Verticals (2019) s02e02 Episode Script

(soft music)
- If Paul Hobbs was to be
compared to anything else,
he would be a perfectionist.
(upbeat violin music)
- Everything that he does,
he does it with so much passion
and he loves the vineyard
and the winery so much.
- [Shakera Jones] Every detail
from the pruning to
the vineyard management
to just always being hands
on with his vineyards
and his grapes and the
entire wine making process.
(upbeat music)
- Paul Hobbs is an
incredibly influential person
in the wine world.
- You could use the word obsessed,
but you could also use the word passion
and that he just wants
to make the best wine
that he can possibly make.
And he will spend endless hours,
whether it's at the vineyard,
the winery, the market,
working the crowds,
wine dinners hosting.
It's hard to explain because
you just kind of like feel it.
- I mean, I don't think there's anyone
that evaluates their
barrels the way he does,
how many winemakers do you have,
literally making their
interns measure the grains
of the barrels to determine the tightness.
There aren't many winemakers
that care that much,
and put that much attention to detail into
where they're measuring their barrels
to make sure you're
getting a true expression
of the grape and the wine.
(soft orchestral music)
- He grew up in upstate New York.
He was one of 11 children growing up
on the family farm,
which is mostly produce,
they had a lot of apples, peaches.
He ended up going to UC
Davis for grad school,
and then was invited
to join Robert Mondavi at his estate
and became part of the
inaugural team for Opus One,
because he had such a fine
tuned expert understanding
of oak usage.
He just expanded all over the globe.
He is a consultant for
so many wineries,
and he started a ton of projects.
- I mean, geez,
talk about an ambitious
winemaker, most winemakers,
if they're making more than
one wine they're moving to another region,
that's pretty close to them.
But Paul Hobbs I mean, he's everywhere.
He's making world class
wines in California,
in the Finger Lakes, in France, in Spain,
in Armenia and Argentina.
(soft music)
- The Finger Lakes are
in upstate New York.
They're a really cool
up and coming region.
Very new.
And it was always Paul Hobbs' dream
to be able to make wine where he grew up.
(soft music)
- [Paul] This is the Finger Lakes region.
One of the first passions really
was Riesling from Germany.
But also it's partly
what convinced my father
to begin converting some of our
apple orchards to vineyards.
It was the New York State Riesling.
And that area has the kind of soils
that you would find in
the Mosel. More slate,
and also some shale,
and also has the cold weather
that Riesling seems to
really respond to nicely.
So we believe or I believe
that Riesling going in
this region could be at the
level of Alsace or Germany,
obviously with its own profile,
but it's a stunning area.
It has all the characteristics
that we would think would be appropriate
for making a high quality Riesling.
It is one of the great
gran dames of varieties.
(orchestral music)
I was born in Buffalo,
but my parents met at Cornell University.
And then they settled back
on my dad's family's farm,
which was established in the 1800s
by my great grandmother and grandfather,
Catherine Lindsay and Edward James.
And so we are farmers.
Edward James was a doctor
and so I was gonna
follow in his footsteps.
But it was really my father's dream for me
to come back and be part of
keep the family together.
We are a large family.
I'm second oldest of 11.
(Paul chuckles)
And so we're a working farm,
we help put food on the table.
So we had a sense of responsibility.
But we also got to learn a lot
about the land and man's
interaction with the land
and so on and so forth.
So that seemed to be a
natural segue into wine.
And that's what took me from medicine
and converted my interest
into the love of wine.
To do this was actually my father's dream
from the beginning.
He's not here to really be a part of it.
But my mother is.
(soft music fades)
(playful music)
It really was a difficult
and challenging place.
Part of what had been planted was grapes,
but had been overgrown
for over 40 or 50 years.
We could see how steep it was.
But it wasn't really possible
to get the full lay of the land.
And then of course, when
we started clearing,
we realized how challenging
that was gonna be.
And actually the slopes are very nice,
they get quite steep.
And some places, the grade goes up to 45%.
So that's not as steep
as the steepest slopes you might find
in parts of the Mosel,
or along the real sill, for example,
but they're steep,
and even dangerous.
And there's a cliff at the very end.
In fact, I nearly fell off the cliff
because the brush was so heavy
and the cliff dropped
150 feet to the lake.
And I was walking along and
suddenly there was nothing.
I mean, I just fortunately
grabbed a tree branch
that saved my life.
But when we cleared it,
we realized how flat and consistent it was
across the plane and then
just gradually got steeper
as we approached the lake,
which is actually beautiful
and that's what we wanted.
