Unrivaled Russian River Pinot Noir and Sonoma Wines with Theresa Heredia of Gary Farrell Winery

Natalie MacLean
Aug14th

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Introduction

Does harvesting wine based on the biodynamic calendar make sense? What about actually drinking the wine based on the lunar cycle? How does fog play a profound role in growing grapes and winemaking in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma, California? Why do some winemakers add Mega Purple to wine, and what the heck is Mega Purple?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with superstar winemaker Theresa Heredia who has worked for some of California’s most prestigious wineries.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

One of you will win a bottle of Gary Farrell wine.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me.

Good luck!

 

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I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

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Highlights

  • Where did Theresa’s early love of chemistry come from?
  • What was the “aha moment” in her wine career that Theresa experienced during a trip to France?
  • Which aspects of Pinot Noir and Châteauneuf-du-Pape captured Theresa’s interest?
  • How did finding the intersection between chemistry and wine change the trajectory of Theresa’s career?
  • How did Theresa get through the double heat waves of 2010 – the most challenging year of her wine career?
  • Which viral moment has been the highlight of Theresa’s wine career so far?
  • What was it like to work at a new vineyard as a new experimental winemaker?
  • How often does Theresa taste the grapes as they ripen in the vineyard and the wine as it ages in the barrel?
  • How does Theresa use the “When Wine Tastes Best” app?
  • What are “Jesus units” in winemaking?
  • What’s Theresa’s opinion on Mega Purple, and why is it used in winemaking?
  • What is Gary Farrell like as a winemaker?
  • What can you expect from a visit to the Gary Farrell winery and tasting room?
  • How did Theresa approach making the wines her own over the years at Gary Farrell Winery?
  • What’s the signature style of Gary Farrell wines?
  • What makes the Russian River Valley AVA unique in Sonoma?
  • How does fog influence the development of grapes in a vineyard?

 

Key Takeaways

  • Does harvesting wine based on the biodynamic calendar make sense? What about actually drinking the wine based on the lunar cycle?
    As Theresa explains, the lunar cycle is correlated to gravitational forces. So on different days, the gravitational forces are really strong. On a root day, the fruity esters and aromatic compounds are pulled down into the vine. So if you pick on a root day, the theory is that you’re not going to capture as much of the aromatics as you would on a fruit day when the gravitational forces are the weakest and the fruity floral notes are actually in the fruit. Then there’s a leaf day when Theresa says you might capture more of the leafy vegetal aromas in the grapes and resulting wine. On a flower day, you might capture a lot of the floral aromatics. This relates to wine in the bottle as well. If you’re drinking it on a root day, the aromatics are pulled more into the liquid. The wine might not smell as fruity and floral as if you were drinking it on a fruit or a flower day.
  • How does fog play a profound role in growing grapes and winemaking in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma, California?
    As Theresa observes, the fog and diurnal temperature shifts help preserve acidity and color development in the grapes. It can get up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime, but at night, the grapes cool down to fog temperature, which is about 50-55 degrees. So you get that big swing in temperatures called a diurnal shift. In the Russian River Valley, many vineyards are at slightly lower elevations next to the river, which means that they have gravelly riverbed soil. The river acts like a conveyor belt pulling the fog in from the Pacific Ocean and chilling the grapes down at night to help capture natural acidity, which is a defining characteristic of the wines.
  • Why do some winemakers add Mega Purple to wine, and what the heck is Mega Purple?
    Mega Purple is highly concentrated grape juice made from Rubired grapes that have red purple skins and flesh to impart a lot of colour. Winemakers use Mega Purple to add color, body and texture, and make bigger, bolder wines. Theresa believes it’s mostly done to correct something that happened to that particular harvest. She’s not a fan but recognizes that some people might need it.

 

Start The Conversation: Click Below to Share These Wine Tips

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There are some really amazing vineyards and wines in the world that are really, truly expressive of place. - Theresa Heredia Theresa Heredia Click to tweet

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During harvest, it feels like instant gratification. You quickly start to see the evolution from the fruit to wine. - Theresa Heredia Theresa Heredia Click to tweet

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The theory is that if you pick on a root day, you won’t capture as much of the aromatics since all the fruity esters and aromatic compounds are being pulled down into the vine. - Theresa Heredia Theresa Heredia Click to tweet

 

About Theresa Heredia

Theresa Heredia studied Biochemistry as an undergraduate student at Cal Poly, SLO, and then Chemistry as a graduate student at UC Davis before discovering her passion for winemaking. She started her career at Saintsbury and has also worked at Joseph Phelps Vineyards and Domaine de Montille in France. She became Winemaker at Gary Farrell Winery in 2012 and achieved critical acclaim for her wines. At Gary Farrell, she developed strong relationships with some of the most prominent vineyards in California. She was twice nominated as Winemaker of the Year by Wine Enthusiast and has received numerous other accolades, including Wine Enthusiast’s #1 wine in the “Top 100 Wines of 2017, and this month is featured in Wine Spectator’s “New Class of Chardonnay Stars”. Prior to joining Gary Farrell Winery, she was at Joseph Phelps’ Freestone Vineyards, where in early 2012 she was named “Winemaker to Watch” by the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

Resources

 

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Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 Does harvesting wine based on the biodynamic calendar makes sense? What about actually drinking wine based on the lunar cycle? How does fog play a profound role in growing grapes and wine making in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma, California? And why do some wine makers add Mega Purple to wine? And what the heck is Mega Purple? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with superstar winemaker Theresa Heredia, who has worked for some of California’s most prestigious wineries.

