Wine Industry in Sonoma County

Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, city and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana Enrico and Gina Lash. Hello, I'm dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Today we have with us two gentlemen, we have rich thomas, director of viticulture at santa rosa Junior College and we have

Graham parnell who's instructor at santa rosa Junior College and is a magazine editor. They're going to be talking about the wine industry in Sonoma County and they're also going to be discussing the different table wines that you might want to buy for your holiday table. So

let's join them now and find out all about the wine industry in Sonoma County. Nice to have you on gentlemen, can you tell me gentlemen, one of you will start with you, I like your accent. Let's talk about the wine industry in Sonoma County. You seem

to have all the statistics, the wine industry in Sonoma County is becoming more and more of the industry to drive the whole county's economy the grapes about 100 and 54 $250 million with the grapes. But if you turn that around in wine aspect, that's about $3

billion to the county Added to which we also have the tourism industry and also for the restaurants and that whole site conglomerates them together almost $4 billion. So towards Sonoma County, that's a lot of money that this wine industry contributes. The wine industry seems to have

a really big clout here in Sonoma County. Um, what do you rich have to say about that? What's your input? Well, the cloud is there because one major reason and that's the God simply put Sonoma County on earth to raise great grapes, which makes great wine.

And in today's marketplace, basically what we're seeing is that people are not drinking a lot more wine today, even though we hear a lot more about it, what they're doing is drinking better and consequently they're going to end up in Sonoma County. We do make the

best wine in the world. Our reputation is probably, I'm gonna say 10 years behind our neighbors to the east napa county and we're catching up, we're Avis were playing hardball and we're out there in the marketplace, showing them the world that we're literally number one. Can

you tell me a little bit about the program at the J. C. U. You're the director of the viticulture program and how that ties in with our wine industry. And we really have the only full viticulture program at the state of California in the community college

level and there's only two at the four year level which would be Davis and Fresno state. So our basic programs function if you will, is to provide vineyard managers uh for the North coast industry. and we also have a wine marketing program which is to give

people, I guess a background on how to market wine. And surprisingly enough, our average students, average age is in the neighborhood of about 40 to 45 years old with a significant number of career change people or early retirement or I'm going to retire up here in

a few years and I want to have a vineyard going. So it's a very interesting mix of people. And what about the classes you teach? The teachers I classes I teach are the component classes, component, wine components so that people have an understanding of what are

the flavors and the aromas and the bouquets are tasting in the various wines through the varietals and also to get beyond the cabernet sauvignon chardonnay and progress forward more into the newest styles of wines and new varietals that are becoming hot. Merlot has been a hot

variety of the last two or three years, but other ones coming on board Now, a syrah, also known as Shiraz, which is the Australian version of it and also Sangiovese and for whites like viognier Marsan and things like that. Can you explain the some of those?

I haven't heard of Viognier and Marsan, those are rhone style varietals, not well known in America, but for us becoming onboard now a lot of wineries starting to make some, it takes three years for a great at least get up to running where you can pick

the grapes. So from the vine, so you can't just decide right now. I think our plant and let's make some next year. It's forward planning as Rich says we're trying through the viticulture program to progress people's thoughts and people's awareness of what goes on in the

program. So if you were planning on putting in a vineyard, these would be ideal classes for our viewers to come and to to watch Absolutely Rich takes on board a lot of people who come and study and learn what they should be doing for the vineyards

and where they need to lead themselves the pitfalls, they understand that it's a nice thing to do and it seems to be popular. I'd like to own a vineyard when they get down to the nitty gritty and find out how much it costs to put a

vineyard in. It makes a step back and think and the realization sets in that it's it's not easy and it's quite expensive to do. You were talking about all the numbers, the money amounts that the income it generates for Sonoma County. What about the job opportunity?

