Winemakers of the Year connect California’s past and future

Winemakers Morgan Twain-Peterson (left) of Bedrock Wine Co. and Tegan Passalacqua of Turley Wine Cellars at the Montecillo vineyard in Sonoma County, from which both harvest Cabernet Sauvignon. Winemakers Morgan Twain-Peterson (left) of Bedrock Wine Co. and Tegan Passalacqua of Turley Wine Cellars at the Montecillo vineyard in Sonoma County, from which both harvest Cabernet Sauvignon. Photo: Erik Castro / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Erik Castro / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Winemakers of the Year connect California’s past and future 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

On a recent brisk evening in a Napa backyard, Tegan Passalacqua and Morgan Twain-Peterson stood with a gaggle of fellow winemakers. Just another Saturday-night party, with food platters and strung lights, if not for a few unusual wines on a nearby table.

To begin: Turley’s 2004 Rancho Escondido, the sole vintage of a rare Baja California wine from that most famous of Zinfandel houses. Next to it, the debut 1993 vintage of Turley’s Hayne Zinfandel. From there, a time warp: A 1984 Ridge White Zinfandel, still pinkish and resilient. A 1974 Ridge Fiddletown. A 1987 Ravenswood Old Hill. A bottle of Simi Carignan without a vintage date — a simple old table wine in a three-quarters quart bottle, that had the group scouring for clues. Best guess? 1954.

“The only wines I’ve seen like that, put into that standardized bottle,” Twain-Peterson says, “were the other old ones like the Larkmead Burgundy.”

This is, in truth, a pretty standard evening for both men. Even a casual conversation quickly becomes a torrent of detail about California wine’s history, present and future.

Walk through Passalacqua’s and Twain-Peterson’s favorite vineyards around the state, many of them more than a century old, and they’ll talk about a continuity from wines and farmers past. But neither Passalacqua, 37, nor Twain-Peterson, 33, spends his days dwelling on what once was. Each is responsible for some of the most significant, and critically successful, wines in California.

Passalacqua is Turley’s winemaker and viticulturist, overseeing 40 vineyards and three winery facilities throughout the state, making not only Zinfandel and related wines (including a dry White Zin) but several whites, plus Cinsault from an old Lodi parcel, and recently, Cabernet Sauvignon. Twain-Peterson owns Bedrock Wine Co., which encompasses both the vineyard of that name, a regal 153-acre patch of Sonoma Valley dating to the 19th century, as well as a set of wines that continue the longtime work of his father, Joel Peterson, whose Ravenswood winery introduced many Americans to Zin.

That’s hardly the sum of their efforts. Passalacqua is a vineyard owner, too, of the 1915 Kirschenmann vineyard in Lodi, a source for Zinfandel for Turley and white grapes for a handful of too-cool projects. Last year he also launched his own label, Sandlands, which debuted to the sort of demand about which Napa viscounts only dream. For that, he focused on wines that offer other prisms into California: Carignane from Contra Costa County, Grenache from Placer County and his personal cause celebre, Chenin Blanc.

Twain-Peterson debuted another label last year as well, with his longtime friend Chris Cottrell: Under the Wire, which highlights the same obsession with place in single-vineyard California sparkling wine as you find among Champagne’s new generation of growers. He makes an Albarino under the Abrente label with pioneering winemaker Michael Havens. And he’s finalizing edits on a dissertation that would make him a Master of Wine.

Because both men care deeply that the past isn’t lost in the race toward the future, they also co-founded, along with other Zinfandel pioneers like Mike Officer of Carlisle Winery, the nonprofit Historic Vineyard Society, dedicated to keeping some of California’s oldest and most prized vines in the ground. The two want to build a future based on California’s homegrown traditions, rather than one guided by the whims of the industry’s deep-pocketed new arrivals.

The men are close friends, and it would be impossible to talk about one’s efforts without referencing the other’s. In fact, their combined work has been one of California wine’s greatest catalysts for quality in recent years.

That also made it impossible to highlight one without the other. For that reason, for the first time we have selected winemakers from two different wineries to share our annual honor. Morgan Twain-Peterson and Tegan Passalacqua are The Chronicle’s Winemakers of the Year.

Although Passalacqua and Twain-Peterson are both native sons, their paths to wine couldn’t have been more different.

Twain-Peterson was thoroughly prepped for a life in wine; the inevitable factoid is that he made his first vintage, a Pinot Noir, at age 5. His father, Joel Peterson, founded Ravenswood in 1976, setting it on course to become one of California’s most beloved brands. The story told about Peterson is that he came to wine from science — as a cancer immunologist at UCSF’s Mount Zion campus in San Francisco, then as a bacteriologist in Sonoma.

