Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Nostalgia

Last night, we held our very first staff meeting for the SB team. It was a chance to get all of us in the same room and talk about things, mainly of course, wine. While we do a pretty intense training program for new employees at Riverbench, we hadn't had a chance to sit down as a group and taste through ALL of the wines together. We took the time to do this last night.

Telling stories about my first days at Riverbench six years ago, and the history of the property and the owners, made me a little nostalgic. I found myself remembering the evolution of the Mesa Pinot Noir and missing our former winemaker Chuck Ortman a bit.

I was sitting in the dusty back office (while Riverbench North was being renovated, I worked in the back building with the mice and forklift) my first October at Riverbench in 2007, and Chuck came by. He was going through the vineyard to taste Pinot Noir and asked if I'd like to come along. Of course I jumped at the chance. Tasting grapes with a winemaking celebrity? Yes please.

We tasted row by row and block by block, ending up at the four acre Mesa block. Even to my untrained palate, I could tell those grapes tasted different from everything else we had tried that day.

"Why don't we make this on its own? These grapes taste...different," I asked him. Chuck just smiled his mischievous little smile.

"We could, and they do," he said.


I still don't know if he took me to the Mesa block last on purpose just to see if I'd react. It's long since been, according to Chuck and Jim, the most highly demanded fruit on the vineyard. So that year we kept those grapes separate from the others. The resulting barrel samples that spring blew us away, and the Mesa Pinot Noir become a staple in our wine portfolio.

I miss Chuck sometimes, and he usually somehow senses that and gives me a call to check in. He was such a legendary talent not only on the Central Coast, but in California's wine history. And certainly he was a big part of shaping Riverbench early on. What a sweet and funny man. We miss his goofy sense of humor now and again around here. I count myself super lucky to have worked with him; experiences like the one above will be the things I remember forever.

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