Early in the life of The SOMM Journal (née Sommelier Journal), back in 2016, I published a Bottom Line column entitled “6 Universal Rules of Thumb” based upon how I managed to build a successful 28-year career as an on-premise wine professional. It was, in fact, the exact same article I contributed to a nationally distributed hospitality industry magazine back in the late ‘90s, when communication was in print rather than online. Point being, some things simply don’t change.

The six “rules” by which I lived by:

1. There is no point in price-gouging.
2. Increased volume of sales never makes up for higher costs.
3. It is never good to “upsell” guests.
4. Don’t be a snob by forcing guests to like “somm wines.”
5. A “great wine list” does not make a restaurant great.
6. Wine is always a condiment, never the main event that attracts guests.

Here in the mid-2020s, times have clearly changed. Costs are soaring out of control and fine dining restaurants are shutting down left and right. Consequently, many sommeliers are out of a job, and to top it all off, one of our institutions—the Court of Master Sommeliers—has been in shambles (although much has recently been done to restore its dignity). Surely, this doesn’t have to be forever.

But if you find yourself in limbo, or are currently working for a fraction of what you should be earning, now is as good a time to think about how to improve your game, once you’re back in the saddle. Six more tried-and-true guidelines, as apropos for today as it ever was in the past:

1. Show up, and be on time. It’s an industry joke that sommeliers are prima donnas. Half the time they don’t show up to events, even when they RSVP on the same day. Some, I’m ashamed to say, are well known lushes, takers, harassers, bullies or abusers. You know who you are. If you can’t help yourself, I am sorry but you need to go. Quit giving the profession a bad name. For everyone else, if you want to be respected, you need to be respectful.

2. Respect the trade. Just because much of the on-premise industry has operated by nasty old practices such as quid quo pro⏤like accepting freebies or tickets to ball games in exchange for product placements, or compelling distributors to write and print your wine list because you’re too lazy to do it yourself⏤it doesn’t mean any of this has ever been right. The only things that are right are the quality of your wines and guest experiences, and your integrity as a wine professional. It’s all about the wine, and service. Period.

3. Tell your suppliers exactly what you need beforehand, never after. Meetings with your reps—especially winery people who travel thousands of miles to make appointments—should never be guessing games. Everyone should have an exact idea of what you’re looking for well ahead of time. Time to start communicating in the most specific terms. Email can be a friend. But enough playing around, and wasting their time and your own.

4. Never underestimate guests again. By now you should know that guests are not stupid. They’re up on the latest things. But even if they don’t know the latest wines, they obviously have the capacity to pick up on them as fast as you ever have. Just don’t ever insult them ever again with the same old stuff, or anything less than stellar or useful. Assume the best in them, give them lots of choices, and you’ll be rewarded by their appreciation of the work you’ve put into it.

5. Communicate directly with producers. Buying wines available only through distributors has never been a rule. Wineries and importers always have far more options than what distributors choose to carry. At the same time, most distributors will bring on new wines when there is a buyer. If you want to make a difference, you must aggressively cultivate direct relationships with producers and importers, who by and large love to deal directly with sommeliers, even in three-tier systems.

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6. Break out of the four walls of your restaurant. The usual way is still the best, which is by visiting wine regions and understanding wines from the ground up, and getting to know the people who grow and craft them. Negotiate a set number of weeks per year with your employer to do exactly that, and never allow your itinerary to be handled by a distributor or anyone with ulterior motives. Go your own way, the same way you create your own wine program in order to distinguish your restaurant. Do that, and success⏤both critical and financial⏤will come naturally.

The original text of my Bottom Line column published in the April/May 2024 issue of The SOMM Journal

Back in the 1990s I used to hear it all the time from colleagues in the on-premise trade: “Why should I sell esoteric wines? My customers could care less. All they want is [fill in the blank].” At the time, of course, “blank” was Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or White Zinfandel.

Times have obviously changed. Many sommeliers now find that it is just as easy to sell the aforementioned varietals right alongside, say, Albariño, Assyrtiko, Ribolla Gialla, Trousseau, Tempranillo, Lagrein or any of the like. Restaurant wine sales is a lot more fun than it was just 20, 30 years ago.

We can sell new fangled varieties because consumers are more sophisticated, and open minded, than ever before. Retail stores and restaurants vying for attention have exposed Americans to more of the world’s incredible diversity of wines. Online information helps turn what was once esoteric into common knowledge.

So what is the next step for sommeliers conscious of playing a proactive role in the evolution of wine consumers? That would be use of sub-appellations, particularly for American wines. I am still surprised, when opening up wine lists in even wine-savvy restaurants, to find categories or descriptions that barely (if never) go beyond the broadest identifications, such as Napa Valley, Santa Barbara, Willamette Valley, or even Washington and Oregon.

Hey, I get it. It’s like the ‘90s—many guests “could care less” about the sensory differences between a Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Coombsville vs. Rutherford, a Chardonnay from Fort Ross-Seaview or Green Valley of Russian River Valley, or a Pinot Noir from Russian River’s Middle Reach as opposed to Sta. Rita Hills, Santa Lucia Highlands, McMinnville or Chehalem Mountains.

Granted, the potential minutiae still makes the average consumer’s head spin. But as a professional, you know these distinctions exist for the most tangible reasons. You can taste it in the glass. It’s the reason why you put a McMinnville and a Chehalem Mountains Pinot Noir on a wine list, or offer a full range of the varietal from Fort Ross-Seaview, Sta. Rita Hills, Santa Lucia Highlands, et al.

Ultimately, of course, terroir is what sets the finest wines of the world apart from other wines, not so much grape variety, blends, the prestige of winemakers or brands. It’s a challenge, but getting guests to appreciate terroir-related distinctions is the ultimate way of promoting good taste, and it begins with the identification of American appellations and sub-appellations to an nth degree. On your wine list, in the same way that we typically identify European wines.

The beautiful thing about domestic wines is that they are better than ever. The American production industry is, in fact, moving in the direction of terroir and appellation-related distinctions. They see the writing on the wall: Many consumers are getting too sophisticated to accept quality based simply upon brand recognition or concepts such as “varietal character.”

And in the same way many sommeliers have felt for years, more and more consumers are no longer choosing wines based upon numerical ratings. They’re seeing right through that facade and looking for qualities expressing, say, typicity or authenticity. Wines that capture sense of place whittled down from appellations and sub-appellations to individuality of vineyards.

Whether you are part of this evolution or not, it’s happening as we speak. It’s a good time to be a sommelier, and play an active role in this movement, which is happening as we speak.

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The original text of my Bottom Line column published in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of The SOMM Journal.

Wine trends aren’t always fathomable. I distinctly remember, for instance, the meteoric rise of White Zinfandel in the early to mid-1980s because I was there, as a working sommelier. In those days we were all flush with enthusiasm for the type of California Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons that had bested grand crus in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.

But guess what: In the beginning we couldn’t give a Chateau Montelena or Stag’s Leap away. When I started as a sommelier in the late ‘70s, the vast majority of consumers preferred fruity wines such as Blue Nun or Wente Grey Riesling; the same consumers who became addicted to White Zinfandel by the mid-’80s.

Grey Riesling, for the record, was never a Riesling. It was a fictitious varietal name given to whites made from Trousseau gris, yet indicative of consumer tastes for wines similar to Riesling. Therefore, I did the next best thing and specialized in authentic German qualitätswein: Great, great Rieslings from classic growths such as Scharzhofberger, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Ürziger Würzgarten and the like. For a few short years in the early ‘80s this strategy actually worked. If they liked their wines fruity, to my way of thinking, I should give them the best fruit-driven wines in the world.

Whenever you upgrade your guests’ taste, you are upgrading the appeal of your restaurant.

Alas, by the mid-1980s the market for German wines in general was dead in the water. Instead, domestic brands such as Kendall-Jackson and Glen Ellen had saturated the market with $4.99 or $5.99 Chardonnay, ushering a crushing tidal wave of soft, fruity, butterball whites that would take at least twenty years to subside. Remember “cougar juice?” That wasn’t too long ago!

The third part of the 1980s’ “fighting varietal” formula hoisted upon us by the domestic wine industry was Cabernet Sauvignon; which was great, except for the fact that not every dish is ideal with White Zinfandel, oaky Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon.

Instead, by the early 1990s I had the staffs in my multi-unit restaurant group pushing hard on Pinot Noir, a far more food-versatile red. I think we were extremely successful, but face it: Pinot Noir did not become mainstream until the movie Sideways came out in 2004. That should tell you a lot about consumer obsessions. They are not always about actual taste. A lot of it is perception, whether real or fictitious—like Grey Riesling, Blue Nuns in vineyards, or the Kardashians.

I was recently struck by a thought in a New York Times column about efficiency, reflecting on the “sheer joy” of setting a “vinyl record carefully on the turntable” despite the obvious convenience, and infinitely cleaner sound, of digital music. Yet no one has to guess why vinyl records have returned with a vengeance—there is something compellingly organic about music coming off a needle, rife with static and imperfection.

By the same token, it should not be hard to understand the current madness for imperfection in wines; particularly natural wines, murky or prickly wines, anything smacking of organics or even a seemingly irrational spirituality. The positive thing about trending wines, even when inconceivable, is that they are usually indicative of some kind of evolution in consumer tastes.

The craving for natural wines, after all, is not too far off from appreciation of terroir-driven classics such as Romanée-Conti, Tempier, Musar or Vega Sicilia. Wines that are often raw or as unpredictable as can be. To my mind, natural wines are just a gateway drug to that higher (one can hope!) level.

Ergo, step one is recognizing and embracing trends. Step two, taking guests already leaning into them to places you want them to be. Ideally, of course, into realms of higher quality wines with a higher percentage chance of enhancing your cuisine, your program and, ultimately, your business.

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“Old Vine” is no longer just another unregulated, more or less meaningless, wine label term. Old vines are now something of a thing; and for once, a very meaningful one.

The British wine trade, for instance, has recently been holding multiple events under the auspices of “The Old Vine Conference,” pulling together global efforts to preserve and celebrate old vines. The first thing you read on the organization’s oldvines.org is:

The best old vines yield uniquely transcendent wines, incomparably rich in savour, symbolism, and heritage. The genetic material of ancient varieties, often retrieved from forgotten old vineyards, is proving vital in adapting to climate change.

Sure, that’s a lot of high minded verbiage to absorb, but let’s break some of it down.

1. I’d use the word “transparent” rather than “transcendent” because of the very nature of old vine viticulture. Everywhere they are found around the world, old vines exist in their respective places for over 50, 100 and in some cases 150 years primarily because they sit on ideal terroirs, benefiting from the healthiest possible environments, and continuously producing high value wines defined by sensory qualities reflecting those sites. The longevity of old vines, in other words, is directly dependent upon grapevine health and transparency of resulting wines. Otherwise, old vines serve no purpose—they would have been pulled out long ago.

2. Vineyards over 50, 75 or 100 years old become part and parcel of the culture, or heritage, of wine regions. That makes them historical—the very reason, in fact, the nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving old vine sites in California is called Historic Vineyard Society.

3. In regards to old vines and climate change, I would add that this is also a matter of what the typical morphology of old vines—as free-standing gobelet of “bush” vines, rather than as modern-day trellised vines—is currently teaching the wine industry, beset by the shock of heat waves, drought, fires, “hundred-year” floods and seemingly endless manifestations of a changing planet. It has become clearer than ever that the grapevines best adapted to extreme climate events are those with the deepest roots, the most mature trunks and most muscular spurs. That is, the oldest vines.

Pertinent to that, there is a current movement entailing pruning adjustments of young trellised vines, which now dominate the industry, to maximize wood size and sap flow—to replicate, in other words, the intrinsic physical advantages of older vines, trained on stakes in the “old school” style.

In California, authentic old vine bottlings—primarily Zinfandel, Carignan, the occasional Mourvèdre and rare Cinsaut or Mission—rarely say “Old Vine” on labels. They are primarily identified by vineyard designations. In South Africa, certified Old Vine Project wines are now identified on labels—amazing bottlings of Cinsaut, Pinotage, Semillon, Chenin Blanc and other varieties. Barossa Valley has its groundbreaking Old Vine Charter, and France always has its Vieilles Vignes.

A final caveat: When tasting and selecting old vine wines for your wine list, do not expect to find dark colors, extreme concentration and oversized body. You occasionally find that, but more often than not it’s more of a delicate, finely delineated profile; the older the vines, the more likely the terroir-related earth or mineral notes distinct to that growth. This is why, despite being around literally forever, old vines are a bigger deal than ever.

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The original text of my "Bottom Line” column published in the October/Novemer 2024 issue of The SOMM Journal.

Dedicating yourself to a career as a wine specialist in the hospitality industry is harder than it’s ever been before. I’m saying this from the perspective of someone who took his first sommelier position in 1978, when sommelier sightings were as rare as endangered species. Nowadays, seemingly everybody wants to be a sommelier.

Can’t say I blame anyone. It is a glamorous job; intellectually and aesthetically fulfilling, despite the salary limitations. Regarding the latter issue, the Court of Master Sommeliers brutally estimates the potential salary of the average restaurant sommelier as being somewhere in the range of $45,000 to $75,000⏤well within the “low income” bracket in large cities such as San Francisco and New York, where most sommeliers are employed. This qualifies for “poverty level” wages in Honolulu, where I spent my first 10 years in wine industry as a full-time sommelier. Even in lower cost cities such as Las Vegas, the average sommelier salary falls well short of the $94,000 estimated for living in “sustainable comfort.”

Yet as any of today’s working sommeliers would tell you, there may be no job as precarious in today’s post-pandemic—yes, the hospitality industry has yet to completely recover from the years when everything simply stopped—world. For restaurants, the far bigger challenge is keeping the lights on, not deciding on whether to retain a sommelier.

Nonetheless, wine appreciation in the United States is as big as ever. While America’s per capita consumption of wine has taken a dip over the past five years, wine sales as of 2024 has hovered around $109 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This is nothing to sneeze at. In restaurants, wine sales⏤and with that, the position of a sommelier⏤is still a key to success.

How, then, is it possible to be a sommelier, particularly in order to qualify for CMS examinations? Same as it ever was, at least in my experience: You do it by becoming a “master” of multi-tasking⏤someone too important for a restaurant to live without. Today’s sommeliers must join the ranks of restaurant managers. They need to be willing and able to hire, fire and train staff, make schedules, take reservations, seat guests, manage sections, clean restrooms, chop vegetables, plan parties and events, write newsletters, file P&L reports, maintain POS systems, run dishwashers, and of course, set and wait on tables (for instance, Bobby Stuckey MS, the owner of Boulder’s nationally acclaimed Frasca, still calls himself the “head busser”). This, of course, is on top of selecting wines for the wine list, talking wine and opening bottles at tables.

If anything, these are probably the minimum requirements for today’s restaurant managers; and by extension, for working sommeliers. It goes without saying, the more you master all of the above, the more valuable you become to a business; thereby, earning a salary that actually falls within the range of “sustainable comfort.” For prospective sommeliers, this is the experience you must accumulate, and how you sell yourself to potential future employers.

Sounds challenging, maybe a little scary; but trust me, it can be even more fulfilling than working exclusively as a cellar manager or glorified bottle opener. Why? Because the more you have at stake in the operations of an entire restaurant, the more likely you are to understand exactly what kind of wine program is necessary to achieve 1) critical acclaim and 2) financial success.

Rather than simply showing up to turn the lights on and off, you are turning on guests and increasing your own motivation to be part of something bigger. Bigger, that is, than being just another dime-a-dozen sommelier.

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Adopted from a “Wandering Sommelier” column originally published in the April 2015 issue of Tasting Panel Magazine.

Once, at a World of Pinot Noir festival in Santa Barbara, I was contemplating a Failla Pinot Noir from Occidental Ridge Vineyard in West Sonoma Coast. If you know anything about Failla, you know that winemaker/owner Ehren Jordan is a poster child for natural style winemaking; although like many vignerons of that ilk, he would never describe what he does as “natural.” He’s just trying to make great wine.

The color of the Occidental Ridge was a deep, vivid, almost blue-tinged red, and the nose was gushy with strawberry-like varietal fruit, infused with whiffs of woodsy forest floor. Tannin and flavors seem appropriately aggressive, considering the nose and the wine’s youth (barely 2 years old), but seemed to plop like a dead weight on the palate, like over-floured gnocchi kneaded by a clumsy novice cook.

I’ve been through this movie before with this very same wine, which can bust out of the gate as gawky, one-dimensional and even slutty to the point of discomfort, or artificiality⏤like a pretty young girl who still doesn’t know how to apply makeup.

The question was: Why couldn’t Failla’s Occidental be a little finer, limber, more lifted and delineated in its woodsy, strawberry perfumed intensity⏤qualities I found abundant in, for example, a Baxter Pinot Noir from Mendocino Ridge’s Valenti Vineyard tasted at the same festival?

