Obscurity Cellars?

I miss winemaking! When Craig Boyd was hired as winemaker and general manager of Oakstone, I knew that he had to call the shots on the wines and the operation of the winery, and I couldn't be happier with the job he's done there. But making one batch a year (the "Founding Winemaker's Reserve”) just didn't satisfy the emotional needs that have developed over more than thirty years of winemaking.

When Oakstone started to outgrow the facility and needed a case goods storage facility, it suddenly occurred to me that I could combine that structure with a new winery, one that fits into my own odd needs and physical limitations. It will be small, it will not have a public tasting room, no logoware hats or shirts, and it will have no employees. If my goals are met, it will also make some very good wines.

The Origins of Obscurity

In the 1970’s, I was invited to attend a tasting at the Astor Home Wine Shop in lower Manhattan, and the wines they were featuring there were from a small winery I had never heard of before, in an obscure region of California, and many were made from varieties of grapes that few attempted and even fewer did well. The winery was Fortino, the region was Gilroy, and the grapes were Carignane, Ruby Cabernet, Blue Burgundy(!), Petite Sirah, Charbono and others that have faded from memory.

The most impressive thing about these wines was that many of the varieties were considered to be “ignoble,” that is, beneath the respect of serious winemakers and connoisseurs of fine wine. Why? Primarily because they were not considered “classified” varietals in their original growing regions of Europe. In most European countries, wines can only bear certain designations if they are made from specified varieties—red Bordeaux wines must be made from the eight varieties allowed in that region, Chianti Classico must be made from a minimum of 85% Sangiovese, etc. In many cases, the grapes were renamed when they migrated to this country, and some were even developed here by professors of viticulture at UC Davis. The Fortino wines were not bottom-feeder cheap, but reasonably priced for the quality—about $3.00 - $4.00 in 1976. I bought five cases of them--by far the largest single wine purchase of my life at that time. They may have been obscure, but dammit, they were good!

The lesson from this experience, for me, was to not follow the crowd when deciding what grapes and wines are good, and what can be really enjoyable. At Oakstone, we started with mainstream varieties, but rapidly interjected some quite unusual grapes into the mix: Charbono, Malbec, Viognier, Petit Verdot, Carignane, Pinot Gris; along with ports made from a whole bunch of grapes that are not usually considered for dessert wines. Trained as an experimenter, it’s been an interesting challenge for me to see if I could discover the hidden talents of unknowns and underachievers, and to develop them into unique and enjoyable wines. Besides, it’s fun! Can you say Alicante Bouschet? Ever wondered what a varietal Petit Verdot was like in a good year? Curious to know if California Tempranillo can approach the greatness of Spain? We want to find out, and we hope you do too!

As a home winemaker during the 70’s and 80’s (mostly on the East Coast), I had the opportunity to make wine from a great many fruits, some of which were challenging even for home winemaking. I even had a standing offer to friends with fruit—bring me fresh-picked goodies and I’ll share half the wine with you when it’s done. That way, I got to try a wide variety of starting materials and learn to adjust and compensate for the oddities of the individual fruits. Looking back on the records from those days, there were some really  obscure wines: currant, gooseberry, chokecherry, crabapple champagne, plum, peach cordial, sparkling cherry, elderberry port—you get the picture. This experience was invaluable for making things like apple wine at Oakstone—the principles I developed at home allowed us to make a seriously good wine from poorly respected fruit—it even won a “Best of Show” award in 2001 and again in 2003 at the Mother Lode Fair in Sonora.

What’s the point of all this? Many grapes have gotten a bad rap because they were not understood, or weren’t planted in the right places, or just had odd quirks that required a little curiosity and experimentation to uncover. So here we are, launching a new venture into very small quantities of really good wines made from many uncommon grape varieties. They won’t all be for everyone, but since the total output will be limited to 1,500 cases per year, we couldn’t begin to accommodate everyone’s taste the way we’ve tried to at Oakstone. For the adventurous, the eclectic, the curious and the skeptics, we will produce just enough of each wine to provide a serious challenge to the status quo. After all, there are plenty of really good Merlots and Chardonnays offered by California’s other wineries to satisfy the taste buds of those who mostly prefer what they’ve had before.

Does this mean that everything must be obscure? No, whenever there are unusually good grapes, or ones that from really old vines, we’ll make small lots where we can express the special qualities of the grapes. Just don’t count on every wine being repeated from one year to the next—variety is both the spice and the essence of life here at Obscurity Cellars!

A note about the winemaker: Although I intend to make the wines starting in 2004, Craig made all of the wines to date, some even before we had hatched the idea of Obscurity Cellars. His expertise shows in each of them, and offers a daunting challenge for my return to active winemaking next year.

How Can I Buy?