We didn't know how good it was
until it was all cleared
and the way it is today.
I mean this is more of a
enterprise devoted to passion.
And whether or not we'll
ever recoup the investment.
I mean, I'm sure over
a long period of time.
Maybe that's why there's 600 years
or many, many generations
of people growing Riesling,
their land is paid for,
the property was developed by the Romans.
And so they just have to pay
for the farming every year and,
but we're gonna have to see
if we can recoup some of this investment.
This wine, which is our
first effort is going to be
something retailed at around $35 a bottle.
(playful music)
And this is the first
non commercial vintage.
This is 2018 so be the 2019
vintage that goes commercial
That was made in New York
at a shared facility.
This Riesling,
and I've tasted many
examples of German Rieslings
and also Alsation drys.
This is only two and
a half grams of sugar.
So that's considered bone dry
in the world of Riesling.
It's now been in the bottle
for about a year and a half
from the 2018 vintage.
(playful music)
And as it evolves in the
bottle Riesling develops,
some people would argue,
this term I suppose,
but I, I use sort of a
petroleum like characteristic.
And that's a tertiary note that seems
to be a magical thing
that appears in Riesling.
That's not part of the primary fruit
nor is it something you would
typically see even immediately
after fermentation.
And even, elevage if you're aging,
and this is not aged in barrel,
this is all steel fermented,
fermented to dryness.
And you would think
this wine would be maybe a little bit thin
or need sugar to hold together,
but quite the contrary.
It has so much body
and that aromatic aspect
that I associate with
with great Rieslings is
just beginning to blossom.
in this wine.
One of the beauties of Riesling,
and why it's considered a noble grape.
It has such great age ability.
And it gets better with time.
But what I particularly
love is the dry Riesling
that reflects the sight.
And I think that's what we're after here.
When I put this wine in my mouth,
it speaks to me of the struggles
that we've had developing this site
because it's so Rocky
For example, to put a vine in the ground,
we have planted around
20 acres of vineyard,
which is well over 60.000 vines.
Every hole has to be basically
broken through the rock.
And so we have a huge hammer,
and it literally crushes
and shatters the rock
in the area where we
want to put the plant.
Then we dig out the rock
and put in soil so it will start.
But that's, Riesling loves a struggle.
And in areas you would think
this vine wouldn't grow,
it grows better
than areas where it has
higher quality soils.
And I think somehow that's
conveyed through the wine itself.
I think that's what makes it timeless.
(piano music)
Absolutely worth the effort.
(piano music)
(upbeat guitar music)
- Paul Hobbs is also especially
known for his projects
in South Americaa and Argentina
and is largely credited
with bringing the Malbec
grape to prominence.
- Geez, you wanna give the man credit,
everybody that drinks Argentine Malbec
can credit Paul Hobbs.
- And he's a huge reason why
Argentinian Malbec just blew up
and became so popular.
He completely revolutionized
how Malbec is produced in Argentina.
(upbeat music)
- I was searching for a
new opportunity outside
California outside the US actually.
And I was also looking
at the opportunities
to start my own business.
So in March of '88,
I settled on Chile as a place
that would be worthwhile exploring.
So I flew down to Santiago,
we drove over the Andes,
and that was quite a
hair raising experience.
At any rate,
as we entered into Mendoza,
I saw a vineyard,
which actually happens to be
pretty much where we are today.
And that captured my imagination,
it was really well planted,
in fact, that I thought it was better
than anything I'd seen in Chile.
Then I went out to the eastern part
of the province of Mendoza
to Bodegas Esmeralda,
which used to contain a
family high end winery
and try their wines.
And as advertised,
they were among the worst wines
I've ever tasted in my life.
They were truly horrible.
(Paul chuckles)
But that's what people have
been saying about Argentina
it's too warm, it was this
or that the other thing,
they didn't have good
equipment or technology.
One of the big problems was
that the wines were oxidized.
At any rate,
they were doing almost everything wrong,
but I didn't understand why
they were doing it wrong
and why they had such good vineyards
at the same time making such poor wine.
And so, that really got my curiosity
about the possibilities,
about the quality of the fruit.
What people didn't know
or I didn't know well,
was that Argentina had been
isolationists for over 40 years.
And that's one of the reasons
their equipment was so abysmal
I mean, they had knockoffs
of European equipment
because they couldn't
import better equipment.
So the industry here made equipment
to try to make wine.
But it was really rudimentary and rustic.