The answer, though, struck me immediately: A young Failla Occidental Ridge cannot be as “fine” or delicate as a Baxter Valenti because it’s grown in a deep, foggy pocket of Sonoma encircled by a lush stand of evergreens, whereas the Valenti is grown high up on a Mendocino ridgetop, also surrounded by woods but well above the clouds at 1,400-feet, in thinner soils and more exposed to wind coming off the Pacific barely 6 miles away.

Different strokes, different Pinots.

For many of us in the wine trade, it’s far too easy to evaluate wines in terms of varietal character, on the basis of arbitrarily set standards, rather than the realities of terroir or origin. This Pinot Noir tastes fat, fruity and clumsy, whereas that Pinot Noir is zestier, subtle, evincing more mineral or forest floor than obvious fruitiness. The overwhelming compulsion is to taste wines as varietals when it comes to, say, Pinot Noirs from California or Oregon, but we don’t do this so much when we compare growths from Burgundy or Bordeaux because the French make it easier by reminding us from the get-go that we’re tasting appellations and vineyards, not varietal wines.

I, for one, constantly find myself falling into that trap, as cognizant as I am of it. Although I don’t do scores, I am apt to mentally “mark down” a Merry Edwards Meredith Estate, thinking its strawberry/raspberry concentration too blatant, ripe or preponderant⏤until I remind myself that I’m tasting a Russian River Valley Pinot Noir from Sebastopol Hills, not one from McMinnville, Central Otago, Mendocino Ridge or Côte de Nuits.

In recent years I have found that forcing myself to keep an open mind even allows me to better appreciate wines that I once found to be weak or wanting⏤such as an Adelaida Pinot Noir from Paso Robles. On paper, the thought of a Paso Robles Pinot Noir seems ludicrous. It’s too darned hot there. But when you consider the fact that Adelaida’s Pinot Noir is crafted from historic vines planted in 1964 (today at 64 years old, one of the oldest in the state) on limestone slopes at a 1,700-foot elevation, then the wine’s dull, faded nose suddenly turns into a gentle, subtle, intoxicating bucket of wild cherries, and its scrawny frame suddenly tastes sleek, zesty, sexy. It may be all in the mind, but then again, pleasure is always a perception.

That is, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. When you taste, and evaluate, wine, you just have to keep reminding yourself of that.

No doubt, a demurely structured Adelaida or even a bucking bronco of a Failla Occidental might get “destroyed” in a double-blind tasting, when we line up a bunch of Pinot Noirs and “let the chips fall.” What a shame. It’s important to taste wines blind to sharpen our senses and mitigate prejudice, but when you taste terroir driven wines within their own context⏤which we do, as a matter of fact, when we taste French crus or châteaux⏤then it’s amazing how bright and diverse the wine world turns out to be.

Wines such as those made from Pinot noir are plenty diverse. It’s our palate, and minds, that we constantly need to diversify.

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If you want to sell more wine, do not pass Go, go straight to the only guideposts that matter: Consumers. Or guests, as we call them in the trade.

How do guests most likely to order wine think? What exactly do they want? The following is a summary of my observations accumulated after nearly five decades working in the wine industry as both a restaurateur and an industry insider:

Consumers drive the entire wine industry

It’s starts with this fundamental concept: Consumer behavior shapes everything having to do with the wine industry—what grapes are planted, what styles are made, what gets written about in wine media, what sells most in the market. You might have heard that the grape growing and wine production industries are in the middle of a horrendous downturn at the moment. It’s because of consumers. When they start drinking less wine, the entire industry trembles, and rolls over. It’s that simple.

Although much of the industry believes they “control” what average customers buy and consume, the reality is the opposite. The industry always follows consumers. Growers, producers, restaurants, retailers, media and marketing all adapt to what the consumer specifically demands. In other words, markets follow consumer tastes, not the opinions of professionals or experts in the trade or industry.

Consumers are not stupid

Consumers are not uninformed, nor are they easily manipulated. Many of them, of course, end up buying mediocre wines, but that’s because this is what most of the industry still shoves down their throats within the price brackets they want to shop. The problem is not consumer intelligence but what the industry chooses to sell. When you think of it, no wonder many consumers are rebelling, and responding by drinking less wine. We’re not satisfying them. We’re mostly insulting their intelligence.

Ergo, if you wish to sell higher quality wine to your guests⏤thereby raising the quality of their experience in your restaurant⏤do not sell them crap. It’s your restaurant, so you can control what they drink by not putting crap on your wine list. Focus strictly on choices that maximize your cuisine, your restaurant’s theme or philosophy, and your guests’ overall experience. Serve wines worthy of your guests’ demanding tastes.

People drink what they like—not what experts say they should

Consumers, God bless ‘em, simply do not think about what “experts” say, especially when they are sitting down in a restaurant trying to have a good time. Personal taste trumps professional authority every time. Yes, they are cognizant of trends (they’re not that unaware) and might lean towards the latest wines because they might doubt their own taste. But in the end, on a sensory level, the vast majority of guests end up following their own preferences. They order what they know they like.

The trick to working with that basic behavioral pattern? Identify those sensory preferences, and all the trends floating in the air, and select wines that meet those needs while also having a higher percentage chance of complementing your cuisine and meeting your restaurant’s objectives. It’s a matter of making what they like one and the same as what you want to sell them. Do not be a passive participant in this nightly process. Play a proactive part of what your customers want while taking your restaurant to a higher level in terms of business and wowing guests.

Consumers want variety—even when contradictory

No one has ever been able to put consumers in one box. That’s the paradox of wine demand that’s been with us forever. They want wines that are sweet and fruity, or dry and austere; light and easy, or big and bombastic; super-cheap or ridiculously expensive; big names or unknown names; rare, natural or artisanal wines and predictable, popular ubiquitous wines. They want it all.

While consumers will always opt for a wide spectrum of choices, the trick, again, is to offer the full range your guests are comfortable with while avoiding anything, in any category, that does not promote good taste at all. It’s your restaurant, for Pete’s sake. If you were the chef, would you deliberately prepare a lousy dish? Why would you serve a lousy or so-so wine, even if “popular”? The best strategy, as always, is implemented at the selection level. Give the guests what they want, but do it by making good choices for your wine list that fulfill an optimal quality level. Wines that knock it out of the park and make you look good. You have to draw the line for your guests, not expect them to do that for themselves while sitting in the dining room, trying to decipher your wine list.

Good restaurants do not serve boring or crappy wines, no matter what the type, no matter what you read in a magazine or what your distributor friends might say. Give them the diversity they want, but do not put sub-standard wines, not even one, on your list—period.

Consumer tastes evolve… quickly!

If you’re in it for the long haul, this is something you should never forget: What you successfully sell today won’t be as successful five or ten years from now. Even a year or two makes a difference. You have to keep up with consumers’ long established record of changing their tastes over time. It never ends. My perspective, granted, is very broad, going back to the 1970s when I first began as a full-time sommelier. During that, to cite a few examples, I’ve watched consumers evolve from...

• Jug wines → varietal wines

• Fruity White Zinfandel → bone dry rosés

• A few dominant grape preferences → diverse global varieties

• Conventional farming → organic, sustainable and now regenerative wines

• Varietal wines → wines “of place,” or terroir

Point being, consumer preferences for brands and wine types never remain static. Tastes change a lot more quickly than you think. If you don’t think so, it’s because you’re not paying attention⏤which probably isn’t doing your restaurant any good.

Generational differences matter

Be wily about generations. Baby boomers, who have sustained most of the premium wine and fine dining industries for decades, are now coming up on 80 years old. They’re dying, not drinking as much, not getting out to eat nearly as often, even though they still wield most of the market’s disposable income. Just recently, Millennials (today, 30 to 46 years old) have become the largest wine consuming cohort, which you’re probably noticing as we speak.

Make no mistake, though, while still the least significant generation insofar as wine consumption and restaurant expenditure, Generation Z (13-28) will become more and more important in the coming years, even if they represent just 5% or 10% of current sales. You do not want to miss on that 5% to 10% of sales. Not in this industry, where losses of just 1% or 2% can mean the difference between sustaining business or going out of business.

Bottom line: Pay attention to even your smallest customer base. Don’t ignore, more specifically speaking, the youngest generations’ preference for wines that prioritize their distinct personal values such as community, authenticity, “natural” or low intervention attributes. These are just as important as the big name brands and standard varietals preferred by your oldest guests. And besides, these exact same preferences are shaping how commercial wine is being produced and marketed as we speak. The youngest cohorts’ tastes will not become any less important over time.

Circling back to the golden mean (consumers!)

Understand your guests. Consumers will remain autonomous, diverse, as predictable as they are unpredictable, and they will always set the trends we are all forced to follow. Rather than passive recipients of industry messaging, they are the real force that determines what wines sell, what wines don’t. While they may not look like the ones holding all the power, while sitting in their dining room chairs waiting to be regaled and amused, inside they carry brains that are invariably more perceptive than you suspect.

Caveat venditor (let the seller beware).

Even though many of your guests appear to be happy with predictable or even mediocre wines, chances are they are only that way because that’s what you’re pushing on them. If your wine list, like your food menu, eschews originality and sticks to status quo, you’re not giving them much choice, are you? If you wish to elevate your restaurant apart from others, you have to put in more work than the others.

This we also know, after all these years: Consumers are always a lot more sophisticated than you think when it comes to what they choose, and are quite capable of embracing new, exciting, innovative concepts. If you are working in a restaurant with highly competitive cuisine prepared by uber-talented chefs, you should already know that. Guests don’t flock to restaurants offering the same dreary fare as every other restaurant on your block, in your city, your state, the country. This goes for wine as much as it does for food.

If anything, the overall wine market always follows consumer preferences, not the other way around. Ignore those long established patterns at your peril!

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I may be wrong, but I doubt it.
⏤Charles Barkley

By now you should know that I’m pretty good at griping about many of the things I find wrong about the wine world. I’m pretty sure this has bothered many of my readers, even friends and respected colleagues, who don’t understand why I can’t accept standard practices and procedures that seem to be, well, a priori to the vast majority of people in the industry, as well as to most consumers.

Take wine lists; because, after all, this page is called “Culinary Approach to Wine In Restaurants.” I’m sure a common response to that is, “what the hell does ‘Culinary Approach’ even mean?” Or maybe, “who cares?”

It means, simply, that I drew a logical conclusion a long time ago, back in the late ‘70s when I was still working my way through college as a busboy and then waiter: That people go to restaurants primarily to eat, not drink wine. Therefore, my a priori conclusion was that wine lists should be designed around food menus; or if you worked in a restaurant manned by talented chefs, the cuisine, or specific dishes coming out of the kitchen.

You don’t put together wine lists to show off, well, “wines.” To my intuitive way of thinking—my Prime Directive, as it were—wine lists serve only one purpose: To make food taste better. The more a wine enhances the taste of a dish, the better the restaurant experience. To me, that’s the ultimate “wow,” whether guests who enjoy wine are aware of it or not.

When I became a sommelier and was put in charge of wine lists, of course, I always realized that picking wines strictly on the basis of what goes best with food might never go over well with many of my own guests; admittedly, a majority of my guests, who were conditioned to expect lists consisting of all the usual wines: X number of Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays, x number of imports from the familiar regions in France, Italy or Germany, the well known brands sold in all the stores and the majority of restaurants, no matter what kind of restaurant (Chinese, French, Thai, Italian, steak, seafood, pizza, pasta, fusion, American, never mattered) everywhere you go on your block, in your town, your state, across the country.

Wholesale distributors, as you would expect, pulled their hair out because I refused to buy most of their products. Instead, I preferred to go out and find my own. Logic told them that all restaurants have the best chance of being successful by selling wines that people already know and love. Why pick, instead, some obscure Loire Valley rosé or a Bandol from Provence, an unfashionably high acid South Australian Riesling or Baden Pinot Gris, a minerally Grechetto or Biancolella from Italy, or even a Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara or Oregon (between the ‘70s and early ‘90s no one gave a damn about Pinots from there, let alone Pinots in general) when it’s so much easier to sell popular brands and varietals from places that are far better known?

“Food,” I would tell them. Followed by more hair-pulling.

That was the sensory part of the formula. The big challenge was this eternal fact of life in all restaurants: Guests order more wines by the glass than bottles. Why? Obviously, they don’t like committing to whole bottles. They want to drink a little at a time. If they feel like more, they’ll order more. It’s called prerogative.

The other issue for the longest time was that most guests perceive wines by the glass as the more economical way to go in restaurants. Even wealthy guests instinctively economize. This meant, back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, no one wanted to pay more than $2 a glass, and so choices of wines by the glass were basically generic jug brands of Chablis, Burgundy and “Vin Rosé.” I worked in one high-end, jacket-required restaurant where these wines were poured out of boxes through a bar gun, just like the sodas.

By the mid-’80s guests got sophisticated and developed a taste for varietals⏤the “Big Three” being Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and White Zinfandel⏤but even upscale restaurants across the country caught holy hell if they tried to charge more than $4.50 a glass, and so most restaurants stuck to brands you could find in any store for less than $10 or $12. Run-of-the-mill, not-so-good wines. The other bad part for restaurants was that you were selling store brands that weren’t exactly prestigious⏤not the best way for restaurants to distinguish themselves.

Today the restaurant world is in something of a quandary because the average guest is far more demanding than just 10 or 20 years ago. They’re used to better quality and far more choices of wine; basically because they can get that in a store⏤for the most part, still for pretty good prices ($15 to, say, $50 retail)⏤and they’ve moved far beyond garden variety Cabernet and Chardonnay (the vast majority stopped drinking White Zinfandel at least 10 years ago). Therefore, upscale restaurants are now selling wines by the glass in the $15 to $35 range⏤and catching holy hell for it.

The common indictment nowadays is “wines are overpriced!” “I’d rather drink cocktails!” [although cocktails are not exactly inexpensive these days]. “Restaurants are rip-offs!” [face it, consumers have been saying that about restaurants forever, which doesn’t keep them from going back over and over again].

What many restaurants are trying to do, of course, is meet the needs of the majority of today’s guests. You can no longer serve them crap. Not if you want to compete with other restaurants whose success is driven mostly by the quality of their product (that is, the “holy trinity” of food, wine and service), or by level of originality or authenticity⏤not by cheapness of price.

It goes without saying that many sommeliers⏤and there are probably far more of them than the world really needs right this moment⏤also get a bad rap because, at long last, many of them are taking advantage of the incredible variety of wines from around the world available in markets across the country. Yes, many sommeliers like handcraft “cool kid” wines, many of them made in uncommercial or natural styles that are still unsavory to people with mainstream tastes. What do you expect, they’re sommeliers! They study wine and accumulate a frightening amount of knowledge and experience; therefore they should be selling new, exciting, different or alternative style wines. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be much of a “sommelier,” would you?

So deal with it.

This year I turn 70. I often wish I was still operating restaurant wine programs, but my time has passed. As in most industries, hospitality has always been plagued by ageism, but I left because I grew tired of the work. Now what I do best is snipe from my old man’s couch.

But of course, if I was still in the game, you know exactly why or how I’d be doing it. It’s still mostly about “food.” People have never stopped going to restaurants to eat⏤even in the most wine-savvy restaurants manned by sommeliers in too-tight suits or designer skirts who can’t wait to share the latest, the finest, most unusual or esoteric wines with you.

Wine has never been among the top three or four reasons why guests return to any given restaurant. But it’s still super-important. Why? Because many guests drink wine, and if the wine doesn’t optimize their overall experience, a restaurant is just spinning its wheels.

Someday, I think (or hope), most restaurants will get it. Lord knows, I’ve done my share of suffering for them. I remember when we opened our nth restaurants in San Francisco, back in 1999. By then I had developed what I considered pretty much a “perfect” wine by the glass program, consisting of 12 wines that were custom grown and crafted for sensory qualities to specifically enhance our cuisine. For this, I engaged some of the finest winemakers in the world (among them, Jim Clendenen in Santa Barbara, Patrick Campbell in Sonoma, Lynn Penner-Ash in Oregon, Riccardo Cotarella in Italy, Sparky Maquis in Australia, Bassermann-Jordan and Heger in Germany). On top of that, I even had four different sakés produced under our own labels calculated for four different aspects of our cooking style.

Think about it. Well over 50% of our wine sales were by the glass, and we were forcing them to drink innovative, exclusive wines with the highest percentage chance of enhancing our food, whether they wanted to or not. In my mind, or at least on a purely sensory level, that’s a gigantic win.

No matter, because when we finally got our first review in the big local newspaper, my wine program was creamed by the longtime restaurant critic. He described my wine selection as “disappointing,” and asked, “Why can’t restaurants like this just offer the brands and varietals most people expect?” I never got to explain exactly why to him. He showed no signs of being able to grasp the concept, and I suspect he never would, not in his lifetime. Yes, I think you can be a well known “restaurant critic” and never really understand how restaurants work, or what their purpose is. As a writer, he was a professional; but as a food (much less a wine) person, a complete amateur.

Most people, to be fair, are cognizant of the fact that restaurants are all about food; they just can’t put two and two together when it comes to wine. But that’s okay because that’s not their “job.” It’s the job of a restaurant to do that for them; just like it’s the job of a chef to use the right ingredient to bring balance to a dish, not the job of the guest to find, utilize, understand or even think of that ingredient.