The actual tale is more complicated. Twain-Peterson’s paternal grandparents were scientists — and epicures. His grandmother worked in Tennessee on the atomic bomb before moving to the East Bay, where she met his grandfather, a grease scientist for Shell. He also ran San Francisco’s Vintners Club. His grandmother tested recipes for Alice Waters’ first cookbook.

Twain-Peterson’s parents were essentially hippies — his older sister was born in a Kenwood commune, and his mother, Kate, concocted the surname “Twain.” His mom was in nursing school at Sacramento State when he was a kid, “which meant I spent an enormous amount of time with my dad.” Peterson was running Ravenswood from a modest facility in Sonoma; Twain-Peterson’s kindergarten, in essence, was between the barrels.

Back to that Pinot Noir. Peterson, perhaps trying to keep his son busy, asked him what type of wine he’d want to make. Pinot, Twain-Peterson replied, “because you said no good Pinot Noir could be made in California.” The Sangiacomo family tended vineyards around Ravenswood’s facility and, ever precocious, Twain-Peterson offered Angelo Sangiacomo 6,000 lire from one of his parents’ trips to Italy. It was a pittance, but the seasoned Italian farmer provided Twain-Peterson with a small parcel to look after, enough for a barrel of wine.

This pattern repeated itself each year until Twain-Peterson was heading to college at Vassar. What he later dubbed Vino Bambino might have been a childhood lark, except that he got a job at Chelsea Wine Vault in New York just before college, where the owner let him hold a tasting. New York’s top sommeliers, improbably, showed up and bought entire vintages; Dan Barber’s Blue Hill took the 1996, and the 1997 went to Gramercy Tavern.

After Vassar came a Columbia master’s program in American studies — he’d gone east to chase the liberal arts and to escape the insularity of Wine Country — but he kept working in wine shops. At Pet Wines & Spirits on the Upper East Side, a mix of wine retail and dog salon, he met Cottrell, a fellow clerk, and the two became best friends. Cottrell now handles sales for Bedrock and is a partner with Twain-Peterson in Under the Wire.

Twain-Peterson made a globe-trotting round to Australia and Bordeaux’s Chateau Lynch-Bages before returning to start Bedrock in 2007, aiming to follow his father’s bootstrapping path. But he never forgot his hours driving vineyards with his dad, an experience that made him a formidable vineyard sleuth. Bedrock is now a collection of his discoveries, like the parcel used for his Oakville Farmhouse red: archaic varieties like Negrette in the heart of Napa, nestled behind some of the world’s most famous vineyards.

Passalacqua’s career began in a more circumspect way. He may be a third-generation Napan, but his great-grandfather and grandfather worked at Mare Island and his father drove a concrete truck; he’s the first in his family to come to wine, even if he grew up around the burgeoning vineyards of Napa’s Coombsville area.

After high school, he moved to Tahoe and worked in construction before studying public health at Sacramento State. He graduated in 2001; job prospects for a budding social worker were dim, so he worked as a lab technician at Napa Wine Co. in Oakville — where many of Napa’s elite winemakers kept their wines made at the time — while taking night classes in viticulture at Napa Valley College.

After a stop in New Zealand, he applied for an internship with Turley Wine Cellars, where Ehren Jordan, then Turley’s winemaker, offered Passalacqua a full-time job. Wanderlust struck, and Passalacqua headed off to work with Alain Graillot in 2005 in the Rhone’s Crozes-Hermitage.

He returned to resume work as Turley’s field man, then added winemaking duties. In 2011, wanderlust struck again. This time Passalacqua headed to South Africa, where he became entranced with that region’s great white variety, Chenin Blanc. After he returned, he officially became Turley’s winemaker.

The wanderlust never really dims. Passalacqua has been wandering California’s back roads for years, often while doing his rounds for Turley, taking spare moments to discover forgotten parcels with interesting vines and dirt, typically shunting them to winemaking friends. (For more on this, go to http://is.gd/passq.) It was only a matter of time before he claimed a few for himself, which is how Sandlands came to be. Its debut included old dry-farmed Chenin Blanc from Amador County; Carignane from century-old vines in Contra Costa; and red Trousseau from young vines Passalacqua grafted on a Sonoma ridge 3 miles from the Pacific.

Twain-Peterson comes across as a bit raffish — he arrives for an interview in a T-shirt that reads “I’m just a yeast looking for some sugar” — although his intellect is immediately evident. Same with Passalacqua, who’s tall and imposing — he played basketball in high school, although you might have guessed he was a linebacker; about two seconds into a conversation, you realize how quickly his mind works. He and his wife, Olivia, live with their 1-year-old son, William, in a modest bungalow east of Napa; Twain-Peterson lives in a small house outside downtown Sonoma.