By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover the sublime Pinot Noir that captivated Theresa while she was dining at the renowned restaurant in Burgundy, Ma Cuisine. It was her a-ha wine that made her want to make wines that are expressive of place. Why the harvest feels like instant gratification for winemakers who work for a year without seeing the fruit of their labours. Yeah, pun intended. How making wine became more fascinating and challenging than cancer therapeutics research at the doctoral level for Theresa. And what a root day versus a fruit day is, and correspondingly, what winemakers and wine drinkers should do. Okay, let’s dive in.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:20  Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Welcome to episode 298. In personal news, I want to share with you a review for the new audiobook version of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation and Drinking Too Much. It’s by Linda Severson from Arizona. She posted it on Audible.com. “Cinematic and suspenseful. (Boom boom boom. Okay, I added the music) Wine Witch on Fire is riveting and I’m not even a drinker. The author’s narration is divine, too. As she tells her story, I feel like I’m watching a movie. I can’t wait to see how she triumphs in the end. Five stars.” Thank you so much, Linda.

You can download Wine Witch on Fire and start listening immediately on Audible.com, Kobo, Audiobooks.com, Spotify, Google Play, Libro.FM, and wherever else you get audiobooks. If you started listening to the audiobook, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide for the audiobook, e-book and paperback versions at nataliemacLean.com/298.  Okay, on with the show.

Now, before I introduce our guest, I just want to say that one of you is going to win a bottle of her amazing, really amazing Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley. All you have to do is email me at [email protected] and tell me that you’d like to win a bottle. I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me. All right, back to our guest.

Natalie MacLean 00:03:47 Theresa Heredia has earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly at Saint Louis Obispo, and was a PhD candidate in chemistry with an emphasis on enology at the University of UC Davis, before leaving to pursue her passion to become a winemaker. She has worked for some of California’s most prestigious wineries, including Saintsbury Winery in Napa Valley, Joseph Phelps Vineyards and Freestone Vineyards and Winery, as well as Domaine de la Montille in Burgundy, France. She joined Gary Farrell Winery and Vineyards in 2012 and achieved critical acclaim for her wines from leading publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wine Spectator and The Wine Enthusiast magazines, as well as being nominated twice for winemaker of the year. And she joins us now from her home in Sonoma. Theresa, It’s so great to have you here with us. Welcome.

Theresa Heredia 00:04:44 Thank you so much for having me, Natalie. It’s an honour to be here and a privilege.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:49 My pleasure. All right, let’s start with the very beginning. You had an early love of chemistry. Where did that come from? And do you remember any early experiments?

Theresa Heredia 00:05:01 I know exactly where my love of chemistry came from. Twofold, really. When I was a kid, we had summers at home and we were latchkey kids. So, my mom was working all day and my dad was living separately, and we’d get home from school and often I would want to play around with things in the kitchen, not cooking, but just like mix some stuff together to see what happens. Baking soda was always fun to play with.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:24 So is that the one that causes cancer?

Theresa Heredia 00:05:28 It can indeed. Yeah. Anyway, so that’s one part of the story. And then when I got into high school science classes, I found that I loved biology. It had a really fantastic teacher. But when I got to chemistry I excelled in it did really well. My brother and his best friend used to ask me for help in chemistry, so I realized it was kind of a natural thing for me. And so that’s what really led me to pursue a degree in biochem and then chemistry.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:53 That’s wonderful. And you even remember a particular teacher, I believe?

Theresa Heredia 00:05:57 Yes. My chemistry teacher in high school was Mr. Jang, and his wife actually was my third grade elementary school teacher. So it’s funny, I actually emailed him or no did I email him or call him? I think I emailed him back in like 2011 or something just to say  I want you to know how much your influence on me has affected my career.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:18 Wow. That’s great. Has he ever tasted your wines?

Theresa Heredia 00:06:22 I don’t know, I haven’t reached out to him again. I should.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:27 Okay. Cool. So, as I understand from my research, your parents weren’t wine connoisseurs though they did enjoy their boxed wine in the fridge. You carried on that tradition in college with your own boxes of Boone’s Strawberry Hill wine. We will not be analyzing that one today. What happened to you when a friend, when you were out enjoying an adult beverage on some floaty rafts back in those days?

Theresa Heredia 00:06:48 Gosh. Yeah, we’re talking Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill sweet wine. It’s like sweet fortified wine. And we were camping at Lake Havasu in Arizona, and it was just a really windy day. And I think a monsoon came in and we were on our two little floaty rafts. Each of us had a little cup holder, some Boone’s Farm in the cup holder, and we got blown out there and the Coast Guard had to come on its raft.

Natalie MacLean Wow

Theresa Heredia And pick us up. So we weren’t that far out there, but it was far enough that our little floaty rafts that we’re trying to paddle with our hands wasn’t good enough. So [laughter].

