Waiting for Merlot

Photograph by Janet Orsi

Deep Roots: Wine scion Jeff Bundschu samples the fruits of
the vine in front of his family's ancestral home

In the Sonoma vineyards of

Gundlach-Bundschu, chardonnay

waits for no man and merlot

ripens in its own sweet time

By Christina Waters

It's more than 100 degrees in the vineyard where fat clusters of merlot grapes avoid their appointment with the crush of 1995. The heat seems to intensify their deep purple hue, but their readiness is an illusion. Unlike winemakers up and down Sonoma's Valley of the Moon, they feel no impatience to be picked.

A cool early summer followed by weeks of high heat has slowed their performance. It is, however, almost show time, and their days of leisure are numbered. Soon their sugars will surge to perfection and they'll be snatched from their verdant beds to be transformed into California's new oenological darling. It's a brand-new season, and merlot is the star.

Aiming his truck through the hottest part of the ripening merlot vines, fifth-generation winegrower Jeff Bundschu chooses a row at random. He gets out and begins cutting sample clusters every 10 feet. We taste. Even now, before fermentation has begun, the flavor of the sun-warmed juices is intoxicating. The all�e of oaks lining the lane to the field is busy with birds. Insects buzz and throb in the soaring temperatures. But even louder is the quiet of anticipation, as hundreds of pickers, growers, biochemists and winemakers throughout the valley will the grapes to ripen. Soon, but please God, not all at once.

Back at the winery, the sample clusters will be weighed, measured and, most important, analyzed for sugar content. Most of this will happen in a mercifully air-conditioned trailer stationed above the vats, tanks, hoses, crushers and giant presses that fill a niche in the hillside where for more than 130 years the Gundlach-Bundschu name has been linked to wine. A laid-back but focused energy defines the operation, where already eight tons of chardonnay grapes have been crushed since first light. Only 20 tons to go before the picking stops for the afternoon.

During harvest, the rhythm of winemaking takes on mood swings of manic-depressive proportion. The race is on to get the grapes to the crusher and from there safely into the fermenting tanks before chemistry starts up an uncontrolled chain reaction of fermentation. Unwanted wild yeasts can begin an illicit relationship with the grapes if they're not moved fast enough from the vineyard to the sterile, controlled winery slumber room. Yet once the grapes have begun their magical transformation, much of winemaking can resemble a slow, patient walk in the park. Lots of hurry up--lots of waiting.

At harvest time, the grapes dictate the dance. No one moves until the fruit of the vine is ready. And then, suddenly, everything is fast forward as dozens of hands and arms gather up fruit as fast as possible. Fork lifts dump tons of oozing clusters into stainless steel maws, where gravity and an evil-looking corkscrew blade drive juices into a hydraulic press, separating out the unwanted seeds and stems to be plowed back into the soil.

A slow press, like a sustained embrace, delivers the final kiss of skin contact and its complex flavor and color information upon the still-warm juice. This morning at Gundlach-Bundschu I am delivered a sample of this almost-in-the-tank juice. Warm, green-beige and cloudy, it's also unmistakably infant chardonnay. A few minutes later, it's pumped into a 2,500-gallon tank to begin its first change of life.

A dozen men, strapping and sunburned, climb all over the equipment, adjusting hoses and running to open and close valves that glitter surgically in their machined precision. The navigator--shouting directions ("Number 5--no, Number 12") and hosing down equipment as it empties and awaits new raw material--is a compact blonde woman wearing shorts, T-shirt, baseball cap and wellingtons. Every person in motion at this minute is an expert, but Linda Trotta, Gundlach-Bundschu's winemaker of five years, runs the show. And over the next three weeks, part of what she'll be running will be enough of those hot, purple grapes to yield 20,000 cases of merlot in time to uncork at Christmas 1997.