Both have exceptional talents in the cellar as well as the vineyard, with slightly variant styles; Twain-Peterson can be slightly friendlier to new oak. But both opt for indigenous yeasts in fermentations and a minimum of additions, and yet make wines that please a broad range of tastes. This is particularly true with Passalacqua, who has subtly punched-up freshness and complexity in the Turley wines, all while continuing to please the winery’s fiercely loyal fans — not least of whom is his boss.

“Tegan knows what I like. When he puts blends together he invites me to taste and so on, but I’m just an observer,” Larry Turley says. “I want him to make his own decision.”

Curiously, neither was interested in Zinfandel when they began their careers. Passalacqua sent a query to Turley not because of Zinfandel, but because of its lesser-known work with unruly Petite Sirah. And when Twain-Peterson started Bedrock, even with the family lineage, he was skeptical of what he could do with Zinfandel. Instead he determined, as his father puts it, that “he was going to become the king of Syrah.”

But Joel Peterson had a trump card. In 2004, he called his son at Columbia.

“Hey,” he said, “we just bought a vineyard” — the Domenici ranch, prime Sonoma Valley land, including vines dating to 1888 planted by Sen. George Hearst. The farming was of the glum, chemically driven sort, and even the old-vine fruit was going into Ravenswood’s Sonoma County blend. Twain-Peterson might have had other ambitions, but Zinfandel called — a dilemma he resolved, at first, by making field blends that he dubbed “heritage wines.”

“He couldn’t avoid Zinfandel, so he found a way to get around Zinfandel,” Peterson says. “Once he’d done that, he’d decided it was OK to compete with the old man.”

Although Zinfandel had little reputation as a serious wine at the time, both decided to treat a populist grape with gravitas. And both are beneficiaries of two long commitments to older vines. Ravenswood made this point in 1984 when it started using the Dickerson vineyard in western Napa. From its inception, Turley drew a bead on old vineyards, and on organics.

Both also benefit from unusually solid financial footing, whether it was Larry Turley’s consistent funding of the moral work of paying to revive and maintain old vineyards, or Peterson and his partners’ sale of Ravenswood to Constellation Brands in 2001 for $148 million, which gave the family freedom to return to the small-scale roots Peterson had always wanted.

That earned them each the opportunity to tinker. In the past, I’ve called Passalacqua’s farming the vineyard equivalent of managing by walking around, and that remains true, as evidenced by the half million or so miles he’s clocked in a succession of Subarus, driving up and down the state. It is attentiveness on a massive scale.

Both clearly feel most comfortable in the vineyard. Their eyes light up when conversation turns to talk of young vines farmed without irrigation — both are evangelists for dry-farming — or the meticulous, plant-by-plant genetic mapping that Officer helped them perform in key vineyards, or their giddy Instagram posts from sodden fields on damp mornings.

They recognize the cultural value of the places they work with. Places like the teensy Puccini vineyard above Glen Ellen, a single acre of wizened “mixed black” vines surrounded by a stone wall and nestled against a state park. Or the Salvador vineyard in Oakley, 110-year-old vines planted in deep sand, a source of particular satisfaction for Passalacqua, who converted it to organics. (“Before we started doing organic farming, nothing would grow in the sand,” its owner, Steve Gonsalves, told me.)

For that matter, there are Bedrock and Kirschenmann, both of which evoke old pre-Prohibition traditions. The vines in such places are particularly special for remaining agriculturally productive, still turning a crop all these years later.

But neither man is enough of an idealist to overlook the scarred history of many of these vineyards, including the long years when Zinfandel could barely turn a profit. If they don’t create value, they know, these places will be plowed under. “At some point you’ve got to figure out an economic way that it makes sense to keep old vines in the ground,” Twain-Peterson says.

That provided the impetus to found the Historic Vineyard Society. Mostly, its work involves maintaining a vineyard registry and hosting an annual vineyard tour and dinner; it also worked with Assemblyman Tom Daly of Anaheim to pass a resolution officially recognizing the importance of California’s old vineyards. (Unfortunately, official protections pretty much end there.)

This is why, for all the Trousseau and Chenin Blanc and Albarino, both men’s work ultimately returns to a meditation on Zinfandel — what might be considered a mandate born of their native roots. Most vintners come from afar with dreams of Cabernet or Pinot Noir. Here are two history buffs taking an opportunity to preserve an intrinsically Californian legacy.