Do you have any statistics on that? I don't have any real raw statistics in terms of, you know, we need this many bodies. I certainly know that pretty much everybody that goes through our program that's looking for a job gets a job either in vineyard management

or on the winery sales marketing type of occupations that are available in the county. So there is a good job market out there. But I think some of the things we have to take a look at it and I was born and raised in santa rosa.

So you know, I can look back and my dad, you said you remember the good old days, well I'm getting old enough where I've got the good old days to remember also when there wasn't a free way out there and there were prune trees and apple

trees and pastures and livestock. You know, all kinds of major diversity within Sanoma county. And I think one of the things that we're seeing today and, and a lot of people would agree and we've certainly got a lot of press both pro and con recently about

all the vineyards going in. Are we becoming a monoculture? And I think the answer is yes, we're becoming a monoculture but its economic reasons that are pushing that, what else can you make money in today? In agriculture, you know, eat lamb, you know, 10,000 coyotes can't

be wrong is a classic saying the problem is a sheep rancher in Sonoma County, the coyotes and mountain lions win the battle and they don't pay their bills. So you don't make any money as a sheep razor. They're trying to put a hog farm down the

road or park and that's gonna fly real well flies flying, that was actually meant to be a fun like that. But that's all right. I'm thinking too well, we also, you know, look at the horticultural industry and the apple industry and I really don't have much

sympathy and I'll probably get shot at a few times because I have before with the apple industry, they're raising an apple called Grabenstein. We all love it. It's good for 20 minutes literally a year. And compared to all the other apples and Washington's beating us to

death with eat Washington apples and red delicious and all that the apple growers are raising and you know, they haven't stayed current and got into new modern varieties and things at least the grape growers have decided to turn this thing around. And uh, we don't have

carignan anymore, which is an old variety that was made for basically red wine period that we made for years and things. You know, we've stayed current, we've increased our yields, we've improved our quality of thousandfold. So the difference in agriculture today in Sonoma County is our

choice, our monoculture grapes or houses, you know, I think we basically have a choice there. We've got to get people to quit complaining about building a winery on every corner because by the year 2000 are major problem in the year 2000 and the industry is going

to be lack of space to put the grapes were raising right now because every time you read about a winery want to be built, somebody fights it. The neighbors, the road, the congestion and the 6000 other reasons that the nimbys have, you know, not in my

backyard, but we're gonna need those facilities because the alternative is houses. Yeah, I think that it's great that we have an agricultural based community here because as you say, the result will be housing if we don't have some kind of agriculture that we're doing. And, and

I like the idea that Sonoma County will stay in agricultural community. So that's important to me. Well, our agricultural livelihoods right here in this class class. I know you're enjoying that wine, We'll get to that in a minute. Are there really correct wines for certain foods?

We're gonna talk about the holiday wines to put on our team. Certainly not Graham handle most of that. I just haven't really found the right demeanor for my rice Krispies yet. But Graham can talk about the ham and the turkey and the steak. I think they

used to be the logic that red wine went with the red meats and that white wine with fish and chicken veal and I think we've got away from that. I think europe is a little hidebound still with the old traditions. But America is, it's very young.

It's, it's go ahead and I think and I teach the same thing in my classes that if you like that wine and you enjoy it with that particular food, then enjoy the wine without food, whatever pleases you and don't be go by tradition, there's nothing worse

than having a meal with the wine that you think that's the way it's always been done and not enjoy the meal or enjoy the wine. So nobody's happy at that point and you have to make everything happy for yourselves. And I think that certain red meats

do belong with some red wines, like cabernet sauvignon certainly goes well. Or Zinfandel, Red zinfandel, not the white goes well with meat. On the other hand, some fish lends itself to pinot sums in actually does goes very well with some red meat. So some fish as

well. So from that point of view, we're not trying to set herself locked into some field for either white wine or red wine. Well, where does that all come from? Where there's a specific wine for a specific type of meal from way back in France, where