Natalie MacLean 00:07:18 Well, that’s extreme wine tasting. So that gave you [laughter] an early taste of that. Now you were still pursuing your PhD in chemistry when you and your partner traveled through Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley in France. Tell us about your experience at the renowned restaurant Ma Cuisine in Beaune, Burgundy. I’ve been there, too and it’s amazing. It’s so casual, yet the food is mind blowing. But tell us what happened to you.

Theresa Heredia 00:07:41 So we were there. We had just arrived on our trip, and we knew that we wanted to go to Ma Cuisine. And we had a bottle of, I would say that that was one of my a-ha moments in discovering my wine career. And we were there. So we had a bottle of, I think it was a 1995 Denis Mortet Clos de Vougeot and it just blew my mind because I had consumed some lower end Burgundys in California. But they’re a lot more expensive here, and to get the high end ones is not affordable, especially for graduate students. So we had this delicious bottle and I realized there are some really amazing vineyards and wines in the world that are really truly expressive of place. And I just came home wanting to make wines that are expressive of place.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:28 Wow, that’s quite the journey from Boone’s to [laughter]. You developed a taste for both Pinot Noir, elegant, light bodied, usually light to medium, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which is fairly robust blend from the RhoneValley. Those red wine styles are almost diametrically opposed in terms of body, taste and weight. Many people prefer one style over the other. Why do you think you developed a taste for both?

Theresa Heredia 00:08:53 So truthfully, depending on the style of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that you love, I love the ones that are more expressive of the Grenache grape varietal, and those tend to be more red fruit driven, a little bit lighter in structure and body. Still bigger than a lot of Pinot Noirs, but I think I love them because they are similar. It’s like a step up from Pinot Noir to Grenache, right? And so Châteauneuf-du-Pape has a lot of different grape varietals in it, but you know, the ones that taste like they’re a little bit more Grenache forward are the style that I prefer.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:27 I love that. I would have never figured that one out because yeah, Grenache is so elegant, so smooth, and so lovely even on its own. But I can see that.

Theresa Heredia 00:09:36 The ones that are more Syrah heavy are going to be that deeper, darker, bigger, robust wines that you’re talking about.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:42 Okay. And what was the exact moment you realized you wanted to become a winemaker, at least go into the wine field?

Theresa Heredia 00:09:50 Yeah, Well, it’s a funny story. So I was in grad school at UC Davis, and there are 400 undergraduate students in a general chemistry class. So remember that, at the time I was studying chemistry, I was working on my PhD and just really had started finishing the coursework and working on my research project. And so there were other graduate student teaching assistants as well. There were 12 of us in total. So we would get together to grade exams, and we all came from different departments. So some of us came from chemistry, some from biochem, microbiology, viticulture and enology. So each of us kind of went around the room talking about our research project analysis that we’re doing. And I realized I heard these viticulture and geology students talking about their research, and they brought wine to the grading session as well. So how fun, right? And when they started talking about their research, I realized that we’re doing the same thing. It’s the same type of analysis, statistical analysis, analytical instrumentation. It was all pretty much the same thing.

So I realized really quickly that I could enjoy the passionate parts of wine consumption and learning, but also the science part could be applied as well. And so I switched within days to the oenology program and never looked back. And then very soon after I got hired on full time at Joseph Phelps Vineyards as the research chemist. And so that was just the perfect marriage for me, you know, to start there, it was like the stars had aligned.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:20 Yes, chemistry, but more fun with wine. And you’re still sort of chem geeky. And in addition to wine adding more of a sensual, fun element, you’re also drawn to it for another reason we’ve talked about in the past. Seeing the results in your lifetime, it may be expand on that a little bit.

Theresa Heredia 00:11:40 Yeah. So well, with peptide research,  peptide synthesis that I was doing in grad school.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:47 Are those short proteins or something like this? I’m trying.

Theresa Heredia 00:11:50 It’s like a short. It’s not a protein because a protein is a longer chain, but a peptide is a short chain of amino acids of proteins, a long chain of amino acids. And so chemically building a library of peptides. Actually, I don’t want to get into that because that’s a whole video. And to itself.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:05 Chemistry 101 sorry, we do have lots in common, but not that [laughter].

Theresa Heredia 00:12:11 But it was cancer therapeutics. Research is what I was doing. And yeah, it was really fascinating. But I was kind of ground zero in terms of that project. And so I didn’t feel like I was ever going to see the results of that project in my lifetime. And when I realized I could do science and wine. Wine is, what, about ten months to a year, maybe 18 months of really the time from grape to bottle for Pinot Noir. And I just felt like it was not quite instant gratification, but almost during harvest it feels like instant gratification because you put the grapes in the tank, you taste the juice the next day, and immediately you start to see the evolution from the fruit on the vine to juice in the tank. And the flavours start developing into wine during fermentation and afterwards. So I just love it. I love every step. Harvest is one of my favourite times of year.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:01 Oh that’s great. Awesome. Now take us to the worst moment of your winemaking career. Maybe it was a really challenging vintage and what did you learn from that?

Theresa Heredia 00:13:11 Yeah, there are a number of different times. I mean, 2020 was a really tough year but everybody knows about that so that’s boring. 2020 was tough because of the fires. It was just widespread all over Sonoma and Napa counties. But everybody’s heard about that. Everybody knows about that. So going back to my time at Joseph Phelps Freestone Vineyards, it was my third full time harvest in the winery and the new Freestone winery that had been built in 2007.

