Is it just me, or does sipping wine seem more sophisticated than any other method of alcoholic intoxication? Still, for all that wine is romanticized, my experience in the wine industry has reinforced one truth: Wine is a business, and a rather large one at that — more than $100 billion last year in the U.S. alone.
There are more than 10,000 grapes that can produce viable wine, yet only 33 of them make up more than half of the vineyard surface planted. In consumer trends we trust. The public has spoken, and big wine is listening.
So, what could possibly compel someone to commit, to prized vineyard land, a new, unknown grape? The Ojai Vineyard Estate Red Paseante Noir was born out of equal parts responsibility to the land, necessity and a more than 40-year history of an unrelenting independent spirit.
In 2017, Adam Tolmach, founder of The Ojai Vineyard, resurrected a vineyard that had succumbed to Pierce’s disease 22 years earlier. Pierce’s disease is primarily spread by an insect called the sharpshooter. Sharpshooters suck juices from vines and introduce a bacterium that clogs the water transporting tissues of the vine, usually killing it within a few years. “PD,” as it is referred to by most wine professionals, poses such a threat to the future of the California wine industry that it is treated with an almost “Voldemortian” respect among people in the know.
PD is usually controlled by limiting the sharpshooter population. Blue-eyed sharpshooters can only travel a few hundred feet and prefer lush habitats near creek beds. The emergence of the larger, hungrier and more mobile glassy-winged sharpshooter in the mid-1990s changed the game.
It was only recently that researchers made breakthroughs by studying grapes that could one day be PD resistant. One such researcher is Andy Walker at the University of California-Davis, who spent years breeding hybrid grapes without the influence of GMOs.
Walker offered some cuttings to The Ojai Vineyard, which planted four of those hybrids in a space of a little more than an acre. The results in less than a decade are nothing short of remarkable.
PD is still spreading rapidly northward to more well-known regions of Napa and Sonoma, and our changing climate is aiding the invasion; but whatever the future holds, the initial work and findings of The Ojai Vineyard are as promising as they are delicious.
The Ojai Vineyard,
Estate Red,
Paseante Noir, 2022
Paseante Noir is bred from Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Sirah and, unsurprisingly enough, exemplifies the bold characteristics of all three. It packs a punch with plush plum, dark fruit and some roasty notes of dark chocolate and espresso (without being too warm), yet has some softer minty herb notes. It’s truly a “try it for yourself” wine as it is the first of its kind.
Cost: $40/bottle
The Ojai Vineyard,
Santa Barbara Country Rosé, 2023
The rosé offers an uplifting counterpoint to the brooding Paseante Noir. I tasted it last year from the tank and it immediately took its place among my personal favorites. It felt like chewing strawberry bubble gum in an herb garden. The difference in the 2023 — which just landed on our shores — is the switch from Syrah to Grenache as the lead grape. Syrah, the base in years past, is completely removed and replaced with a chunk of Paseante Noir. The result is a sublimely complex rosé with freshness to match, and speaks to the constant improvement and experimentation at The Ojai Vineyard.
Cost: $35/bottle.