And so that was one of the main reasons
that they were unable to control
some of the basics of wine making.
Even after we made the first wine.
We didn't bottle that first wine,
we just sold it here in the local market.
But the next year we had barrels,
and the first French oak
barrels ever imported
into the country,
but the wine, it suffered, tremendously.
That whole effort that whole
year's effort was destroyed
from oxidation in the bottling line.
So we invested in a new bottling line
and et cetera ,et cetera.
We formed a team we
called antioxidation team,
we got t-shirts for
everybody to make them aware
of the importance of this sort of thing.
And we built like that.
(melancholic music)
What I didn't recognize when
I first came to Argentina,
is that there's violent hailstorms here,
as a result of the high Andes,
and the moist, warm air
flowing in from the pump.
So when those two collide,
it makes enormous thunder heads.
And so to prevent damage to grapes,
what growers try to do is keep the fruit
as low to the ground as possible
cocoon it inside the chutes,
so we had to change that system.
But to do it,
we needed a way to defend
against the hailstorms
to make the growers comfortable
with modern canopy management.
So that meant raising the fruit wire
to the typical level that we see today,
which is about 30 inches above the ground,
raising the entire canopy.
That was scary for growers.
So we introduced the net,
which was an idea we largely borrowed
from the Piedmont district of Italy.
There was a lot of Malbec planted
because they had planted Malbec
as basically, a blending varietal,
but it wasn't being used by many producers
as a stand-alone variety.
So to get to where we are today
Malbec had to go through
quite a series of steps.
(upbeat music)
So when we began these
changes in the viticulture
that led to a new way of growing Malbec.
And so the berries,
when we began growing it that way in 1991,
the berry became much smaller
because we were irrigating less
the rachis or the stem redder,
we opened up the fruit zone.
So there's good light filtering
into the canopy and so on.
- (speaking foreign language)
(upbeat music)
- At some moment it became
clear to me that I wanted
to go do my own project in Argentina.
But I also knew all the stuff that I
was doing and all the
things that I had learned,
I realized one thing was very
important, not to go alone.
And so I began a search for partners.
This is in 1997,
and this wine basically
launched the company.
And at that time, what
really put us on the map
was a huge score in the Wine Spectator.
This wine earned 92 points,
maybe more important is
what the writer said,
this raises the bar for Argentine Malbec
which was a huge statement,
and essentially put us on the map.
So this is the '99,
our first vintage from
the Marchiori vineyard,
we're in this small
department called Pedregal.
And let's see how this is gonna show.
This now, basically 20 year old wine.
This is really this cork is nothing
is I've never seen any cork
this badly disintegrated.
So this is one of the reasons why
people might consider using
another type of closure.
Also, even back in this time,
we had difficulties
sourcing high quality cork.
So let's see how the color looks on this.
Normally with such an old bottle,
look at that, beautiful color.
So that was always one
of the key questions would
wines not only Malbec
but particularly Malbec
but would wines made
in Argentina age or have ageability.
And I think there's proof
in the glass right there.
If you see that color,
absolutely spectacular.
Very little brown or orange rim on that.
So it's held up much better than the cork.
So there's still plenty of
fresh fruit showing in there.
So that's really spectacular.
(soft music)
Good acidity, really, some nice, red,
even red currant fruit.
It has also developed this
wonderful bottle bouquet
which is giving it another
element of complexity.
You know, it's remarkable to think that,
20 years later or even
more 22 years later,
and even in those primitive times
when we didn't have
ideal bottling equipment,
and so on and so forth.
But when the grapes are high quality,
and you've got good phenols,
and good acidity,
the wine is absolutely superb, beautiful.
That is absolutely splendid, delightful.
(joyful music)
These are not quite ready.
They're like raisins, try one.
- Raisins?
- Hmm try one.
- Paul Hobbs has three daughters.
His eldest daughter's name is Agustina.
And she's also involved
in the wine industry,
works with her father a lot
and could potentially pick
up the reins down the road.
I grew up in Mendoza with my mom
and when he would come visit,
he would take me to his vineyard visits,
he would take me to the winery,
like we just spent all
of our time together.
My first, first memory,
I think I would probably have to say
I was six or seven
and we were walking the Marchiori vineyard
with my dad's old partners and my dad
and we were watching the Malbec grow.
And it was right around harvest.
And I remember just my dad saying
how old the vines were.
They were about 70, 80 years old.
And I remember I was like, wow,
that's super old.
For a five year old, six year old,
it's pretty impressive.