Yet their success only highlights the crisis that California’s adopted grape faces today, one that Twain-Peterson and Passalacqua readily acknowledge. Along with a small roster of fellow travelers, including Carlisle’s Officer and Ridge Vineyards, they have been fighting an uphill battle in making Zinfandel with intent. Until the past couple of years, that grape’s zeitgeist had gone completely the other direction — endless bottles made big, dull and sweet.

“Zinfandel is just so beleaguered,” Twain-Peterson says, “because it’s made in such not-wonderful ways all over California.”

This is not a sly conversation about Zinfandel’s proper size. The Turley wines still top 15 percent, and Bedrock’s aren’t that far behind; Passalacqua points out, defiantly, that “Zinfandel has been made in a high-alcohol style for 150 years,” including famous 1960s wines from Mayacamas and Sutter Home.

No, the issue that occupies both of them is freshness. That’s less about lower alcohol levels than picking slightly early, if need be, rather than radically late. The latter has been Zin’s default for too long. Too many well-known wines harness grapes one step shy of being raisins.

The triumph for Bedrock and Turley is to have found a balance, to rely on great farming to help make wines that are unrepentantly bold but also thoughtful and complicated. Are they too big? Twenty-five years ago, Twain-Peterson points out, when his father’s wines landed at an honest 14 percent, they “were described as Gothic and huge.”

Of course, many budding winemakers now sidestep more mainstream efforts to focus on side projects like these, which is why both men keep coming back to what they consider the real threat to Zinfandel: It has become uncool, a wine largely made by a generation whose tastes are falling to the sidelines.

“We’re almost at a crisis point for Zinfandel,” Passalacqua says, “because young people who are serious about wine don’t drink it, and young people don’t want to make it.”

Not entirely. Twain-Peterson and Passalacqua are our youngest Winemakers of the Year to date, and yet there they are, hunting down ancient vines in forgotten corners, anointing Zinfandel as their own. They have built a bully pulpit for what they hold most dear. If the future of California wine rests in hands as capable as these, there’s no concern whatsoever. What comes next will be extraordinary.

From the notebook

2013 Bedrock Oakville Farmhouse Heritage Oakville Red ($42, 14.5%): One of Twain-Peterson’s rarer releases, made from a melange (Negrette, Petite Sirah, Mondeuse, etc.) grown in some of Napa’s rarest real estate. Inky, warm fruit flavors; spicy, fragrant and complex — violets and sandalwood.

2013 Abrente Napa Valley Albarino ($23, 13%): Twain-Peterson’s project with winemaking pioneer Michael Havens yields one of Napa’s most charming whites: peach skin, bay laurel, an intense lime tartness and surprisingly full texture.

2012 Under the Wire Bedrock Vineyard Sonoma Valley Sparkling Zinfandel ($40, 12.5%): Keep an eye out for the new vintage of this rosé made by Twain-Peterson and Chris Cottrell. An important old vineyard in a context (fizzy) rarely seen in California, full of tangy Seville orange and cherry skin.

More wines: Bedrock’s lineup is exceptionally diverse, including the Bedrock Heritage wine from Twain-Peterson’s own vineyard. There’s the Carignane-driven Evangelho, plus Zinfandels from Carlisle (Russian River Valley), Kirschenmann (Lodi) and the famous Monte Rosso (Sonoma Valley), a Gibson Ranch Grenache, blended Old Vine Zinfandel and many others.

2013 Turley Salvador Vineyard Contra Costa County Zinfandel ($38, 15.8%): This forthcoming release showcases one of Passalacqua’s favorite vineyards. Plush boysenberry fruit and a warm, softer aspect from the sandy soils don’t get in the way of broad-shouldered tannins.

2012 Sandlands Sonoma Coast Trousseau ($28, 13.2%): Not to bypass his Chenin Blanc but Passalacqua makes this improbable wine from ridgetop vines near the Pacific Ocean. Trousseau is usually delicate but this has intense mineral-tannin structure, with generous fruit and a cocoa-bean sweetness.

More wines: Turley produces more than 30 wines, and even the basic efforts show Passalacqua’s abilities, including the Juvenile Zinfandel, a White Zinfandel rosé and the Bechtholdt Cinsault. Among the single-vineyard wines, the Dragon (Howell Mountain), Sadie Upton (Amador) and Ueberroth (Paso Robles) all show distinct sides of California. As for Sandlands, Chenin Blanc remains a calling card — there will be at least three as of the 2014 vintage — but keep an eye out for his rare Placer County Grenache, from an old vineyard outside Sacramento.

