Becoming Devil Proof With California Malbec
Jesse Katz’s resume as a winemaker reads like a superstar in the making - from time spent at Pétrus in Bordeaux, California cult legend Screaming Eagle to stellar Argentina wineries Vi?a Cobos and Bodega Noemia. He became the youngest-hired head winemaker in the U.S. at Lancaster Estate in Alexander Valley, Sonoma County helping to build a new winery as well as received a tremendous amount of critical acclaim for the significant increase in quality of the wines during his tenure. Eventually Jesse broke out on his own with his line of Aperture Cellars wines made from Sonoma vineyards he highly prizes. As he celebrates Aperture’s ten year anniversary, he is nearing the completion of a new winery and hospitality center that is rooted in his unique childhood that was pivotal to starting his obsession for great wine.
Aperture Cellars
The Aperture Cellars new winery and hospitality center is not only designed with environmentally friendly aspects in mind, with modern lines that seamlessly meld into the vineyards surrounding the buildings but it is deeply rooted in what has shaped and propelled Jesse’s life. The roof was designed with the idea of a camera’s aperture that represents the part of the lens that opens and closes with different shutters; it is the part that helps to control the amount of light allowed in the camera and hence affect the final photo. Jesse said that he worked with an extremely creative and thoughtful architect Juancarlos Fernandez, partner of Signum Architecture, who was fascinated with the name of the winery. Based on Jesse’s description, he drew drawings of an aperture that was three-dimensional and deconstructed it to expand over the four rooms in the hospitality center that would combine natural light and added light incorporating views of the vineyard from any seat.
The Aperture Cellars hospitably center will be completed in the spring of 2020 and it will be versatile with movable walls that can either create a big event space incorporating the outdoor scene or an intimate one-on-one tasting, and the various rooms have Jesse’s father’s photographs throughout becoming a gallery for Andy Katz. It is a perfect intertwining of finally creating the consumer experience and winery that Jesse has always dreamt of but since his father is the one who introduced him to great wine by bringing him around the world, it is fitting that his father’s presence is noted in the name and images of the Aperture wines as well as the place where they will be crafted and eventually enjoyed by wine lovers traveling far and wide to his Healdsburg, California location.
Obsession for Great Wine
Andy Katz is a famous photographer who ended up shooting some of the greatest wine regions around the world, collaborating with some of the top wine critics and wine writers on a total of 11 books on wine. Andy not only brought his son to California to hang out with the likes of Robert Mondavi, one of his collaborating partners on a book to showcase the beauty of Napa and Sonoma, but they lived for a time in Burgundy, Tuscany and Bordeaux as well. At the young ago of 12 years old, Jesse remembers being fascinated by the idea that Burgundy wines, mostly made by either Chardonnay or Pinot Noir grapes, could “be so vastly different from village to village despite being from the same grape and same vintage.” When Jesse talked about his father’s love for wine over the years he said with a huge gin, “He is the biggest wine fan I have ever met so he quickly gravitated to the love of wine when he started taking photos of it all over the world and still till this day he is a massive wine lover.” But despite this passion for love being passed on to Jesse at an early age, he initially thought working in wine was only for those born into it. Through time he realized that he could get a degree in winemaking and he started by working harvests back to back in the Southern Hemisphere in Argentina and then working the Northern Hemisphere in Europe and California. While working in Bordeaux at Pétrus, he gained a great respect for Merlot as well as thought about the potential for Bordeaux varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon in Sonoma County; that idea grew once he went back to California to get experience as a head winemaker.
Jesse was able to seek out sites in Sonoma that could grow Bordeaux varieties with richness and texture yet be aromatically lifted and he has even planted his own vines of Merlot from clones taken from Pétrus, and Sémillon clones from d’Yquem, as well as carefully selecting clones for other varieties. But even his first vintages of Aperture, which was established in 2009, received high praise from the start as wines that were harmonious and complex with incredibly well-managed structure, and in 2015 he was able to quit his day job of working for another winery to focus on his own wines. This would take him down the road to creating a winery like no other he has worked in before that would allow him to get the best out of his fruit to have a true expression of terroir of these special sites while highlighting the texture and vitality that he always wanted to experience in these Bordeaux varieties.
Winery Like No Other
Picking the right vineyards that are able to achieve enough ripeness yet retain freshness and aromatics is of the utmost importance to Jesse but how the grapes are handled in the winery is just as critical. He believes in spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts that comes from the vineyards for a complete expression of place but he realized that the winery and the process needed to be meticulous to achieve the best results with a wild ferment. The combination of stunning aromas, bright fruit and silky texture is remarkable in his wines as each bottling hits all the pleasure centers. It seems like a mystery how he is able to achieve such a breathtaking balance consistently but once he speaks about his process in the winery, it becomes clear how he is always able to get the best out of his grapes.
