Photography and winemaking might not seem to have a lot in common.
But if it wasn’t for photography, Jesse Katz probably never would have become a renowned winemaker.
Katz’s long journey to becoming a winemaker can be traced back to his father, Andy, a professional photographer.
“My father had always been a photographer,” Katz said during a recent interview. “He used to do rock and roll album covers for The Doobie Brothers and Dan Fogelberg.”
Then when Katz was about 12 years old, his father got an assignment from a restaurant in Colorado (where the family lived at the time) to take photographs of wineries in California.
“They sent him to take photos of the vineyards and wineries in Napa and Sonoma,” Katz said. “My dad barely knew the difference between white zinfandel and red zinfandel at the time. He had no idea about wine, but he really kind of fell in love with the people in Napa and Sonoma, the wines, the wineries and the culture of this area. He also met some very influential people, Robert Mondavi being one of them. After my dad had finished this project for the restaurant, he kept in touch with these folks and Mondavi being the visionary that he is, saw some of these amazing photos that my dad had taken, started utilizing them in their own marketing and then actually talked my dad into doing a book on the beauty of the region called ‘Napa and Sonoma’ and Mondavi ended up writing the introduction to that book. And that really kind of kicked my dad’s career off in that industry.”
That book led to 12 more photography books by Andy Katz about wine, which involved the family living in some of the world’s greatest wine regions, including Tuscany in Italy and France’s Bordeaux and Burgundy regions. France in particular left a lasting impression on the young Jesse Katz.
“I was a kid and I was getting to live and travel in all these difference areas,” he said. “I think it was very impactful for me at an early age, particularly in France when we were living in Beaune or wherever it may be. Burgundy was quite easy because I could understand at a young age because the red wine was almost always pinot noir and the white wine being chardonnay but how vastly different that same varietal could be for the same vintage from village to village.”
“Sitting at the dinner table, they would pour you a little glass of wine and start introducing it to you as part of the food and part of the culture and part of the region. So that was kind of my first ‘a ha’ moment in wine, getting to really understand how a place had such an effect on the final product. I had no idea how to articulate it at the time – that essence of terroir – and how the human touch can go so far but the place where it comes from has so much to do with it as well.”
Even so, Katz never actually thought he could make a living as a winemaker.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a winemaker, especially in the old world (Europe), where it seems like it has to be passed down from generation to generation. So when I left Colorado at 18 and moved to California to go to business school in Santa Barbara and I needed summer job and I was fascinated with wine and wanted to continue to study it, I got an internship at 18 at Fess Parker Winery, which was the closest winery I could find. It was a great winery. Fess was still alive when I was there. It was just a great team, great group of individuals. I got to see there were a lot of folks that were not born into the wine industry as well. There were actually degrees in viticulture and oenology and other words I had never even heard of.”
“After I got my degree in business, I transferred to Fresno State, where I got my viticulture knowledge and chemistry degrees. During that time, I fell in love with Bordeaux varietals. I really love kind of the ability of a winemaker to create different textures within the same varietal. There was so much more tannin component, so much more aging in barrels and how you could kind craft these different textures and balances in wine. It gave the winemaker a lot more stylish flexibility.”
“After I got my degrees from Fresno, I started spending half of the year in the southern hemisphere and back here in our hemisphere for our harvest so I was getting two harvests in every year for the first few years. I really just wanted to surround myself with some of the best talent and best vineyards I possible could. And specifically, I wanted to study varietals – Bordeaux varietals – in multiple different climates and regions. I worked throughout Napa, focusing mostly on Cabernet Sauvignon. I went out to Argentina and studied Malbec for a couple different vintages... I got to study these varietals at a very, very high level.”
Katz’s studies also included stints at some of the best wineries in France’s Bordeaux region, including Chateau Petrus. He then worked at several wineries in California and Argentina. So why did Jesse and his father decide to start Aperture Cellars in 2009?
“After I got back from Argentina, I got a job with Screaming Eagle and I worked throughout Napa,” Jesse said. “At that time, as I started to study more and more, my father had just moved to Healdsburg, which is where I live now. I was visiting him over there a lot. The pinot noir producers of this area were really doing a great job of focusing on high quality farming, single vineyard sites and you were starting to see some of these stars coming out of Sonoma focused on the pinot noir realm. The cabernet sites out here. There are obviously a lot of them. But I wanted to show what Sonoma County could do particularly… with luxury, high-end wines and farming them to their top ability.”
“I started Aperture just really as a fun project because none of the wineries I had been working at I could afford at all and we wanted to start a fun project showcasing and focusing on varietals in a different way.”
Aperture Cellars is best known for its cabernet sauvignon wines. So why did the Katzs decide to open a winery famous for its cabernet sauvignon wines in Sonoma instead of Napa, which is world famous for its cabernet sauvignon wines? Part of it has to do with economics.
“The cost per acre or ton in Napa is just so ridiculously high that if you’re not born into it or come from money, it’s really hard to make it as a young winemaker like myself,” he said. “I think it’s one of the faults of Napa. It’s pushing out a lot of the young talent.”
But money wasn’t the only reason why Katz wanted to open a winery in Sonoma County.
“For me there’s a level of discovery and finding new gems that is really exciting,” Katz said.
And part of that has to do with creating wines that truly express the potential of Sonoma County’s soils and climate.