The best “wine restaurants,” in the end, are the ones that put everything together, dishes and wines (along with caring service), in the same way that the best chefs put dishes together. It has to be a sensory thing, not an intellectual one.

There are, in fact, some incredible restaurants in our country and elsewhere around the world putting wine and food together in amazing ways, and are justifiably acclaimed for it. It’s a shame, though, when less celebrated restaurants—that is, those falling off the radar of local critics (obviously, never a reliable bunch)—accomplish the same things on some level, or at least aspire to, but aren’t appreciated for lack of awareness of what they’re doing. Nonetheless, people in general aren’t getting any stupider (unlike with politics). They’ll come around, and they’re the ones that count. You can’t stop increasing wine and culinary sophistication.

In the meantime, I’d much rather be right about my wines than wrong about how I go about choosing them, no matter what anyone says or thinks!

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The original text of my Bottom Line column published in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of The SOMM Journal.

For well over 40 years, or at least during the entire time I’ve worked as a sommelier or full-time wine professional, the American wine industry has treated consumers like they were idiots.

I don’t get it. There has never been anything in the leaves suggesting that consumers aren’t smart. They never have to be told, for instance, what the absolute latest in technology is all about. Most of them understand the most complex language; even if they don’t, they figure it out very quickly. Hence, the way technology advances with such astounding speed. Consumers are never left behind.

When it comes to matters of taste, consumers are even more ravenous. They never need to be told about the coolest music going down—they can practically sense the latest sounds in the air. They always seem to know what the best books and movies are all about, or the latest foods and fashions to follow. They don’t need to hear it first from press or social media. They often catch on faster than the musicians, writers, filmmakers, chefs and fashion designers themselves, which is why so much of our art, food and fashion is inspired by people themselves—originating out of the vibes emanating from “the street.” Our best artists come from there.

In our own restaurants—very popular restaurants, packed to the gills—our waiters always stood at the tables describing a few of their favorite dishes, out of the 15 to 30 new ones our chefs conceived every day. They’d highlight few key ingredients (anywhere from 15 to over 30 in many dishes), sauces, cooking techniques. If there was a hint of someone not quite grasping something, we’d immediately explain it with a few simple words. We never subscribed to the fallacious idea that “guests don’t like waiters explaining menus.” Do you like packages that don’t come with instructions? Of course not. We knew damn well that if we were cooking so many new or different things, we’d better have some explanation ready for them. The proof was in the pudding: The more they understood our menu and dishes, the more they loved them. And we could clearly see that our guests loved, and fully understood, what we were doing because they kept coming back for more. They still are.

Yet when it comes to wine, most of us in the wine industry—from producers to distributors, media, trade and restaurateurs—still treat consumers as if they are slow learners, who can barely understand more than four or five varietals at a time. When Jancis Robinson first came out with her pocket-sized Guide to Wine Grapes, she listed over 700 grape varieties commercially grown around the world. Why so many? It’s called consumer demand. A grape that’s unknown in one part of the world is very familiar and appreciated in another. They are only mysteries when you don’t talk about them.

Trust me. I have certainly never written a dumbed down wine list in my life. I like to think I respect the intelligence of my guests. Many of my selections were wines most people never heard of. So what? That’s why I’d write short descriptions on my wine lists so that guests would know at least a little something without having to ask me. Even though most American wineries can barely handle producing and selling five or six different wines at a time, I know from my own experience that the average consumer can handle a lot more—as long as you’re taking the trouble of doing a little bit of explaining.

The way most restaurants still stack their wine lists, however, is a reflection of the wine industry’s overall attitude towards consumers. A typical “award winning” wine list might have over 100 Cabernet Sauvignons and at least 50 Chardonnays; and maybe, just two Zinfandels and one Chenin Blanc, but nothing “weird” like Graciano or Biancollela. Almost no cool, new producers; mostly just big commercial brands sold everywhere. Nothing from out-of-the-way appellations because... well, we assume our guests can’t possibly grasp or appreciate alternative grapes, unknown brands or unfamiliar appellations, no matter how amazing the wines may taste with our cuisines.

So we spoon-feed them, like babies, and chuckle about their penchant for “thinking dry and drinking sweet.” But it’s not the consumers who are dumb, it’s us, the so-called “professionals.” Too dumb to see what’s obvious about consumers in general: That most of them are smart; in many ways, smarter than us.

Most of us in the industry or trade are also too lazy to make an effort to give customers what they really deserve, which is as much variety of wines as the enormous variety of dishes prepared by many of our uber-talented chefs. Restaurant guests, as we all know, always come in mainly for the food. They understand brand new dishes, and even if they don’t quite know every ingredient going into them, they are more than eager to experience them.

So that’s my caveat. Simply, if you assume your guests are capable of appreciating only a few wines at a time, then that’s what you get—guests with narrow tastes or, worse yet, who are utterly bored by your meager selection. But if you treat them like, well, average consumers—people with the capacity to learn and appreciate just about anything you throw at them—then you get the predictable results. You sell a lot more wine!

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I don’t always cover Napa Valley wines, but when I do, I prefer brands focused on culinary needs best suited to cuisines and restaurants. If they happen to be terroir focused, all the better, since I have always considered wines that express distinctive sense a place to be far more interesting than wines meant to taste just like any other varietal bottling. No apologies. I’m just fussy that way.

Hence, my coverage on the past, present and future endeavors of Sequoia Grove Winery published as the cover story of the current issue of The SOMM Journal (February/March 2026)…

Is it too much to ask for a Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay that is more than just another Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay—even if it’s from a vaunted region like Napa Valley? Therein lies the challenge of any restaurant sommelier conscious of curating a wine list that is truly based on variables of terroir, individuality, vintages and dynamics of evolving tools and styles.

There are, of course, tiny, handcraft brands that fulfill these objectives. Rare, however, are the brands that do the same while being sold in every state of the Union, plus numerous export markets. Size is the eternal challenge. The plain fact of the wine industry is that the bigger the brand, the less handcraft or terroir driven its wines. Wines become the dreaded “c” word—corporate.

Through, well, crafty design and long term planning, Napa Valley’s Sequoia Grove Winery has evolved in a completely opposite direction. While nearing five decades since its founding in 1979, rather than going down the road of uniformity and sameness this estate vineyard driven brand has only increased its commitment to individuality in terms of both style and terroir. All while maintaining a yearly production of 30,000-35,000 cases; the majority of that, Cabernet Sauvignon (15,000-20,000 cases).

Sommeliers will love the fact that, on sensory levels, the most recent vintages of Sequoia Grove wines have become more acid driven and perceptively restrained in oak and alcohol—attributes favorable to vineyard distinctions. You not only taste “Napa Valley” in the Sequoia Grove wines, the winery is also releasing bottlings that taste distinctively of sub-appellations drilled down as far as “East” and “West Rutherford Bench.” Make no mistake, this has more to do with control of grapes from the ground up as opposed to decisions made by winemakers; although it helps to have a winemaker with a built-in sense of restraint, which describes Sequoia Grove winemaker Jesse Fox.

Although Fox brought over 20 years of previous winemaking experience before joining Sequoia Grove in 2021, he doesn’t hesitate to attribute his obsession with achieving detailed, balanced styles of wine to his original career as a chef, plying his trade at restaurants such as French Laundry, after graduating from Cornell and #1 in his class at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. When you taste the latest Sequoia Grove wines, it is as if you are experiencing the meticulousness of a chef.

Fox summarizes what he calls Sequoia Grove’s “new chapter” in the following fashion:

Winemaking will continue to focus on purity, balance and complexity, but will be more about world class vineyards. With the addition of vineyards on Mount Veeder and State Lane in Yountville to our historic vineyards on the west and east side of the Rutherford bench [Sequoia Grove’s estate controlled vineyards now total 100 acres], we are now able to showcase distinctive Cabernet Sauvignons through three of Napa Valley’s most expressive terroirs: Mountain power, benchland structure, and valley floor elegance. While Cabernet remains our core, Chardonnay is a major pillar of who we are, solidified by sourcing from benchmark sites like Hyde and Hudson.

Even a culinary minded winemaker like Fox, however, acknowledges that, as the age-old wisdom goes, great wine is made in the vineyard: In the case of Sequoia Grove, something that has fallen in the hands of Director of Vineyards Jake Terrell since 2016. Like Fox, Terrell focuses his craft on achieving sensory distinctions in the bottle through continuous work in the areas of soil health and mapping, biodiversity, regenerative practices, and perhaps most tantamount to Sequoia Grove’s current direction, the matching of each variety and clonal selection to the soil types they are best suited.

A recognized leader in sustainability, Terrell has played key roles in revising California’s Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices while establishing Sequoia Grove as one of the first grower/wineries to earn stringent Napa Green certifications as both a vineyard and winery.

A history of estate focused winegrowing

Sequoia Grove is no stranger to estate vineyard farming. The brand started that way in 1979 when founder/brothers Jim and Steve Allen acquired 24 acres of what would become the Sequoia Grove Estate, located right off of Hwy. 29 on the west side of Napa Valley’s Rutherford AVA. The winery quickly established itself as a highly visible local landmark, marked by majestic coastal redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) in front of the original winery barn, since converted into a tasting room. When the Kopf Family—founders of Kobrand Wine & Spirits, who first took Sequoia Grove national in 1985—purchased the winery from the Allen family in 2002, they began investing over $25 million in vineyard expansion as well as a modern winery geared towards small lot production, built behind the original barn.

There are historical reasons why Sequoia Grove has come to specialize in Cabernet Sauvignon. The brand’s fifth vintage, a 1985, took the lofty title of “Best American Cabernet Sauvignon” in the American Wine Competition; a distinction repeated by its 1987 vintage. On the strength of consecutive years of Cabernet Sauvignon excellence, the International Wine Review recognized Sequoia Grove as “1988 Winery of the Year.”

While establishing long term relationships with a number of Napa Valley’s most prestigious growers, the winery began a program of vineyard acquisition, beginning in 2006 with a 34-year lease of the 50-acre Tonella Ranch on the east side of the Rutherford AVA. Tonella is a growth of impeccable lineage: Tracing its roots to 1922 when it was established by J.J. Ponti on a property alongside Georges de Latour III, subsequently going into many of the famed Beaulieu Private Reserves. Ponti, in fact, was the man who hired the legendary André Tchelistcheff for Beaulieu Vineyard in 1938. Before establishing his winery, Jim Allen himself was deeply inspired by the work of Tchelistcheff, who served as consultant for Sequoia Grove for 13 years, almost up until his death in 1994.

Most recently, Sequoia Grove has bolstered its Cabernet Sauvignon through acquisitions or long term contracts with the following properties:

State Lane Estate Vineyard, Yountville AVA—18 acres purchased in 2022 on a site previously renowned for wines such as Beringer Private Reserve; distinguished by well drained gravelly to rocky soils on the Napa River alluvial fan, similar to the rocky soils of iconic vineyards such as ToKalon.

Mount Veeder Estate Vineyard, Mount Veeder AVA—The most recent acquisition (2023), a 108-acre property (30 acres currently planted) on, indeed, “mountain” slopes ranging from 1,450 to 1,750 feet; completely replanted, with terraces removed in favor of vineyard slopes following the more natural contours of slopes of all aspects, with most of the property planned to remain as natural woodland.

Morisoli Vineyard, Rutherford AVA—Highly regarded 9-acre Rutherford bench vineyard managed by fourth and fifth generation Napa Valley growers Gary and Chris Morisoli, producing quintessential Rutherford style Cabernet Sauvignon forming a backbone of Sequoia Grove wines sine 1988..

Stagecoach Vineyard, Atlas Peak AVA—The famed, rock strewn vineyard planted 900-1,850 feet atop Napa Valley’s eastern edge; since 2001, the source of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot grown for Sequoia Grove on an 18-acre parcel.

“The short term objective,” says Fox, “is to take the winery entirely in-house. Although there are obvious advantages to sourcing from diverse sources within Napa Valley, we identify most strongly with Rutherford where 75% of our estate vineyards are located. I’d say that in about about 5 years we’ll be 85%-90% estate, primarily Rutherford based. We have already embarked on label redesigns underlining our movement towards wines of place.”

Culinary Chardonnays

The challenge of all contemporary California Chardonnays is still market expectations of full bodied wines with pronounced oak influence. Fox, however, takes the route of sculpting wines with just enough restraint and perceptible acid balance to strike a keener balance with cuisines of multiple cultural influences. This style, according to Fox, calls for native yeast fermentation and farming for enough malic acid to incur natural malolactic fermentation. There is lees stirring but it is stopped following ML, with alcohols ending up at about 13.5% ABV.

The 2023 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Chardonnay ($38) consists of six vineyards, although half the wine comes from Haire Vineyard in Carneros, sourced from blocks planted to Old Wente selections and the Robert Young clone (Wente clone 17)—heritage California selections chosen for their pronounced citrus acidity. The nose has a pronounced floral fragrance penetrating a veil of creamy/vanillin nuances (11 months French oak, 1/3 new). There is a slightly phenolic, meaty feel to its silky, crisp, ultra-fine texturing.

By way of contrast, the 2023 Sequoia Grove Haire Vineyard Carneros Chardonnay ($55) evinces a tart stone fruit freshness, a lemon/citrus perfume and pronounced acidity in a long, meaty, almost chewy palate feel. According to Fox, “This is a style of Chardonnay that evolves in the bottle, but it is already steered by its acidity, coating the palate with citrus oil, and in the way it veers towards wet limestone, an almost briny minerality, towards the finish.”

In 2026 the first bottling of 2023 Sequoia Grove Hyde Vineyard Carneros Chardonnay ($75) will be released, sourced entirely from the Hyde family’s Old Wente Livermore selections, renowned for their “hens and chicks” cluster morphology. It is intense, markedly spicy and lush in citrusy perfume; while tart, seamless, focused in its citrus profile—as opposed to tasting of its elévage (11 months French oak, 1/3 new, followed by 5 months in steel)—and linear (rather than “opulent”) in its lifted, acid driven levity.

Terroir driven Cabernet Sauvignons

Slated for 2026 release, the 2022 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($55) is a balance of Rutherford (51%), Atlas Peak, Coombsville, Howell Mt. and Calistoga; 82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 7% Merlot, 2% Malbec, 2% Petit Verdot: Purplish ruby color; focused cassis, earth and dried kitchen herb tones; rich, deep, log, velvety sense of depth.

Says Fox, “By sourcing from the highest quality vineyards, the wine represents Napa Valley as a whole, building palate feel and the weight of polyphenols [longer chain phenolic compounds, combining color and tannin} at the center of the tongue... it’s what Napa Valley does better than everywhere else in the world.”

Since the core of the wine, however, is Rutherford, adds Fox, “There are always savory elements, along with a powdery tannin, in our Napa Valley blends. The Coombsville components adds freshness and acid backbone, Calistoga a concentrated fruit quality typical of a warmer climate, with an iron-like minerality coming from Stagecoach, a volcanic vineyard with red, rocky soil.”

The exciting news is the first national release (in 2026) of the 2022 Sequoia Grove Tonella Vineyard Rutherford-Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($140); previous vintages, starting with a 2014, were sold strictly DTC. Typical of Rutherford growths, a predominance of Cabernet Sauvignon (98%, bolstered by just 2% Petit Verdot) does not mitigate the wine’s long and velvety feel underlined by the “powdery tannin” that Fox identifies with the AVA. There is a cassis-like intensity with black veering towards blue toned berry qualities, with an overall feel of elegance for which the appellation is known.

The 2022 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Cambium ($225)—the proprietary name, as an homage to sequoias, referring to the actively growing layer in trees between the inner bark and sapwood—is the brand’s Napa Valley appellated téte de cuvée; in 2022, 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot (from a 1,900-foot slope in Stagecoach), 2% Petit Verdot: Black ruby, chocolaty rich and intense, nearly confectionary in its voluptuous fruit with floral/violet nuances; dense, thick, full bodied yet rounded, textured, coming across as meticulously sculpted in its tannin and multifaceted fruit intensity.

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The future in vineyard-designate Cabernet Sauvignons

As André Tchelistcheff once famously said, “It takes Rutherford dust to grow great Cabernet.” Hence, to demonstrate the brand’s identification with this historic AVA, Fox and Terrell felt compelled to preview three of their vineyard-designate bottlings from the 2023 vintage—future releases not planned until 2027—illustrating the winery’s increased focus on terroir driven wines.

First, there was a comparison of the 2023 Sequoia Grove Tonella Vineyard Rutherford-Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($145) and the 2023 Sequoia Grove Rutherford Estate Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($175): A comparison, as Terrell put it, of “Eastern Rutherford Bench [Tonella] and Western Rutherford Bench [Estate].” Whereas the 2023 Tonella is still nearly black in color and strapping in tannin structure, it wears its terroir with a profile of herby blackcurrant/cassis laced with tobacco and savory herbs suggesting rosemary and thyme, and a finesseful feel avoiding a heavy or ponderous impact.

