BLOGSCHU

Transition: Part Two (Finally!)

When Linda Trotta, our winemaker for over twenty years, let me know she wished to move on and try her hand with some other fruit after the 2008 harvest, I immediately contacted Keith Emerson for the job, and am excited to introduce most of you to one of the most talented young winemakers in the business today.

Keith is the director of winemaking for Vineyard 29 in St. Helena, Calif., consults for three respected wineries and produces a proprietary Cabernet sauvignon, Emerson Brown. And now Keith is Winemaker for Gundlach Bundschu.

After graduating from UC Davis in 1999, Keith spent a year at Cakebread before joining Gundlach Bundschu. He served as associate winemaker from 2000 to 2004 and developed an encyclopedic knowledge of our vineyard and wines. We new early on he was a rock star and encouraged him to take a next step that would expand his horizons. Did he ever.

At Vineyard 29, Keith works closely with consultant Philippe Melka on the estate and Aida labels and directs all aspects of winemaking for the CRU Napa Valley label. He also oversees the program for custom-crush clientele, including Andy Erickson and Celia Masyczek, and works with several respected growers, including David Abreu, Mike Wolf, Jim Barbour, Piña Vineyard Management and Silverado Farming Company, among others.

At Gundlach Bundschu, we are lucky that Keith has a most talented crew to work with.  Directing day to day winemaking is Lead Associate Winemaker Anne Dempsey, who oversees all day to day winemaking.  Anne has experienced harvests in a number of countries,including South Africa and New Zealand, and served as assistant winemaker at Clos Pegase winery where she worked directly with Paul Hobbs. Anne is assisted by Associate Winemaker Jessica Koga who runs the lab and oversees other winery projects.   Jessica also has extensive experience, including a harvest position at Cloudy Bay in New Zealand and as enologist for Shramsberg Vineyards. 

Keith, Anne, and Jessica all share our passion and belief in our property and our legacy, and bring a honed vision and proven capacity for making exceptional wines of power and elegance. As talented as the team is, equally important is that they are all good people. Full of energy and spice. We have already made some very big progress on 07 and 08 wines, and they started out very good. Expect some exciting wines in our future.

Transition: Part One

So the new year is starting off with a big change here at the winery.

In the event that you didn’t see the notice on our website, or catch wind of it some other way, Linda Trotta, our winemaker and friend for over 20 years has left Gundlach Bundschu to pursue other interests. (Keith Emerson has been appointed winemaker, details to come in part two, or see the official press release here.)

In early 2008, Linda approached me expressing her desire to transition out of her role at GB, and out of the company. Nothing personal or negative, just a desire to move on and try her hand with some different fruit. We worked together to plan the transition and agreed that she would leave after harvest, which she did in mid November.

We hear about pioneering women in winemaking, and Linda certainly qualifies. When I came back to work with the family full time in the early nineties, Linda had recently transitioned to winemaker.  She was the only woman winemaker in Sonoma at the time, and there were few others anywhere else.

She was young, enthusiastic and swimming in all sorts of chaos, none of which was her own doing. We were making wine from seven vineyards beyond our own estate, our previous winemaker was acting as GM but not exactly letting go of the reins in the cellar, and she had a crew full of men, most of which were well older than she was. Despite her youth (late 20s at the time), she brought order and a mature approach to our winemaking, and a nuanced, balance-driven wine style that will be an ongoing legacy here.

About ten years ago,we committed to focusing exclusively on our estate vineyards, and set the lofty goal of becoming the best estate winery in Sonoma County. Linda set to work, driving vineyard and winery operations to that end, and today we have a cellar full of exceptional wines to show for it. She leaves us a with a strong vineyard and winery operation and a legacy of intense site driven premium winemaking. She also leaves us a better organization.

Not only can I say I grew up with Linda, I can also say that I grew as a person because of her, and my guess is that many people here would echo the same thing.

Happy New Year- A Good Omen

Happy New Year.  I am excited to report that the SF Chronicle Wine Section's secret tasting room shopper came by Gundlach Bundschu's tasting room at some point recently and had an 'excellent' time.  'Good' and 'Fair' are more the norm for these reviews, so we are stoked.  Despite Chicken Little's accuracy of late, we will take it as good omen for 09!

This is as close as we get around here to a restaurant review, and as you might imagine one can get nervous about an impending visit.  Our tasting room hadn't been reviewed recently despite numerous interactions with the paper on account of our 150th anniversary, so we suspected it would come sooner or later.    Truth be told, I am confident to the point of cockiness that we have one of the best winery crews and tasting rooms in the business, so I didn't loose too much sleep.    Well, the review came in the form of the Chron's first tasting room review of 2009, and our rockstar staff delivered as expected.  They are the best.