Wine: Music in the Vineyard
By Mark Criden
Nembutol numbs it all. But I prefer alcohol.
—The Clash, “The Right Profile,”
London Calling, 1979
So, it seems, does much of the music world.
Despite their well-earned reputation for drug propulsion, few musicians are pharmacist wannabes or fantasize about catching on as a Merck rep when the time comes to hang up the Stratocaster. Many, however, wind up in the wine business. These days, you can barely swing a hoe without hitting Sting, Olivia Newton-John, Bob Dylan, or the other glitterati now starring on wine labels.
Much of this is hardly surprising. Both wine and music are creative endeavors, requiring imagination, fine craftsmanship, some artistry, and a glamorous image to capture public attention. Even the ancient Greeks believed that wine, music, poetry, and art sprang from the same Spring of the Muses, created at Hippocrene by a kick from the flying horse Pegasus.
Alchemy I: Music into Wine
California, our national hotbed of reinvention, is where this metamorphosis reaches its summit.
Take, for instance, Patrick Campbell, owner and winemaker at Sonoma Mountain’s Laurel Glen Winery. Like many musicians, Campbell stumbled into winemaking, having a degree in neither viticulture nor enology. After studying English Literature at Pomona College and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard, Campbell moved to Sonoma in the mid-1970s. While living in a Zen Buddhist community, he played the viola in several Bay Area symphony orchestras and chamber groups, tending his commune’s vineyards by day. A few years after his arrival, Campbell and his wife Faith purchased the 3-acre Laurel Glen Vineyard, since expanded to 35 acres.
Now in his late fifties, Campbell’s string quartet days may be behind him, but he brings a soulful, harmonious touch to his cabernet-based wines. Two are produced from his Sonoma Mountain vineyards, the flagship Laurel Glen Estate Cabernet, and Counterpoint, its earlier-drinking younger brother. He also makes Terra Rosa, a scrumptious Cabernet-Malbec from the Mendoza area of Argentina as well as Reds, a delicious, affordable cash flow blend of old vine California carignane, zinfandel, and petite syrah.
Over in tony Napa Valley, Elias Fernandez learned about winemaking the hard way. The son of migrant farm workers, he first picked grapes at the age of eight, working the fields and vineyards after school and on holidays.
Fernandez’ creative gifts first became apparent as a teenager, when he took up jazz trumpet; his musical talent and experience earned him a Fulbright scholarship for music at the University of Nevada at Reno. After only a year, though, he ditched the idea of a musical career to study winemaking at the University of California at Davis. “I realized I’d rather be a starving winemaker than a starving musician,” he laughs.The jazz world’s loss was winemaking’s great gain. Fernandez joined Shafer Vineyards in 1984 and was elevated to the top winemaking position spot in 1991, crafting such exalted wines as the Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon, Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay, Firebreak Sangiovese, and Relentless Syrah.
Further up the coast is Washington’s superb McCrea Cellars, dedicated exclusively to Syrah and other red and white Rhone Valley varietals. New Orleans-born winemaker Doug McCrea spent fourteen years as an accomplished classical and jazz musician, composer, arranger, and educator, before moving to the Pacific Northwest. After kicking around for a few years at a couple of Puget Sound wineries and studying at the University of California at Davis, he launched what has become a great career in winemaking.McCrea’s philosophy is simple. “The wine is fundamentally created in the vineyard. A winemaker captures the grape’s subtle aromas and flavors, nurturing and expanding these elements. Like musical improvisation, he applies his personal expression or ‘signature.’ Both fields provide the ability to release creativity.”
This resourcefulness and his ability to riff are apparent in all of McCrea’s wines, not only his signature Syrahs, but also his red Mourvedre, his red blend inspired by the wines of Southern France called Sirocco, and his whites from Roussanne and Viognier.
Alchemy II: Wine into Music
Steve Edmunds is one of California’s great iconoclast winemakers. Although he owns no vineyards, Edmunds sources grapes from wonderful parcels of old vines throughout the Golden State and ships them to his winemaking facility in Berkeley, where he turns out one world-class bottle after another under his Edmunds St. John label. His Syrah, especially from the Wylie & Fenaughty vineyards in El Dorado county are among the greatest examples of that Northern Rhone varietal in California, and his Cotes du Rhone-inspired blend, called Rocks and Gravel, puts many a Chateauneuf du Pape to shame.
But Steve was writing music—bluegrass flecked with folk and country—long before he began making Syrah. He’s put together an album of eleven of his songs, called Lonesome on the Ground, and it’s available on his website, www.edmundsstjohn.com. The samples available online are sweet, though they improved immeasurably with a glass of Rocks and Gravel.
Every gimmick-hungry yob digging gold from rock ’n’ roll
—The Clash, “Death or Glory,” London Calling, 1979
Attention, winos also addicted to Bob Dylan or Mick Fleetwood—good news! Your dreams have come true.
Antonia Terni, an Italian Dylan groupie, convinced the star to lend his mug to her Fattoria Le Terrazze winery to produce a new label called Planet Waves, also the name of Dylan’s 1974 album. The first bottling is a 2002 blend of Montepulciano and Merlot. “I’ve been a Bob Dylan fan since the first time I heard him, and I didn’t even understand English then,” said Terni, apparently explaining a lot.
If Dylan wine completes you, better hurry. Only 1500 bottles were produced for the U.S., and it’s bound to be considered a bargain in some quarters at its suggested retail price of $65.
Co-founder of the famously vacuous Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood has recently introduced the Mick Fleetwood Private Cellar label. Its first wine, the “1998 Cuvée,” is a Merlot/Cabernet Franc blend from California’s central coast.Fleetwood admits he’s no connoisseur. He just knows what he likes and hopes other people will share his taste. “I want this to be fun,” he claims. Fun starts at the label, which bears Fleetwood’s image and moves on to the price tag. If you’re thinking a nice cheap bottle to share with friends while giving Rumours its two-thousandth spin, uh, no. The Mickster will set you back around $30.
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Jerry Garcia, dead, though not Dead, for the better part of a
decade, was, among other things, an artist as well as a musician; the labels of the J. Garcia bottles feature his artwork. |
Death or Glory
Long-standing philosophical debates as to whether the dead can sell wine have been answered in surprisingly literal fashion with the launch of the J. Garcia brand by California’s Clos du Bois winery. Jerry Garcia, dead, though not Dead, for the better part of a decade, was, among other things, an artist as well as a musician; the labels of the J. Garcia bottles feature his artwork.
That Garcia was a famous aficionado of a wide range of intoxicants is further proof that irony is wasted on the living.
Clos du Bois produces the Garcia brand in the normal range of California flavors—Zin, Cab, Chard, and Merlot. By all reports, the 2001 Cabernet is not bad, and if that’s a sufficient recommendation, a bottle will set you back $20.
And for those who are about to ask, yes, I’m aware that you can buy a Graceland® Cellars line of Elvis Presley® brand wine products, including a Jailhouse Red Merlot, The King Cabernet Sauvignon, and Blue Suede Chardonnay, but, no, I’m not going to tell you about them.
Former rocker turned celebrity sommelier Jean Luc Le Dû was asked a couple of years ago what bottle he would share with any musician living or dead. He chose the 1990 Rayas Châteauneuf du Pape to share with Joe Strummer of The Clash. “But he’s dead, unfortunately,” Le Dû lamented.
Unfortunately? Another wine label waiting to be born!
Mark Criden, a non-profit executive, is the former chair of the Buffalo Branch of the IWFS. You can reach him at mcriden@yahoo.com.
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