they used to have certain wines with certain foods because the tannin level or the city level and the food was so awful. The reason the french food got to be so good devices, sources to cover and mask the terrible flavors of the meats and the fish

because they had no refrigeration in those days. So you killed something, you either eat it very quickly and if you got gamey or hung too long, you have to kind of mask out the flavors. So they advise wonderful sources. So the french still have the wonderful

sources nowadays, but with the modern techniques for preserving food and keeping food fresh, you get the best of all worlds. But the wines aspect of trying to help mask out the flavors of the bad foods that's still staying with us and that's tradition from it. Oh,

interesting. I didn't, I think Danny to follow up on that, this whole concept of tradition, you know, that's a wonderful thing to have a lot of traditions and things like tradition. But the problem with a lot of traditions in the wine industry in particular is the

fact that those traditions are also intimidating and it's preventing what I'm going to call joe Budweiser, mr, average citizen to go out and buy a bottle of wine because he's afraid of it. You know, there's so much of the big words that Graham and I like

to use when describing wines and goes with this food. We need something to go with a hamburger, that's why beer is 36 gallons of person a year. And wines, only two people aren't afraid to go get a candle. You know, everybody knows how to unscrew the

top or pop a pop top. How many people you give him a bottle of wine and, and also, or a corkscrew and that's good. What do we do with both these little critters. There's nothing wrong with the corkscrew, we go back to intimidation. Again, 90% of

the wines that we drink in California today are made even right here in Sonoma County could just as well be served sold with screw tops. Cork goes back to tradition again. And yes, I'm not gonna argue. There is some aging that goes on. Just something about

having that cork pop from your standpoint because you know how to take a cork out. I'm looking at the other 400 million people out there that downtown Iowa, you know what's the corkscrew? Quite seriously and these traditions that we've got are really what are holding back

increased consumption. We've got wine for every taste. You know, we've got the kool aid with a kick called white zinfandel, the starter kit basically that I call it for wine drinkers put it in a Playtex over extremely well and then we've got the big cabernets and

then Graham mentioned the chardonnay, cabernet. People only think there's run red wine and one white wine and that chardonnay and cab, I'm actually a charter member of a group that's called abc that's called anything but chardonnay and cabernet because there are so many other wines that

graham mentioned out there. But I'm serious about this intimidation, affected wines and you shouldn't be intimidated by it and you shouldn't have said God, I'm afraid to buy wine for dinner because I don't know whether I will buy the right wine to go with the pork

chops tonight, if you like a drink it. Well, I go into the store and there's just all of these, there's just so many choices that I get frustrated and I think, well I don't know what to buy, you know, and I go to a good old

italian red and I figure I'm okay, but there has to be some kind of way to decide to narrow down your choices again. Tradition. I think it's part of, part of the thing that a lot of people, it's the sweepstakes winner for the white in the

Barossa Valley in in Australia in their wine competition was a screw cap, 10 year old Riesling in a screw cap bottle. It's not traditional and we've got ourselves into a bad place that we think cork's regular corks are the only way to have closure for, for

bottles, if winemakers would admit to themselves and some wood and lot won't, what is a good closure. A screw cap is actually a very good closure. We put all our low end wines and cheap wines, so no, I can't have that. That's going to be a

science of cheap wine and what have you. It's a very good closure, but we're just afraid tradition has got us into corks, but we are moving forward. As rich said, Our technology is there for us now to have synthetic corks where no air gets in and

no air gets out, but on average, 90% of all wine that's bought is drunk within 48 hours. We need to break right here. Hang on to that Cork issue. Stay tuned. I have no idea where I got back to when I was younger. I did lots

of stupid things. Lots of unsafe sex. I could have infected any number of people without knowing it. I never thought of using a condom and I'm paying for it. Now I'm HIV positive if you're having sex, you should be using a condom. I don't care who

you are, where you are, who you've been with, where you've been. You need to be safe. Welcome back to Sonoma County in the 90s were just discussing wines for your holiday table and we'll get back to Graham Graham. I want a real Portugal cork in my