Theresa Heredia 00:13:37 We made wine before that from 2002 forward. But I’m talking about in the winery facility. So we’re there. And 2010 was just a long, cool growing season up until August. And then again in September, we got two separate heat waves. So the first heat wave in August caused some desiccation of the grapes.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:58 And what does that mean?

Theresa Heredia 00:13:59 Desiccation, like raisining, drying of the grapes. But out at Freestone at the time, they weren’t really ready until the end of September, early October. So you can think of it in terms of that heat wave hit and we were still like a month away from harvest. But there was another heat wave that came in September, and we knew a heat wave was coming and they were forecasting mid 90s out on the coast, which is kind of odd or was odd at the time. And it had been a really cold, wet, foggy summer. So the poor grapes hadn’t really seen that much sunshine or heat. And so the exposed side of the clusters just fried in the sun. And so you had beautiful clusters and ripe stems on one side and then raisins on the other side. So it was a tough year. To remedy it, the best that we could do is I decided to do a reverse sort. It’s what I call a reverse sort. Usually you put the clusters across the sorting table and you pull out the bad stuff like a raisin here and there, maybe a moldy cluster. Well, in this case, we were pulling out the beautiful gems, what I call the nuggets of love. So we pulled them out and we use those for whole cluster inclusion in the fermentation.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:06 Okay. And we’re going to talk about that later on. Now take us to the best moment of your career – I love a happy ending – so far because you’ve got a long career ahead of you. But what’s been the most best moment so far?

Theresa Heredia 00:15:18 I’ve had a lot. One kind of a fun one that comes to mind is in 2020, when we’re all sitting home bored, you know, trying to figure out what to do. We at Gary Ferrell Winery came across this video on YouTube that Zoe Bell posted and it was called…

Natalie MacLean 00:15:33 Who is Zoe Bell, by the way?

Theresa Heredia 00:15:35 A famous actress, I believe. Okay. And she posted this video and so it was just camera work, tricks of the camera. And so there were a bunch of famous women like Cameron Diaz, Rosie Perez, Florence Pugh. So each of them was either throwing an item and then, you know, they would each record it. And so the person who put the video together made it look like the person was throwing it before, and it hit the person who’s next on video. And it went on. I think there were at least 10 or 20 different women. And Florence Pugh, when you get to her, you see her scratching her head like, oh, that hurt. And then she goes to look around to grab something and she grabs a bottle of Gary Ferrell wine and she’s about to hit somebody with it. But then she looks at it, and then she puts it down and she grabs a dog bone instead. So it was really cool. It was really cool to see that.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:26 That is great. Excellent virality.

Theresa Heredia 00:16:29 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:30 All right. So in 2001, as you’ve mentioned, you did your first harvest with Sainsbury in Carneros, which sits between Napa and Sonoma. The next year, you were hired full time at Joseph Phelps Vineyards, where you spent ten years making Freestone and Fogdog wines from a new vineyard. Why was that such a good experience for a new experimental winemaker as you describe yourself?

Theresa Heredia 00:16:52 It was amazing. It was like I had been invited to the university of cool climate Sonoma Coast Pinot and Chardonnay winemaking. And I really had very little experience at the time. And so I was working in collaboration with the director of winemaking at the time – his name is Craig Williams – and he was very experimental. He was very experimental and knew I was and so we were just like two kids in a candy store, you know, just trying different experiments with Pinot to see what makes the best, most site specific wines from the Sonoma Coast. And I just had so much fun, and I feel like it was a really unique opportunity for a young winemaker to learn to really jump in the deep end of winemaking and learn. There was no brand established. There was no winemaking protocol established. So it was all game.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:39 Well, that is great. What a great experience for your first one…

Theresa Heredia 00:17:41 It was tremendous

Natalie MacLean 00:17:42 because you also had the mentor, too. You weren’t left on your own flying alone. That was great. I’m going to ask you a few questions about what happens as you make wine now, because I’m just really interested. How many times do you taste grapes as they ripen. You’re out in the vineyard like is it every day I mean how often?

Theresa Heredia 00:18:02 Every day. Every day during the harvest, as soon as the grapes start to turn purple. The Pinot Noir grapes we’re talking about –  since you’re tasting Pinot today and so am I – so as soon as the grapes start to turn purple, they start to lose some of the really harsh malic acid, and they start to develop sugar. And as they do, they become more edible. And so, you know, the humans are eating them, the birds are eating them, other critters out there are trying to eat them as well, like deer. We try to keep them out of the vineyard, but I’m out there every day trying to see each of the vineyards and the blocks within each of the vineyards at least a couple of times a week. That way I can kind of. I’m a scientist. My palate can sort of calibrate and develop kind of a curve, so to speak, to see how it’s changing over time.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:44 Become your own Brix meter.

Theresa Heredia 00:18:46 Exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:47 Yeah, that’s a technical tool. Do you also use one of those in addition…

Theresa Heredia 00:18:53 Definitely. So I have one of the old fashioned ones, a refractometer where you put a little drop in and then you shine it up to the light. And then there’s a little graph in there that you can see the Brix level.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:02 Is there a reason why you use the old fashioned versus whatever the new fangled contraption is these days?

