Alderbrook

Wines & Vines, May, 2000 by Richard Paul Hinkle

A recipe for success

It was the cup of coconut milk, I think, that really made Jim May's smoked salmon chowder recipe work. And though the recommended Viognier 1998 did work well--as a complement, with its own rose petal, lemon, butter and coconut milk hints--I thought the contrast of the 1998 Saralee's Vineyard Gew[ddot{u}]rztraminer actually pushed the soup forward, what with the wine's intense, hothouse floral aromatics and almost sassy jasmine spiciness.

"When paired together," says winemaker Kristi Koford, talking about the Viognier, "the richness of the salmon chowder balances the richness of the wine." Adds winery chef Jim May, "The addition of the lime juice accents the citrus and floral character of the wine, and enhances the flavors in both the wine and the soup. The delicate smokiness in the salmon brings together the slight toastiness in the wine with the exotic jasmine and rose flavors."

The Alderbrook approach to new wine releases is refreshingly unique and effective. What they've done over the last few years is to include a Jim May recipe--along with the local ingredients with which to fulfill that recipe (perishables shipped in dry ice)--along with the appropriate wine(s). Most of the recipes are fairly straightforward, so much so that I actually look forward to fiddling with them, presenting them to my family, and seeing firsthand just how well the wines match up to the recipe. Invariably, they do.

Food is the natural bridge to wine, and that's why this innovative marketing technique works. However much we've pushed American consumers away from wine, with our arrogance and elitist mentality-and even considering some of the high-falutin' cooking shows that have nearly nudged even food out of the mainstream-consumers still think they know something about food. So food remains a means of luring folks across the void, across the vast canyon to the other bank[ldots]wine. We can get you here from there.

"We started doing this, oh, must have been three or four years ago," says managing director Catherine Bartolomei Eyler (who's also responsible for marketing and PR).

"It was with the 1993 Zinfandel, I remember that," adds May.

"That's right," intones Eyler. "Mainly, we were trying to do something different. I like food. I like to cook. I like to try different wine and food combinations, to see what works, and what doesn't. When we first hired Jim, his audition dinner focused on Sonoma-grown ingredients--we're a Sonoma County winery, after all--and he simply dazzled us. When we had previously sent out our new release wine samples, it seemed as if nobody was paying us any attention.

"So, when we were about to relcase the 1993 Zinfandel, we decided to take advantage of the bounty of Sonoma County food products. Jim did a sun-dried tomato tapenade and pasta recipe that used a couple of local products. The food producers agreed to specially package individual, recipe-sized packets of their products, and we sent them out with the wines and Jim's recipe. We sent it out to 48 writers, asking each to let us know if they liked the idea.

Forty-seven responded! And, while a few weren't interested in receiving the food/recipe part, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Primarily, it gave us a chance to make real contact with the writers, it gave us something to talk about. We've got very solid winemaking here. Now we have to get out there and let people know that we exist. This program gives us a good start, but now we have to get out there and do a better job talking to our retail and restaurant accounts. So we're looking at taking this food and wine program on the road and talking first hand with our distributors and our reps.

Alderbrook has gone through a bit of a metamorphosis over the last couple of years. First, "fruit first" Kristi Koford signed on as winemaker in 1997 when Bob Cabral left for Kendall-Jackson (and then Williams-Selyem, all for more chances to make Pinot noir). Then, last September, the 50,000-case winery took on new ownership when George and Dorothy Gillemot (owners since 1991) sold to some of the partners affiliated with California Family Foods.

The new partners are brothers Bruce and David Meyers, brothers Tom and Perry Charter, along with Court King, Clay Shannon and Alen Darr. A vertically-integrated agricultural company based in Colusa County, California Family Foods primarily packages rice from 30,000 acres in an ultra-modern plant, both for their own labels and for those of others. (They also grow grapes, melons, tomatoes and almonds.) Says Bruce Meyers, "Our rice processing facility in Colusa is the Mercedes-Benz of our industry. It is state-of-the-art and second to none in the world. We envision Alderbrook at that level. Second to none, and world class in quality."

Though plant improvements will certainly help, winemaker Kristi Koford points to improved grape sourcing as the key to wine quality improvements in the two years she's been in charge of production at Alderbrook.

"We used to have nearly three dozen growers, most of them providing less than five tons of grapes," says Koford, who spent a decade each at Robert Mondavi and St. Supery. "Now, we're working closely with just a dozen outside growers, and each one produces more than 20 tons of grapes and each one is professionally managed. It helps a lot that our viticulturist is Rob Weinstock. (Koford and Weinstock also share the managing director title with Eyler.) He not only handles the fruit off our own SO acres, but works with our growers and handles national sales. Hey, he used to have his own label (Weinstock Cellars, producer of kosher wines), so he knows the business from the ground up."