Sommeliers' designer wines
From the chapter: Can we sell anything?
Hawaii's Chuck Furuya MS recently counted up the number of specialty wines borne from winemaker/sommelier collaborations now being served in Hawaiian Island restaurants, referring to them as “designer” wines. The question many outsiders may have about this practice: Why? Aren’t the thousands of commercial brands now available to restaurant wine buyers from around the world good enough? Are custom designed wines useful, or just representative of a sommelier’s ego?
I come from Hawaii, of course, and have quite a bit of experience living and working in the Islands ever since the days when clothing was optional and everyone lived in little grass shacks along the beach (not). In the late 1980s, to be more precise, a style of cooking emerged that tied together the multiplicity of ethnicities and cultures reflecting the populace with the classic, largely French oriented techniques in which most of Hawaii’s better chefs were trained.
The problem in the late ‘80s was that over 90% of guests frequenting Island restaurants, be they locals or visitors, were drinking one of only two wines: A big, fat, fruity/oaky Chardonnay, or a sweet, fruity White Zinfandel—which was what all of America was drinking at the time. But for Hawaii’s quickly evolving fusion cuisine, these were not exactly ideal matches.
This, more than any other reason, was why we began to shore up our relations with all the skilled winemakers we could find, and began asking them to craft, or even grow, customized wines better suited to dishes entailing every sensation—hot, sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and savory or umami—and package them under varietal names most people could understand. Wines, that is to say, that actually made our cuisine taste better.
This meant lighter, crisper, minerally Chardonnays rather than big, fat, buttery ones. For my restaurants, I once wanted to try out a higher acid, mineral toned style of custom Pinot Blanc. Since it was still the '90s, I wasn't sure I could convince my guests to drink Pinot Blanc, so I had the wine labeled “The Unchard.” They loved it, and it was magical with the cuisine.
I also produced lighter, floral, silky, zestier styles of Pinot Noir from Oregon, a mouth-watering Oregon Pinot Gris, a soft tannin/fruit centered Ballard Canyon Cabernet Franc, and even Cabernet Sauvignons (a North Coast blend) and Syrahs (South Australia) made with stronger emphasis on fruit and spice than on body, tannin or oak. If you can recall, during the ‘80s and ‘90s most of the wineries in the U.S. were not making them that way—we had to ask specific winemakers to do that for us.
But face it, there were a number of other archetypal wine types that could never be duplicated in the U.S. and so we had to look elsewhere. Therefore I found willing winemaker/partners in Australia and Italy. For one vintage, I contracted a famous vintner in Beaujolais. I also devised two vintages of a South-West French red called "Rustique," blending four classic varieties; and also had no less than two different white wines customized in Germany, in the Baden and Pfalz regions.
Hawaiian regional cuisine, in fact, is particularly conducive to feathery light, higher acid/minerally wines such as Riesling. Is it any wonder that, ever since then, seemingly every acclaimed German winemaker has worked with one Island sommelier or another on customized labels?.
Needless to say, if designer wines weren’t popular, Islanders, and winemakers, wouldn’t be doing them. The only blips? The occasional yahoo—I mean restaurant critic—especially on the Mainland, who couldn’t quite grasp the concept of wines made or selected specifically for food (one notorious San Francisco reviewer chastised our restaurant for not having “enough brands of wines familiar to most people” on our glass and bottle lists).
Reality Checks
Among the notable winemakers with whom I worked to create "Roy's" label wines: Lynn Penner-Ash in Oregon; Jim Clendenen, Bryan Babcock, Forrest Tancer and Patrick Campbell in California; Riccardo Cotarella in Italy; Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan and Weinhaus Heger in Germany. Working with the best in the world, we learned a few things along the way.
First, that working with a winery to produce a private label is definitely a partnership, and for everyone involved there must be benefits beyond profitability. Our program was a huge success—cuvées ranging anywhere from 200 cases (a sumptuous Sangiovese as well as gorgeous Cabernet Franc based blend by Babcock) to 700 to 900 cases a year (Clendenen's iterations of Roy's Chardonnay, and Pinot Noirs by Penner-Ash)—but it wasn't always a rose garden.
Admittedly, for instance, many of our only guests were simply not wowed by our custom Beaujolais—it took two years for us to go through 400 cases of what I thought was a perfectly quaffable, food-versatile red. Live and learn, but you never want to produce a wine that takes over a year to sell through because that puts too much stress on your winery as well as distributors warehousing your inventory.
Sometimes, stylistically, relationships (even the friendliest) are not entirely simpatico. Early on, for instance, we engaged a favorite Carneros Chardonnay specialist who, however, showed little inclination to tailor our custom label wine to our food, utilizing too much oak and other excesses, making it a less than ideal match with our Asian influenced seafoods.
Which is why we eventually turned to Clendenen in Santa Barbara, who was crafty enough to produce a crisp, lower key, mineral nuanced (rather than oaky) style of Chardonnay that tasted better with our dishes than almost any other white wines not made from the Chardonnay grape. We were always amazed by how adaptable this style of Chardonnay was with Asian influenced dishes.
Some thoughts to seriously consider when considering your own private label program:
There must be a culinary need for a customized wine. Never forget that your wine will be consumed with food—your chef's specific dishes. If the wine is not an ideal match, it simply won't sell.
