Home
Joel Peterson, Ravenswood's Zin Master
By Malcolm Jolley
First as a cult pioneer, then as a populariser, Joel Peterson, a
micro-biologist by training, is the man most responsible for America's great
thirst for California Zinfandel. His iconically labelled Ravenswood wines are
priced for value and are snatched up in four star restaurants and big box stores
alike. In true Bay Area dot.com fashion, Peterson took Ravenswood public in the
late 90s (with an online Dutch auction offering) and has since taken a VP gig at
mega producer Constellation, who bought his winery outright a few years ago. In
the offices of Ravenswood's Toronto PR firm, we recently chatted about the early
days of the winery whose slogan is "No Wimpy Wines".
Gremolata: In 1976,
when you started Ravenswood, did you imagine 30 years later you'd be taking
interviews in a fancy PR firm's boardroom?
Joel Peterson: Not a
chance.
Gremolata: OK, dumb question. But what was it that possessed you
to start a winery back then?
Joel Peterson: 'Possessed' is a good word
because there was a certain kind of madness, I suppose. In 1976 we made 327
cases and I expected to be a small, little geeky winery doing single vineyard
designated wines. You know, small lots of wines. But when we doing the
designated vineyard wines, there would always be segments of the vineyard that
didn't fit with the rest of it. So I started making blends from those wines and
called it 'Sonoma County Old Vines Zinfandel'. So, as I developed the flavour
profile of the designate wines, I would try new vineyards, which would also end
up into the blend. And then one of my partners, Reed Foster, came to me in 1983
and said, "You know, you're making great wines and getting great write-ups, but
we have a problem: it takes three years for us to get paid on the wines you
produce. And since you're actually producing more every year, Our cash flow
sucks. I suggest you make white Zinfandel." And I said, "I'm sorry? I don't do
pink. I don't do sweet. And I don't do wimpy wines." And he said, "Well, you
better come up with something because we won't be here in a year, if you don't."
So that's when I came up with my 'Vintner's Blend Zinfandel'. It was a wine we
could get out of the winery in 12 months. And it was a wine that was a little
bit lighter. And it was also I wine that I could drink and enjoy sharing with
friends.
Gremolata: So it was designed with the idea of bringing wine to
the people.
Joel Peterson: It was. And it was designed wit the idea that
we would do it a price that would appeal to a wider audience. Although we didn't
know it would work. In 1983 we were a relatively small winery, but that first
vintage we made 1,500 cases of the Vintner's Blend, and I thought that was a
tremendous amount of wine. I was worried. But then, it was gone in two weeks.
And we wondered, how did that happen?
Gremolata: And that was just in the
wine shops around San Francisco?
Joel Peterson: Yeah, that was strictly
San Francisco. In fact, it was one of those strange occurrences where all the
pieces came together. Simultaneously, or at least very shortly thereafter,
Costco was starting up and that whole phenomenon of the big box store. Like all
small wineries, I resisted selling my wine there because they were a discounter.
And they didn't advertise (which turned out to be a good thing). But Costco came
to me and said, "will you let us sell your wine?" And at first I said I wasn't
interested in a discount store, but they said they weren't really a discount
store, they were a membership store, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. But it was
something else that sealed the deal. In those days my receivables were about 180
days. I only sold at wine stores with on-premise accounts and they were terrible
about paying.
Gremolata: You'd have to go yourself to get your
money?
Joel Peterson: Yeah, that was part of my problem. I just didn't
get paid very well. So, when the guy from Costco said, "By the way, we pay in 30
days." I said, "Maybe we can do something." And it was a hit there, which really
cemented the whole Ravenswood Vintner's Blend phenomenon. We got the wine to the
people.
Gremolata: Is the wine different now than it was in
1983?
Joel Peterson: I've got better at what I do, so I think they're
actually better than they were 1983. I have a lot more flexibility than I ever
had. Part of being bigger is that you can be more severe with your cuts at the
upper end, and be even more severe with the cuts at the middle end. And I like
to say that the lower end is so big that it can absorb my experiments and
mistakes.
Gremolata: Why Zinfandel?