The 2023 Estate, says Fox, is more like “the Châteauneuf du Pape of Rutherford— fuller bodied, more structured in tannin and notably bigger in brambly fruit... While located two miles apart, the two Rutherford vineyards are planted to the same clonal selection [identified as the Weimer clone]... The differences are in the deeper alluvial soils with more organic material on the west side, compared to the more gravelly, less vigorous sandy loam of Tonella on the east side. In the vineyard, this results in lighter canopy on the east side—the sensory impact being, West Rutherford Cabernets are more brambly and East Rutherford Cabernets more herbal.”

A product of exceptionally well drained, shallow, stony Cortina series gravelly alluvium, the 2023 Sequoia Grove State Lane Estate Vineyard Yountville-Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($195) is plummy, ripe toned (blackberry/blueberry), and exceptionally dense and savory. Remarks Fox, “The rocky soils gives the wine its distinctive mineral backdrop, although this vintage is a little of an outlier for us because it is blended with 24% Malbec, which has since been torn out with the recent replantings.”

Veering away from the Rutherford profile, the 2023 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Cambium ($225) is already assembled from select cuvées from Mount Veeder, Yountville, Oakville, and Saint Helena; 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Malbec, 4% Petit Verdot. While elegantly composed in the house style, it is a showier style of wine: Opaque purplish ruby, deep, dense, big, powerful, concentrated and densely textured with almost over-the-top tannin.

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Fox summarizes Sequoia Grove’s next steps by saying: “By the time the 2023 reds come out, Sequoia Grove expects to be predominantly estate grown. They won’t, perhaps, be wines that you drink by themselves; but rather, more ideally with food. We are doubling down on our philosophy of balance and vineyard expression.” For a national—make that international—brand, a laudable accomplishment indeed.

The original text of my Bottom Line column published in the latest The SOMM Journal (February/March 2026) chronicles a tasting of six Cabernet Franc-based red wines with a winemaker and wine-savvy restaurateur.

Since our tasting, the winemaker, Steven Kent Mirassou, publicly voiced misgivings about talking about wines in context of foods; saying: “The more I thought about this afternoon in subsequent days, and the more I consulted my notes about the pairings, the more convinced I became that the whole wine/food thing is a barrier to the growth of enthusiasm for wine.”

As is my wont, I respectfully disagreed with my winemaker/friend. In my own experience, talking about wine in terms of food is probably the most effective way of communicating the appreciation of wines for the simple reason that the vast majority of consumers understand food far more easily than wines.

We come out of the womb craving sustenance, and by the time we are toddlers we understand exactly what we love to eat and why. We do not, however, get the chance to appreciate wines until we are adults; and even so, for economic and social reasons most of us (at least in America) don’t really get “into” craftier styles of wine until we are in our late 30s or 40s. Of course, wine seems “complicated!”

Just last week, I was curious about how Google AI summarizes my work in the restaurant industry, my full-time occupation for the first 30 years of my adult life. One of the highlights pulled out by the big monster in the cloud is that I have always operated wine programs with the following objective, as quoted directly from the AI:

"Think Like a Chef Philosophy—[Randy Caparoso has] pioneered a culinary-driven approach to wine programs, teaching staff to treat wine as a food ingredient that must balance a dish's flavors. This shifted the focus from ‘prestige’ labels to originality and food compatibility.”

For example, it is not a matter of introducing a guest to Cabernet Franc as a grape that originated in Bordeaux, France, and is even one of the progenitors of Cabernet Sauvignon. Who cares? The important thing is that it makes a lighter, smoother style of red wine with a zestiness that complements a lot of dishes, from a roasted salmon to mushroom ravioli and a grilled steak in a fruit or herb infused sauce. Then it becomes meaningful!

This approach has always held my restaurants in good stead. It allowed us to serve extremely complex dishes with unusually esoteric wines. Being “different” is how we distinguished ourselves. Yet no matter how unusual, if you present a wine in terms of how it tastes with food, and how it fits into your life or personal needs, it makes it easier for the average guest to identify with it. Wine, in this sense, is not rocket science, requiring years and years of “masterly” studies.

Hence, one of the “Bottom Line” messages in the following article: If you want to communicate wine, communicate it in a way that means something to most people: The foods they love to eat. The story…

In the restaurant industry, it has always been harder to sell Cabernet Franc than Cabernet Sauvignon. Most consumers prefer darker, riper, big and richly oaked reds. Over the past few years, however, consumer preferences have shifted towards lighter reds with sharper acid, while being underripe or even devoid of oak have become qualities in themselves. Is this Cabernet Franc’s time?

There is a vigneron in Livermore Valley named Steven Kent Mirassou who thinks so. Mirassou is a sixth generation California grower/winemaker who originally founded his Steven Kent Winery on the premise that Cabernet Sauvignon is ideally suited to Livermore Valley terroir, and that Cabernet Franc is, at best, a foil for blending—a weaker, wimpier brother from another mother. What changed?

Says Mirassou, “I tasted, for the first time, real Cabernet Franc... [after reading] Kermit Lynch’s book Adventures on the Wine Route. I was compelled to taste the wines he had discovered... I bought some of the vintages of what he had and found a vinous signpost for myself. The wines of Joguet and the Bretons, eminent producers from the Loire Valley, flaunted their austerity and shoved their acidity right up in your face, fruit parading like a hooker in the old Times Square.”

What Mirassou began to perceive, even in cold, underripe vintages such as 2011 and 2015, was that the notoriously green, herbaceous aromas of Cabernet Franc have something “mysterious” about them, and a “bottomlessness that comes around with time in the bottle, which does magical things with foods Cabernet Sauvignon can never touch.”

To test his hypothesis, I recently got together with Mirassou at Uncle Yu’s, a Livermore restaurant long known to Bay Area foodies for its innovative Chinese cuisine and Japanese slant, plus a smart Euro-centric wine list curated by owner Nick Liang.

From Kermit Lynch’s landmark Berkeley wine store, I picked up three entry level Loire reds made entirely from Cabernet Franc, each true to their appellations: A lean, decidedly tart and violet scented 2024 Thierry Germain Saumur-Champigny; a pungently earthy, rustic 2024 Bourgueil by Catherine et Pierre Breton; and a plump, round yet svelte 2022 Charles Joguet Chinon Cuvée Terroir.

Mirassou, Liang and I tasted the purely varietal Loire reds—that is, none showing even the slightest whisper of oak influence—alongside the light, smooth and lanky 2022 Steven Kent Livermore Valley Cabernet Franc, a richer, rounder, deeper, mildly oak nuanced 2021 Steven Kent Ghielmetti Vineyard Cabernet Franc, and a lusher, plusher, Right Bank Bordeaux inspired 2021 L’Autre Côte by Steven Kent crafted from Cabernet Franc (85%), Merlot (10%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (5%).

First, what was almost weird is none of the pure Cabernet Franc-based reds from France were particularly strong in methoxypyrazine. We found more herbaceousness, along with milder acidity, in the three California reds. The question, though, is what these sensory factors do with food. We tried three fusion style dishes:

Roast duck marinated in tea leaves and maltose, five-spice Mandarin noodles—Both Liang and Mirassou zoomed in on two wines, the pure and pristinely fruited Chinon and the lush, rounded Livermore Valley L’Autre Côte as their favorite matches; finding that the bright acidity of the French red accentuated the anise/licorice seasonings in the dish, while the plump Merlot component in the California blend smoothed over the caramelized maltose (i.e., rice-based sugar) crispness of the duck.

Rack of lamb with rosemary and Szechuan pepper—While the gamy meat’s powerful infusion of sugar, peppers, herbs and soy sauce ran roughshod over most of the wines, Mirassou cited a savory “explosion” of umami-driven flavors brought out by the earthy Bourgueil, whereas Liang praised the “pop” of interaction between fennel seed, rosemary and Ghielmetti Vineyard Cabernet Franc.

Snake River Wagyu steaks with shiitake, pearl onion and mini-heirloom tomatoes—Multi-layered, ultra-umami-infused dishes like this make you think “power” reds like Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah, but the advantage of Cabernet Franc is its mild, balancing tannin. Mirassou remarked this dish “shut down” the Chinon yet “accentuated” the two herby Livermore Valley Cabernet Francs; although for Liang, it was the Saumur-Champigny which “cut through the rich flavors with its edgy acid/tannin structure” that proved the best match.

Conclusions: Herbaceousness is not nearly as much of a sensory factor of Cabernet Franc-based reds in food contexts as commonly assumed, although use of herbs or vegetables can tie a dish to a Cabernet Franc. It is more, though, about balance, relative lightness (generally in the 12.5%-13.5% ABV range), moderate tannin and, above all, perceptible acidity—all adding up to food versatility, particularly in the fusion style, umami driven cooking popular in our restaurants today.

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The original text of my Bottom Line column published in the June/July 2024 issue of The SOMM Journal.

Our restaurants garnered their share of “best in nation” awards. It just wasn’t for the reasons you may think.

After we earned one award for our wine program in 1995, my home phone rang in the middle of a family dinner (I was in the habit of being home with the kids just before the dinner shift). It was the editor of the country’s biggest wine consumer magazine, which shall not be named, calling to ask: “If your wine list is that good, why haven’t you been submitting it to our annual Grand Awards?”

I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it probably went like this: “Your Grand Awards reward the biggest wine lists with the largest number of prestige wines. Our wine list is the exact opposite—we keep it small as possible on purpose, to have the least amount of classic or prestigious wines. Instead, we go for wines that go best with our food, and primarily wines that fall in the price range most of our guests are buying. In terms of quality, it’s mostly about originality, or wines by winemakers who prioritize balance or sense of place… I’m a little old fashioned about that.

“But… if you change your criteria to make it more like ours, and start handing out Grand Awards for ‘best food compatibility,’ I’d be happy to enter our list!” He said thanks and hung up.

A few months later, though, both of our families sat down to a nice dinner in our restaurant on Maui. No hard feelings. But my wine list still wasn’t eligible for his magazine’s top award.

This, of course, was never to be critical of restaurants that do chase “Grand” awards. To each their own. It’s not so much the decisions you make as the way you execute them. Our strategy worked for us because, to put it bluntly, we prioritized profit. This is not to say we didn’t prioritize prestige. We really and truly wanted to be counted among the finest restaurants in the world, not the finest wine restaurant. We were ambitious in our own way.

In that sense, our definition of prestige had more to do with what you experienced at a table on a sensory level, rather than a perceived prestige. What we cared about was: Is this the best dinner you had in your life? Do you appreciate our caring service? Does the wine we suggested go great with your dishes? I can also tell you from experience, this type of prestige was never incompatible with profit, which was our main objective in life.

One of the ways to achieve that is to turn the concept of “prestige wine list” inside-out. You can, for instance, do it the usual way, by carrying monthly inventories in excess of $100,000, expecting to post at least $50,000 in monthly sales. We, however, preferred to carry monthly inventories of less than $25,000 while selling more than $50,000. Turning over your inventory two, three or more times each month is, simply, preferable to settling for sales amounting to just a small percentage of your standing inventory. I know it can be done because we did it.

I would also argue that it is not how many wines you sell, it’s the wines you sell. Put yourself in your guests’ shoes. What impresses you most—finding a handful of fantastically original wines that go perfectly with dishes, or finding volumes of big-name wines with little connection to what impresses you on a sensory or intellectual level, or the dishes you need to complement?

If you’re like me, when handed a big wine list in a restaurant, you make it your mission to sift through all the pages to find those one or two wines that are truly exciting or momentous. What if you were to make it your mission as a restaurant manager to dispense with all those pages, and create a wine list that only lists wines that are exciting or momentous, leaving out all that fluff? This is what a great, small, profit driven list is all about. Cutting the chaff from the wheat well before a guest walks through the door.

I often used to say this kind of program takes courage. The gall to blow off the pressure to have a show-off “Grand Award” list. Increasingly, in this day and age of restaurants constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, it is more like survival instincts. Big wine lists—loaded down with useless, dead inventory—can suck the life out of any restaurant.

For sommeliers, it’s a matter of checking egos at the door. You don’t need to compile or “curate” gigantic libraries of wine. You can expand your self-education by implementing programs based upon flexibility, constant change and creativity; the same way a chef wakes up every day, thinking of new dishes to put together with the highest quality ingredients to be found. I promise you, this kind of approach can very satisfying.

Finally, one of the most underrated benefits of a small, disciplined wine program: It is far easier to train staff on less than 100 wines than thousands of them. Especially if you are constantly changing your list. You can keep your servers thirsty for knowledge by tasting every new selection with them, each step of the way. This is the part of restaurant management that never changes—the smarter the team, the bigger the sales, and more wowed the guests.

That, to me, is the definition of “prestige.”

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Here in 2026, food and hospitality forecasters are struggling more than ever to pinpoint the changes in direction that consumers across America may be taking in terms what they’re eating. It’s getting harder because as our economy continues increase the divergence of social and cultural stratums, consumers invariably move in several directions at once.

In The New York Times article entitled “How We’ll Eat in 2026: More Caution, More Crunch” (December 29, 2025), rather than predicting specific foods, culinary pundits are settling for talking about “quieter tastes, little bursts of pleasure… less-jangling restaurants and healthy foods worthy of the ideal Grandma.”

No question, wine consumption follows culinary cultures. It’s why you drink Chianti with bistecca alla Fiorentina in Tuscany, feathery light rosés with salade Niçoise in the Riviera, Assyrtiko with grilled octopus in Mykonos and Santorini.

In the United States, of course, our cultures are either wildly varying or a decidedly mixed pot. Who the hell knows what we’re supposed to drink?

In a way, though, food trends have always had at least a little impact on what wines are sold in America. In the early 2000s, for instance, when the Atkins Diet made it “okay” to consume beef, and lots of it, it was easy as pie for restaurants to sell Cabernet Sauvignon, a quintessential “steak wine.” We just left the potatoes off the plate.

The big scare right this moment, though, is beef prices are going through the roof (re The New York Times’ “As the Price of Beef Soars, Restaurants are in ‘Code Red’ Mode”). What will that mean for Cabernet Sauvignon sales? Can’t be too good.

So what might we expect the ramifications of 2026’s projected food trends to be for wine consumption? A few thoughts, following the categories outlined by The Times:

“Foodmaxing Meets Grandmacore”

By referring to “grandmacore,” The Times celebrates everything a proverbial “grandma” might have made, such as “sourdough bread, dried apples, sauerkraut and vegetables she canned herself.” In other words, lots of pickled or fermented foods.

The natural match for soured or pickled foods, of course, are white wines with perceptibly tart acidity, towards which American consumers have been steadily moving over the past 5 to 10 years. This is in stark contrast to 30, 40 years ago when the only white wines domestic wine producers could get consumers to buy were medium-sweet Chenin Blancs and Rieslings, fat and fruity Chardonnays or soft and creamy Fumé Blancs. Today, there are actual categories for razor sharp, dry Chenin Blancs and Rieslings, and the acid edged wines we couldn’t give away 40 years ago (think Albariño, Picpoul de Pinet, Greco Di Tufo, Grüner Veltliner, Savennièrres) are now in demand. Pét-Nats, the darling of the cool-kid crowd, wouldn’t exist without the current taste for wines that make your tongue feel like they’re stuck in a socket.

If anything, “grandmacore” may be the case of a food trend finally catching up to an already established wine trend. Consumers now want it tart.

“Extra Texture”

Quoting Andrew Freeman of San Francisco’s AF & Co., The Times says, “This is the generation of fluffy, chewy, smooth, crunch, melty… chewy is on track to become the new crunchy.”

“Chewy,” of course, is a sensory impression, not a specific food type. The Times cites the “shattering pastry” of TikTok notoriety (many vintners would love to be a TikTok “snackable,” but I have yet to know of one that has) as well as freeze-dried candy, none of which suggests a possible corresponding wine trend.

As a palate feel, the closest thing I can think of is the combination of bitter phenolics and sharp acidity common to many orange wines, of which the jury is still out. It’s been at least 10 years since average wine consumers first came to understand that these are not wines made from oranges, but rather faintly tinted wines deriving their opposing textures from white wine grapes fermented on their skins.

Over the past two or so years I have read prognostications saying orange wines are still “in” and orange wines are now “dead.” Handcraft producers I know who are still tooling around with the category seem to be indicating that consumer response is neither here nor there⏤but there is just enough interest to keep it going. For now.

Are orange wines the culinary equivalent of chewy foods? If it is, it is a quaint and quiet one, amusing in its presumption.

“Ingredient of the Year: Vinegar”

“The quality and styles of vinegars available to home cooks will continue to expand,” we learn, for the same reason “Filipino cuisine [in which vinegar is an essential ingredient] continues to increase in popularity.”

We are basically talking, again, about the ever-increasing taste for tartness, or acidity. Although tart and minerally dry wines have always been our preference, it’s funny that, more and more, my own family has been putting out salad greens on the table with no more than a bottle of vinegar to sprinkle on the leaves. Lately, for instance, I’ve been enthralled by a prickly and perfumed barrique aged Rosé Wine Vinegar from Emilia-Romagna made from a rare, high acid black skinned grape called Ancellotta that costs less than most Italian balsamics. As much as we love olive oil, we just don’t need it on salads anymore. Even our tastes are constantly, and almost unconsciously, changing.

