3 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
A top California winery is getting a little edgy. Here's why
Calling it a rebellion would be a stretch. But when Rory Williams started his wine label, it constituted a meaningful departure from the Napa Valley wineries that his parents ran.
The winemaker is the son of Frog's Leap Winery founder John Williams and Tres Sabores founder Julie Johnson — excellent wineries that both appear on our Top 25 Bay Area Wineries list, whose annual update we published on Tuesday. In 2009, while working for both of his parents' businesses, Williams launched Calder Wines, a vehicle to explore older plantings of forgotten Napa Valley varieties like Valdiguie, Charbono and Riesling. These were wines that at the time, he believed, would have seemed too edgy for Frog's Leap or Tres Sabores, which have made their names largely on Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel.
Calder earned acclaim, and it became an important player in the mid-aughts movement that brought attention to lesser-planted California grapes. But Calder is no more: After the 2019 vintage, Williams decided that Calder had run its course.
That was driven by a desire for some semblance of work-life balance. On top of working for Frog's Leap, Tres Sabores and Calder, Williams had a new daughter. He told himself to choose two. His daughter and Frog's Leap won.
Yet on a recent visit to Frog's Leap, where Williams' title now is vice president of viticulture and enology, it was hard not to see Calder seeping in. Williams has brought his Valdiguie, Charbono and Riesling under the Frog's Leap umbrella, and he's experimenting with techniques like concrete aging.
The end of Calder has enabled at Frog's Leap 'a proliferation of little fun things,' Williams said.
The heart of this effort is a vineyard now known as the Williams Rossi Ranch, where Williams grew up and still lives. The Rossi family planted grapes on this 50-acre Rutherford property in the early 20th century and never quit, not even during Prohibition, and kept Valdiguie, Riesling and Charbono in the ground even as they grew unfashionable. In the mid-1990s, Frog's Leap arranged to farm the vineyard for the Rossi family and take its fruit; in 2007, after the death of longtime owner Louise Rossi, the Williamses bought it outright.
Calder was born from a desire to do something with those unfashionable varieties at Rossi. In the intervening years, they've become more fashionable. 'Stuff that was ludicrous 15 years ago is no longer ludicrous,' Williams said. If a wine like Valdiguie — a light, fruity red once known as Napa Gamay — previously seemed polarizing for the clientele of an establishment winery like Frog's Leap, nowadays it 'just adds spice.'
Spice is an apt descriptor for the 2024 Frog's Leap Charbono, which will be Williams' first post-Calder release of the wine. This red grape, best known under its Argentinian pseudonym Bonarda, was a celebrated Napa Valley specialty in the early 1900s but is now nearly extinct there. The 2024 is delightful, with a Christmasy set of aromas that recall mulled-wine spices and fresh pine needles.
Not all of Williams' innovations in the cellar involve obscure grapes. He's excited about expanding Frog's Leap's use of concrete vessels, which can provide some of the oxygen exchange of an oak barrel without imparting oakiness. Using concrete cubes for Zinfandel, he's found, 'locks in freshness,' delivering 'that crystal ball of red energy that is Zinfandel at its best.'
Concrete egg-aged Sauvignon Blanc produced such a distinctive wine that Williams rolled it out into a separate bottling. Compared with Frog's Leap's grapefruity, grassy core Sauvignon Blanc (which sees a little bit of concrete aging, but is mostly in stainless steel), the 2023 concrete-aged Sauvignon Blanc is round and minerally. It's also cloudy, thanks to a lack of filtration.
Some experiments still demand a new label, however. Williams has introduced a $30 red blend called Flycatcher, which tastes like fresh strawberries and licorice. He sources Zinfandel from Lodi, Merlot from Mendocino, Petite Sirah from Yorkville and Tempranillo from the Sierra foothills, 'the idea being just get out of Napa,' he said. He wanted to explore these vineyards in other areas 'and not say no because it's not our brand identity' at Frog's Leap. Also, Williams added, buying less popular grape varieties from older vineyards helps ease the economic pressure their owners may feel to pull them out of the ground.
These wines ultimately constitute a small share of what Frog's Leap is doing. And Williams is clear that he's never lost his passion for the winery's mainstays like Cabernet, Merlot and Zinfandel.
'We're a 45-year-old Napa Valley winery. What's the single greatest danger for us? Myopia. Just punching our card making Cab,' he said. But immersing himself in the world beyond Cabernet, seeing what other grapes can do, has allowed him to return to it with a wider view. He loves Napa Cab all the more now.