wine bottle. Now you have to do a little more convincing to get me to believe that we're gonna have screw tops in the future. But you understand all sorts. I also mentioned about synthetic corks, They sound the same as a regular cork. As I say. They

don't let any air in or out and in parts no off flavors. But the industry standard right now is 2 to 3% loss per year due to corked wines. A corked wine is a wine that has a real strange smell. It's like wet leather, wet dog,

real corky smell on it and you reject the cork, the wine out of hand, not the wine was made badly. It's, it's a bad piece of cork and has not done well in with the wine with, it has interaction with the wine with the cork from

solution that the court was treated in and that's, that's a high amount for the winery. Every every 100 bottles three get thrown out. And it's not that the wine is affected. It's a good quality wine, but you've affected the customers. How do you know? You've already

bottled the wine? It's on the shelf, you bought it. They don't. And that's the major problem is that it gets out into the public and then you ordered this wine that you don't know. And you say, God, this smells like Graham is a little more polite

than I am in the terms of use, but it can smell like you said, wet leather or moldy cardboard or something to that effect. Anyway, I don't like that wine. Then you blame it on that wine instead of it's that bottle. But you don't know the

difference as a consumer and it's been up to 5%. It's a major problem. And then Graham talked about these new synthetic plastic corks. That landmark is doing certainly some with ST Francis is doing all synthetic corks. Now my point with the cork is I don't care

whether it's plastic or real. It's still tough to get out of that bottle as opposed to like, so which is the consumer that we need to get to. We the ones that have increased all of this wine consumption over the last few years are getting older

and our doctors are holding gun stores, they don't drink so much wine anymore and but new people aren't really coming in as much the generation extras if you will. There's an element of that, but it's certainly not the big group. We need to because we can

look at numbers and We have not increased in consumption significantly at all in the last 10 years, interesting. Maybe you can demonstrate how you would unscrew a bottle of wine if I had a screw top, I'd be real happy too. Well, I guess you just jab

it in twisted and popular, you know, the sort of the corkscrew and they also are the two popular ways you cannot get a plastic cork out of a bottle with an also however, and even I know Saint Francis vineyards labels, they simply say do not use

the two pronged cork remover because it won't come. So anyway, the corkscrew is intimidating. But obviously you put the corkscrew into that the most important part is get into it somehow short of breaking the neck of the bottle off and then pouring the wine and here

we go back to these traditional types of things. Again, you know, wine is unlike a can of beer or maybe a diet coke or whatever. It's supposed to stimulate a lot of your senses, it's supposed to look good, first of all, you know, people can make

a big scene out of this and graham and I like to watch people at restaurants, you know how, how much do they want to impress their friends? So they go through this portal and hold it back, You know, they don't do it and you'd like to

have a white tablecloth because you're looking at depth of color. You're looking at browning and oxidation and things and then the latest things, you know, we gotta hold it like this, you know, really impress. Our friends, slap it all over the place. The only reason for

swirling wine and the reason for the tulip shaped wine glasses are the fact that as you swirl it, you're exposing more wine to the air which volatile eyes is the aromatic materials in there. And you'll see some people actually do this because somebody told us we're

supposed to drink wines Chilled. Well, the word is cool rather than chilled. There are some restaurants, they pull it right out of the refrigerator and I think it's 36°. You couldn't smell anything because all the aromatic materials are captured in that cold liquid. So you'll actually

see somebody take their hand, you know, and warm the wine. And as you do that, you're swirling and exposing more of the aromatic materials to the year, which then are temporarily trapped in kind of this tulip shaped glass and then you, you don't go, you know,

like you see a lot of people really get a good smell of that. You don't do that. It's a slight sniff because there's alcohol in there. Also if you let's say sniff too long that alcohol is gonna deaden all the senses. You don't smell anything. So