The Times’ 2026 ingredient of the year is just one more sign that consumer preferences are never static. Consumers themselves don’t need to be reminded of their evolving tastes. It’s mainly a caveat for those of us in the wine and hospitality industries who remain slow on the uptake. Either adjust, or die.

“Backyard Bounty”

“Politics isn’t the only realm in which the United States has turned inward. Americans are looking in their own backyard for ingredients are uniquely theirs,” writes The Times. 15, 20 years ago we were calling it “locavorism.” It may be the exact same thing, but media, evidently, needs to keep redefining it in order to have something to talk about.

Although “drink local” has always been a bewildering concept. In the ‘90s, for instance, I remember how in the tony San Francisco restaurants “local” meant Sonoma County, Napa Valley or... Burgundy in France. Meanwhile, wineries in nearby Livermore Valley and Santa Barbara used to complain that they couldn’t make a dent in the Bay Area. Heck, from just across the Bay in Berkeley, Kermit Lynch had a hard time penetrating the San Francisco market.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, restaurants still buy and sell wines from either Napa Valley or Amador County. Wines from Lodi, the wine region closest to Sacramento, are pooh-poohed. Do you think New York wines predominate on wine lists in New York City? Hardly. American chefs might be partial to local foodstuffs, but not restaurant wine buyers and sommeliers when it comes to local wines. Appreciation of “backyard bounty” makes sense—and you do see it here and there (Washington and Oregon markets, for instance, take pride in their own vinous products)—but it is never as much of a priority as frequently thought, even by The Times.

“Kitchen Couture”

This is a reference to commercial foods such as tinned fish and olive oil packaged in sophisticated colors and designs that, to consumers, “mirror their inner lives, not just their tastes,” to quote Chef Alon Chen. In other words, Americans are predicted to be just as shallow as ever, falling for labels or containers that they only imagine mean a delicious, personally meaningful experience, regardless of what’s actually in the can, box or bottle.

This news is more dour than hopeful. Wine sales, of course, are famously driven by labels or packaging, the direction of which is perpetually impossible to gauge. Branding is all over the map, from low key and minimalist to showy, busy and/or colorful, peculiar or pretentious. Although good taste is sensory, it is always in the eye of the beholder. One thing we always know, though: If the wine inside is either substandard or average, it damned well better have an appealing label. If the wine is outstanding or of incredible value, it sells no matter what kind of label it has. Haute couture, indeed!

“Heightened Sensitivity”

This is all about the increasing number of restaurants reporting guests requesting quieter tables where they can experience food with a focus reminiscent of the ritualized service of tea ceremonies, amounting to “a move from whimsical to purpose-driven sensory experiences.”

The only thing this could possibly mean is that a growing number of guests are looking for more than a culinary experience. More than how dishes or wines taste. They want something that meets their current cultural or emotional needs. Really, I can understand that. As distrustful as I am of quiet restaurants with very few guests sitting nearby (a slow restaurant is often a sign of a shitty one), I do love a hushed atmosphere in which we can focus primarily on our wines and dishes, and gaze into each other’s eyes.

Over the past year, mostly out of panic-stricken response to the drop in consumer consumption, many industry pundits and consultants have been advising that wine marketing should focus more on the emotional connections with the consumer, and less on the usual litany of winemaking or vineyard distinctions.

In a recent conversation with a handcraft vintner who hand-sells all of his own wine, he made the interesting observation: All sales approaches depend on the customer. The more important thing when deciding how to communicate is “letting folks show their cards first... if they are curious about how a wine is made, you can spot that right away and go down a rabbit hole, but if they just want you to suggest something without any insights from the winemaker, then you just open the bottle and leave them the hell alone.”

If, however, there is a trend towards “heightened sensitivity,” this means even greater opportunity to sell wines of profound quality. I’ve always called them “meditation” wines—wines of such lofty stature or intellectual appeal, you almost want to save them to sip with special friends or colleagues, and take the time talk about them. You know—good ol’ fashioned wine geeking. Like rock and roll, it will never die.

If anything, price is no longer the criteria by which such wines are measured; especially since high priced prestige wines are now, in a manner of speaking, a dime a dozen. Far more important is rarity—rarity of the appellation or a vineyard, their history and grapes, the aesthetic choices of a winemaker. A wine is meditative only when it is, in fact, phenomenal. Thank heaven for “heightened sensitivity.”

“Word of the Year: Value”

This is not what you think, since value has long ceased to mean the least expensive choices; but rather, for consumers, the most “discriminating... unique experiences and quality food from different cultures—especially from sustainable sources they can trust.” For the “ultra-wealthy,” of course, this still means willingness to spend “thousands of dollars,” but for many others it will be “reasonable three-course prix fixe” dinners, as long as “it delivers on taste.”

It goes without saying that both restaurants and the wine industry at large have recently felt the crunch of “value” as a prevailing criteria. Despite the downturn in consumption, however, in recent years the American wine industry has been increasing its revenue by the billions. Simply put, consumers are drinking less but spending more, whether they need to or not.

What do I mean by that? In fine dining restaurants, for instance, we have long known that it’s nearly impossible to sell a bottle of wine for less than $40, but if we mark them up to $65 or $75, they sell like hotcakes. A lot of people outside the industry think this is how the restaurants rip off consumers, when in reality it’s all about restaurants kowtowing to the peculiarities of average guests. “Value” is just as much a state of mind as ever.

“Small-Batch Hospitality”

For restaurants, a downscaled hospitality means increased appeal of “informed, personal service that feels genuine, not scripted... smaller restaurants with shorter menus” in order to create “the surprise and delight moments.”

What makes me laugh about this forecast is I recently went to a local The Cheesecake Factory, still housed in a gymnasium-sized room, offering a menu bigger than a Chinese restaurant’s and service as lackluster and random as ever. Yet still, I had to wait over an hour for a table. No matter, because while we waited among the crowd we were treated to an entirely gauche, gigantic yet entertaining three-screen video on the wall showing all The Cheesecake Factory dishes plus (of course!) a dozen and a half different cheesecakes, in full living color.

So much for The Times’ prediction of small, mindful dining. Just one night of business rendered by The Cheesecake Factory stores across the country crushes that quaint little idea into insignificance the way a single chop off Jimi Hendrix’s left-handed guitar knocks off the side of a mountain in “Voodoo Child.” This is America, not a nation of teahouses.

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All the same, there is no doubt that “small batch” does indeed have a corresponding trend in the wine industry: Small-batch, handcrafted wines are in bigger demand than ever. Why? Because that’s what today’s consumers want, the same way consumers in the ‘60s and ‘70s began rejecting generic jug wines with screw caps in favor of smaller production varietals bottled in fifths with genu-wine cork. It is quite clear that many of today’s consumers are openly rebelling against the assembly line products of giant companies. Instead, they are looking for less predictable wines with attributes as different as possible from that of commercialized wines.

It is, as always, the consumer’s prerogative; and like it or not, it’s happening as we speak.

The original text of an article published in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of The SOMM Journal.

In 2025 Bien Nacido Estate—an 800-acre property tucked into a canyon on the eastern edge of Santa Barbara’s Santa Maria Valley AVA—celebrates its 20th year as a wine brand. The vineyard itself, of course, has an even longer history; its importance to the entire California wine industry, incalculable.

In 1969 this historic site, originally called Rancho Tepusquet, was purchased by brothers Stephen and Bob Miller, fifth generation California farmers. The Millers renamed it Bien Nacido, for “well born,” taking pains to preserve the property’s original adobe home built by its first owner Tomás Olivera, who was rewarded the ranch on a Spanish land grant in 1837, when California was still part of Mexico.

In 1973 the Millers planted the first of what soon became 300 acres of Pinot noir and Chardonnay. These weren’t the first vineyards planted in Santa Barbara, but they quickly became the most acclaimed. At a high point, over 60 different wineries—primarily prestigious, handcraft brands—were sourcing fruit from Bien Nacido each year (the number hovers around 40 today). Pioneering icons, such as Au Bon Climat and Qupe, set up shop right on the property.

The Millers did not invent the concept, but Bien Nacido is known for the most vineyard-designate bottlings in the state of California, hence the country, perhaps the world. For the industry, this became the standard for smart vineyard marketing; for consumers, one more step towards grasping the concept of terroir—the supremacy of “place” associated with all the world’s finest wines, even if slow to catch on in America.

Today Bien Nacido is still operated by Stephen Miller (President/CEO) and his two sons Nicholas (Sales & Marketing) and Marshall (Finance & Operations).

I recently sat down with Anthony Avila, the Bien Nacido Estate winemaker since 2019, who explained the significance of the brand’s 20th year. According to Avila, “The Miller family had long thought that they should produce wines under their own label, but didn’t take the plunge until 2005.” For most of the past two decades, the family’s approach to entering the markets across the country has been low key, even quiet, while carrying a big stick because, as Avila points out, “We have always had first choice of the property’s best fruit, from the blocks with the longest history of great wine.”

For most of the brand’s history Bien Nacido Estate wines have hovered around 1,500 cases; in recent years it has climbed to 2,500. In 2023 a roadside, adobe inspired tasting room, called The Gatehouse, was completed, although they have only recently begun to hold public events, such as multi-course dinners and 1-hour tasting tours of the vineyard.

Nicholas Miller served as the brand’s first winemaker, producing the wines in a nearby crush facility. In 2011 they brought in a full-time winemaker, Trey Fletcher (formerly of Littorai), after bringing the entire operation on-site by converting an old dairy barn into a winery.

Avila tells us: “The fundamentals of the estate program are unchanged. At the end of the day, the goal is world class wine that tastes, first and last, like Bien Nacido. The vineyard is the ‘star,’ the hard work done in the field.”

Adds Avila, “Bien Nacido has always been farmed sustainably, with organic inputs wherever possible. Nothing is added to the wines except SO2. Oak is ‘reasonable,’ maybe 30%, 40% new at the most, in combinations of barrique and puncheon [double-sized barrels minimizing oak influence]. All the wines most definitely lead with a sense of place. Accordingly, all the wines are unfiltered and unfined, and fermentations are mostly native, inoculated only when necessary.”

Our conversation led to the $64,000 question, which is: What exactly is the taste of “Bien Nacido” preserved in the bottle? Avila answered this, first, by talking about the estate Chardonnay, which begins with block selection: “Our Chardonnay, comes from the two oldest blocks on the property, including own-rooted vines planted in 1973. They were own-rooted, honestly, because at the time the Millers didn’t know better about rootstocks, but the old vines are like people—I think they get more interesting over time, and are better at self-regulating. In the end, though, the older blocks give you more definition and layers of complexity compared to fruit from the younger blocks.”

In terms of sensory ramifications, Avila explains: “The profile of Bien Nacido Chardonnay includes a sense of earthiness, a minerality suggesting chamomile, dried straw mingling with citrus peel and a brioche-like, confectionary quality. On the palate, it’s driven by the natural acidity long prized in Santa Maria Valley, a natural part of cool climate viticulture, where you never have to adjust acid. There is also a phenolic structure almost peculiar to Santa Barbara, which only emphasizes the mineral in the aromatic profile.”

Regarding the Bien Nacido Estate Pinot Noir, Avila tells us: “We pick from the same six blocks—deliberately selected for distinct soil types, varying exposures, different aspects and microclimates⏤which includes hillsides, where vines struggle a little more and produce more phenolics and aromatics, and sandier, flatter parts of the vineyard producing softer, plusher wines.

“Overall, the ‘Bien Nacido Pinot Noir’ profile is a mix of black cherry, cola, a specific exotic spice and a Mandarin citrus-like quality long associated with Santa Maria Valley in general, and Bien Nacido in particular. There is, in fact, a consistent ‘Santa Maria spice,’ which I liken to a mélange of cardamom, clove, cinnamon, Christmas spices. The palate feel balances the richness of phenolic content and a natural perceptible acidity, yet the structure still comes across as soft, a little giving.”

The Current Bien Nacido Estate Collection

2022 Bien Nacido Estate, Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay ($65)

Pale green tinted gold; fragrant, floral (apple blossom), stony/mineral, hazelnut and wild scrub (chaparral-like) notes. Edgy with tart acidity and an almost aged cheese-like savory character in a pointedly steely, medium bodied structure, remaining bright and upbeat in a long and sleek finish.

Adds Avila, “You can taste the phenolic character typical of the vineyard in the citrus pith and mineral on the palate. We do 100% barrel ferments and age in both barriques and puncheons, taking advantage of the lower oxidation and deeper lees beds of the larger formats to emphasize the vineyard’s acid/mineral profile. Finally, wines are pulled out of oak to finish four, five months in tanks before bottling.”

2022 Bien Nacido Estate, Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir ($90)

Medium ruby color; red berried fruit with both fragrant dried herbs and sweet tomato leaf-like nuances; lively, crisp, silken qualities with a faint dollop of vanilla; the classic Bien Nacido profile evident in the pungent kitchen spice and lush, sappy, cherry/strawberry, almost confectionary fruit.

Adds Avila: “Fermentations are done in open-top tanks, typically with a whole cluster component [5% to 20%, depending on the blocks], followed by 16 months in barrel, typically in 40% new oak, before bottling unfiltered.”

2021 Bien Nacido Estate, Santa Maria Valley “Succession” GSM ($75)

60% Syrah, 20% Grenache, 20% Mourvèdre. Opaque purplish ruby; humongous, ringingly spiced nose, mixing the pepper of elevated rotundone with raspberry coulis and sagebrush; the wine’s bracing intensity spilling over onto the palate in waves of dense, velvety, sumptuous textures.

Adds Avila: “The brand has always produced estate Syrah and Grenache, but in 2020 a little bit of Mourvèdre that formerly went to another winery came to us. After picking and aging the parts separately, I put together a “GSM” blend which the Millers loved, a lot! What is more unusual about the 2021 is that it comes from a cooler growing season, even for us; very unique because not a lot of people are making a cold climate style California GSM.

“Rhône grapes in Bien Nacido definitely have a cool climate profile, more tannic, concentrated and elevated in spice. Syrah retains an ultra-dark color, Grenache is focused and lower in alcohol, and Mourvèdre veers into blue fruit characteristics plus brighter acidity and firmer structure compared to Mourvèdres grown elsewhere in the state.”

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The original text of the Bottom Line column in the December 2025/January 2026 of The SOMM Journal.

The other day the daughter of a winery owner—who, naturally, grew up with wine on the table—came up to me and said, “I’ve been studying wine a long time to help with the family business, but the part I have the hardest time with is talking about wine in terms of food. Where do I begin?”\

I told her what I tell everyone fairly new to the industry. That it isn’t nearly as difficult as you think. Think of choosing wines for dishes, or dishes for wines, in the same way as choosing ingredients to put in your dish when you’re cooking. Since both wines and foods end up in the same place, in your mouth, it makes sense to use certain ingredients in proportions to make a dish taste better. The sensory components of wines are like ingredients. It’s just a matter of finding wines with components that balance out a dish, like you would ingredients.

This, in fact, is precisely the way I taught wine and food matching to my restaurant staffs for over 25 years. Since I always worked with excellent chefs, all I ever had to do is point out how chefs use their training and sense of balance to create dishes. As servers, we utilize our training and sense of balance to steer guests to the best possible matches for our chefs’ dishes. And through constant wine/food tastings, my staffs always learned that multiple wines can go with multiple dishes for numerous different reasons. “Think like a chef,” I always told them. There are lots of wines on our list at your disposal. Make good use of them.

I think what gets lost in the translation, though, is the oft-heard opinion that “wine and food pairing,” as the popular American wine writer Alder Yarrow recently put it in a Decanter (Aug. 2025) article, “is a load of bunk... bullshit... junk science... vistigial dogma.” Alder, who is a friend of mine, really hates wine/food talk. Obviously, he does not see things from the perspective of restaurants where people go primarily to eat, not drink wine.

Again, if you think like a chef, the objective is to choose ingredients to make the best possible dishes. That’s what people want. It’s also why the objective of both wine lists and servers is to help guests find wines that result in the best possible sensory experiences. Why settle for second or third best? That’s not how competitive restaurants operate. Therefore, we should think about things like loading up our lists with wines that taste great with our dishes, and training our staffs to think seriously about this craft, rather than being passive participants who just take orders.

The interesting thing about the Decanter article is that the editors didn’t let Yarrow have the last word. They also included remarks by Fiona Beckett, a brilliant British pundit, who offered this common sense observation: “I struggle to understand why, if a particular wine is important to you, you would be content to serve it with something that wouldn’t show it at its best. It would be a ‘why bother?’ attitude you almost certainly wouldn’t bring to wine. Would any wine lover say, ‘Why stress about finding a good wine when anything red, alcoholic and thirst-quenching will do?’ Almost certainly not.”

Good, sensible wine and food matching matters; always has, always will, especially in restaurants. It’s not like your job is to “teach” guests what the best wines are for dishes. It’s more a matter of gentle, or even sneaky, nudging towards what makes your dishes taste best, which in turn shows the wines you’ve selected, and ultimately your restaurant, in the best possible light. This is our job. A priority, not a suggestion.

