How would you like a wine made from top-quality Napa Valley grapes by the head winemaker for Atelier Melka, at less than half the price of the wines Philippe Melka usually consults on?
How about if the grapes were picked earlier than for most high-end Napa wines, making the wine fresher and more restrained?
That's the idea behind La Pelle, a side project for Maayan Koschitzky, Miguel Luna and Peter Richmond. Koschitzky is director of winemaking and a partner at Atelier Melka, while Richmond and Luna are the founder and winemaker, respectively, for Silverado Farming Company, which manages some of the top vineyards in Napa.
It's a logical, international super team-up. Richmond, a California native, worked in vineyard management for Bien Nacido Vineyards, Stag's Leap Winery and Kendall Jackson before going out on his own. In 2019, Napa Valley Grapegrowers named him Napa Valley Grower of the Year.
Luna was born in Guadalajara, Mexico but moved to Napa Valley at age 13, and is a protege of Richmond's, working closely with small vineyards around Napa Valley.
"When I was 14, I started working in the vineyard with my dad," Luna told Wine-Searcher. "He told me to get a job and I didn't, and one day when I was 16 at 4:30 in the morning, he woke me up and he said: 'I said you should get a job and you didn't, so you're coming with me.' I hated it." But eventually he came around.
Koschitzky is a rising international wine star. An Israeli native who grew up on his family's farm, Koschitzky served as a paratrooper in a combat unit for three years. After finishing his military service, he studied engineering before getting the wine bug and working at two of Israel's top wineries, Ella Valley Vineyards and Margalit. When he came to the US he started at the top, getting hired right away by Screaming Eagle. After three years there, he was recruited by Melka, one of the world's top consulting winemakers, and has worked his way up to partner. Yet, at the same time, he returns to Israel every autumn for a few weeks because he is also head winemaker at Amphorae Winery there.
"He became a partner because he has all the qualities I attribute to a great winemaker," Melka told Wine-Searcher. "We are focusing on a very high level of winemaking for the projects we're doing. He has great management skills. He used to be a commander in the Israeli army. He knows how to manage people as well. He's a fast learner. He could become one of the figures of the Napa Valley. He has all the attributes to become one of the very strong names in this business."
For his part, Koschitzky is humble: he didn't tell me initially about his military service, or about the charity project Giving Kitchen, in which he is making wines to support food service workers that are only available in Georgia (the state, not the country.)
"We didn't like each other at first," Luna says now about his friend and partner Koschitzky. "I used to work for Philippe and Philippe knew I was a good worker. But Maayan didn't know me. One day Maayan sent me an email and said: 'Can you pull these barrels, and when you're done, call me so I know you did it.' He didn't trust me to do it. But now we know each other better than that."
Luna and Koschitzky now get along so well that they are co-winemakers on the La Pelle wines.
"I approached Pete [Richmond] and said: 'We want to make wine together'," Luna told Wine-Searcher. "Pete knows Maayan very well. We really showcase the farming that Silverado can do. We have control. Silverado does a lot of farming but doesn't make a lot of decisions. It's a great way for both of us to expose the farming company and also the winemaking. With the way Napa is, you need $20 million to have an estate vineyard, to do anything. We have the estate model without having an estate. We're able to keep the prices reasonable by Napa standards. We're making everything from our grapes. They're not bulk grapes."
Koschitzky agrees, saying: "The reason we started La Pelle was because we wanted to secure our own grapes, and farm them the way we want to for many years. The idea of a farming company backing us up and allowing us to pick through their portfolio, that allowed us to start La Pelle."
For its current releases, La Pelle offers two Cabernet Sauvignons – one is a Reserve – and a Sauvignon Blanc. The Cabs have the power and fruit you expect from Napa Valley, a little more so in the case of the Reserve, with better freshness than some. Koschitzky says knowing that the grapes will be used for La Pelle changes the way they are farmed all year.