you know it's graham and I have both done enough judging all over the country. And we have one little saying that if it doesn't smell good don't even bother to taste it. And on your little notes as you're doing your I. D. P. I. M. So

that when you come back and put in mouth if it doesn't smell good don't drink it. But you know it's supposed to do all of those kinds of things smell like the grape which is called the aromatic or the aroma flavors smell like the barrel aging

the bouquets and things. I have a particular thing about I dislike oak that I dislike. I dislike oak. Where is the dominant factor which most of our chardonnays are and I can make chardonnay with some Thompson seedless grape juice and oak two by four in a

touch of butter in mango. I got the instance, average american chardonnay right there Thompson said you want a great to start with fine but that's kind of how we've learned to mask the flavors and that's why I like sauvignon blanc, the video name the Martians that

they actually smell like real grapes and they're not masked with all the oak. Well let's get back to the proper way then to do your wine. So you don't look like a fool in the restaurant. Well, you can do it so quickly and so easily. You

know, you can actually take your glass and you can look at the color, Is it the right color for the variety basically? Is it the right depth? Is it a little brown? And if it's an older wine, you want brown on the edge, If it's a

young wine, it's gonna be brown and it's oxidized and you're gonna smell that also. But you can do this, you know, making a big scene to impress all your friends. Take a little sip and away you go. Now when you sip wine, when we judge wines

and we do 100 and 50 a day, you don't really drink the wine once it gets past right here, it doesn't have to go that way. In fact, if it did, you'd have to bring the ambulance and get us out of there at four o'clock in

the afternoon. So you take and you sip it in and you do something your mom told you never to do, you know, Swirl it in your mouth and kind of and you do that. What are you doing? You're doing the same thing as with your hand

here. It's nice and warm in there. Hopefully 98.6 or plus or minus a few, depending on what you did last night and then you're warming that wind up its volatile izing those aromatic material, they're going right back up, right back into your olfactory senses in here

about what is it, 70 or 80% of taste is really smell and that's very easy to prove the next time you have a really bad cold or really hellacious allergy problem going on, eat an onion, eat some garlic and things, it doesn't taste like anything because

you've lost all the ability to smell the same thing is true with wine. So when we're judging, you know, we have a little spit bucket doesn't sound cool and all that, but it saves your mentality, but you don't do that in a restaurant, You know, you

don't spit on the floor at home or whatever the case, you can actually swallow it, doing that, but once it gets past there it's gone. So in the evaluation, you know, it's, it's three things visual olfactory and taste bang bang bang and you can do it

quick or you can really stretch it out and impress the fact that you're from England from England, I had to bring that up, made me feel good France four years now he's been doing this. Is there a certain way to pour the wine as far as

avoiding avoiding spills. Yes. What you like to do is get the bottle of wine, Obviously you're going to pour and as you finish, you twist the bottle and that way the drops stay in the glass, not on the table and that's where you twist it from

that point of view, you don't want to pour a big, big glass. A lot of restaurants you go into, I've noticed with the big glasses, pour a huge amount at the top. You ever tried to do this with a full glass of wine. That's why you

wear burgundy colored coats because you wear the wine afterwards, because you can't do that. Also, if you're not going to go up the whole wine down one go and it's just going to, it's a cold wind, chilled wine, it's going to warm up and get warmer

and warmer and warmer. The wind gets, as demonstrated by holding that you're heating up the wine somewhat. The warmer it gets, the more you're going to release, which is fine, to a certain extent, Once you get above a certain temperature gonna release. So many more things

in California wines are very, very floral in many aspects, very fruity. And the reason for that is the 200 days plus of growing growing days, we get the sun, you get here in France, they don't get that 100 days at max and most of that is

not good weather. So that's why the changes of the french fruit versus american fruit California fruit is so apparent. You have wonderful growing times here of 200 plus days. That's absolutely superior. The sun on the sun, on the, on the grapes is going to help broaden