Theresa Heredia 00:19:07 I use the newfangled one in lab at the winery and I use the old school refractometer when I’m out in the vineyard, because I don’t have to worry about destroying it.  The other one is digital. The one I’m talking about is just an old school mechanical one.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:19 Right. Okay. Sounds like a kaleidoscope or something. It kind of.

Theresa Heredia 00:19:23 Yeah, kind of.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:25 And how many times do you taste the wine as it’s aging in the barrel? Once you get it in.

Theresa Heredia 00:19:31 As much as possible. However, I have to respect the fact that we’re trying to be as sanitary as possible. So we don’t want to introduce bacteria and stuff like that into the wines and then have the wines develop volatile acidity or any other issues. But during harvest, in the fermenter, I taste multiple times throughout the day, at least two, if not three times throughout the day.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:51 Wow. Does your mouth ever get really sore or tired from all the acidity or the tannin? All of that.

Theresa Heredia 00:19:58 It gets tired. Yeah. And so that’s why bubbles are such a great thing. You know, we start out the harvest with bubbles. And we kind of finish the day either with a glass of Champagne or sparkling wine, like an Iron Horse or something local or a really crisp, refreshing beer.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:13 So you toast at the beginning of the harvest as well, like a little ritual to get you started.

Theresa Heredia 00:20:18 We do. We call it just the toast to ring in the new harvest.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:22 That’s great.

Theresa Heredia 00:20:23 Kind of a blessing, so to speak.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:25 Yeah, absolutely. And do you still use the mobile app called When Wine Tastes Best?

Theresa Heredia 00:20:30 I sure do.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:31 Okay. It’s a biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers. Well, I guess it was made for wine drinkers, indicating the best days to open and drink the wine. I think based on the moon cycle. But you use it as well. Do you use it like for when to pick the grapes or how do you use it?

Theresa Heredia 00:20:46 Mostly it’s just a fun little casual app that I use just to see how the wine might be showing today. And I usually don’t look at it preemptively. I usually look at it after the fact. Because if I’m smelling or tasting the wine and it seems a little bit more earthy today or maybe  it doesn’t seem like the aromas are is lifted as they were the last time I tasted it, I might open the app just to see, hey, is it a root day or a leaf day? Is that why I’m smelling more earthy? You know, maybe herbaceous aromas? Or am I smelling really lifted fruit aromas? Lots of vibrant cherry and raspberry. In that case, maybe it’s a fruit day. Sometimes it correlates, sometimes it doesn’t.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:23 And so by fruit day how are they defining that? Is this the calendar and biodynamics by extension, defining that based on the gravitational pull of the moon in terms of how does that work? Once the wine is in the bottle, the moon is. maybe you can help me understand what’s going on.

Theresa Heredia 00:21:40 I’ll try, I’ll try. I’ll do my best without getting into a dissertation also because that’s not my area of expertise. However, I do know that the lunar cycle is correlated to gravitational forces. So on different days the gravitational forces are really strong. So let’s start by talking about why we would harvest based on the biodynamic calendar and the gravitational forces. So on a root day, the vines – all the fruity esters and aromatic compounds – are being pulled down into the vine. And so if you pick on a root day, the theory is that you’re not going to capture as much of the aromatic stuff. That’s a root day. So next would be a leaf day. On a leaf day, you might capture more of the leafy vegetal aromas. The next is a flower day. You might capture a lot of the floral aromatics. And on a fruit day, the gravitational forces are the weakest or not as strong. And so you’re going to capture all of that stuff, everything, all the fruity floral stuff and everything down below that as well. So you can talk about that with respect to wine in the bottle as well. If you’re drinking it on a root day, all those aromatics and stuff, they’re going to be pulled more into the liquid and so they may not smell as fruity and floral as they would if you were drinking them on a fruit or a flower day.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:53 Fascinating. Well, I’ll have to look up that app.

Theresa Heredia 00:22:55 It’s fun. You should check it out. I also talk about it like you know how there are just some days and you can’t explain it. You slept really well. However, you know, you wake up in the morning and you’re like, oh my God, everything just feels heavy.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:07 You’re having a root day.

Theresa Heredia 00:23:09 It feels like a root day. And sometimes I open up the calendar and guess what? It’s a root day [laughter].

Natalie MacLean 00:23:13 It’s a root day [laughter]. That’s what I can blame it on from now on [laughter]. I’m just having a root day. Don’t worry. You’re also a big audiophile and in fact you even have a restored analog turntable, which is super cool. What music do you like to play in the cellar as wine matures and what do you play it on?

Theresa Heredia 00:23:30 So in 2021, I finally broke down and bought. It’s like a big boom box for the cellar. And I also bought a little portable JBL Extreme. It’s like the big cylindrical speaker that has a shoulder strap on it, so it’s waterproof so they can use it out on the crush pad. But in the cellar, we play music on the big boombox that sits up on top of the wall, and it’s got great sound, lots of bass and everything too. So truth be told, during harvest there’s a lot of hip hop because I love it and it seems like the staff at the winery loves it too. But our cellar master, Peter, and myself both really, really love jazz, and I’m a Blue Note jazz fan, and it seems that he is, too. So oftentimes, when the rest of the crew is gone and it’s just Peter and myself, he’ll put jazz on in the cellar, mostly for himself, but he knows that I enjoy it too.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:18 Is Blue Note a style of jazz or is it a record album like John Coltrane or Soul Train or whatever it is.

