Ken Burnap of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard, pt. 3 Becoming a Winegrower
Ξ September 17th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
While I prepare the second part of my interview with the Mondovino’s director, Jonathan Nossiter for Tuesday’s post, I thought it would be quite sublime to intertwine another portion of my conversation with Ken Burnap, the retired founder of Santa Cruz Mountain Winery first begun July 14th. The reason is simple. As discussed in the first installment of Mr. Nossiter’s interview, his 2007 book Le Goût et Le Pourvoir is being released October 13th as Liquid Memory. Among the book’s multiple concerns are the ideas of the preservation of place, of terroir, receptivity to otherness, and the respect for cultural difference and history, all intersecting in wine. One of America’s foremost winegrowers of any era, Ken Burnap’s career is certainly in keeping with these values. It is highly recommended that parts 1 & 2 be read before continuing. Detailed background may be read there.
Part 1
Part 2
Admin I wanted to ask about the experience of finally discovering the vineyard, the David Bruce vineyard. There is this wonderful story about you drinking a bottle of Champagne when it was seen. There you are, up there in you truck, finally having settled on a vineyard, made the big decision…. The pivotal moment.
Ken Burnap Well, it was a pivotal moment. I’m hearing things from you about me that I’ve only told to one person in my entire life. (laughs) So I’m kind of startled! But that’s absolutely true. There’s nothing I’m trying to hide.
I think it was Jeff Emery, he wrote up a series of ‘historical’ notes which included a few details. And it may have been when I interviewed him. But to speak with you about it is, of course, best.
KB I had decided because of the research I did on where I should grow grapes in California that the three best possibilities was along the Russian River in Sonoma, perhaps around Livermore, near the water because of the stabilizing effect a large body of water has on temperature, and the Santa Cruz Mountains. I gave up on Livermore pretty quickly because some of the areas… and I got most of my information on Livermore from a book written in 1941 by Schoonmaker. There was a lot of information from a test station they had in Livermore. I knew Myron Nightingale, a big booster of that area. He and his wife made the first botrytised wine, to my knowledge, ever made in California. It was a Sauvignon Blanc they had growing out there that used to get attacked by this terrible mold. They tried to kill the mold. They finally plated it and found that it was Botrytis and they thought, ‘Hey! Wait a minute. We should try to make it.’ It [the Sauvignon Blanc] just didn’t want to develop. He actually wound up infecting a whole bunch of grapes with some laboratory plates of mold, (laughs) he and his wife. They made a fabulous botrytised wine.
I apologize. That’s the worst thing about me. My mind tends to wander. But I gave up on Livermore fairly quickly because the areas that seemed to have the best promise for Pinot Noir (and actually it wasn’t that great for Pinot Noir to begin with I didn’t think), but most of the areas that did have potential were very rapidly having housing tracts put on top of it. So I gave up there and concentrated efforts in Sonoma, the Russian River area, again because of Joe Swan who was making those fabulous wines. Sometime, if we ever get together, I’ve got to pour you some Zinfandel made in the ’70s and ’80s by Joe Swan. His wife said one time ‘You and Joe have the same problem. The best wine either one of you ever made was the first wine you made. And you’ll never be able to make another one. It’s driving both of you crazy.’ (laughs)
So I spent a lot of time out there. But I really liked some of the stuff David made. And he was doing some pretty avant garde stuff. It turned out a lot of it was stupid, but then a lot of the avant garde stuff I did was stupid. I don’t know what it is. Every generation in any artistic field it seems like they have to test the limits, and they totally ignore what people have learned in earlier generations. They’ve got to do it themselves, to screw it up or make a success out of it.
