A note from the editor: the last half of February, we’re dedicating our articles to winemaker spotlights. To those of you who have wondered what a day in the life of a winemaker is like, I’d encourage you to check out our Napa Valley Bud Break Boot Camp—a hands-on approach is about the best way you’ll find out. – Jonathan Cristaldi
Story by Brian Freedman
Jamie Kutch has become one of the most respected producers of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in California by refusing to give in to what the market told him. That’s an unexpected strategy for a man who once made his living on Wall Street—and then famously chucked it all away to follow his passion out west, as a winemaker—but it has paid off in ways he never could have imagined.
In 2005, his first vintage, “I didn’t know how to make the wines I wanted to,” he told me. “The journey really began on year two or three.” That’s because in the beginning, as a new winemaker without the confidence to break with the accepted wisdom of the time, “I worked off the Kosta Browne pick date,” harvesting the Pinot Noir he was contracting for at the same time as them.
The only problem was that the wines he was producing as a result just didn’t suit his palate: They were too big, too ripe. In 2006, his second year, Kutch decided to try to make a more delicate wine by punching down the cap with his bare hands. But that had the opposite effect on the wine, making it too extracted.
In 2007, still searching for how to achieve the style he desired, Kutch decided to adjust his pick date. “So that’s why I picked 30 days earlier” that year, he said.
He was derided for a decision to pick his vines in Kanzler Vineyard a month before the other winemakers who had stakes in it. “I was ridiculed,” he recalled, “and asked [behind his back] whether or not I was trying to make sparkling wine.”
Yet he persisted. Inevitably, “that wine was lighter in body,” which was a step in the right direction, but it still wasn’t quite there. “I said I love the character, but I don’t have [enough] glycerine or alcohol. I asked myself, ‘Where am I going to get power and weight from if I don’t have glycerine?”
Which is when the idea of stem inclusion started to germinate. The next vintage, Kutch included stems in his winemaking, which resulted in a wine with the structure he desired, but it wasn’t quite “loose” enough for his taste. How, he asked himself, could he remedy that?
And so it went, vintage after vintage, a Socratic winemaking dialogue with himself, questions posed and then answered a full year later. It was a long, arduous process, but with each passing year, he dialed in on the techniques and decisions that would get him closer to crafting the Pinot he left his life in New York for.
So he cut all new oak from his winemaking. Then, he went from punching down his caps two or three times a day to just two or three times total. “All those little things,” he said, “no recipe, no reading of a book, just tasting and making another vintage and learning, making a note and learning some more.” He paused, and then added, “It’s a longer road, but I chose the longer road,” with a clear vision in mind.
In recent years, Kutch’s Pinot Noirs have become benchmarks. Antonio Galloni called his 2018 Falstaff Vineyard Pinot “gorgeous” and his 2017 McDougall “a total stunner.” Master of Wine Jancis Robinson praised the same wine as “quite outstanding!” Reviewing Kutch’s 2014 Chardonnay, Eric Asimov of The New York Times praised it as, “One of the best California Chardonnays I have had in a very long time, textured, harmonious, long on minerality.”
He now produces 10 different wines—two Chardonnays and eight Pinots, including standout bottlings from McDougall, Falstaff, and Bohan, among others.
“I’m a believer in the word ‘terroir,’ but since I’m American, and [making wine] in the United States, I prefer not to use that word,” he said. “I prefer to use ‘wines of distinction,’ or ‘wines of a distinctive place.’ And in Sonoma, that’s been compelling for me because I have Falstaff on sand at low elevation, and in the fog and cold. I have McDougall at high elevation, planted in rock and on a warmer site. And then I have Bohan which believe it or not has two different soils: One soil type that’s in McDougall and one that’s in Falstaff. And the Graveyard Block of Bohan even has soils that are a little different: There’s quartz there. That provides me with four wines that are very distinctively different.” For Kutch, that plays directly into his overarching goal: “In this journey, it’s been fun for me to focus on the idea of less is more. Not to turn into the nation’s ‘Super Size Me’ culture of making more and more wines, but concentrating on a few vineyards and trying to achieve the highest level I can by focusing on them and spending more time there.”
“I have to work hard,” he added. “I put in a large amount of labor. I don’t have the money for an oenologist, for a huge team. But with that comes the word ‘happiness,’ and I’m happy. And that trumps bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars or selling for millions one day…I’ve really watched others in my space, in this industry, and I see their successes or failures, and I try to turn that into a question of, ‘What would be a success for me?’” In the end, he said, “I wanted to blaze my own trail, find my own voice. And that led to using 100% whole cluster, to looking to the old and trying to make it new again.”
Recently, Kutch achieved a deeply satisfying personal milestone. After finally getting distribution in France—Pinot Noir and Chardonnay’s ancestral homeland, where red and white Burgundy have been such inspirations for Kutch—he went to a wine store outside of Reims that carries his wines, and approximately 20 people from the town showed up to taste them and meet him. “That was a magical moment of feeling success,” he recalled, “to be in France, in Champagne, and selling the wines to people who are genuinely interested in what I’m doing.”
That town is a long way from Wall Street, and it took a decade and a half to get there. But Jamie Kutch did it. By following his gut and his palate, by remaining true to his vision, and by a stubborn willingness to ignore the sidelong glances he received in the beginning, he has achieved what he set out to do all those years ago.
“When someone pulls the cork,” he explained, “I want them to taste the amount of work and energy and time. I want someone to think a little more, instead of just drinking the beverage.”