"I think it's the name," she says, as we take a break to tour the massive underground cave that burrows hundreds of feet straight through Gundlach-Bundschu property. Located a quarter mile from the original stone estate house, where Jeff Bundschu's grandmother Mary still makes her home, the cave consists of two long, cool tunnels lined with 1,400 recumbent oak casks. At the very center of this climate-controlled sanctuary is a huge banquet table where private, exclusive tastings are held in a clandestine setting worthy of James Bond.

"Merlot is a lot easier to pronounce than gewurztraminer," Trotta continues. "People find it less intimidating." They also find this friendly red grape highly drinkable at a younger age than many cabernets or pinots, and at far more accessible prices. I share with Trotta my theory that for all of these reasons merlot is perfectly positioned at the end of 1995 as America's "trainer" red wine, the best candidate to entice chardonnay drinkers to cross over to the dark side--to my thinking, to the more serious, rewarding side of wine drinking. Trotta, whose personal favorite varietal is zinfandel, agrees.

All through California's major winegrowing districts, from Sonoma and Napa to Monterey and Paso Robles, that loud wrenching sound we hear is the sound of old vines, many enfeebled by the pestilence of phylloxera, being ripped out. And being replanted with merlot grapes. Soon this valley will be lousy with merlot. But what is already there is taking its sweet time about ripening.

Coolness has delayed the second, big push of the harvest, says Trotta, who is enjoying a few unhurried days in the middle of crush season. "A lot of things are right on the edge, and ready to ripen all at once. Last year was almost exactly like this." G-B already has harvested its full dance card of gewurz, pinot noir and gamay. "And we're almost halfway through the chardonnay." But there are "probably 300 tons of merlot" grapes poised for picking, grapes that compose a full third of Gundlach-Bundschu's vintage of 1995.

Linda Trotta doesn't go around with "Woman Winemaker" emblazoned on the forefront of her consciousness. The mists of patriarchal exclusivity in this business are gradually clearing. The fact is, women now make up half of the UC-Davis oenology program enrollment, and there are four other women winemakers-of-record among Sonoma Valley's 34 wineries.

Trotta says her success is "probably mostly due to my own attitude, my own confidence in my work." The romantically inclined might choose to trace some of her confidence to a Southern California childhood spent helping her Italian grandfather make big red wines in his home cellar. But Trotta herself locates a pivotal year spent in Italy during her student days at UC-Davis. Though she was studying art history and Italian literature, the year immersed her in the culture and flavors of Italian wines. This inspiration led her to a bachelor of science degree in fermentation science, cellar work at Kenwood's St. Francis Winery, and then laboratory training with Sebastiani before she came to G-B in 1989.

"Being a woman in this field is a big deal in the grand scheme of things--and it's being reflected in other professions as well right now. But if I'm thinking about it then I can't concentrate on doing my work," she says with a chuckle. It's this tendency to laugh easily that keeps wiping the look of concentration from her tanned face. She's concentrating, but it looks like a heck of a lot of fun while she's doing it.

The heady scent of ripe, freshly crushed chardonnay grapes fills the warm air outside the cave. As we emerge, Trotta stops to soak up her favorite view--vigorous vines spill out toward the horizon in every direction, backlit by the Coast Ranges in the east.

"This is probably the way it looked when the Bundschus first settled here," she observes with a pleased grin. Jim Bundschu, the current owner and head of operations, lives nearby, as do sons Jeff and Robbie, who, during the winery's latest transition toward the future, are taking on increasing winery responsibilities.

The family "kept the vineyards going during Prohibition," Trotta explains, "though most of the land was orchard and livestock during those years. It was replanted with grapes in the '60s when AXR rootstock was the rage. But Jim's father went with St. George root stock. He could trust its resistance to phylloxera, and his family had already undergone the last pestilence during the 1880s. So we have no phylloxera problem here."

Yellow jackets have found nirvana in the irresistible perfume wafting from the overflowing crusher. "It'll get more hectic than this, when we're crushing merlot and chardonnay at the same time--chardonnay in the morning, merlot in the afternoon, with both presses working, and just to make it fun," Trotta grins, "something will break. So you need good mechanics, technically trained people who know machines and the biochemistry of winemaking as well."

