Writing an end-of-year recap in 2020 is a strange exercise, because it feels like we’ve been recapping 2020 all year long. At every chance, we’ve reminded ourselves that the world is undergoing a fundamental change. The word “unprecedented” has crept into so many headlines that it’s become cliche. Forecasts of a post-pandemic world — Zoom meetings forever? — have been plentiful, and often very insightful.
All that is to say that you don’t need another end-of-year recap in this newsletter. Besides, we’ve pretty much already done an end-of-year recap for the California wine beat in the form of our 12 wines that define 2020 package — a collection of bottles that illuminate the big themes that affected California wine this year, from wildfires to racial justice to the “clean wine” craze.
So today, on the final day of this most unprecedented year, I want to share a different sort of recap: the wine stories of 2020 that went overlooked or underestimated. It was hard for any news to compete with the coronavirus, but many developments within the world of California wine deserved more attention than they received. (And no, I’m not going to mention the buttery Chardonnay lawsuit again, though I still maintain its canonical importance.)
• Some of California’s most important wineries changed hands.
Two of Napa Valley’s most beloved legacy estates were sold from families to larger companies. Last week, Long Meadow Ranch sold Chardonnay legend Stony Hill Vineyard to Gaylon Lawrence, Jr., the Arkansas agriculture magnate who’s been buying up prestigious Napa properties at an impressive pace. He also bought Napa’s Burgess Cellars over the summer. We’ll be closely following these wineries and Lawrence’s growing empire in the coming year.
Meanwhile, in March the French Champagne company Maison Louis Roederer purchased Diamond Creek Vineyards, the iconoclastic Cabernet producer in Napa’s western mountains. The sale followed the death of Adelle “Boots” Brounstein, who had founded Diamond Creek with her late husband, Al.
The other major winery acquisition of the year — and maybe the one that raised the most eyebrows — was of Bonny Doon Vineyard, in January. Founder Randall Grahm sold his wine brand, which had been one of California’s most influential, to a young company called WarRoom Ventures, which was relatively unknown at the time of the announcement but is quickly becoming better known. (Now called WarRoom Cellars, the company recently launched Bubble Butt, a brand of canned “rosé seltzer.”) Grahm, always dependable for a shockingly candid interview, admitted that he was “deeply ambivalent” about the sale.
There were a number of other significant transactions. The giant Constellation Brands bought media star Gary Vaynerchuk’s brand-new Empathy Wines brand, seemingly before it had even gotten off the ground. Bill Foley bought Sonoma’s Ferrari-Carano. Clay Shannon bought Steele Wines, merging two of Lake County’s most prominent players.
• Winemakers became firefighters.
During this fall’s wildfires, some winemakers and other civilians took matters into their own hands (sometimes, it should be stressed, against the advisement of Cal Fire). While the lightning fires were blazing in August, vintners in at least three different areas of Napa Valley effected rogue firefighting operations with vineyard equipment, including big bulldozers. In Napa’s Pope Valley, the efforts culminated in a controlled burn that one civilian referred to as “the 5-mile hail Mary.”
One especially notable effort belonged to Jon Berlin, owner of Napa’s El Molino Winery, during the Glass Fire in October. Berlin rode his specialized stunt motorcycle around Spring Mountain, scouting flare-ups for the professional firefighters, extinguishing spot fires and cutting fire lines with a chainsaw. Many of his neighbors called him a hero.
• New wineries opened to the public, pandemic be damned.
Despite the fact that 2020 was probably the worst year to open a winery tasting room since Prohibition, a number of Bay Area businesses were undeterred. Lola Wines began hosting wine tastings at its quaint Calistoga hideaway in January, barely two months before all wineries were ordered closed. Bricoleur, a lush estate in the Russian River Valley with farm-to-table meals, ended up launching over Memorial Day weekend, as soon as wineries were allowed to reopen in a reduced capacity. And the Faust Haus in St. Helena, the latest wonder from the Huneeus Vintners universe, poured high-end Cabernet in a setting that resembles a gothic fairy tale.
• The wine industry lost some beloved trailblazers.
We said goodbye to Milla Handley, whose Handley Cellars helped put Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley on the map as a fine-wine region. She died in August at age 68. The cause: COVID-19.
Barry Sterling, founder of Iron Horse Vineyards in Sonoma County and a key player in the establishment of high-quality California sparkling wine, died of natural causes in July at age 90.
Another member of the nonagenarian club, Dolores Cakebread, died in October, also of natural causes. She created Cakebread Cellars with her husband, Jack, and played a crucial role in elevating hospitality — especially as it related to California cuisine — in Napa Valley.
Wine(s) of the Week
What really makes a New Year’s Eve party isn’t gathering with friends or making out with someone to “Auld Lang Syne” — but, rather, sparkling wine. In a mega-edition of Wine of the Week, I share seven California bubbly options that would be perfect for tonight’s festivities.
Holiday break reading list
• Elin McCoy’s list of predictions for wine in 2021, in Bloomberg, is a good one. She foresees virtual tastings as the new company perk, a big opportunity for wine-based seltzers and a lot of pink Prosecco.
• Here’s a visually striking, easily digestible feature about an experiment underway in Bordeaux to adapt winemaking to climate change, in the Washington Post.
• The tiki bar has come under fire in recent years for the cultural insensitivities that many people see as baked into the genre. With the help of some cute, colorful illustrations, Sammi Katz reviews that problematic history and highlights some bartenders who hope to stage an equitable tiki comeback.
• Writer R.H. Drexel named her top 25 wines of 2020, and I have to say I love the understated, staccato-like style of tasting notes she uses here.
• Another major wine story this year — though not quite on the California wine beat — was that of Italian winemaker Valentina Passalacqua. Passalacqua is the maker of the Calcarius brand, which had become a darling of the natural-wine set until her father was accused of exploiting migrant workers, leading many of her fans and U.S. importers to question how much Passalacqua knew about it. In the Cut, Angelina Chapin writes about the winemaker’s “spectacular rise and fall.”
Drinking with Esther is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle’s wine critic. Follow along on Twitter: @Esther_Mobley and Instagram: @esthermob
December 31, 2020 at 07:00PM
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The most overlooked wine stories of 2020 - San Francisco Chronicle
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