Theresa Heredia 00:24:26 Soul train. Blue Note was a jazz label. It was a jazz record label. And the period of time that I really love is from 50s and early 60s and, like, oh my gosh, yeah. Herbie Hancock was on Blue Note. Hank Mobly. Two of my favourites and Coltrane’s – God, what is it called? I’m drawing a blank right now – But anyway, one of his best albums that he did was on Blue Note and it’s called Blue Something.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:49 That’s great. Wow. And back at the winemaking, what are Jesus units?

Theresa Heredia 00:24:54 Jesus units. So I learned about Jesus units during my first harvest when I was working at Saintsbury. And sometimes in California the fruit might get a little bit riper than you want and develop more sugar than we would like. And as most people know the sugar gets converted to alcohol, so if we don’t want that much alcohol in the wine, we have to adjust it in some way. One tool of the trade is to add a little bit of water, right. It’s like cooking or making jam. And one way that you can measure the water edition is by attaching this little screw on gauge. It’s a liquid gauge that goes on the end of a water hose and it measures the amount of gallons that go into the tank. And so somebody actually changed it on the work order to say that each measure was a Jesus unit, because you’re literally turning water into wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:40 After the miracle of Cana and when Jesus did that. Okay. And what’s Mega Purple and what does it taste like?

Theresa Heredia 00:25:47 I have no idea what it tastes like. I’m proud to say.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:49 That’s probably a good thing [laughter]

Theresa Heredia 00:25:51 but I do know what it is. It’s really, really concentrated grape juice. So it’s just grape juice concentrate made from ruby red grapes, I believe.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:01 Are those table grapes, ruby red?

Theresa Heredia 00:26:04 I think they’re table grapes, but you don’t really eat them. I don’t think they sell them in the store, but they have red, purple skins. And they also have really red, purple flesh. So imagine the amount of color that you can get.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:15 Right. And so why do some winemakers add Mega Purple to wine.

Theresa Heredia 00:26:21 They’re trying to add colour and body and texture and just make bigger, bolder wines.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:28 So it’s kind of perhaps depending on your viewpoint an adulteration, like using too much oak.

Theresa Heredia 00:26:34 For sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:35 Or too much sugar chaptalizing or whatever.

Theresa Heredia 00:26:37 Exactly. The chaptalization in some cases is absolutely necessary and you can’t really tell that it’s there. I don’t think people are necessarily doing it to make bigger, bolder wines. They’re just doing it to correct something that happened to that particular harvest. But Mega Purple and Mega Red are, in my opinion, one of those adulteration that I’m just not a fan of.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:57 Sure, absolutely.

Theresa Heredia 00:26:58 But some people might need it.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:00 Yeah, that’s true I guess. To amp up the volume, depending on what they’re going for market wise and  style wise, but I think they should call chaptalization reverse Jesus units.

Theresa Heredia [laughter]

Natalie MacLean 00:27:03 I think that would be easier to understand.

Theresa Heredia 00:27:13 Yeah, exactly. I’ll have to think about a name for that.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:16 Yeah. Anyway, you joined Gary Farrell Vineyards and Winery in 2012, and the winery that Gary Farrell himself founded in 1982, in the heart of Sonoma County. And he had been a handyman, if I understand correctly, at Davis Bynum Winery for a few years, the owner invited him to make a small batch of wine. His first wine won a silver medal at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair. What do you think was Gary’s best or unique skill as a winemaker?

Theresa Heredia 00:27:43 Gary, believe it or not, I’ve never met him. But wow, I’ve heard so much about him over the years and he was just a fastidious, fastidious winemaker. I think he is. I’ve heard from people who know him really well that he liked to wear white. In fact, somebody recently told me they used to call him the Man in White. And as a red wine maker, wearing white is really brave, right? But that also goes to show that he’s very fastidious and clean and he’s not spilling on himself. And so that says a lot about his personality. And that really allowed him to make wines that are a really clean expression of the Russian River Valley or Sonoma Mountain, whatever wine he was making.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:24 Wow. I won’t wear white to any sort of wine tasting. I actually got black and still wine stained. Anyway. Now the winery is perched, as I understand, high, a hilltop overlooking the stunning Russian River Valley. Tell us what we see from your tasting room and the terrace.

Theresa Heredia 00:28:42 It’s a really beautiful view. In fact, it’s what really told me that I had to accept the job at Gary Farrell. I went there to go do a tasting and I walked out and looked over the terrace and I was like, yes I could work here. I could spend a lot of time here. So what you see you looking over the terrace, you see the line of trees that are lining the Russian River itself. You can’t see the river itself, but you can see the trees. And then you can also see on some days, if you’re looking down in the morning, like during harvest, you can see the what looks like a Milky Way. You know, kind of a conveyor belt of milky white fog just moving along the river. It’s really cool. And vineyards you see from the top of the terrace as well.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:21 Right. And are there other mountains that rise up sort of on either side of the river, or are you sort of perched on the highest point and then it sort of the valley spreads out below you?