Joel Peterson: Well, there
were a lot of reasons. I grew up tasting wine early, when I was about ten. So I
had tasted a lot of wines by the time I was 18. And by the time I got into the
wine business I was tasting 100 to a 120 wines a week, just for the fun of it. I
had tasted Zinfandels along the way that were very old: a 1900 Inglewood, a 1934
Larkmead. These were really remarkable wines. They weren't just good, they were
very, very good. Just very lovely wines, and I had some reference points to
taste against. But I also knew that in California in the 70s we weren't doing
much with Zinfandel, even though it's our most historical grape. It came to
California in 1854 and rapidly became the state's most important grape. By 1880
there were 30,000 acres planted. It's still the third most planted. But it
wasn't being done very well, and having grown up drinking European wines, I
thought, 'What do great European vineyards have in common?' Dry farming. Some
kind of regulation for low crop levels. Some kind of open canopy. And they're
usually selected for a particular terroir or soil. So, you never see Pinot Noir
or Chardonnay in Bordeaux. They're selective about the grape. Well, the only
grape inCalifornia that really fit those criteria was Zinfandel. In 1976, when
you looked at all the Cabernet, all the vines were planted in the wrong places
and they were irrigating them, and you could see these strange trellising
systems. But Zinfandel had been planted a long time ago. Most of vines that go
into our County series, and many that go into the Vintner's blend, were planted
between 1880 and 1920. So the crop level is low. There on open trellising or
bush vines (depending on which part of the world your from) and that gives them
lots of light and air and spreads them out that way. And during Prohibition, the
vines that were in the wrong places were ripped out, so the ones that survived
are in the best places. Plus Zinfandel itself has been bumped all over the world
until it found its ideal home in California.
Gremolata: What is Zinfandel
exactly? Is it Primotivo?
Joel Peterson: It's actually Crljenak
Kastelanski, a catchy little name that they called it in Croatia. It means the
"red grape of Castel". It came to New York from the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Collection in 1824 with a guy named Gibbs, who grew it in hothouses. He ripened
it by April and sold it for a dollar a cluster, which is $60 a pound. And the
interesting sideline of this story is that when Gibbs died, his wife sold the
property to a bunch of developers. This was Queen's, New York, by the way. Right
across the river from Manhattan. And what do you think the developers called
their new housing estate? They called it "Ravenswood Estate".
Gremolata:
Was that your inspiration?
Joel Peterson: No. I just found out about it
three years ago. There's still a location in Queen's called Ravenswood, just by
the Con Edison power plant. But, my Ravenswood was named because I had an
experience with ravens and it also refers to an opera called Lucia di Lammermor,
where the hero [Lord Ravenswood] drowns in quicksand. I thought starting a
winery was little like drowning in quicksand.
Gremolata: Not a reflection
of how you felt about wine, surely?
Joel Peterson: No, not a reflection
of how I felt about wine, but how I felt about the fact that I crushed my first
grapes in 1976 but I hadn't sold anything by '78 and I still didn't have a name
for the winery. I hadn't sold a bottle and I was more than broke, my domestic
life was in shambles and it was looking pretty ugly. So, I thought, 'This is an
unpleasant experience and I'm going down.' But I loved the wine making part of
it. That whole thing was wonderful. And we obviously survived that,
so...
Gremolata: What does "no wimpy wines" mean? You're not making 17%
high alcohol killers, so I'm not sure.
Joel Peterson: No, I'm not making
17% wines, but at one point they were as big as any California producer. Now
there are people who are making wines that are even bigger and alcoholic and
more out of balance, in my opinion. But you got to think of no wimpy wines as
being on top of your game. So, if you had, for instance 'no wimpy ballet
dancers' that could be Baryshnakov. It's not about being tough, necessarily,
it's about being the finest expression.
Gremolata: And it's not blush
wine?
Joel Peterson: Yeah, it was my initial response to someone
requesting that I make white Zinfandel, because it was hot. But the expression
grew accidentally when Reed went down to a store (because in those days we sold
every case ourselves) and the owner was pressuring him to sell him a white
Zinfandel, asking him when we're going to make it. So Reed says, "I don't think
it's going to happen. Joel's really opposed to white Zinfandel. In fact, he has
a sign over the fermenters that says No Wimpy Wines Allowed." And it would have
died right there, except Greg (who was the store owner) called me up and said,
"I like your wines. I'd like to come and see the winery and, when I'm there, I
really want to see your sign..." So Reed and I made a sign and it kind of went
from there. Like every thing else.
Comments