Jesse will work with 20 to 30 different lots in the winery but he will sometimes break up these lots into different tanks and ferment the different sections of the same lot at varying temperatures to bring out different qualities of each place and variety to eventually blend them back together, ultimately showing every facet of that piece of land and grape. His new Aperture winery will have automatic pump-overs (allowing juice to go over the skins for structure and color) so he can control how much extraction he gets for each lot as he generally likes to do them every hour (one to two minutes each) in the beginning but as the alcohol rises he backs off as harsh qualities can be extracted; this is key to the exquisite texture his wines display while still having enough concentration; he will also ferment a certain amount in small barrels with laborious punch-downs that are gentle but it takes a significant amount of strength and focus to do them correctly. As one can imagine, Jesse doing this himself with a couple of workers before he built this new winery was an unbelievable feat to take on every harvest but with the new winery he will be able to be freed up to find even “more precision” with his wines as well as have everything else a state of the art facility would have to implement strict selection and ideal cold storage conditions for grapes so he can manage all the varying issues a vintage can present.
Devil Proof
Although still relatively young, Jesse already has a cult wine named Devil Proof that represents two different bottlings of single vineyard dry farmed Malbec. The Rockpile Ridge vineyard is powerful, rich with dark fruit and the Farrow Ranch vineyard is more feminine with floral aromatics, brighter and has more restraint. According to Jesse, “I have worked with Malbec throughout the years of my tenures in Napa and Sonoma and then I have worked in two different spectacular wineries in Argentina, Bodega Noemia which farms biodynamic old vines in Patagonia, and Paul Hobbs own winery Vi?a Cobos”, explaining his desire to make Malbec. He further expressed that when he came back to California after working several harvests around the world, he was madly in love with Malbec and that he was determined to find great vineyards in Sonoma where he could make a wine that could stand toe to toe with the great wines of the world. He certainly has achieved making it a wine that has impressed the top critics as one of the greatest California Malbec wines but other industry leaders have mixed his Devil Proof up with some of the greatest Bordeaux wines to Jesse’s delight. These wines go into 100% barrel and over time 20 barrels becomes ten barrels by the end; it is a labor intensive way to make a small amount of wine but Jesse is all about achieving the best results.
All of Jesse’s wines have a photo that was taken by his father but the Devil Proof is his father’s most famous photo - a woman in Cuba that is living the good life by smoking a cigar as well as drinking and eating what she likes. There is a saying in Cuba that if one lives well and drinks well that she is devil proof and the devil cannot get her. Jesse’s father thought this woman embodied all these characteristics and the power and the essence of this saying. It is a photo that represents a wine that has become iconic in a short amount of time while also paving the way for how Jesse has lived his life. He has gone to great lengths to discover and unlock the potential of the grapes and wines that surround him in the vineyards and winery at a great personal cost, but he is living life full throttle giving it his all and his wines are certainly devil proof when it comes to complacency as he is never satisfied and he guarantees that he will take his wines to the next level of enjoyment for vintages to come.
***Link to Original Forbes Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathrinetodd/2020/01/28/becoming-devil-proof-with-california-malbec/#551acfad63dc
2018 Aperture, Sauvignon Blanc, Sonoma County, California: 98% Sauvignon Blanc and 2% Sémillon. This Sauvignon Blanc was inspired by the First Growth Haut-Brion in Bordeaux as Jesse was able to spend some time there when his father was taking photos for a book about the First Growths of Bordeaux. It doesn’t have as much Sémillon as Haut-Brion but Jesse has planted vineyards of the variety from clones that he got from d’Yquem so there will probably be more Sémillon in future vintages. Jesse says he wants this wine to have acidity and freshness but also texture and longevity for aging in the cellar; aromas of honeysuckle and white flowers with rich peach flavors on the palate with a long, mineral finish.
2017 Aperture, Red Wine, Sonoma County, California: 52% Malbec and 48% Merlot. This is a sneak peak at the 2017 as it will be released into the market in the next few months. Typically it is a blend of majority Malbec and Merlot with some Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon but some of the Cabernet grapes were still on the vines during the 2017 fires and so he did not use those grapes and ended up making a lot less wine rather then taking the chance with smoke taint. This wine was simply singing when tasted with violets and fresh blueberries jumping from the glass and a sensuous texture that was a complete knockout.
2017 Aperture, Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley, Sonoma County, California: This 2017 vintage is a blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Malbec and 7% Merlot. Jesse’s dad, Andy Katz, took this photo of a Cabernet Sauvignon bunch right before it was picked and it has graced the cover of his Sonoma book that he did with James Laube from Wine Spectator. It is not only the photo for this wine but it has become the image for Aperture wines. The Cabernet Sauvignon grapes come from four hillside vineyard sites that all have mineral-rich volcanic soils. Multi-layered with pristine blackberry fruit with hints of smoldering earth and graphite that had an addictive umani quality along the finely chiseled tannins.
2016 Aperture, Devil Proof, Malbec, Rockpile Ridge Vineyard, Sonoma County, California: Single vineyard dry farmed Malbec that comes from 8th generation farmers, the Mauritson family, from their Rockpile Ridge vineyard. Some wines live up to the hype but this one exceeds them as one could think how good can it be compared to some of the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon wines out there, or Merlot such as Pétrus or Masseto, but it certainly holds it own. An intoxicating nose with fresh sage, hints of cocoa nibs and an intense minerality that is at once decadent on the palate with richly concentrated flavors of plum pie and cassis that has lots of velvety tannins yet it is elegant with finely structured tannins and a remarkable vitality that has a long, pure finish with fierce precision. Only 285 cases made.