Matt Taylor’s Yin and Yang

When I first met winemaker Matt Taylor, we stood in the Ink Grade Vineyard, a 750-acre site (220 of them planted) that dates to the late 19th century and sits partially in the Howell Mountain AVA. The remote property had belonged to Heitz Cellars, but in 2019 Heitz’s new owner, Gaylon Lawrence, Jr., and Lawrence Wine Estates CEO Carlton McCoy carved it out to stand on its own as a new label. They felt it had a unique terroir. Taylor was tapped to oversee the farming and winemaking for it.

Built like a linebacker, but with a soft-spoken and gentle demeanor, Taylor, 48, was born in Occidental, California, a rustic blip of a town that has since become the epicenter of the new wave of extreme coastal Sonoma Pinot Noirs. As he was starting out on his wine path, he took some advice and eschewed the more formalized book training of University of California, Davis, to attend Fresno State instead, where a more hands-on and practical winemaking education takes place, he says.

From there, his winemaking journey included stops in Jerez, Spain, as well as Joseph Swan Vineyards in California and as a stagiaire in Burgundy at Domaine Dujac. Eventually he hooked on at Araujo Estate in Calistoga in 2005 as assistant winemaker, eventually moving up to winemaker before departing in 2010.

A Preference For Wines With Personality

Taylor’s Cabernet Sauvignons from Ink Grade show his inclination to emphasize the minerally side of the wine spectrum, offering a fresh, sleek and slightly high-pitched style, with damson plum, bitter cherry and red currant coulis notes framed by singed savory and dried rose petal hints. It’s a departure from the more typical tar-slaked, densely packed and tannic wines that come from the appellation.

His style isn’t a surprise, though, if you scratch below the surface. When we’ve chatted about wines, Taylor cites the 1971 Mayacamas and 1971 Eisele as touchstones, along with past vintages of Cornas from Thierry Allemand, Sancerre from Domaine Edmond Vatan and the wines of Rioja’s López de Heredia. In other words, old school, mineral-driven wines.

In between his Araujo years and joining Lawrence Estates, Taylor helped start the Reuling Vineyard estate, along with Front Porch Farm in Healdsburg. At the latter, he indulged his desire to farm more than just wine grapes, working on fruit orchards, vegetables, grains and more.

Komorebi is one of two Sonoma Coast vineyards Taylor has made wine from, planted primarily with Pinot Noir. (Todd Pickering)

He also planted two vineyard sites of his own around his childhood area of Occidental. Along Taylor Lane, he planted his Komorebi vineyard in 2011 and, just a short drive away, Mammoth Rock in 2016. Komorebi (a Japanese word for the dappled sunlight that comes through tree canopies) is planted primarily to Pinot Noir with a drop of Chardonnay. Mammoth Rock follows another path, focusing on Loire Valley grape varieties, including Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as some lesser-known grapes such as Romorantin, Grolleau and Pineau d’Aunis. Both sites are planted at high-density, with close-to-the-ground, cane-pruned vines. Sadly, he no longer buys fruit from Komorebi, instead focusing on Mammoth Rock.

Seeing the viticulture he’s employed provides a flashback for me, transporting me to French regions where such plantings are much more common than in California. Both of sites are markedly cool, breezy, coastal-influenced microclimates, with a budbreak to harvest time that can extend to 220 days, a time frame that is several weeks longer than for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, for example. By keeping the vine canopy and fruiting zone close to the ground, Taylor keeps the grapes less-exposed to wind and evapotranspiration while enhancing phenolic maturity through skin ripeness.

“It’s a risk,” says Taylor, calmly. “But it’s also a little bit of a banana belt through here and these sites hold some heat.” The “heat” on a breezy coastal site is relative, but the vines’ close-to-the-ground stature means that what heat there is, is kept close to the fruiting zone.

For his own wines, Taylor employs all whole-cluster ferments, concrete vessels for aging, and no sulfur additions until just before bottling. Under his namesake label, Taylor debuted wines from these sites starting with the 2016 vintage. He also holds his bottlings back for several years before release (atypical for mainstream wineries) and his current releases include a 2021 Komorebi Chardonnay. All of this means his label is very much a project on the edge, just like its vineyards.

Compared to his current job at Ink Grade, Taylor’s own small side project is a big contrast in name recognition and bling factor. As is his style though, he’s sanguine and thoughtful about it, seeing it as an opportunity to meld and hone his own approach to winemaking.

“When you’re a Sonoma County kid, you come to realize Napa is a necessity. I’ve made my peace with the fact that Napa drives the conversation,” he says. “But at the same time, I’ve taken things I’ve learned from out here to inform my approach at Ink Grade.”

Taylor will need to keep informing himself—he’s been tasked with making the wines at Trailside Vineyard in Rutherford (alongside Domaine Dujac’s Jeremy Seysses) and the Haynes Vineyard in Coombsville, both in the Lawrence Estates portfolio.

At all his projects, Taylor oversees both vineyard and cellar, putting him among the trend of the current generation assuming important roles in California wine (see Megan Zobeck, Natalie Winkler, Graeme MacDonald, Lindsey Wallingford, et al). With his feet straddling starkly different ends of the wine world, his yin-yang approach is producing promising results.

Watch this space for what he does next…

Read more of James Molesworth’s Winery Intels, hear his interviews with leading winemakers on Wine Spectator’s Straight Talk podcast, and follow him on Instagram at @jmolesworth1.