And actually, the image
that comes back to me
is me just snacking on all these grapes.
I would just snack on as much
Malbec grapes as I could.
I would just like stuff my face with them.
Because they're so sweet and so delicious.
(joyous music fades)
- Oh, those are beauties, aren't they?
- Yeah, they're really
good and good color.
- Mm hmm.
- That's nice and tart.
- So that's a good way
to see the difference.
This particular selection of Pinot Noir,
is coloring up faster than the Pommard.
You can see if I touch it,
Like the bag,
I rub off a little bit of the waxy coat.
- Yeah.
- So you can see that nice bloom
on the cluster it's beautiful.
- It's looking Pretty good.
- Yeah. My small clusters,
they're gonna come through
and finish the suckering a little bit.
- Yep.
- Just clean that up.
But otherwise,
we're pretty much looking
a little bit of veraison.
- What would you say
veraisons at what 20 ish, 30%?
- Probably less right here.
But we'll see as we go along.
- I've always been in the winery
in the vineyards.
When I was little, any
time I was with him,
he would take me on
one of his first trips.
So when he was consulting in Chile,
he would take me to Chile with him
when he first started
a project in Hungary.
On his first trip,
I went to Hungary with him,
even if it was market visits
on his first trip to Japan,
we went together.
It was kind of like the
thing that we did together
when I was growing up.
But that has really been the relationship
that we've always had.
I really do love that bark.
(Paul laughing)
It's so unique.
- Well has a little bit of,
you can see just a little
lichen growing on it.
- Yeah.
You see it,
It's mostly on the north side.
You notice on this side
here on the south side,
it doesn't grow.
So it stays away from the sunny side.
- Yeah
- It is beautiful, isn't it?
- It's really beautiful in the fall.
I remember in March,
it was just stunning.
- Yeah
- With the green grasses and everything
- Pretty amazing
- It was really cool.
Just watching nature do its thing.
- You might not be too far off right here,
for example, with respect
to rate that is own,
you got some really
nice coloring going on.
So 20% would be about
right on these vines.
Yeah, it looks good.
- I think it wasn't until I went
to high school or even college
when I started realizing
that going through a wine making program
wasn't the normal thing.
Like all my friends when I went to Cornell
were pretty mad.
They were chemistry majors.
They were government majors.
They were feminist study majors,
and I was the wine girl
and they're like,
so what do you do all day?
Just like drink wine?
Like what?
What do you do in class?
So I think like growing up with it,
you just kind of like grow up in it.
You you don't really think
about what it really means
until you kind of like grow up.
and it's funny because I don't
think he's ever pressured me
to go into the industry.
He's just kind of like,
let me kind of find my own way.
- All right.
I thought I'd bring a bottle
of 1998 high vineyard Cuvée Agustina
and honor the fact that
here we are with COVID.
(both laughing)
We've had so much time together.
But just seems appropriate
that we're here at Catherine Lindsay.
- Yeah
When we first bought this property,
and you were four years old,
and we just walked this
so it just seemed like
let's see how it's tasting.
What do you think?
- Where did you make it?
Was it at Kunde
because none of this winery.
- You got a good memory.
That is, if you remember, well,
in 1997 is the year that you did the
Full Monty plunge into
the open top fermentor.
- Michael Black
- So This was made the
year the year after that.
- My dad always talks about
memories of me falling
into a tank of wine.
When I was four,
it was at Kunde winery
when my dad was making wine there.
He knows the story better than I do.
But, my mom was working at the at the end
of the of the winery,
and my dad and I were just on an
open top container with just grapes up
just had been harvested the night before
and we put a long board over it.
and so we just sat down there together.
And then we just started
rocking back and forth
and it was just like fun.
And then the next thing that he notices
is that I'm inside,
head in first.
And he just looks in and it's like
from my waist up.
I'm completely inside the tank.
And my legs are just
like dangling in there
and he like grabs me by the legs.
And I just like look at him
smiling completely purple,
white teeth and I'm like,
(Agustina slurps)
yum.
(Agustina laughing)
It says what's the first
vintage of Agustina
that you made?
- '94
'94
- It correlates to
- To the year that I was born.
- Yeah.
And let's see if I know
how to work this thing.
There we go.
- Looks like it's in.
- I think we got it going,
- Release, do
- This will push.
- There you go.
(playful music)
- There you go.
That's a nice little pour.
- Thank you.
I'm gonna give myself a little.
(Agustina chuckles)
(playful music)
This is a nice way to serve the wine,
particularly a wine like this,
it has a little more age on it.