An old-vine tour: Two winemakers’ top spots

Mendocino County

Gibson Ranch

Grapes: Grenache, Syrah, Trousseau Noir, Peloursin, Petite Sirah

First planted: 1880s

“The amazing thing about Gibson is that McDowell Valley feels like a world unto itself — this high valley outside Hopland a ways from Sonoma and everything else. It makes sense that the field blend would be so unique.” (Twain-Peterson)

Sonoma County

Bedrock Vineyard

Grapes: 23 varieties, including Zinfandel, Carignane, Alicante Bouschet and more

First planted: 1888 (in current iteration) by Sen. George Hearst

“Bedrock is the wine that I started Bedrock Wine Co. to make. A very old vineyard with a lot of history. It definitely makes for a wine of more spice and savory character rather than just all-out fruit. What we’ve learned most from Bedrock is what a decade of good farming inputs can do to an old vineyard that previously was farmed more chemically.” (Twain-Peterson)

Montecillo

Grapes: Cabernet, Zinfandel

First planted: 1964

“Some of the oldest Cabernet remaining in the state, the former backbone of the Kenwood Artist Series. This vineyard makes old-school, perfume-infused mountain Cabernets. Before Turley started buying fruit from the vineyard these vines were slated to be pulled out.” (Twain-Peterson)

Nervo/Vineyard 101

Grapes: Zinfandel, Negrette, Grenache, Burger, Chasselas, more

First planted: 1896

“Nervo to me is, outside of Bedrock, one of the most personal vineyards we work with. My father remembers visiting the old Nervo winery in the 1950s. My grandparents bought wine from Nervo winery. On top of that, the vineyard is just amazing: 25- to 35-degree slopes of decomposed shale.” (Twain-Peterson)

Contra Costa

Evangelho

Grapes: Zinfandel, Carignane, Mataro, Palomino, Mission, more

First planted: 1890s

“It was the vineyard that opened my eyes the most to what Tegan, when he was forming his thesis about more marginalized areas in California, was talking about. Evangelho is a truly great vineyard that’s just been disguised by the vagaries and missed opportunities of Contra Costa as a whole. It makes a wine that’s graceful and perfumed and has a subtle structure from the sand, which totally belies the fact that it’s the warmest appellation we work with.” (Twain-Peterson)

Del Barba Oakley Road

Grapes: Zinfandel, Carignane

First planted: 1920s

“A prime piece of old own-rooted vines planted on north facing slopes near the Sacramento River delta.” (Passalacqua)

Napa Valley

Library Vineyard

Grapes: Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, “mixed blacks”

First planted: 1930s

“It’s likely Napa Valley’s most diverse vineyard planting. I don’t know any other vineyards that have more than 20 varieties planted in them. And it makes a wine you can’t replicate. It can confuse you with it’s aromatics. You almost think it’s a white white, but then it’s a big Petite Sirah.” (Passalacqua)

Hayne

Grapes: Zinfandel, Petite Sirah

First planted: 1900s

“It’s planted in what may be California’s best grapegrowing soils. It’s our thoroughbred. The wines are strong and structured but without a lot of fat. They’re our longest-lived Zinfandels.” (Passalacqua)

Oakville Farmhouse

Grapes: Negrette, Mondeuse, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Colombard, Chenin Blanc

First planted: Likely 1930s

“The oldest vineyard left in Oakville, and one we are grateful to have preserved. This is truly a last vestige of uniqueness in a valley awash with modern plantings of Cabernet. This features some of the only remaining old Mondeuse in Napa Valley. The original owner of To Kalon Vineyard, H.W. Crabb, liked Mondeuse so much he called it Crabb’s Black Burgundy.” (Twain-Peterson)

Lodi

Kirschenmann

Grapes: Zinfandel, Refosco, Carignane, Chenin Blanc, Green Hungarian, Pinot Gris

First planted: 1915

“I love old-vine vineyards, I wanted my own vineyard, and the reality is, the reason I wanted to buy it was the quality of Schmiedt [the vineyard next door]. I’d never had Zinfandel from Lodi that tasted like that.” (Passalacqua)

Bechthold

Grapes: Cinsault

First planted: 1886

“Definitely the oldest Cinsault in California. The thing I like about that wine is it’s ... the easiest-drinking wine we make. Yet it doesn’t lack for complexity. I think that wine confuses people in what they think about Lodi. You’re thinking Beaujolais, but it’s from Lodi.” (Passalacqua)

Amador County

Judge Bell (aka Story)

Grapes: Zinfandel, Chenin Blanc

First planted: 1907

“What I love about the Zinfandel is, it has what I call the Amador garrigue. It’s kind of an isolated vineyard, surrounded by native vegetation. It’s true Amador wine, with its spice and its tannin.” (Passalacqua)