Malbec. It’s literally the one varietal that my father in law and my sister in laws, won’t drink. They all hate it. That may bring up some interesting possibilities of course in terms of limiting the need to share, but it’s a grape that gets a bum rap so to speak, in large part because people are only now growing it in spots where it has a chance to be successful.
Video Transcription:
Hi all. Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I’ll hold this up so you can get a look although you have a bottle of this in your Wine Club shipment this month already. So this is an Odonata Malbec.
So I’ll leave the vineyard kind of explanation for the newsletter. There’s kind of a lot of information about [Lodi 00:00:18] Vineyard and kind of how Malbec might end up in Lodi in the first place. Long story short is that Malbec tends to rot and mold and some other bad stuff if it’s too cold. Lodi’s a logical place to grow a grape that needs it to be warm enough to dry out completely on both sides of the bunches.
So I do want, as far as this intro, I want to focus a little bit on Odonata, the winery. So the winemaker’s name is Denis. It’s kind of winemaker as owner, as general manager, as the dude’s doing pretty much everything down there. So they’re based down in Salinas, which if you’re not familiar with California geography, is maybe an hour south of San Jose or so. So a couple hours out of major wine growing regions.
As most people think of them, but Santa Cruz mountains is right there. And Denis has kind of got this kind of cool story. So he has a business degree, not a viticulture degree. He met the folks at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards, which is a [inaudible 00:01:21]name of the space. And Santa Cruz Mountains is actually pretty close in Salinas and some of these central valley spots.
And so he learned to make wine as an old school internship. And I think that’s one pretty cool part of the wine industry and it’s something that we’ve been exploring a little-bit here as part of the Wine Club of late. In that, there’s a lot of people that go to Davis or go to Cal Poly or go to Fresno and they learn to make wine there, but there’s this whole other subset of winemakers and it’s maybe half or 60% or so of folks that learn it as an internship. As a trade. And as we kind of move through the industry and quite honestly, more places are starting viticulture programs.
Cal Poly didn’t have one when I was in school, as an example and they have one now that’s really highly respected. So you’re getting more winemakers from actual wine making programs. So what happens with those guys? So if you go to Davis, you can get the big job. The job with health insurance. The job that pays the bills. The job in a winery that people have actually heard of. What happens if you’re somebody who learned it as a trade? You might intern or make $10 or $12 an hour, maybe $15 in California here pretty quickly, but you’re not paying the bills unless you go out on your own and do something a little bit different and sell some wine.
And so that’s kind of where Wine Club wise we end up getting maybe more of those than I would set out to do because those are the folks that fit the profile, I think, of what people are looking for and Odonata definitely fits into that.
So you’ll see an interesting kind of take from Odonata and Denis on a number of varietals, but he’s trying to be varietal specific in a lot of ways, especially in the red wine side and I think that’s interesting. Yes, some wine makers want to cut their teeth on either Cabernet or Pinot or they want to show you what a great blender they are and they’re going to make a Bordeaux blend with 80% Cabernet.
So I think it’s interesting when somebody is kind of zigging when everyone else is zagging. Malbec’s not easy to sell. And I think he’d probably tell you that. From a business perspective, there’s probably easier things to do than make Malbec or Riesling or all these other kind of second or third tier grapes that people don’t ask for specifically. It’s a smaller subset of the market, maybe it’s easier to make sales if you’re not fighting all the big boys that people have heard of. Maybe not.
So that’s an interesting discussion for a later date, but I do think it helps tell the tale of what do people do when they actually need to or want to make a living in the wine industry, but they don’t have that viticulture degree that would allow them to go work for Kendall Jackson making millions of barrels of wine every year.
And what does that lead to as an industry and I think it’s mostly it’s a really positive thing and I hope it’s something that we don’t lose. So once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. If you’re a member of Special Selection, it’s Old Reserve Selection Wine Club, you’ll see an Odonata. Almost everyone’s going to get a Malbec just because I think it’s an interesting story. This is one of the better versions I’ve had from California.
It fits a good kind of spot of tannin versus lack of sweetness and mouth feel. And I think you’ll notice that as soon as you open it up. It’s not kind of … sometimes you get French Malbecs and they’re so clear that you … they’re so light you can almost see through them. Sometimes South American Malbecs are overpowering tannin wise. I think this is a nice intro to the varietals for something that I think is the style that people should be going for if they want to sell.
So once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures and thanks again for your membership.