Without a tasting room, there will be a paradigm shift in the way Obscurity wines are offered to you. We have a website (www.obscuritycellars.com) with secure ordering, a mailing list, and these newsletters. We will be happy to accept telephone orders, faxes or emails (although we request that you not include a credit card number in an email, since it’s about as private as a postcard), and you can always write to us—we love to hear from you!

Next year, we will open up the cellar for a few special events each year (attendance will be by invitation), and will have limited visitation, by appointment only (we don’t want to be rude, but if you were to show up without an appointment made in advance, we won’t be around, and the winery will be locked). When I retired in 1998, I did a pretty lousy job of it, and wound up working from 6:00 every morning until about 8:00 each night to build Oakstone into the operation we wanted it to be. Now that Oakstone has become self-sustaining (and has people who can work normal hours to keep it that way), we have decided it’s time to do a few things the way we need to. This time, we really intend to spend some weekends away, enjoying life, attending special wine events, even going wine tasting while still participating in winemaking in a relaxed way.

Since Oakstone sold almost all its wines from the tasting room, we were able to price our wines very attractively, even well below market value for many of them. Obscurity wines will still be fairly priced, but our business plan is different from Oakstone, and so is our pricing structure. You will know that the wines we offer will always be “proprietor’s reserve” wines, since the quantity is severely limited, and only the finest grapes will be used to make them—estate grown or produced by some of the area’s finest grape growers.

The Murrill Vineyard

Three of Obscurity’s first six wines were grown in the Murrill Vineyard. It might seem odd that so many wines come from one vineyard, but it is a special vineyard, owned by some special people, and it produces some exceptional grapes. The growing of grapes is a family affair at the Murrills’, with Frank and Ruth, the elders, son John & wife Terry, the “youngers,” and with son Steve and his wife Wendy joining from the Sacramento area each fall to help with the annual harvest.

When we first met the Murrills, Oakstone was desperately seeking zinfandel, which at that time was a very scarce commodity. We had been able to buy some of their grapes in 1999 with the help of Ben Zeitman of Amador Foothill Winery, and when we talked to them about the 2001 crop, they asked if we would consider taking a few tons of their brand new sangiovese, as well. Since this was to be the first harvest from young vines, there was no track record for the grapes, and we were not very enthusiastic (neither Craig nor I had made a Sangiovese we were really proud of). Frank persisted, and we relented, since we knew his track record for producing excellent zinfandel. The sangiovese grapes reached a sugar content of 24.5% on August 19, a frighteningly early time, but the acid content was much too high, at 1.10%. I asked Frank to turn the irrigation on for just these vines, and leave it on for a week. He reluctantly complied, and after a week of scorching heat and continuous watering, the sugar was at 23.6, and the acid was down to 0.78—exactly right! This act of faith between a grower and winery owner who really didn’t know each other led to a relationship of trust between us that has blossomed into a full partnership. The award of the Best Sangiovese in California at the State Fair Grape & Gourmet celebration (above) to the wine made from these grapes was a very special recognition of what hard work, faith and trust can do.

When Frank and Ruth first bought the property on Ridge Road, there was a only ramshackle farmhouse, and the vines had not been tended since the early 1940’s. They had run amok so badly that they had to be cut back with chainsaws, but with patience and hard work, the Murrills restored the old house and vines, then planted new zinfandel vines, and finally planted the sangiovese in 1998. They were able to salvage about 400 zinfandel vines that were planted in 1916, and also about 215 carignane vines from the same planting, and these vines have never been watered. We kept both the carignane and the 1916 zinfandel separate, and they have now turned into two more award-winning Obscurity wines.

Left to right: Three State Fair Dignitaries, Bear, Frank Murrill, John, John Murrill

The picture below shows why the Murrill Vineyard is so special: below the topsoil, there is nothing but rocks of all sizes, so much so that they could never drill a well on the property—the hole would close up immediately when the drill was withdrawn. When you underlie rich surface soil with a deep rockpile like this one, the combination is almost perfect for growing high-quality wine grapes. With eighty-seven years to put down deep roots, these vines have extracted minerals and nutrients from extreme depths, and from a large area per vine, since they are planted on ten-foot centers in both directions.

Just a Small Fraction of the Rocks Removed from the Murrill Vineyard

Frank is just a few years younger than these vines, but a great deal younger in spirit. The “young” zinfandel vines, mostly planted in 1985, go into the Oakstone Zinfandels, but we wanted to find a distinctive name for Obscurity’s wine produced from the vines salvaged by Frank’s hard work. Understanding that not everyone wants to be known as “old,” we approached Frank with a request to celebrate both his vineyard and his longevity on the label of this special wine. He generously allowed us to label the wine “Old Man Murrill,” and we hope to be producing it, with his help, for many more years.