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The original text of an article published in the October/November issue of The SOMM Journal on a 2-day exploration of the vineyards and Cabernet Sauvignon based wines of Alexander Valley, punctuated by winemaker panel/tastings moderated by this reporter. The story, beautifully illustrated by photographs taken by Tim Vallery of Peloton Photo…

Terroir means everything and nothing. It means everything from the perspective that all the natural circumstances in which a grapevine grows has a direct impact on the quality of resulting grapes, and consequently the wines made from those grapes.

It means nothing unless we can talk about the sensory qualities of resulting wines in a way that differentiates them from other wines. There are too many books and articles that talk day and night about the climate, soils and topographies of different regions, making absolute no connection to how any of that matters in the glass.

Hence, this past April’s 12th Annual Alexander Valley Cabernet Academy, organized by Alexander Valley Winegrowers (alexandervalley.org), in which sommeliers were invited to walk through different parts of the Alexander Valley AVA and then sit down to taste the actual sensory differences, thus putting two and two together: Terroir matters.

First, some basics:

• Alexander Valley, first defined as an AVA in 1984, occupies the northeast corner of Sonoma County, in the vicinities of Healdsburg, Geyersville and Cloverdale.

• It is not a gigantic AVA—approximately 20 miles long and 8 miles wide—but Alexander Valley’s 15,000 acres of grapes produces over 25% of all the wines grown in Sonoma County (the latter consisting of another 18 AVAs).

• Alexander Valley’s climate, like that of most of California’s coastal regions influenced by the Pacific Ocean, is squarely Mediterranean; meaning, cool, wet winters and dry, warm to hot growing seasons marked by significant diurnal temperature swings which help produce ripe fruit balanced by fresh natural acidity. The devil, of course, is in the details: A dramatically contrasting topography—ranging from 130-400-ft. elevation gravelly clay loam valley floors along the Russian River which runs through the appellation, to 600-2,800-ft. gravelly benchlands and rocky mountain slopes—creates a wide range of wine styles now being explored by artisanal producers.

  

• Cabernet Sauvignon rules the Alexander Valley roost because the grape loves warm climate and rich yet well drained soils.

• For over fifty years restaurants and sommeliers have come to depend upon the round, voluptuous, crowd pleasing styles of Cabernet grown in Alexander Valley, epitomized by pioneering brands such as Jordan, Simi, Rodney Strong, Alexander Valley and Silver Oak. In recent years, however, some 20% of the Cabernets have been coming off of higher elevation sites where, above the fog line, heightened UV (i.e., solar ultraviolet light) and narrower diurnal swings are producing grapes with thicker skins and increased phenolic content, resulting in darker, more robust and concentrated variations of the “voluptuous” Alexander Valley style.

• It is inevitable that over the decades growers and vintners begin to pinpoint sub-areas within their appellation. Although most brands still employ blending of wines from the different sub-areas to maximize quality, in the years to come both industry and trade will come to better know the distinctive sensory qualities of wines coming out of the parts of Alexander Valley now identified as Cloverdale, Geyserville, Jimtown, Healdsburg and Maacama.

Day 1—Weather and Microclimates

The first day started at the Alexander Valley Vineyards estate, at the very site where Cyrus Alexander, the valley’s historical namesake, built his original pueblo, near where he planted the region’s first grapevines in 1843. Alexander Valley Vineyards partner Harry Wetzel, IV and his vineyard manager Junior Macias presented their 2022 Alexander Valley Estate Cabernet Sauvignon—a soft, silky, quintessential valley floor style of the varietal, yet intense in the cassis/herby character consumers have always found so captivating—as an introduction to the lush varietal style typifying the AVA’s specific variation of Mediterranean climate.

Like their estate bottling, the 2021 Alexander Valley Organically Grown Cabernet Sauvignon was aged in both French and American oak, which Wetzel candidly said is as much an aesthetic as an economic choice—something Ryan Hess, the sommelier of Badmaash LA, remarked is also a “defining characteristic,” strong value and and easy drinking being as much an Alexander Valley attribute as anything. The organically grown iteration of the brand’s varietal, however, is also deeper, spicier and zestier than the “regular” bottling, while retaining the lush regional profile.

The 2021 Thomas Meek Robert Young Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, sourced from one of the AVA’s original valley floor sites dating back to the 1960s, demonstrated both the lush, velvet texturing and tea-like complexity of the terroir, couched in the toasty richness of 100% French oak aging; whereas the 2021 J. Rickards Cabernet Sauvignon’s cushiony ripe fruit profile was only enhanced by 50% American oak.

Day 1—Geology and Soils

In the afternoon panel of the first day, Trione Vineyards winemaker John Duckett and ACTA Winery founder/winemaker Dustin Moilanen teamed up to demonstrate the impact of soils types; starting with the 2020 Trione Cloverdale Ranch Block 21 Cabernet Sauvignon from the northern reaches of the AVA dominated by the gravelly loam of benchland just east of the Russian River, producing a ripe, fruit-focused, distinctly floral scented style of the varietal, zesty with acidity, plump yet still fairly concentrated.

By way of contrast, the 2021 ACTA Alexander Valley/Chalk Hill Cabernet Sauvignon was, as Moilanen remarked, a “Goldilocks” of a wine—grippy yet velvety, fleshy yet muscular, both red and blue fruit scented—reflecting a combination of alluvial and clay soils of a vineyard overlapping into the Chalk Hill AVA.

From there, we were transported up into hills east of Cloverdale to a +1,000-ft. elevation, rocky shale/sandstone site soaked in more unabated sunlight, producing the 2019 Rodney Strong Brothers Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon—a decidedly darker, sturdier, chocolatier take on the varietal, yet as velvety and inviting as any in the AVA.

If there was any question that variant soil and geology make a difference, the 2019 Stonestreet Alexander Mountain Estate Cabernet Sauvignon put aside any doubts. Grown in multiple sites at over 2,000-ft. elevations well above the fog line, on craggy perches exposed to both wind and chaparral elements, this was a comparatively higher phenolic, savory structured wine showing a full range of aromas from red, black and blue berries to wild scrub, forest floor, cedar and nuances of 100% French oak.

Day 2—Topography and Elevation

The second day started with a drive up, up, up to Stonestreet Vineyards’ Pocket Peak vineyards, where we were greeted by Jackson Family Wines proprietor Christopher Jackson and Stonestreet winemaker Kristina Shideler. Pocket Peak, according to Jackson, is the proposed name of a prospective new AVA. While nested in Alexander Valley, this high elevation corner certainly merits separate distinction.

According to Jackson, it is all about the “constancy of wind resulting in 15% less juice to skin ratios, thicker skins and degradation of pyrazines in grapes like Cabernet.” Shideler remarked on the “extremity of light at higher elevations,” resulting in earlier bud break and development of flavor compounds; combined with narrower diurnal shifts (i.e., cooler days and warmer nights than in the rest of the AVA), giving grapes “ample time to build out nicer tannin structures and polymers” [the latter, the combination of phenolic molecules into larger compounds].

Produced by Frances Ford Coppola, the 2022 Archimedes Cabernet Sauvignon combines three vineyard sites up to 2,800-ft., the highest in the appellation, showing floral, rose petal and even mildly peppery notes different from mainstream Alexander Valley profiles. By way of contrast, the 2020 Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon, culled from as many as 50 vineyard sites from valley floors to hillsides, was more typical of the appellation in its plump yet acid driven, finesseful structuring. Made from a single vineyard on the valley floor, the 2020 Alexander Valley School Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was round, rich, mildly herbal and fruit focused.

Like the Archimedes, the 2019 Stonestreet Rockfall Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon soared in still different directions: Almost peppery with kitchen (cardamom-like) spices, lots of blue and blackberry notes, violet fragrances, coffee undertones, dense structuring and distinctly acid driven. It was “big” (14.8% ABV), perhaps like a Napa Valley wine, yet still very “Alexander Valley” in its svelte feel and intoxicatingly floral profile.

Day 2—Blending the Best

Our final tasting, manned by Francis Ford Coppola senior winemaker Andrea Card and Rodney Strong winemaker Olivia Wright, focused on the blending of vineyard sources to achieve different iterations of the regional style. The 2021 Francis Coppola Director’s Cut, for instance, craftily combines Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah (4.7%), Syrah, (4.4%) and other grapes such as Cabernet Franc to double down on the sultry, balanced feel for which Alexander Valley is known; the Petite Sirah and hillside grown Syrah adding acid, meatiness and distinctive spice elements to its come-hither profile.

Wright talked about utilizing as many as 50 different vineyard lots in the 2022 Rodney Strong Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon to forge the sumptuous texturing of valley floor sites with the higher flying, floral/violet profiles of the firm’s three highest elevation vineyards (Brothers, Rockaway and the now-historic Alexander’s Crown), combined with a hibiscus tea-like fragrance of Malbec (8%). At $35 suggested retail, an almost unbeatable combination of value, complexity and pure drinkability.

For the 2020 Alexander Valley Cyrus Cabernet Sauvignon, it was all about blending: 64% Cabernet Sauvignon with 25% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 7% Petit Verdot and 2% Malbec, plus aging 50/50 in French and American oak, to achieve a plush, fleshy, more flowery scented wine than the brand’s varietal Cabernet bottlings. In similar fashion, the 2022 ACTA Deeds (68% Merlot, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cabernet Franc) was rich and fleshy, combining the velvet quality of Merlot with the pungent herbiness of the two Cabernets, just accentuating the qualities that have made Alexander Valley the popular go-to, especially in restaurant settings.

What the sommeliers say

According to Marie Mertz, the chef/owner of Todo un Poco in Elk Grove, CA: “The Alexander Valley Cabernet Academy was an opportunity to discover the true essence of Cabernets from this AVA. It’s more than about value, which we always expect from this region. It’s also about how well these styles pair with food.”

“The Alexander Valley wines of today are definitely about terroir,” says Erica Williams from Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. “It’s also pretty awesome to experience how scientific, technical yet vast the effects of talented winemaking can be, particularly when it comes to producing wines that only make it easier to please our guests.”

Heather Missad of Bowdies Chophouse in Grand Rapids, MI adds, “There is no shortage of complexity or sophistication in these wines. In between the tastings we were shown older bottlings of the same wines, clearly demonstrating how effortlessly they age. They definitely belong among the finest Cabernets we can offer in our restaurants.”

George Staikos of The Educated Grape in New Hope, PA stated, “I was not aware of the sheer amount of diversity and quality of wines now coming out of the appellation, especially in the high elevation sites. Alexander Valley produces compelling wines that deserve the attention of all the country’s top buyers, on-premise and off-.”

Roibin McAndres of Cleveland’s Hospitality Restaurants concurs, while summarizing the enthusiasm of all the visiting sommeliers: “The restaurant group that I represent has been selling Alexander Valley wines by the glass for a long time, admittedly because of their QPR. But the Cabernet Academy left me with a deeper understanding of the region’s terroir. It was humbling to finally being able to see the vineyards, talk to the vintners, walk through their caves. The wines speak for themselves, but I now understand the whole story!”

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The original draft of an article published in the November/December 2025 issue of The Somm Journal.

The California icon

In the annals of modern day California Cabernet Sauvignon, there may be no producer that has achieved as much consistency of style and monumental success as Jordan Vineyard & Winery, starting with its inaugural vintage (a groundbreaking 1976) released 45 years ago.

Through thick and thin, the Jordan brand has absolutely dominated the on-premise market. Innumerable magazine and restaurant polls have proven that. Jordan has been fixture on fine dining wine lists in every state of the Union for multiple reasons, some of which you may be surprised to learn. Face it, wine brands come and wine brands go—more and more fantastic California Cabernet Sauvignons coming out each year—yet Jordan continues to hold its own.

First, sommeliers and restaurant wine buyers well know the sensory profile of a Jordan: It is a medium bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, never over-the-top “big,” never exactly “light.” There is plenty of tannin and restrained oak—nowadays (since the 2015 vintage) 100% French oak—bolstering the palate feel, although more than anything, a Jordan is driven by perceptible acidity. You could say, it’s obsessively acid balanced, and it’s been that way in every vintage since the 1976, through all the phases of the varietal category’s evolution in the state, even when it was always the most ultra-ripe, massively dense and oaky Cabernets Sauvignons that grabbed all the accolades.

Restraint and acid balance, of course, are byproducts of a deliberately chosen style. It began when founders Tom and Sally Jordan first purchased a 275-acre property on the Alexander Valley floor in 1972, adding another 1,300 acres on the current site of the Jordan Estate two years later. The Jordans thought big: A Bordeaux inspired château, producing estate grown Cabernet Sauvignons in the restrained, balanced styles of Bordeaux. Their original consultant, the legendary André Tchelistcheff, advised that this was very possible in the loamy alluviums of Alexander Valley.

The 1976 Jordan, culled from fruit assembled from more established vineyards in the AVA, was almost a shock to the system because of its light, almost lean, yet long and savory profile. The followup 1977 release was entirely estate grown, not as lean as the ’76 but falling in the same sensory vein, and the brand was off to the races: Restaurants across the country [including my own in Hawai’i!] ate it up because 1) the style was so immediately accessible to guests, and 2) it enhanced, rather than fought, nearly everyone’s cuisine. The perfect restaurant Cabernet.

The current Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon release is the 2021. Typical of the house, it spent 2 years in oak and another 2 years aging in the bottle before being released this past May 2025. It’s like the old saying, “No wine served before its time.” The ’21 is far more layered and sumptuous than the earliest vintages of Jordan—tasting almost literally like a box of chocolate covered blackcurrant with dollops of cassis and just the lightest smidgen of peppery herbiness to remind you it’s “Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon”—but the pervasive sensory quality, after all these decades, is its perceptible acidity, undiminished by restrained tannin and oak.

Doubling down on the Jordan style in the vineyards

Wine, it is always said, is made in the vineyard, and it has never been any different for Jordan. Although Tom Jordan’s original vision called for 100% estate grown, château bottled Cabernet Sauvignon, the last vintage to carry an “Estate Bottled” designation on the label was the 1993. There were a number of factors leading to the current make-up of the Cabernet Sauvignon, which hovers around 85% non-estate fruit, with just 15% coming from the Jordan Estate:

In the mid-1990s Jordan’s original plantings began to suffer from phylloxera, reducing both yield and quality. Rob Davis, Jordan’s winemaker of note since its founding, immediately began sourcing from vineyards elsewhere in Alexander Valley, while in 1996 a new vineyard was established on the hillsides behind the Jordan winery.

The winery also marked the arrival of viticulturist Brent Young in 2005. Young immediately began implementing new soil mapping technology while taking a “deep dive,” as he puts it, into the right rootstocks and clonal selections for all the different soil types, taking a hard look at row direction, and trellis and irrigation systems in both the Estate plantings and vineyards belonging to the winery’s grower/partners. As Davis was quoted at the time to say, “It was my mentor André Tchelistcheff who drummed into me the importance of soil... without great soil, we can’t produce great wines.”

2005 was also the year the entire Jordan operation was taken over by Tom and Sally’s son, John Jordan, who would assume full ownership in 2007. Maggie Kruse, who began as an enologist in 2006, elevated to assistant winemaker in 2009 and head winemaker in 2019 upon Davis’ retirement, explained: “20 years ago, when John took over, we were given a mandate, which was simply, ‘improve quality.’ Out of necessity Rob had already begun sourcing fruit from other vineyards. John just made it clear that the priority has to be, make better wine, don’t cut corners. Ask the same things every year—what are we doing to improve our fruit, our blends? It was, in fact, a matter of putting quality over estate.”

Young adds, “Farming is all about timing, projection, precision, being proactive not just reactive to Mother Nature. Of course, we’ve see it all, drought, heat spells, disease pressure, etc. The mandate we got was to think long term. This involves going back to organic material to build up the health of soil and plants, the use of natural food-based fertilizers, planting green beans and bell peppers between the rows, using 3 to 5 different rootstocks in the newly planted blocks, selecting the clones that are not just right for each site, but also gives us the tannin structure and elegance that only enhances our established style of wine.”

In 2010 and 2011 the Jordan Estate vineyards ran up against still another obstacle, a grapevine disease called Red Blotch. The industry would not actually diagnose the cause of this virus, turning leaves red and debilitating growth, until 2018. It did, however, initiate another seven-year plan, starting in 2016, to replant the 118 acres of grapevines in the Jordan Estate.

“It takes a good five years before you see the results of new plantings,” says Young. The future is especially promising because the Jordan team is just beginning to see yields from recently acquired blocks such as the 40-acre property, Karlik Ranch, elsewhere in Alexander Valley. Young tells us: “In 2021 we planted 28 new acres at Karlik. There was existing Cabernet on the property but they were virused. But the reason why we took it on is its amazing soils, largely a cobbled sandy loam soil. The advantage of sandy loam, even over our own hillside vineyards, is the roots can go down 10-ft. or deeper before reaching a hardpan. In most of our Estate we go just 26 inches before hitting hard sandstone. In the great vineyards of Bordeaux it’s all about the depth of root zones. I expect phenomenal results from this new site.”