Anyway, I finally decided the vineyard would be somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains; it’s where I wanted to be. I was living in Orange County at the time and I was making two and three day trips up here with my geological maps, my car full of scientific instruments. (laughs) But I would invariably stop by David’s [David Bruce] place because I loved his wines. David is just a great guy. He’s just enough off-center to be interesting to talk to sometimes. So we we’re having dinner up there. He’d decided to cook one of the ducks that’d been giving him a hard time. And he had a great cellar. I’m not sure where he got all these great Burgundies, but he had some really great Burgundies. He didn’t bring them upstairs very often but every now and then he would. And he got one and said ‘OK, Ken. How’s it going? Have you found the great place where you’re going to make the fabulous Pinot?’ I said, ‘Naw. I’ve been up and down these mountains and I can’t find anything.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a piece of property that you should look at. It’s breaking my heart but I’m gonna have to sell it. [....] I don’t want to, but I think that is the perfect place to grow Pinot in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I’m so convinced of it that I pulled out 100 year old Zinfandel vines that were making fabulous wine.’ I asked, ‘Is that where your ‘68 came from?’ That was the wine that made David’s reputation. The ‘68 Zinfandel came off of that vineyard. Fabulous, fabulous wine. I think he bought it in ‘64. They pulled all the Zinfandel up and planted Pinot Noir. He said he hadn’t been able to make a wine off of it yet because it’s now in its third year. There might be some grapes this Fall.
So I asked, ‘OK. Where is it?’ ‘Ah, you can’t miss it. You go down this road, you go up that road…’ I went up there and I couldn’t find it. I went up and down this road.. I’d stop and look. But you couldn’t see anything, certainly there were no grapes I saw anywhere growing. I called him on the phone and said ‘Dave, I can’t find this place.’ He said ‘Well, did you go do such and such? Do you remember that mailbox?’ I kind of vaguely remembered the mailbox. He said to make a left hand turn there. ‘I don’t think there’s a road there.’ He said ‘Yeah, there is.’ So I went up this thing. It was dirt and had weeds as high as the hood ornament on my truck. That’s where it was, right on top of the mountain. God, it was a beautiful, beautiful vineyard.
I took a bunch of soil samples. Next day I had a guy come up with a backhoe. We dug a trench to take some more soil samples. I took them back to Orange County. I got all my results in. Oh, shit! This is it! This is the place! So I went back up there to look at it for the last time. I had been telling my wife, my business partner and everybody that I was doing this, that I really wasn’t going to grow grapes. I was just curious whether or not there was a spot that you could grow great Pinot Noir in California. And once I found it I would say ‘OK. That’s the spot.’ And I’ll tell anybody where it is if they want to know. And I really, honestly, maybe in the back of my mind I thought I want to grow grapes, but it was really more… I wasn’t looking for a place for me to buy, I was looking to see if there was a place that fit the criteria that I had come up with. I honestly didn’t want to buy the property to grow grapes at that point.
So, anyway, after I got the [soil] results, I went back the following weekend. I just wanted to see it one last time. And that was it. I was going to see it off. And I went to a wine shop in Santa Cruz and bought a bottle of, I think I bought a bottle of Cliquot, I’m not sure what they had in the cooler. It was cold. I got some plastic cups (laughs) and went up top the hill and sat down and opened the Champagne. And drank the whole bottle! (laughs) And somewhere along the line, the sun hadn’t gone down, but here’s the Monterey Bay… somewhere along the line, I really don’t think it was the Champagne, it might have been a contributing factor, I thought, ‘Shit. I want to do this. I want to grow grapes. That’s why I’ve been doing all this!’ That’s when I made the decision to try and buy it.
I honestly wasn’t looking for a place to buy. I was looking only to prove my point.
Then we went into that buyer/seller dance. David and I immediately decided it was better if he got a broker and I got a broker. We didn’t talk to each other directly! (laughs) Twenty-five acres, about eleven of them in vines and grapes. And I am embarrassed at the price I bought it at so I’m not even going to repeat it.
Everything that I’ve been able to do since I retired is because of the value of that land. I’ve had several businesses in my life, and when I wind up selling them the thing I made the money off of is the land it was sitting on. I never rented property. I would always buy it. It’s the one smart thing I’ve done. It worked out best for everybody. David got to settle up with his wife. He kept his house, and he kept his winery intact and [another] vineyard. And I got what I to this day think is the greatest place to grow Pinot Noir in California.