Trotta admits that harvest time is the most exciting point on her calendar. "It's a real creative process, taking something that looks like that," she points at the mountain of fresh-picked goo working its way down the stainless-steel maw, "and turning it into something wonderful. Now's when you can feel the energy and the excitement." After initial fermentation, removal of residual yeast (racking) and the beginning of aging in oak barrels--"merlot gets about a year in oak"--the essence of the vineyards will fully express itself. Barrels will be sampled, and "the most fun part" of blending for desirable qualities will take place.

"I'll come up with proposal blends and then sit down with the whole crew--Jim, Joe and Robbie--and then we'll decide on the final blend. We'll be looking for intensity of flavor; the style of merlot we make, for example, is big. The great thing about having an estate is that we can get to know the grapes, year after year. We'll blend the fruity cherry qualities against the plummy ones, so that they complement each other."

To get the full picture, remember that Trotta will repeat this process to orchestrate each of the 16 different wines that appear annually under the Gundlach-Bundschu label.

However much we in the outside world like to crystallize the winemaking calendar into a few warm weeks in October, the work is ongoing, Trotta explains. "The crush begins the end of August, and by the time we press all the reds, it will be the first week of November. It's really a three-month process for me, with about eight weeks of actual picking. Then 10 days after each round of crushing, fermentation is the focus. And in December we begin bottling gewurztraminer," she says, with a look of mock weariness.

Out in the simmering vineyards, the fifth-generation Bundschu scion is growing into the many hats he'll juggle throughout the year. At harvest, the one that fits Jeff Bundschu best involves assessing vines, noting vigor, checking for telltale signs of rot or sun burn. "We've tended to prune to what I like to call California sprawl," says the twentysomething heir. "But our trellising is evolving--we're going more vertical, and vine spacing is another big thing right now." Grape growing is in this guy's blood--it is the passion of all vintners, who are specialized farmers at heart.

The word "experiment" pops up a lot in the conversation Bundschu shares with George Weiler, who manages one of the estate's vineyards. They talk split canopies, clones, upright pruning and sugars in the burning sun. "It's going to be a good year for merlot," Jeff predicts. "Word is that the white grapes are down. It's been hot, but the heat was late, so there was actually a short season."

We both seek out an oasis of shade as he spins the family saga that began 137 years ago. By the 1870s wine from the family acreage we're standing on was producing a staggering 150,000 cases annually. "The winery [J. Gundlach & Co.] was actually located in San Francisco," Jeff explains. "And the grapes were taken to the city by barge along Sonoma Creek." Until Gundlach's enterprising new partner, Charles Bundschu, married the owner's daughter ("it was an arranged marriage, she was very young" says the founder's great-great-grandson) and settled on the Sonoma estate.

After Prohibition, the family land continued to grow fruit, cattle and some wine grapes. In the late 1960s Jeff's dad, Jim, convinced his father to replant the estate entirely with grapes, and by 1973 Gundlach-Bundschu was not only resplendent with thriving vineyards, but was once again making its own wine.

Tossing the bins of sample clusters into the pickup bed and wiping the sweat from under his hat band, Jeff heads the truck back toward Trotta's crushing operation. "We're the luckiest of families."

That afternoon, in the tasting room with winemaker Trotta, I'm convinced that--in addition to luck--talent, strategy and forward-looking muscle had a hand in shaping the Gundlach-Bundschu fortunes.

It's a full 20 degrees cooler inside the tasting room, whose stately stone facade was erected by the original winemakers more than 100 years ago. The current winemaker and I warm up with a 1993 Estate Chardonnay--"crisp, just a hint of oak and no malolactic fermentation, because I think it complements food better," Trotta says. "It'll last a long time, primarily because of the acid. But people tend to want that butteriness that comes from malolactic," a process of secondary fermentation that softens flavors and accentuates butteriness--and if overdone, can turn structure into flabbiness.