Choose a winery that is responsive to your quality and cost needs. Yes, the advantage of a private label program is being able to sell a one-of-a-kind wine at a lower cost, but it is genuine sensory quality that actually drives sales and profits, just as it is with your food (if your chef is a lousy cook, no one likes the food, and your restaurant is bound to fail). To achieve a suitable cost/quality balance, you'll need to work equally well with your partner/winery's owner or business manager, the winemaker, as well as supportive marketing teams responsible for getting your wine from Point A to Point B. Everyone has to share the goal of producing a wine that is ideal for your restaurant; and it goes without saying that you need to be involved in every step of the entire process, from farming to fermentation, élevage to bottling, labeling, shipping and distribution (distributors also need to be a willing partners). Sounds like a lot, but it's very do-able—we did as much as a dozen wines each year, most of the time from four different countries and at least two states, not to mention getting the products to restaurants in up to a dozen states.
Specify your style of wine. A winery can't craft something ideal without very specific sensory guidelines. But don't follow just your own instincts. Consult your entire staff—they're the ones who will be selling the wine! Conduct tastings and lead discussions utilizing commercial brands as examples, then communicate the resulting consensus with your winery/partner. You name it—peppery spice nuances, sweet fruit or mineral toned noses, crisp or soft acidity, rounded or aggressive tannin, lots of creamy or smoky oak or no oak at all—a good winery can deliver any of the specifics with amazing precision. But you have to be precise to get what you want, and be there when it comes to steps such as tasting, selecting and blending cuvées.
When you commit to a quantity, underestimate your usage based upon one-year turnover. This, we've learned from experience—that after a year, wines are less likely to retain the exact same sensory profile originally envisioned. For instance, we once produced a beautiful, and pricey, "Toscana" blend (primarily Sangiovese, tweaked with Syrah), but because we instinctively bottled it unfiltered with minimal sulfur dioxide, towards the end of the first year bottles were turning up with varying degrees of Brettanomyces. Some guests loved it, some didn't. In terms of production decisions, we learned our lesson. In terms of sales, we learned to underestimate our projected yearly depletion—it is better to run out of a fantastic wine than to be stuck with a disappointing one for longer than you want.
Do not compromise on labeling and packaging. An attractive art label and a catchy name will always enhance sales. If you're going to do something, make it attractive enough that you will want to use the label for merchandising. It matters to guests. To ensure that your label meets TTB (U.S. Tobacco, Tax & Trade Bureau) guidelines and your winery's bottling line specifications, it's easiest to work with the producer's own graphic and printing resources. But it is better to select your own artwork, and be specific on the label's stated varietal makeup, appellation and, unless they prefer anonymity, name of the producer and/or winemaker (a prestigious winemaker is always huge extra selling point). For instance, our Roy's Chardonnays always clearly stated that they were "Barrel fermented exclusively for Roy's style of food by Au Bon Climat's Jim Clendenen in California's Santa Maria Valley." When we selected barrels of single-vineyard Pinot Noir for bottling in Ken Wright Cellars, you can bet that the back label said "This single barrel cuvée was personally selected by Roy's Randy Caparoso for Roy Yamaguchi's family of restaurants." Credibility is everything, especially at the point of sale. And besides, if you got it, flaunt it!
Wines customized for Hawaiian Islands sommeliers
Five of the more interesting designer wines that have been exclusively crafted and bottled for Hawaiian restaurants over the years:
Alan Wong’s Kitchen Sink—A blend of Napa Valley grown grapes customized for the Wong’s native Hawaiian influenced fusion cooking, executed with the deft touch of Evening Land Vineyards’ Sashi Moorman.
Halekulani’s Burnside Vineyard Pinot Noir—For the more luxurious Island cuisine served in this 5-star hotel, a crisp, cold climate style Pinot from the Sebastopol/Sonoma Coast crafted for veteran Cellarmaster Kevin Toyama by James Hall (Patz & Hall); and just one of an entire portofolio of exclusive Halekulani wines done for Toyama by vintners such as Bert Selbach (Dr. F. Weins-Prüm) and Olivier Humbrecht (Zind Humbrecht).
Roy’s Tavern Red—Collaboration of Gary Burk (Costa de Oro) and Mike Weber (Director of Operations for this restaurant group’s more recent, casual American/Island concepts); a wine Furuya described as a “juicy, rustic, savory blend of Tempranillo and Syrah, with a dollop of Cabernet for structure and Pinot for lightness,” produced and served from the tap in 5-gallon nitrogen pressurized kegs.
DK Restaurants’ CF Eurasia Müller-Thurgau—The “CF” standing for Chuck Furuya MS, who oversaw this restaurant group’s East-West food oriented wine program; a white wine by Franconia’s Paul Furst that Furuya described as “remarkably light, delicate, nuanced, well priced, and magical with our food.”
DK Restaurants’ CF Euro-Asian Riesling—Germany has long played a major role in Hawaii’s culinary tradition, for purely sensory reasons. This off-dry Riesling was crafted by Gunderloch's legendary Fritz Hasselbach to express tropical/pineapple fragrances, hence a seamless match for Asian as well as Pacific Islands influenced foods.