"We finish picking La Pelle red wines way before we finish picking for Melka," Koschitzky told Wine-Searcher.
The La Pelle Sauvignon Blanc is the most eye-opening of the three. It's taut, with great Meyer lemon freshness, but also midpalate richness from spending 18 months on the lees. Oak is initially prominent in the aroma when you open the bottle, so it's good to decant it, but with air it integrates into a wine that stays both refreshing and interesting through a long finish. There aren't many Sauvignon Blancs like this made in California.
"Both of us love Sancerre," Koschitzky said. "We sourced from a single vineyard that Miguel is farming. For us it's all about acid and texture. It's a little bit the Dagueneau style of aging for almost 20 months. It usually stays on the low 11s in the alcohol range. It's a cooler fermentation. In the beginning it's so acidic it's really undrinkable. There's too much acid for malolactic."
Luna says the vineyard is on the Napa Valley floor near St Helena High School.
]It's a 1981 planting," Luna says. "Dry farmed. It's never had water. It's organic. It's old school big vines. In 2017, when we had the big drought, that was the vineyard that handled it the best. We keep the wine on the lees for the full 18 months. We leave it there for so long. It takes a while for it to come around. We're not using the word 'hipster', but we're using battonage and we don't sulfur for the first year. The idea is to build midpalate. The oak really helps to build midpalate."
Atelier Melka's list of clients includes wineries in Chile, Australia and Washington state, along with many very expensive Napa Valley wineries known for their big reds: Dana, Brand, Tusk, Gandona and Lail Vineyards.
"When we approached Philippe, he said: 'Don't make another big Napa wine'," Luna said. "That's not who you are. Do something a little fresher. Don't make another score chaser."
In fact, Melka says he is now one of their best customers.
"My wife, she's a big, big fan of their wine," Melka says. "I don't buy a lot of wines from a lot of clients, or other winemaking friends, but theirs I do because I just love it. Back in the '90s we started to make extremely concentrated fruit-forward wines. Now the evolution is for something fresher, to go with food a little better. I think they really represent the next generation. When Maayan arrived to work in this company. my palate became a little bit like his palate and his palate became a little bit like my palate. At the end of the day, the future of Napa Valley is producing wines that are not only about fruit, but about structure and finesse."
And not just Napa Valley. Koschitzky says that when he took over at Amphorae in Israel, he was following Michel Rolland.
"When the new owner bought the place in 2016, he brought me in to reinvent the winery," Koschitzky says. "Prior to my time there Michel Rolland used to consult and the wines were a riper, bigger style and mainly Bordeaux varieties. When I took over we switched to much more Mediterranean wines and focusing on fresher, fun wines."
La Pelle made about 1500 cases of its 2018 wines. Their goal is to make about 2000 cases a year. Their first Cabernets are blends of multiple vineyards, but with the 2019 vintage they plan to introduce single-vineyard Cabs, as well as a Chardonnay. Thanks to Richmond's connections with the Miller family that owns Bien Nacido Vineyards, the Chardonnay will come from Bien Nacido's oldest plantings, the I Block, planted in 1973.
These may sound like the kind of inaccessible wines that command high prices, but that's not what La Pelle is about.
"When we launched the brand we were lucky enough that we were able to build a significant mailing list pretty quick," Koschitzky said. "We're gonna have six or seven markets [for retail and restaurants]. We opened Texas last year but the whole state of Texas got 15 cases. The idea in the end is to have about half distribution and half mailing list. We want the wines to be out there. We don't have the infrastructure to do tastings all the time. We need the wine to speak for itself, for it to find people for the mailing list."
The wines aren't cheap by world standards per se, but for prime Napa Valley fruit, farmed like an estate vineyard would be, they are reasonably priced.
"It's not all about revenue," Koschitzky said. "We're able to do it and we're able to maintain our price. When we launched the brand, we wanted to maintain the price for the first five vintages. We're on the third and we've been able to do it."
September 07, 2020 at 07:01AM
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