Theresa Heredia 00:29:32 Yeah, it’s the valley spreads out below. You can see some rolling hills and vineyards on the rolling hills. But yeah, that’s mostly what you see.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:40 Awesome. Sometimes, if I understand correctly, you hang out in the tasting room petting the winery cat. I hope the cat is still with you. Is the cat still there?

Theresa Heredia 00:29:48 He is. His name is Benny. He’s a great…

Natalie MacLean 00:29:52 I thought it was named Chardonnay or, I don’t know paws or something [laughter].

Theresa Heredia 00:29:56 No. I’ll tell you about his name. His name is Benny the Jet Rodriguez. And if anybody has seen The Sandlot, our former tasting room manager was a huge movie fan. And so he loved The Sandlot. Benny the Jet Rodriguez is the kid who runs really fast in the movie.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:11 Oh, gotcha. Great.

Theresa Heredia 00:30:13 Yeah. So this is Benny.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:15 So what is the oddest or most amusing or whatever thing visitors have said, especially when they didn’t realize at first that you make the wine?

Theresa Heredia 00:30:22 Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, just the mere fact that some of them didn’t realize that I was the wine maker and asked me, you know, where’s the bathroom? Or, you know, can I…

Natalie MacLean 00:30:25 Can you hang this coat up [laughter].

Theresa Heredia 00:30: 28 Yeah, exactly [laughter]. Here, hold my beer [laughter]. You know, because I’m not making myself known either. And I’m just out there petting the cat, so most of them just want to ask questions about the cat.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:48 That’s good.  So even though Gary Farrell, of course, is retired, he remains such a legendary figure in California winemaking. I know you’ve respected his tradition, but how did you find ways to step out of his shadow and make the wines your own?

Theresa Heredia 00:31:01 It’s a really good question. It was tough coming in to Gary Ferrell. I feel like I had really big shoes to fill. And what I did when I first came in is since I started in May of 2012, I had the opportunity to taste through all the wines in barrel, the ones that had not been blended yet, and that was the Pinots. The Chardonnays had already been blended to get ready for bottling. So I had each individual component of Pinot Noir to taste through and it gave me the chance to compare and contrast vineyards, blocks within vineyards, different cooperage, so different barrel and toast types within each vineyard as well. And I went out to the vineyards, tasted as much as I could, and I didn’t come in immediately thinking that I could just use the techniques that I applied to making the wine at Freestone, because we’re in a different climate now. I’m in more inland in the Russian River Valley, where it’s a little bit warmer. And Freestone is out near the coast. And so totally different fruit profiles and different tannin structure and everything.

So I came in wanting to respect the fruit, respect the existing winemaking, respect the style the historical style of Gary Farrell wines. And so I just kind of took it little by little and started evolving the winemaking techniques a little at a time. So, for example, I started buying some light toast barrels, but I bought maybe 30 light toast barrels that year of our full order, which was we probably ordered about 200 barrels. So a small experimental amount. And I also introduced a little bit of whole cluster fermentation. We started talking about that already. So on and so forth. I could tell you all kinds of winemaking techniques that have evolved over the years. There’s a lot that you can change in the winemaking practices and I’ve changed almost everything along the way. But the finished wine in the bottle is still consistent with the style that Gary was producing back in the day, just  different qualities, but similar. Does that make sense?

Natalie MacLean 00:32:55 Yeah it does absolutely. How would you describe that signature style just overall, especially for say the Pinot Noir?

Theresa Heredia 00:33:02 Yeah. So the Pinots that Gary used to make and the Pinots that I make are not only truly expressive of place, they have a lot of terroir, site specificity, whatever terminology you like to use. They’re also a little bit less ripe. So lower in alcohol. They’ve got really crisp, vibrant fresh acidity and they’re made to pair with food.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:23 My favourite type. And what makes the Russian River Valley, which is an American Viticultural Appellation, or AVA, that was established in 1983, different from other AVAS or subregions in Sonoma, such as Carneros and Chalk Hill and Dry Creek Valley.

Theresa Heredia 00:33:39 Russian River Valley is very different from those in particular. Those are great examples. I’ll start with a comparison to Dry Creek. So Dry Creek is aboutit’s just a few miles north of us, north of the northernmost tip of the Russian River Valley. But Dry Creek is where you find Zinfandel, right. It’s mostly known for Zinfandel. We grow a little bit of Zinfandel here in the Russian River Valley as well, but it’s very different. So here in the Russian River Valley, for the most part, a lot of our vineyards are at slightly lower elevations. A lot of them are right next to the river, like our Rochioli vineyard, for example, as well as our Bacigalupi vineyard. And being adjacent to the river, that means that they have, you know, kind of gravelly riverbed soil. And also the Russian River is acting like a conveyor belt and pulling the fog in from the Pacific Ocean and chilling the grapes down at night to help capture natural acidity. So the vines really retain ample natural acidity and that’s a defining characteristic of the wines.

Natalie MacLean 00:34:37 So does Dry Creek Valley not get the same amount of fog, or do they just really get very little fog at all? Like is the fog a big difference?

