Berkeley’s Donkey & Goat Winery recently presented “Unfiltered: Conversations About Wine.” A day-long gathering of winemakers, grape growers, importers, wine-shop owners and wine writers, it focused, as promised in the title, on “natural” wines (with the usual contention about what exactly that term means).
Around 30 wine producers brought bottles, each about three or four, so there were nearly 100 available for tasting.
Some I knew, but many of the wines — and wineries — were new to me. Alas, I’m a hopeless, hapless taster, easily distracted by crowds, loud music and too many choices. Way too many choices. My preferred way to ‘taste’ is a couple of glasses consumed slowly over the course of a meal, but that’s scarcely possible at such an event.
Even scribbling tasting notes is a challenge while juggling wine glass, spit cup, written information and conversations with the pourers (at this event most of whom were, happily, the winemakers themselves).
Fortunately, the gathering also featured three panels (on climate change, terroir, and ‘flaws’ in natural wine) that, for me, gave it focus. Debate abounded (advocates versus detractors of “orange” wine, carbonic maceration, sulfur addition, emergency interventions, etc.), and those disagreements were perhaps the most enlightening part of the day.
The most fun, on the other hand, was talking to young(ish) vintners and listening to them elaborate on their passions. Like my brief conversation with Nat Wong, a UC Davis graduate in ornithology, and, coincidentally, former Davis Enterprise employee. On a trip to the Loire, he drank a glass of cab franc (maybe the third glass of wine he’d ever had, he says) and it changed his life.
He went back to UCD, enology this time, then got a job at Folktale Winery on the Central Coast. Encouraged by the former cellar master (a post Nat now occupies) to make his own wine, he went in search of grapes and found Siletto Family Vineyards in San Benito, and in 2020 he made his inaugural wine, a rosé of barbera. And thus Nat’s Blade and Talon Wine was born.
He’s an experimenter — he makes, for example, a wine he calls “retsinata,” his version of the Greek retsina. My taste of it was intriguing but, not a fan of retsina, I was more taken with his “Siletto Ruchè.” Ruchè, I learned, is an Italian red grape, native to the Piedmont area, that was used mostly in sweet wines and in blends.
It’s making a comeback in Italy, and Nat liked it so much that he got approval to plant it here. (While I was in Berkeley, I took BART to San Francisco and stopped at Blue Stream Wines in Chinatown — owner James Taylor carries a couple Blade and Talon wines and has hosted winemaker evenings with Nat.)
And there was Emily Fernwood; she makes her Osa Major wine in the Donkey & Goat cellars and is a one-woman operation “from trucking grapes to selling bottles and everything in between.” She works with various vineyards and loves the history and diverse regions of California wines, interests that intersect in her 2023 Somer’s Mission.
Somer’s the name of a 50-year-old, dry-farmed vineyard in Lodi that grows “pais” or “mission,” a rare California native and mainstay of California’s pre-prohibition winemaking history. Emily’s version is terrific.
And there’s Matt Niess from North American Press, who concentrates on native U.S. varieties: “By championing indigenous varieties and hybrids, we’re not just making wine — we’re rediscovering America’s viticultural heritage.”
Many of these grapes are more suitable to our climate than European varieties and can often be grown without pesticides or too much water. Matt says, “This means safer vineyards for workers, living soils for future generations, deeper roots and cleaner watersheds, and wines free from chemical residues. These vines work in harmony with our climate rather than fighting against it.”
La cross, brianna, lenoir, baco noir, catawa are some of the grapes he works with. Never heard of them? Me neither, but exciting to think about. One of his wines, called “L’Amalgame San Francisco Bay Rosé,” is “made with over 100 heirloom American grapes … a diverse and expressive wine unlike any other. Hand-picked with friends and family, the grapes were gently pressed and fermented naturally, capturing its vibrant and carefree spirit.”
I quote this not because I’ve tasted it (I haven’t) but because I had no idea 100 heirloom American grapes even existed!
One of the panelists, importer Eric Dench, made an important point that could have been the theme of the entire gathering. What we like in a wine is mightily influenced by what we eat and drink. Like jazz or impressionist art or Romantic poetry or the stream-of-consciousness novel that at first seemed impossibly chaotic — and, to some, abominations — once we become “conversant” in the “genre” we begin to “get” it, like it, even become passionate about it.
An example Eric used was a Serbian field blend he imports (he passed around tastes), which, he admitted, takes some getting used to but is immediately approachable to folks who live in the area whose food and eating history/customs have long prepared their palate for these unusual (to us) flavors.
Many of the panel attendees who almost exclusively drink “natural” wines (and have thus become conversant in the genre) liked it as much as I did. Alive, interesting, food-friendly, people-friendly — and happily hazy.
Alas, most of the wineries I visited at “Unfiltered” are not represented anywhere local. There are some exceptions. Donkey & Goat itself has two wines at Nugget, their entry-level If/Then Red and If/Then White, both of which I’ve written about recently and are well worth trying if you haven’t already.
Amy Grabish at The Pip (Dixon) really likes Perch wines (winemaker Adam Saake was in attendance at “Unfiltered”) and carries several bottles. And at the Co-op you can find (sometimes) Two Shepherds wines (look for their cans). And the Co-op has, in the past, carried Idlewild, Pax, and Cruess — if you’re a member, ask the Co-op to bring them back.
Meanwhile, a shop like Vintage Berkeley is your best bet for trying a variety of these small production and unusual wines, both domestic and imported.
My most important takeaway from “Unfiltered” was reassurance that the future of California winemaking is in good hands. These vintners’ knowledge, passion, flexibility, and commitment to diversity and responsibility augur well for our ability to overcome the many difficulties wine faces in these politically, culturally and environmentally challenging times.
Dining and Cooking