Because it's so gentle.
And I think it allows the wine to,
frankly, evolve more slowly.
In aged wine,
this is like what we do to barrels.
We've pressure out the wine,
we don't pour it or pump it out.
And so I think it helps
tremendously to preserve,
all that's been developing in
there over the past 22 years.
- Now that color.
Is just really beautiful.
You can very easily think
it is a wine from Burgundy.
Well, cheers.
- Yeah, cheers.
Let's see how this
beautiful wine is showing.
Hmm.
It's really developed a nice little,
what would you call that?
Just a slight bit of,
color development?
- Yeah
(both laughing)
- No, I think it's a gorgeous,
look at that, it's just what you expect
it's, what 22 years old now,
- Yeah.
And it's got just a little
bit of a orange rim to it.
So that's showing,
- It's really beautiful.
- Yeah, showing beautiful.
- Has a very spicy characteristic
on the nose.
There's like a jammy strawberry
with a black pepper on it.
- Hmm
I think that comes through
in the palate as well.
Tannins are really supple.
I'm amazed how fresh The fruit is.
- That's yummy.
- Oh, all we need is a little,
a little asado,
- Or even a little bit of charcuterie
It has aged remarkably well.
But the Hyde vineyard,
sort of special anyways,
always has very velvety and soft tannins.
So that's something I love about it.
I think that's still
coming through on the wine.
- It really is.
- I'm kind of surprised how
youthful it is, frankly.
- So '98 was also the year that
you purchased this vineyard,
you bought the Catherine Lindsay estate,
but the winery wasn't here
the vineyards were here or no,
- No, this was just a
piece of rolling land
that was grasslands
actually used by Cal Fire.
For practice burns.
That's what this property was used for
and had been used that
way for over 13, 14 years.
So we we planted this one in 2000,
a couple of years after this wine,
but it's kind of fun, from
a historical point of view
to go back, thinking that
you were only four years old,
remembering probably better than you,
what you were like at that time.
- Probably
What we have today, here in
Sebastopol was built in 2003.
- That's a quick turnaround
from buying it in '98,
to planting in 2000 that's a two year gap
and then having a full facility by '03.
- Well, yeah.
(both laughing)
And that's always a winemakers dream,
as you can imagine,
because once you have your own facilities,
you've got even more control.
But initially it was tougher.
So this wine is important step
in the historical timeline
of our little business.
- Yeah.
And it seemed so appropriate to dedicate
one of our bottlings to you,
- Thank you.
But I must say you're a tough cookie.
Because if I didn't get a good score,
- Oh, I remember that.
- I was watching.
I was always opening
up the Wine Spectator,
looking through to see how
the wines were getting ranked
and scored.
- Yeah, so.
I was like, Daddy, it's only a 92.
(Agustina laughing)
- Hey, we didn't score that low.
- No, no, no, no!
I don't remember what the numbers were.
- But
- Nobody.
- I remember I would
always open up the magazine
and being like,
Where are we?
Where?
- Yeah, by the time you
were seven or eight,
you were very much on,
checking and making sure
I was doing my job properly.
(both laughing)
So that was great.
That was very funny.
- I still am.
- Yes, you're still checking.
Thing is in our blood, frankly,
- Yeah
to do this kind of thing.
And it's part of our DNA
and I do think that
when you pour your heart
and passion and your life
and you put a lot of your
own time and dedication,
as well throughout your childhood
and you you've been in
cellars in Argentina,
dragging hoses and this and that.
But if it works out that this is something
that you love and would
love to carry on of course,
it's something I think would be terrific.
- I better start reading
some textbooks then.
- So keep working.
(both laughing)
I would definitely want
to continue the family tradition.
I think he did create his winery
for future generations.
For me and my sisters
to kind of keep working
and my kids and their kids
and grandkids and so on.
And I think that I would
definitely want to keep that going.
(soft music)
- Well, listen, Agustina,
this is, we just past your 26th birthday.
So we celebrate, with Château d'Yquem
which was the wine that got me interested,
in the business in the
first place back in 1969,
when your grandpa first
introduced me to wine
and I'm very proud to have made this wine
in your honor.
And I think it's you're aging
maybe a little bit better
than the wine
(both laughing)
- I hope so.
(both laughing)
- Well, we'll see who wins at the end
(both laughing)
- Well, for the wine
sakes, I hope the wine
but I really do hope I
age as well at this wine.
(both laughing)
- Well cheers
- Well cheers
(soft music)