Adds Kruse: “With the new and improved plantings coming onboard, I can see increasing Estate fruit in our blends to maybe 25%, 30%, near future. The priority will always be increasing quality, and that’s going to come primarily from what we do in the vineyards. In the winery we’ve always taken the no-compromise approach. Nothing ends up in the final blend that doesn’t meet our standards. What doesn’t fit is declassified or sold, just like the grapes that are not up to snuff.

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“The style of Jordan will remain the same. In fact, we will double down on it—elegant, balanced wines meant to go for food. This has been the key to Jordan’s success over the past 45 years. We’ll just continue to get better at it!”

When Kermit Lynch talks, people listen. He has always been the conscience of our industry; even today, a few years into his retirement from his own business Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. His mind remains restless; having just published his first novel, At Poupon’s Table (2025), dedicated to the memory of Lulu Peyraud of Bandol’s Domaine Tempier

In September 2010 Sommelier Journal—the precursor to The SOMM Journal—indulged my personal aspirations by allowing me to publish a 6-page interview with Kermit Lynch, my first (and perhaps only) mentor. By the late 1980s Lynch’s imports were the only French wines I would carry on my wine lists. Many of his selections were a revelation because they were practically the only wines that tasted, at least to me, real—their natural selves, not so much contrivances of commercial or even artistic (i.e., reflections of winemaking craft) machinations.

Honestly, selling these kinds of wines in the ‘80s and ‘90s was like pulling teeth. Very few consumers were interested. Whenever I sold a bottle of a Kermit Lynch import it was practically because a guest was humoring me. Mr. Lynch himself well understood that challenge. A few years ago, when I asked him to write the foreword for my book on restaurant wine management (still to be published!), he kindly obliged by writing about the first time we actually met, in March of 1990, when he somehow stumbled into my restaurant in Honolulu:

“At the table, I opened the wine list first, as usual. My wife told me I looked like a cartoon character, with my eyes bulging out of their sockets. There, on the wine list, in Hawaii, obtainable, was the Savennières from Château d’Épiré, one of my favorite dry whites, but unknown, esoteric, hard to sell. What the hell was it doing in Hawai’i?

“I roamed down the list and saw all sorts of unusual selections from France. But not just any wines; these were the dangerous ones. I asked the waiter if the wine buyer was on the premises, and that’s how I met Randy Caparoso. We became friends and he spread the word about a lot of my rather obscure wine imports. He loves making discoveries as much as I do, so we hit it off.”

Shortly after in 1990, Kermit published this in his newsletter:

Now, of course, Kermit Lynch imports are everywhere; which is why, in 2010, I proposed a “20 years after” talk with him about favorite wines, past and present.

In 2004 Ten Speed Press compiled Kermit’s favorite newsletter passages in a book called Inspiring Thirst, which included this 1995 snippet on Bottex’s Bugey Cerdon Rosé:

“Here is one of those curiosities we import that many people are afraid to try. Fear of the unknown? Well, it is a sparkling rosé from the Savoie made from a grape variety that no one has even heard of. Plus, it is ultra-light, only 7° alcohol! Strike four.

“When I vacationed in Hawai’i, Randy Caparoso, the ideal sommelier at Roy’s Restaurant in Honolulu, invited my family to a picnic on the beach. He brought an ice chest of Bugey rosé. Of course, the sun and the waves helped, but I don’t know that I have ever enjoyed a wine more. And even in the hot sun, at only 7° alcohol, this wine does not mount to the head. Next barbecue, give your friends an utterly known, utterly fabulous treat.”

Kermit loved that beach so much, a few years later he bought a cottage just a few feet away (we last enjoyed that haven of bliss ourselves during a two-week stay in December 2023).

That said, the original text of our chats in spring of 2010…

The original paragon of terroirists, champion of unfiltered wines, and patron saint of today’s fervent followers of natural or organic wines: You needn’t subscribe to any of these religions to know that Kermit Lynch has been one of the most influential figures in the wine world since founding his revolutionary Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant in 1972; first as a retail store, and since the mid-eighties as an internationally acclaimed import company.

Then there’s “The Book”: Lynch’s classic Adventures on the Wine Route, published by Farrar Straus in 1988, and now in its twentieth printing (in paperback by North Point Press). One of Lynch’s biggest admirers, Winebow’s Leonardo LoCascio, has described Lynch as “the most coherent example of a wine importer… all of us spend time with our producers, but Kermit took things one step further and went to live among them.” Adventures chronicles Lynch’s earliest encounters with the most staunchly traditionalist winemakers in France, struggling to maintain the integrity of their craft beneath the onslaught of technology, modern day market demands, and the slings and arrows of outrageous critics. Lynch and his family (wife Gail Skoff, a professional photographer, and kids Marley and Anthony, now ages 21 and 19) have always split time each year between homes near Bandol (from May to October) and in Berkeley (avoiding Provence’s harsh winters).

Resulting awards have been legion: as in the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (received in 2005), Chevalier de l’Ordre de Mérite Agricole (1998), and the James Beard Foundation’s Wine Professional of the Year (2000). In 1998 Lynch purchased the historic Domaine Les Pallières in Gigondas, which he produces with the help of the Bruniers of Vieux Télégraphe. But his proudest, recent achievements? As a musical artist, the production of two CDs—Quicksand Blues (2001) and Man’s Temptation (2009)—recorded with the backing of top-notch Nashville and West Coast musicians, and put out by Dualtone Records.

Lynch’s singing voice has been described as “a rollick with a riff-raff of raspy Rod Stewart channeling Dylan” (Ed Paladino, E&R Wine Shop, Portland). Bonny Doon’s Randall Grahm has called Lynch “the father of the reefer” (i.e. refrigerated containers). Grateful Palate’s Dan Philips says “there isn’t a day that passes when I don’t think about Kermit… he has been my mentor through example and study”—yet Philips has never even met the famous wine importer-turned-bluesman!

Last December (2009) Lynch and I met twice, over lunch at Chez Panisse and at his store in Berkeley, and began our conversation revisiting some of the producers immortalized in Adventures on the Wine Route:

Could you tell us about the changes brought by new generations among the producers you wrote about in Adventures, published over twenty years ago?

Each winery is a different story. Sometimes the transition will involve a son or daughter, working hard to improve the quality of their wines. Back when I started, it was usually the opposite. You would have a son or daughter who graduated from a school of viticulture or enology, but all they were interested in was making a stable, predictable wine to satisfy the “market,” but not the soul.

At Domaine Tempier (in Bandol), the most recent change in generations has meant nothing but good. Daniel Ravier took over with the 2000 vintage, following Jean-Marie Peyraud who had taken over from his father, Lucien. I think the wines became considerably better, almost immediately, after the winemaking was turned over to Ravier, who had to come from outside the Peyraud family.

Was this a skill factor on the part of Ravier?

There’s certainly that, but also because Ravier had already spent decades in the region, making wine and olive oil. He’s got his feet in the soil—that makes a difference. I always think it’s strange when a renowned domaine hires a renowned winemaker from outside the region, like from Bordeaux, to make their wine for them, yet it’s something you see quite a bit. Part of my definition of terroir involves the tradition of winemaking—when you start playing around with that, the wine is bound to change quite a bit. You almost end up, in this varietal world we live in right now, with wines that don’t have that character, or “thereness,” of terroir.

The taste of a grape rather than a place?

Exactly. I don’t understand fruit driven wines. Why not just buy fruit juice? I don’t get it—it’s like, “if you want fruity, this fruit juice is really pretty.”

Is the Peyraud family still involved in the operation of Domaine Tempier?

There are four sisters and two brothers, I believe, who are still the owners of the domaine; and of course, they make the big decisions—they’re the boss. Ravier is sort of the general manager who makes all the day-to-day winemaking decisions, and Lulu [Peyraud] still lives at the domaine.

What about the changes among your Loire producers?

Charles Joguet was a big transition because he had no kids.So he sold the domaine about twelve years ago, and his team stayed on.He lives there, and wine continues to be made under his name.I visit, have lunch with him from time to time, but I don’t know what his day-to-day role is. But I’ve been happy with the wines. When Joguet ran his domaine, he was not just a trailblazer—bringing Chinon up to the stature it has today—but he was also a gambler. Yet Charles tells me that the wines have been more consistent in recent years, and I have to agree.

Then unlike years past, when something “new” happens to a domaine, it is no longer something that might turn out “bad?”

You know, since I’ve started going to France, there have been big changes. There are a lot more people trying to make natural, unfiltered wine these days. When I first went over, the issue was all these squeaky clean wines with no character; with of course, the exceptions like Domaine Tempier, and Vieux Télégraphe owned by the Bruniers in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. But you also need to consider the fact that before, with a Henri Brunier, he would only bottle one out of every two or three vintages. His sons have the talent, but they’ve been able to make good wine practically every vintage. The only recent vintage they haven’t made was 2002.

So we are talking about considerably improved technology in the winery and vineyard?

Absolutely. Things are better than ever. Then there’s global warming—it’s not just talent and improved winemaking these days.

What about in Savennières, at Château d’Épiré?

There have been many changes there. Their story has always been about the same family, the Bizards, but with three different winemakers, hired from outside the family, ever since I started going there, around 1977. One of the winemakers was not very successful; and during that one period, I let them know how I felt. I don’t know how much I had to do with it, but the changes eventually turned out for the better, and the quality has been as great as it ever was during the past five or six years.

But it’s an interesting story. When the father, with whom I started working in the seventies, died in 1985, the kids immediately began to replace the old demi-muids (large oval casks) with stainless steel tanks. With the old Monsieur Bizard, I was always allowed to come in and create my own blends; but suddenly I was being offered choices strictly from stainless steel. I told them that for the Cuvée Spéciale that I imported, which always came from the oldest vines, I needed the wine to come from demi-muids rather than the sterile tanks. Eventually they came around, and now I still go back to make my blends. I prefer the traditional style of Savennières from demi-muids, but sometimes I’ll add some wine from stainless steel if it helps to make a better wine – there’s no rules when it comes to this.

I think that’s one of the mistakes that people make about me. They read my book, and they see what I think about filtration, and based upon that, they say something that I’ve never said: That Kermit Lynch imports only unfiltered wines. That’s not true at all. If I think a winemaker’s talented enough to pull it off, I prefer an unfiltered wine. But you have to start with the idea that a wine is going to be unfiltered, and take care of it in a different way. In the best of all possible worlds, all my wines would be unfiltered; but in many cases, they are not—some producers’ filtered wines may be better.

What are other examples of Kermit Lynch wines being misconstrued?

The best producers are always changing. It is a mistake to think that tradition means staying in one place. At both Tempier and Vieux Télégraphe, for years and years there would be a cuvée unfiltered made for me, and something else for the rest of the world. Neither one of them were completely behind unfiltered wine at the beginning. It was only after about a dozen years for the Peyrauds—the Bruniers took a little bit longer at Vieux Télégraphe—that they came around, and today neither one of them filters any of their reds.

Domaine Tempier has also been long associated with non-use of SO2. Have there been changes there in that respect?

Lucien Peyraud, who originally made Bandol what it is today, actually did give his wines SO2. Because of the way the wine was raised it would get reduced, and SO2 would protect it from reduction; and you could also rack it. But there would be problems with the wines, especially when Jean-Marie began making them, because he often did not rack enough. So you had wines that some people thought were refermenting in the bottle, which was actually caused by residual gas carbonique, because the wines were not racked enough.

And I presume you no longer find this in a Domaine Tempier?

Absolutely. This problem disappeared after the winemaking was taken over by Daniel Ravier, who is more of a perfectionist. It’s been the same at Domaine Joguet in recent vintages. But yeah, this thing about filtration is not something based upon some philosophical idea. It comes from tasting, and observing wines as they age. No one can talk about filtration unless they’ve had the chance to taste exactly the same cuvées, filtered and unfiltered, over a period of time. Only then do you understand what filtration takes out. People want to argue with me about filtration, but I don’t want to argue with them unless they’ve tasted wines over the years and made the comparisons. Then you find that in almost all instances, the filtered wines lose their color and their aroma, and the unfiltered wines don’t—99% of the time. Unfiltered wines, both white and red, retain so much more flesh, so much more flavor.

Talk about your years working in Burgundy to find the wines you like.

Most of my reds from Burgundy are unfiltered, and most of the winemakers I know have been excited about it. This idea of filtering originally came from somebody telling the winemakers that the market won’t accept wines that are bottled with some little speck of something or another. But these days when I tell winemakers that I want my wine unfiltered, they say, “yeah, great… I wish everybody were like you!”

But in the past, the story was different: Owners who would say, “it’s just had light filtration.” Then I would have to ask, “what do you mean by ‘light’?” And they’ll talk about using cardboard, or diatomaceous earth. There was one of them, who started off by telling me he only does “light” filtrations, and explained how he filtered a wine with a cardboard box #3, which is a pretty wide filtration that takes out the flies and everything; and then how he filtered it with a #7, which takes out just about everything. After that, he did a sterile filtration. I asked him why, and he said, “well, my wine is so dense that it won’t go through the sterile filter if I don’t do the other filtrations.” What’s amazing is that you’re tasting his new vintage, which is black, and so delicious, coming right out of the cuve. Then he pours his wine from last year, which has already been bottled, and filtered like hell, and it tastes more like rosé!

Can you talk about your experience in Beaujolais; which, it seems, has become more popular after a long period of relative disinterest?

For my producers, that’s been very true—we’re selling more great Beaujolais than ever before. Restaurants are eating them up; probably because people are catching on to how versatile wines made from Gamay are with food—certainly a refreshing antidote to many of the over-priced reds you see these days. But overall, the Beaujolais region is suffering.

In what ways?

It is the quality producers—like Foillard, Lapierre, Thévenet and Breton—who are doing great. Others in the region are seeing the trucks coming by, picking up all the wines the good producers can make. There’s going to be a pendulum shift towards wines that are the opposite of what you see mostly in Beaujolais; from vineyards in which there has been no real cultivation other than for huge production of weak wines, with heavy use of herbicides and pesticides. In these vineyards there is nothing growing between the vines, just bare earth, no life. That’s going to change, and the pioneers like Lapierre, and the “Gang of Four,” have been leading those changes. They’re succeeding because they get a lot more money for their wines, of course, and in recent years there have been more like them.

So economics will play a big part of the changes in Beaujolais?

I saw a Morgon recently in New York–I believe it was a Duboeuf–that was on a shelf for $12 a bottle. Lapierre is up around $26, $27, and we can hardly keep it on the shelf. Other winegrowers in Beaujolais are seeing this, and they’re saying, “I’m going to change.” Just like Côte-Rôtie was transformed by Guigal; although in that case, not exactly for the better. Côte-Rôtie used to be a gem of a Syrah, with natural, exotic aromas, and now it’s not—it’s become more about tannin and oak.

Speaking of which, where is Kermit Lynch currently at in the Northern Rhône?

I’ve got a very interesting new Côte-Rôtie coming out under my own label this coming year; something I put together, showing what I think Côte-Rôtie is about. Of course, the two that I already bring in, from Philippe Faury and Jasmin, I like very much—they’ve always been known for finesse, and I’ve been working with them for a long time. Especially Faury, because he has always let me do my own blends, and it’s not done in an oaky style.

So if a producer, from Côte-Rôtie or elsewhere, decides to change to a less finesseful, oakier style, would it be safe to say that he may no longer find a place in the Kermit Lynch portfolio?

He wouldn’t, but he’d find another importer real quick! Then again, most people think Côte-Rôtie is a heavy, oaky, alcoholic wine. That’s not what it always was, if you read the literature from the past.

What about for Cornas?

Circumstances in Cornas, for some reason, are a little different. If you look at the Northern Rhône, Thierry Allemand and Clape stand out as two great, great winemakers, and it’s almost by chance that they’re both in Cornas, and both at the top of their game. No matter which appellation of the Northern Rhône they would have been in, they’d probably make the best wines.

Then again, wouldn’t many people say Guigal is the one on top in the Northern Rhône?

Well, yes, obviously I’m losing that battle, too (laughter). Guigal sells for hundreds of dollars, and my two wines from Cornas are more like $50 or $60.

Let’s go back to your Gang of Four from Beaujolais, and the issues that have always been raised concerning unsulfured wines—something that in a lot of ways is identified with Kermit Lynch imports…

It may come as a surprise to many people to know that I don’t believe that unsulfured wines are necessarily the purest. I’ve been working with all my producers on this, in all the regions. In Beaujolais, yeah, we have seen too many wines gone wrong, but I haven’t had a problem with instability since I began talking to my producers about this, going back at least the past two vintages. And they all agreed—they all knew there were problems in the bottle, and so they are now using the small amounts of sulfur we are asking them to. Minimal doses, but at least 15 grams.

We are requiring this from all of them, that is, except Lapierre. I want to continue working with unsulfured wines with Lapierre because we taste together so often, sharing ideas like: If you want to bottle without sulfur, do you bottle early or do you bottle late; do you do it in stainless or do you do it in wood; in barrel or in foudre? With Lapierre, I want to see how stable a wine we can make without sulfur, and I think he would be the best one to work with.