Theresa Heredia 00:34:46 Big difference. So they do get some fog. But for example, one of our Zinfandel vineyards that we’ve worked with in the past is in Dry Creek Valley but up on Bradford Mountain. And so higher elevation, the fog might be present in the overnight and in the wee hours of the morning but for the most part its getting pulled from the ocean down below that elevation. So that’s really what makes the biggest difference. But in Napa, Napa just doesn’t get that kind of fog presence at all because you have the Mayacamas Mountains in the way. And so it kind of is a block to the fog coming in from the Pacific Ocean. A barrier, so to speak.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:24 And so the fog you’ve talked about it preserves, it cools the grapes down at night. So it’s preserving the acidity. Are there any other impacts that fog has? Like so you get these bursts of ripening in the day and then everything chills out at night. Does that lengthen the ripening season?

Theresa Heredia 00:35:42 Definitely. So we in Sonoma County we like to talk about diurnal fluctuations. And so we’re here in sunny California in the Russian River Valley, which is, as I said, inland from the Sonoma Coast, the far west Sonoma coast by about 20, 25, 30 minutes, depending on where you’re driving from and to. And so the fog helps to chill things down at night. But it does get warm and sometimes hot during the day. So let’s say it gets up to 90°F and at night the grapes cooled down to fog temperature, which is about 50 – 55 degrees. So you get that big swing in temperatures and that’s what we call a diurnal shift.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:18 And that’s what really makes the complexity that it’s going full tilt in the day and then resting at night.

Theresa Heredia 00:36:24 Yes. And it’s you know mostly about that acid retention. But also it helps with colour development in the grapes as well.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:32 It kind of reminds me of like working out. So instead of just nothing changing, you know, you have intense workout and then you rest and it’s during that rest period  you’re repairing. And then I don’t know if that’s a good metaphor or not but…

Theresa Heredia 00:36:46 It is a great one.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:47 Okay, great. And you said that the river, is it the river mostly that draws the fog off as the day goes on?

Theresa Heredia 00:36:55 The fog is burning off in the sun. And the river is mechanically pulling it from the Pacific Ocean into the valleys, the Russian River Valley, and then it just kind of burns off as the sunny day develops on throughout the day.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:09 Right. Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:37: 11 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Theresa. Here are my takeaways. Number one, does harvesting wine based on the biodynamic calendar make sense? And what about actually drinking wine based on the lunar cycle? As Theresa explains, the lunar cycle is correlated to gravitational forces. So on different days, the gravitational forces are really strong. On a root day, for example, the fruit esters and aromatic compounds are pulled down into the vine. So if you pick grapes on a root day, the theory is that you’re not going to capture as much of the aromatics as you would on a fruit day, when the gravitational forces are the weakest and the fruity floral notes are actually in the fruit. Then there’s the leaf day, when Teresa says you might capture more of the leafy vegetal aromas in the grapes and resulting wine. On a flower day, you might capture more of those floral aromatics, and this relates to wine in the bottle as well. If you’re drinking it on a root day, the aromatics are pulled down more into the liquid. The wine might not smell as fruity and floral as if you were drinking it on a fruit or floral day. I’ll put a link in the show notes to that app that gives you that biodynamic calendar for when you should open wine, and when you shouldn’t.

Number two, how does fog play a profound role in the growing of grapes and wine making in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma, California? As Theresa observes, the fog and diurnal temperature shifts help preserve acidity and colour development in the grapes. It can get up to 90°F in the daytime, but at night the grapes cool down to fog temperature, which is about 50 to 55 degrees. So you get that big swing in temperatures called a diurnal shift in the Russian River Valley. Many vineyards are at slightly lower elevations next to the river, which means that they have a gravelly riverbed soil. The river acts like a conveyor belt, pulling the fog in from the Pacific Ocean and chilling the grapes down at night to help capture natural acidity, which is the defining characteristic of the wine, she says.

Why do some winemakers add Mega Purple to wine? And what the heck is mega purple? So Mega Purple is highly concentrated grape juice made from ruby red grapes that have red purple skins and flesh. To impart a lot of colour, winemakers use Mega Purple to add colour, body, and texture to make bigger, bolder wines. Theresa believes it’s mostly done to correct something that happened during a particular harvest. She’s not a fan, but recognizes that some people might need to use it.

In the show notes, you’ll find a full transcript of my conversation with Theresa, links to her website and wines, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You can also find a link to take a free online wine and food pairing class with me called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. That’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean dot com forward slash 298. Email me if you have a sip, tip, question if you read my book or are listening to it at [email protected].

If you missed episode 195, go back and take a listen. I chat about the differences between aroma and bouquet when it comes to wine more broadly, as well as California Pinot Noir specifically with Keith Overstreet. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Kerith Overstreet 00:40:54 Aromas are what we get from the grape during fermentation. In the conversion of sugar to alcohol, the yeast make different compounds and they smell really good. We then as winemakers layer that with aromatic note that comes from things like barrels. Oxygen through the barrel helps create the bouquet.

Kerith Overstreet 00:41:16 Those are additional aromatic notes.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:19 Do you associate secondary aromas with bouquet?

Kerith Overstreet 00:41:22 Yes I do.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:22 And then tertiary is on its own for aging.

Kerith Overstreet 00:41:26 Right. You know, when you start to get those Sherry notes that come with wine that’s had a good long life. So aroma comes from the grape and bouquet is everything else.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:40 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Theresa. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the wines of Sonoma and especially the Russian River.

It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favourite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at nataliemaclean.com/podcast. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a seductive Russian River Pinot Noir.

You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.

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