After a chardonnay from the fabled Sangiacomo Vineyard, followed by the spice and violets of a dry 1994 Estate Gewurztraminer, we move on to what I consider the more serious stuff--a 1992 Pinot Noir and a big, bodacious 1993 Cabernet Franc. "It's a wine I'm particularly proud of," Trotta says of this popular Bordeaux blending grape that she's turned into a wine that stands on its own. "It's got about 10 percent cabernet grapes and 5 percent merlot. That hint of merlot just woke it up," she grins.

Finally we approach the 1993 Merlot, and I am gratified to find all the accessible plums, cherries and spice exactly where they should be, filling my mouth with what tastes like pleasure.

Trotta, however, isn't finished. Playing on my red wine weakness, she brings forth a 1993 Zinfandel, spicy, peppery and with a top note of butterscotch, and a larger-than-life 1991 Estate Cabernet that is at once huge, soft, complex and loaded with black cherries. However delightful the merlot, these last two beauties give all my tasting wits a full court press. With each sip I'm forced to crawl inside the wines and feel my way through their multi-layered charms.

Out in the blazing afternoon, the merlot grapes are still shy of picking. Inside the tasting room, I'm no longer in a hurry. For merlot, I can wait.

Will merlot be the crossover that will make red wine drinkers out of the chardonnay crowd?

So what about the theory that all this Merlot Madness is just a clever marketing ploy? Winemakers with merlot grapes on their hands, hustling the glamour of this glut to the gullible consumer? Couldn't this sudden cachet just be an industry-driven conspiracy?

I'm pitching this theory to Ravenswood Winery winemaker Joel Peterson, whose Sonoma-grown merlots are considered among the most desirable and affordable examples of the red-hot varietal.

But Peterson isn't going for it. "I think exactly the opposite is happening. This is a market-driven trend and we're scrambling to keep up with it," he insists. "Back in the mid-'80s, when I started getting interested in merlots, I could find maybe five or six American-made versions, and a few odd foreign ones. That's it. Of course Bordeaux has always used merlot in blending; Petrus and Pomerol, for example, mature quicker and produce a softer effect thanks to the addition of merlot.

"Now the American wine drinker is looking for flavor without all the tannic angularity of cabernet--merlots have a roundness and fullness that's instantly pleasing," he says. "They're easier to drink, sooner." I don't agree, however, that they're necessarily cheaper.

"On the contrary," Peterson contends, "grape growers are getting top dollar right now for their merlot." Why? "It's not an easy grape to grow. The fruit is subject to a tremendous amount of shatter, so yield is low. And that drives up the price. The grapes are so finicky that if the wines weren't good, they'd, well, they'd die on the vine." Much chuckling.

Peterson does agree that merlot appears to be the crossover wine that will make red wine drinkers out of the chardonnay crowd. "If they taste it--and you wouldn't believe how many people just say they don't like red wines without even tasting them--they really like it," the winemaker admits, in the brisk delivery of a born pitch man. "It has that flavor spectrum that appeals to people." He illustrates. "Cabernet sauvignon can be very briary, very vegetal. But with merlot you invariably get that pure fruit hit. It's got a round, big berry quality that doesn't get in your way."

It also helps, Peterson adds, that "most of the merlots being made tend to be very good. It's like chardonnay. This grape tastes good even when grown in a wide variety of regions and climates." And that's fortunate, since merlot grapes are currently running anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 a ton.

What if suddenly everybody and his cousin were producing merlot grapes? "Then zinfandel would cost me $7,000 a ton," Peterson jokes. "Actually, there's a relatively small percentage of merlot planted in Sonoma currently," he calculates, "but one out of every two vineyards going in are merlot, and ultimately this valley will be maybe 20 percent merlot vineyards."

"I love merlot," the winemaker croons. "It produces an incredibly pleasing wine." So pleasing that two-thirds of the 30,000-case "heart" of the Ravenswood line is devoted to merlot, bottled into a range of styles from moderately priced Vintner's Blend to the very exclusive Ravenswood Estate designation. "It's not really a challenge to drink," Peterson confesses, "but it's great with dinner--sort of a gourmand's answer to chardonnay."

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