the aspect of the various flavors and the fruit flavors and quality of the grapes, which always becomes wine. And that's why California wines so much more fruity than the french wines. Term vintage here comes from europe where it means the year the grapes got ripe and

half the time they don't get right because of the lack of sun and they can add sugar and do all kinds of things. We cannot do that in California and we have a saying that every year is a vintage here in California, some are better than

others, but at least every year the grapes get ripe even despite the fact, I'm sure to hear this year from last season, so back to about half full that obviously as rich says, you can't swirl it when it's full. Plus also the not letting that chilled

wine warm out so much where you get so much aromas and so many aromatics out there, you can't get the original varietal characteristics and also it helps them that the more they pour in the quicker you'll drink it next time you go to the second bottle.

So I'll tell the wind, don't just starts pouring about a third force. That's fine. I like to just finish mine and sip it and enjoy it with a meal. Another problem I guess in restaurants is that our choice of wine sometimes to impress our friends. As

richard said, we try and get out there and do all these great movements and, and all for show is we order the most expensive bottle of wine and that wine is so over oaked or so over buttered and so overworked to the whole deal. It becomes

the meal instead of the full instead of the food. So instead of complimenting and that's where we need to get back to. Is that wine and food should match each other and complement. So one enhances the other instead of one dominating. And that's what we like

to do. We're starting to run out of time. Here we have a few minutes left. I want to ask about meritage, what is meritage? I hear that word. Now, can you explain that to me? Meritage basically started out a few years ago when we tried to

get rid of the french image in the California wine industry and we used to call them bordeaux blends and somebody decided. And it's quite sure that you make a better wine by blending varieties than you do with 100% of any given varietal and certainly some of

the finest wines in the world are french bordeaux, which are a combination of five varieties, cabernet sauvignon merlot, petite verdot and malbec and cabernet franc, there was 1/5 1 in there and if you didn't have 75% of any one of those, you had to call it

red wine. Well then you're competing with burgundy red burgundy, you know, hearty burgundy or whatever the case, $16 versus 2 99 on the shelf as red wine. A little tough to sell that way. So somebody decided that, well maybe we better come up with a term

that can be used and be accepted from a legal standpoint to be able to use any or all of those. Those five varieties put them together in any combination you wish and then you could call it a meritage. Well did the name really catch on and

I'd say I'm not sure that it has most wineries making meritage today also have what we call a proprietary names to go along with it. Benzinger is what tribute would be one. Opus one insignia, conundrum mosaic and all these various kinds of wines. So and they're

typically very high end wines and is, you know, they're going to have some nice complexities and things like that. They will probably be the meal more than go with a lot of meals. What would you classify a high end wine price range $25, I was gonna

say 25 would be an average range. Some you may have had about 15 and an inexpensive table wine. 6 to 7. If you can find a like a meritage blend, I don't think you'll find a meritage, $67 you wouldn't find one for 15 minimum 15, minimum

I can think of right now I think from Sonoma County standpoint and you know what wines go with what foods if you want to play this safe role and you really don't know. There's two wonderful wines out there. One of them is God's gift to Sonoma

and only we do a wonderful job that Zinfandel, Zinfandel, there's several styles Zinfandel kind of goes with everything and the other one, we're running out of time, we might pick something else right now And Syrah. And so gentlemen, you're saying throw caution to the wind and

just buy the wines you like for your table, learn how to get the cork out and pour it. That sounds great, enjoy the vacation. Yeah. So anyway, I want to thank both of you for being on the show. I've enjoyed it tremendously and I've learned much

about wine and what wine I can use. It's only appropriate. We toast you. Yes, let's toast, let's make a thank you for the invitation. Well thank you both of you for joining me and I hope to have you back again one time to the holidays, cheers.

Thank you. Thank you for joining us and I hope to see you again. Next time I'm Dana Jericho and this is Sonoma County in the nineties