The first significant Beaujolais that I imported, back in 1979, was by Jules Chauvet, the original instigator behind the Gang of Four. Chauvet was also a microbiologist, and I never had stability problems with his wines. I only imported three vintages before he died, but those wines were so… “my god.” The aromas were what I call “cornucopian”—so much in there to entice you. Yet Chauvet had no grand crus, just Beaujolais Villages—he was that good.

My thinking about unsulfured wines that prove unstable in the bottle is that it’s not fair to the customer, and it’s not fair to the wine. How many great wines have I seen that were bottled without sulfur, but somewhere along the line—a month or six months, or two years later—became undrinkable? What is the virtue of that? I do feel a little responsible for being part of this almost religious fervor for non-SO2 wines. Based upon good experience, from 1979 until about two years ago—you’re talking about almost thirty years of experimentation—I’ve since made the decision: If it’s done well, sulfur is a great gift.

Recently an MS/friend told me about how he much enjoyed a five year old bottling of your Beaujolais AOC, which was formerly bottled under the Kermit Lynch label, and now as Domaine Depeuble. He found it to be perfectly fresh, in immaculate shape. What’s up with that?

Here again, the Depeuble is bottled unfiltered, so I’m not surprised to hear that. One year we found a case of Depeuble’s Beaujolais Nouveau that had been buried in the warehouse for almost two years—long past the usual expiration date. We pulled a bottle and opened it, and here it was: Being unfiltered and unsulfured, it had a deposit more than an inch deep—just thick—and it was unbelievably fresh. That deposit, I think, may have had something to do with it, nourishing the wine and keeping it alive. I love everything about Beaujolais Nouveau, and that’s why we celebrate it each year. But most of them are pasteurized, cold stabilized, sterile filtered, and sulfured, yet they’re supposed to be drunk right then and there. It’s unbelievable—there’s no reason to do this to a wine you drink immediately. You taste Depeuble’s Nouveau, and what do you get? Ba-bammm! Being unfiltered and unsulfured makes all the difference in the world.

In Adventures, some of your most quoted passages have been about wines that are made to attain high scores, as opposed to going with food. How have things changed in that regard?

Unfortunately, today wine is made to score points, even though wine was originally made to go with food, or just to make you feel good. Another thing about scoring wines that is so false is that you end up with winemakers in places like Muscadet, putting their wines in new oak to make it taste more like Montrachet, because they think they’re going to get higher points. I don’t get that, because first of all, you can’t ask Muscadet to be Montrachet. It stands to reason that the most perfect Muscadet in the world deserves a score of 99 or 100 as much as a Montrachet. The “good” Muscadets you see around are tagged with scores like 88 or 89. Regardless of the score, a perfect Muscadet has its function, and it’s never going to be the same as a Montrachet’s. But scores today are even more important than when I first wrote my book—so that’s another battle that I’ve clearly lost!

But you have to understand, or readers should understand, that most people in this country think that, “I can’t trust my wine merchant.” Or, “I can never trust Kermit Lynch because he’s trying to sell me his wine.” They never stop to think that it is the critic who is trying to sell his journal or his magazine. It’s a little twisted, but that’s the mess scores make of everything. They all do it—everyone is peddling their scores, so many of them that the message has become hopelessly diluted—and now we’ve even got critics and magazines in France doing the same.

Well, presuming sommeliers are not as gullible as consumers: What career advice would you give to our readers, the sommeliers?

It’s one of the bright spots in the wine world that I see so many sommeliers, and so many wine lists, that aren’t paying attention to scores. They’re not paying attention to fame; they’re trying to buy wines that they think are interesting. Early in my career I got the reputation of bringing in esoteric wines, but when I go to some restaurants now, I have to ask, “what’s this, where’s this from?” Sommeliers these days are much more daring, and it’s fabulous.

But for advice, here’s something a little more specific: I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately—something I haven’t done in a long time—to places like Boston and Portland; and of course, I’ve been traveling mostly to promote my CD (Man’s Temptation, released in early 2009), and pouring a little wine on the side. In restaurants, like at home, for white wine I’ve always liked a good white Burgundy. So what I noticed, in New York and a little bit in the Bay Area as well, is that when you go to a wine list and locate the Burgundy section, and you look for a Chablis AOC, you cannot believe the crap—I’m sorry, I can’t find a better word—that you end up finding. It’s all négociant wines! You go to look at sections for other regions, and you see these really good wines from great growers. I don’t get it, because there are so many great growers’ wines made at the AOC level, from Chablis as well as Mâcon and Vézelay; and they’re so cheap, why settle for something from a négociant?

Somebody told me that if a restaurant wants a special cuvée from an importer, then you make a deal—you can get the wine if you sell a few cases of this other wine, by the glass or whatever. Okay, but what I do understand is that sommeliers today also have the chance to do something special: Before, you know how Americans were, they used to say, “I won’t drink a Meursault, I have to have a grand cru Meursault”—and that was the American way. Now people are hesitating at the price of crus Meursault, and so here’s the chance for sommeliers to turn people on to all the exciting Meursault—or AOC Chablis, Mâcon, and don’t forget Rully—that are out there. That’s an area a smart sommelier can concentrate on, and make a lot of people happy.

Today, of course, there is also a lot of consumer interest in Biodynamics, and you have a few of them.

We have several, but I have to think about who exactly they are I know the store staff can rattle them off, but it’s not something I keep at the forefront of my mind because, you know, I never select wines based upon that.

Well, Ostertag is a certified Biodynamic producer that restaurants and retailers know well…

Ah, yes… and so is Kuentz-Bas… Lapierre… then there’s Breton in the Loire… the Cairanne that I import (by Domaine Catherine le Gœuil)… and several more who are organic. It may not be a coincidence that producers I like happen to be organic. But it’s funny, it’s never something I ask when I speak to producers–whether they are organic or Biodynamic.

Of course, I can talk about Les Pallières, which I own with the Bruniers. We grow organic, and we have the soil to prove to people that we do. But to get the certificate you have to endure another layer of bureaucrats coming through your cellar, and then you have to pay for that privilege. Like many others, we don’t want somebody to tell us how to make the wine, or what we should do in the vineyard—and to pay the money, not knowing who exactly is getting that money? I don’t know what the deal is, but I know many of my growers certainly could never pay for certifications, which can run you in the thousands.

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Earlier you mentioned starting off with a reputation for being esoteric. What’s “esoteric” for Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant these days?

I’m bringing in a lot of Vermentino, sometimes blended but sometimes pure, from Liguria. Our Punta Crena Vermentino just blows you away. Also from Liguria, there is a new Pigato (by Fèipu dei Massaretti). The Pigato grape makes a beautiful white wine, similar to Vermentino; but contrary to what’s been told, it is the not the same grape as Vermentino. That’s been something of a favorite project for me. These wines are sort of like Pinot Noir in the way that they’re so impressionable, or transparent. What’s growing around the vineyard kind of affects the way it smells—the minerality, or the salt from the sea, come right through it. This is the stuff that turns me on.

The quality of garrigue?

Yes, what they call maquis in Corsica—the spicy, herbal quality of the surounding scrubland. This is especially true of the Vermentino whites we bring in from Corsica. I’ve just brought in a new producer from Cap Corse, at the northern tip of Corsica, where it juts out into the Mediterranean. As you know, Cap Corse is where I started in Corsica in 1981, with the producer Clos Nicrosi; but there was a change of ownership there, and I had to quit working with them. Just recently we had a staff tasting of our new ’07 Raveneaus from Chablis; and lined up beside all of them, we had this rosé and Vermentino Cap Corse from our new guy Domaine de Gioielli. Our staff knows full well the style of Vermentino from Patrimonio by Yves Leccia and Antonio Arena, which grows in limestone, and tends to be very full bodied, very fleshy wines. Cap Corse Vermentino comes from higher altitudes, and from different, schist type soils, and we couldn’t help but notice, “my god, this is like Chablis is to Meursault,” when comparing Cap Corse to Patrimonio, even though the two appellations are adjacent to each other.

Gioielli is a neighbor to Clos Nicrosi. I’m not sure if the wines will prove to have the same magic we’ve always found in Luigi’s Clos Nicrosi, but we’re excited. Sometimes I think when I retire I’ll write a book called The Ones That Got Away, because there’s so much in the stories about what came between us and the producers we used to work with, like Clos Nicrosi, and Domaine de Coujon, where we did three vintages of that beautiful, Rolle based white wine from the Languedoc’s Coteaux de Murviel.

Or like that Tursan by Baron de Bachen that I used to be so much in love with?

Yeah, like Tursan… like the girl who got away… oh, the stories we could tell…

Then again, there are the Bruniers at Vieux Télégraphe, and Clos Ste. Magdeleine in Cassis, also celebrated in your book—producers you’ve stuck with from the beginning…

For Magdeleine, it’s been since 1976. Why? Their Cassis blanc just keeps getting better and better! I still work with François Sack, although just this year his two sons have started assisting him—two kids so beautiful, I’m surprised they aren’t movie stars.

Well, let’s hope the Bruniers and the Sacks never make it into that book on The Ones That Got Away.

No, I suspect they never will!

Originally published in the September/October 2022 issue of The Tasting Panel Magazine as part of my series of columns entitled “The Wandering Sommelier.”

Ask practically any vintner in California’s historic Livermore Valley AVA where they go locally for the best wine and food experiences, and they will not hesitate to say: Uncle Yu’s at the Vineyard. Uncle Yu’s specializes in Chinese inflected Asian cuisine. The mind behind Uncle Yu’s reputation as a wine destination belongs to owner/wine director Nick Liang, who freely admits: “For many years I was told Chinese and Asian foods are not a natural match for classic wines. I never paid attention to that.”

An opportunity came up, in the summer of 2022, to test Mr. Liang’s culinary mettle when I was invited by Larry Dino, the owner/grower of Livermore Valley’s Cuda Ridge Wines, to taste the progress of his Carménère program with a multi-course lunch at Uncle Yu’s. We also invited two of Livermore Valley’s best and brightest sommeliers—Posada Restaurant Beverage Director Jorge Tinoco, CS, CSW, and Fran Cuniffe, a WSET Level 4 Diploma candidate—to share their insights into what Liang and Dino are doing.

Although Mr. Liang runs a globally sourced wine program, he is bullish on Livermore Valley wines: “While Bordeaux varietals in Livermore can be very bold, I have found that more than other California regions, they tend to have an elegant structure and acidity to go much better with food. For instance, we have made some shocking discoveries with Livermore Valley Cabernet Francs with seafood dishes that really opened up our eyes. Because of its inherent spiciness, there is even more potential with Carménère.”

Hammering his point home, Liang started us with Cuda Ridge’s 2019 Insel Vineyard Carménère with, on paper, the most unlikely of food matches: Stir-fried wild prawns infused with basil and mushrooms. The pervasive factor in this joltingly successful match was the strong umami found in both the prawns and vivid violet colored wine; but it was also a “balancing” act, according to Liang. “The natural acidity Larry gets in the Carménère cuts through the shrimp, and the herbiness of the basil and earthiness of the mushrooms in the sauce all helped to enhance the savory [i.e., umami driven] effects found in both the Carménère and the dish... I call this an ultimate chemical reaction ‘party’ in the mouth!”

Cuniffe cites the 2019 Cuda Ridge as a “textbook Carménère, full of green jalapeño and grilled shishito pepper flavors, with bright acidity and smooth tannin.” Her favorite course for these wines, however, was the 2020 Little Dog Vineyard Carménère with roasted rack of lamb, Szechuan peppercorns, bellpeppers, a sticky soy sauce rice, grilled onions and fresh cilantro, highlighting the peppery as well as umami components in the dish and wine. Cuniffe observed: ”The first thing I noticed about this vintage was its smokiness, which went incredibly well with the lamb and onions. The peppers and cilantro helped extend the Carménère’s green notes and show off the beauty of the varietal character.”

Mr. Tinoco’s favorite match was Uncle Yu’s Chef John Phung’s seared medallions of Snake River Wagyu shortribs in a soy blackpepper sauce and shavings of red pepper. “The dish created a luscious mouthfeel,” says Tinoco, particularly in combination with the 2018 Carménère, the most peppery of the Cuda Ridge vintages, with a deep, almost soy sauce-like savoriness of its own. A fruitful collision of umami in the dish, and umami in the wine.

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Liang describes himself as a “a sommelier who is always excited about finding the ultimate wine and food matches.” Distinctive wines such as the Livermore Valley Carménères of Cuda Ridge, adds Liang, “personify the qualities that give us the capability to achieve that goal.”

Although it’s been over four years since this one-pager, “Back to business (managing wine programs in a post-pandemic world),” was published in The SOMM Journal, it has recently occurred to me that not only are we are still living in the same world, it’s gotten worse.

Number one, because wine costs are going through the roof. True, we need to select better and better wines for our lists because guests continue to get more sophisticated and demanding, but those wines are increasing in cost, exploding our inventories and inflating selling prices. It is no longer strange to walk into a restaurant and find that the lowest priced wines by the glass are $18, $25 or $30. I hate to sound like an old fart, but when I started in the business that was more than my lowest priced bottles.

Number two, recent social and political upheavals have only put the economy in a frailer state. Consumers are responding naturally, by consciously managing expenses more conservatively. They might recognize, and even accept, that wines by the glass in fine dining restaurants now start at $25, but it doesn’t mean that they like it. More and more of them are voting with their feet—by not dining out as often as they normally would.

Or, as it’s now pointed out in many places, instead of wine they’re opting for cocktails or beer. Beer can be good, and certainly filling. And cocktails, more imaginative than ever.

In short, though, wine is becoming less and less a beverage of choice in the on-premise setting.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s like that old adage about the book entitled “How to Lose Weight,” which has just one page that reads: “Eat less food.” The logical response to rising costs is to look for wines that cost less but are just as good as any other wine. And in restaurants, “good” doesn’t mean just “good wine.” It’s even gooder when it makes your cuisine taste better—the entire objective, when you think of it, of any restaurant truly focused on delivering the best possible sensory experiences.

Now more than ever, selecting wine for culinary purposes has to become a science—something just as important as any of the sommelier’s professional pursuits, such as understanding the taste and origin of wines. Mastery of wine per se is no longer enough. Mastery of wine in the context of food and shrewd restaurant business management—paramount

Consumers may be tightening their belts, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like to go out, or will ever stop loving the taste of wine. They’re spoiled that way. It does mean that the restaurants they’ll choose to frequent most often are those that offer the best perceived values. The most sensory bang for the buck.

That said…

I totally get sommeliers who feel the need to integrate their personal wine journeys with their employers’ wine programs. The more you experience as a wine professional and buyer, the more you learn. But I think everyone understands that, at least during the beginning of the end of pandemic restrictions, many restaurants will be looking for wine programs managed with some degree of fiscal responsibility.

Sure, there may be some pent-up consumer compulsion to spend, and spend big; but it will still take most restaurants considerable time to mitigate their losses from the past year. That is, those restaurants that managed to survive the past year. If you can’t manage a program under those circumstances, there’s a good chance of landing back on square one—out of a job.

So how does a sommelier adjust to the economic climate of the next two or even three years, while putting out very competitive, compelling wine programs? Let’s talk tried-and-true ways:

Low inventories of cutting-edge stuff: The most expeditious approach, of course, involves a rethinking of small wine programs, consisting of less than 200, maybe even 100, selections at a time, amounting to standing inventories as low as $25,000 to $50,000. “Small,” however, has never meant “severely limited.” The advantage of small wine lists has always been that you can easily rotate inventory; and changing pages every day—the same way a chef writes menus daily in order to offer new, imaginative dishes consisting of the freshest seasonal ingredients—is a snap.

If, say, you rotate at least five new wines each week on a wine list usually consisting of about 150 selections, you are actually offering over 400 new wines each year—more than enough to keep your guests, your staff and yourself up on the best and latest. Especially if you make each selection count: Strictly wines that enhance the image of your wine program, and complement specific dishes. Which brings up...

Honing in on your food: For the most critically acclaimed and profitable restaurants, the only “image” that has ever really mattered is culinary. Guests go to restaurants to eat, and they drink wines while they’re there. The most successful post-pandemic wine programs will probably be built on cuisines, not the conventional idea of all-encompassing wine lists, consisting of wines from every region of the world for no real culinary purpose.

Does a successful chef offer dishes to satisfy every craving, from hamburgers to miso-marinated black cod? Of course not. Wine lists, like menus, need to focus razor-sharp on what each restaurant does best—that is, signature dishes appealing to the guests’ palates and imaginations. Meaning, thou shalt choose no wine to go on your wine list that does not go great with at least one dish, preferably more than a few dishes, and then...

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Promote thyself: If commercial industries have learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that revenue doesn’t drive itself. The days of sommeliers whose only job is to sit with reps to taste wines, stock cellars and open bottles are long gone. Building wine programs now involves conceiving wine and food menus, executing events and promotions, writing email newsletters and website blogs, posting on social media, and telegraphing content with every image-driven application possible.

Do not wait to be told what to do, or how to do it. What’s that classic old marketing tagline? “Just do it” It’s time to harness your strengths, your individuality and hard-earned knowledge, and get to work.