And I am really sorry that I had to sell it. Anyway…. They pulled out all the vines and replanted everything to some sort of clone that they felt was better. I think it was a Pommard clone. I forget the wine writer, an English wine writer from the 30s when he wrote this, these flowing, ornate descriptions of wines, that actually referred to Pommard, ‘that treacherous Pommard’. There was some thought that there might be some Grenache in it back in those days.
What do you drink now? Are you still learning from your own wines?
KB I’ve been a sailor pretty much all my life also. One of the things that my wife and I did, about seven years ago, I commissioned a boat to be built. I had a race boat for about thirty years. But I got older. That kind of boat is really hard work. I didn’t want to have to depend on a crew of seven other guys anymore. I sold the boat. Then after about two years I thought ‘I can’t go without a boat’. At this point Nancy, my wife, and I, we’re an item. She also likes boats. We met because she was on the [ ] crew that delivered my boat back to Santa Cruz from Hawaii after one of the TransPac races.
We had this cruising boat built. We had this idea that we would sail around the rest of our lives on a cruising boat. My racing boat had been cut down to where there was nothing on it. I mean, there was no refrigeration, it was just Go Fast. So, I had a boat built that had freezers on it, a big refrigerator, air conditioning, electric winches. It was really nice for two-handed people, you know, one guy getting along in years, the other a lady. We could handle this boat just great.
It was built in France. We picked it up in France. We took delivery. We went down the coast and into the Mediterranean. Up then to the Adriatic we went to Turkey, we went along the North Coast of Africa; we crossed the Atlantic into the Caribbean. All of that took about four and a half years, 29,000 miles we sailed.
In that process, it was no problem when we were in France (the boat was built in La Rochelle). We went to the open market every day and we bought a lot of French wine and a lot of cheese. My wife had goats and made goat cheese at one time. She had a very successful business of goat cheese. So she’s a cheese nut. We found some wines during that extended period on the boat that I really didn’t know existed before that are now some of my favorite wines.
I am actually getting around to answering your question! (laughs)
Albariños, for instance. We we’re in that part of Spain and the wines suck. I don’t like the reds. I’m talking to somebody there that’s in the wine business. He says ‘Oh, you gotta try this. Albariños are really nice whites.’ ‘Oh, come on. Whites from Spain? I don’t want to do that.’ ‘Try this.’ Well, I’m crazy about them. To this day we buy some Albariños every now and then.
And when we were in Italy, we were drinking Pinot Grigio, white. That was kind of new to us too. Now six years later the world is awash with Pinot Grigio, 85% of it bad. Well, not bad but very simplistic. Very blah.
So the wines that we drink today… very few whites. I really dislike Chardonnay. That’s probably why I didn’t have very much success with it. I really didn’t realize it at the time but I just don’t like Chardonnay. Something about the grape pisses me off.
We drink a lot of red. We have a home in Mexico. And boy, when you’re down there, you’ve really got problems with wine. They’ve got a trade treaty with Argentina. The Argentine reds are pretty good. There’s a Wal-Mart that moved in not too far away. Bless their purchasing agent, they buy a lot of French wines. I’m buying French wines in Mexico.
The wines that I really love today, if I could have good ones and not drink anything else, would all be from Burgundy. My favorite Burgundies are Morey Saint-Denis, maybe eight miles in each direction from Morey Saint-Denis… ah, make that six miles.
I like the whites from Burgundy if they haven’t spent a lot of time in wood. In fact, I like them better if they haven’t spent any time in wood. Macon Villages, that to me is the greatest cheap white wine in the world. Unfortunately it’s not as cheap as it should be! Meursault is my favorite. But my favorite white right now is Sancerre.
You know, when I was buying Sancerre in a bistro in Paris in the 80s that was almost the cheapest wine on the list. The Muscadets were the cheapest. Now a Sancerre, we just got back from France a couple of weeks ago, is 55, 65 euros! Which means eighty, ninety dollars a bottle in restaurants!
End of pt.3.
Part 4 will appear next week. Pt. 1 here Pt. 2 here
