also harbor a feisty competitive streak.

They'll get a chance to exercise it — and perhaps claim bragging rights — June 15th at the Mondavi Center in Davis.

Kurt Hummel is currently on year-long assignment in California, reporting for his "A Year in the Valley" series on the west coast wine industry.