“When I started with winemaking, I wanted to be in the winery all the time,” Katz said. “Then I realized how important the vineyard was. After I got in the vineyard more and more, I saw how important the soils were. And the more I started to come to the Sonoma side, I saw what spectacular soils we had over here and our climate was slightly cooler (than Napa) and as we started to see these warmer and warmer vintages, that’s what really brought me out here. I started looking for what’s sustainable and what will be the next great sites and the soils brought me out here and the climate.”
“I still think some of the sites in Napa are some of the great sites on the planet, but consistently during warm vintages, my favorite sites are my cooler sites in Sonoma for cabernet sauvignon.”
“We get a lot more coastal influence” in Sonoma, he said. “Our nighttime temperatures are usually about 10 to 15 degrees cooler. It will take a little bit longer to warm up during the days. Our heat spikes won’t be as extreme and it will cool down quicker. So it’s just a more temperate climate. Those cool nights allow the vineyards to rebound and give the wines a little more nuance and elegance. We’re just able to create wines that have more balance, nuance and elegance.”
APERTURE CELLAR WINES REVIEWED THIS WEEK
2018 Aperture Cellars Sauvignon Blanc ($40 Suggested Retail Price)
2017 Aperture Cellars Red Blend ($55 SRP)
2017 Aperture Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon ($70 SRP)
WINE TASTING NOTES
2018 Aperture Cellars Sauvignon Blanc
Grape - 98 percent Sauvignon Blanc, 2 percent Semillon
Wine Maker’s Tasting Notes - “The style for our Sauvignon Blanc is really influenced by my time in Bordeaux. Although I was studying mostly on the Right Bank, this really overlapped from when my father was doing his book on the First Growths. So I spent a lot of time before the reds were coming in on the Right Bank getting to spend a lot of time in the vineyards and cellars of Haut-Brion and Chateau Margaux and some of these other places because my father really got to know those folks quite well. While I was particularly at Haut-Brion, I got to see their attention to detail of their farming of Sauvignon Blanc… their attention to detail in winemaking, how hard they would press it, monitoring Ph during their press cuts and then of course their barrel fermentation. So when I wanted to create the first white wine under Aperture, it really took its influence from the Bordeaux blanc style. I get a lot of white peach, melon, some fig on there. We took some of those elements from my time there (in Bordeaux) and really created our own style. We’re not trying to make Bordeaux style white wines. We’re trying to take some of those techniques and showcasing our unique fruit and our amazing climate.”
Wine Writer’s Tasting Notes - Fresh, bright yet slightly smoky wine with hints of peach, apricot and other lively, refreshing fruit. Subtle, understated, soft, rounded flavors.
2017 Aperture Cellars Bordeaux Red Blend
Grape - 52 percent Malbec, 48 percent Merlot
Wine Maker’s Tasting Notes - “2017 was another fire vintage. In 2017, (the fires) had a much, much larger effect in those areas where we farm and grow. Thankfully, it was much later on in the season, so we were about 92 percent through the harvest at that point. And the crops that we had left out was a little bit of our latest ripening cabernet sauvignon on our clay soils. Usually, the cab in the clay soils goes into our red blend… The clay loam soils hold the water a little bit more and it will not let the vine ripen quite as much… For cabernet sauvignon, it’s always going to showcase more red fruits and will always be our last sites we pick and those were sites that were still hanging out there in 2017. After those fires… everything that I was testing and tasting had an effect from smoke. It was quite low at that point but still we made a very hard line that if it’s above our threshold… then that wine will not be used. So everything we brought in after the 2017 fires we ended up having to bulk out,” meaning sell as bulk wine and not use in the blended red wine. As a result, the 2017 Aperture Cellars Bordeaux Red Blend “is a little more unique than our other red blends. It’s just two varietals this vintage. The 2017 is just Malbec and Merlot. They’re two of my favorite varietals. I went to Argentina to study Malbec and Bordeaux to study Merlot. Those two varietals are always a bit make up of this wine… To me, it showcases a lot of the spice, a lot of those beautiful red fruits. The 2017 red blend is drinking so beautifully to me right now because it has a lot of structure and spice and fruit and richness and beautiful, long finish.”
Wine Writer’s Tasting Notes - Austere, dry, flinty red wine with a soft yet intense finish. Peppery notes combined with hints of dried fruit flavors that last several minutes after each taste. A truly wonderful wine with a velvet-like richness.
2017 Aperture Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon
Grape - 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon
Wine Maker’s Tasting Notes - “Cabernet was the first wine I ever made under the Aperture portfolio. For the first four years, it was just this wine and we created one wine under Aperture. This is a soil specific wine. These soils are all volcanic. This comes from four, specific hillside vineyards on the eastern part of Alexander Valley. There’s red volcanic and white, chalky volcanic soils in there. In general, the volcanic soils and the steep hillsides we’re working with give (the grapes) a lot of stress early on in that vine’s life. So we’re able to shrink the berry size down on a consistent level from vintage to vintage, even if we get a lot of rain. Those soils dry out really, really quickly because of the steepness of the hillsides and the volcanic soil drains really well… The volcanic soils for me in cabernet really highlight minerality and nuance. To me, this wine is something of a unique style of cabernet for California. It has a lot of great fruits and it’s more of the darker, blue, black fruits. But there’s also some spice and minerality and a level of freshness and elegance.”
Wine Writer’s Tasting Notes - Subtle, well-balanced, voluptuous wine with earthy, intense flavors. Smooth texture from start to finish. Absolutely magical, bright, delightful wine.
Cheers!
Wine Press by Ken Ross appears on Masslive.com every Monday and in The Republican’s weekend section every Thursday.
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January 26, 2021 at 02:54AM
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