Kutch Wines

Jamie Kutch’s 2018s are very pretty, vivid wines that very much capture the personality of the year in their translucent expression of place. The generous crop ripened late here, as it did pretty much everywhere. Kutch told me he treated the wines as gently as possible in fermentation. With the exception of the Bohan Graveyard Block, which was made with destemmed fruit, the 2018 Pinots were done with essentially 100% stems and aged in mostly neutral oak with no racking until July, when the wines were prepared for bottling. The 2018 Chardonnays are equally promising.

Antonio Galloni, Vinous – January 2020

Jamie Kutch, is a Fordham graduate who was a NASDAQ trader with Merrill Lynch, commuting daily to Manhatten via the Long Island Railroad, and gave it all up to move to California and make Pinot Noir. Upon the urgings of Andrew Vingiello (A.P. Vin) and Brian Loring (Loring Wine Company), Jamie sent an e-mail to Michael Browne of Kosta Browne Winery, located in the Russian River Valley at that time, and detailed his dream to make Pinot Noir. Michael’s advice was “Go for your dreams if it is at all possible, otherwise, you might regret it for the rest of your life. A man had once told me that ‘the biggest regrets in life are not things that you did, but the things that you did not do.’ I thought he was a very wise man.” That was all Jamie needed to hear. Michael offered to be his mentor and assist him in making his initial Pinot Noir under his own label. Jamie quit his job, talked his girlfriend into moving west with him, and in a short time was in San Francisco. Jamie’s unusual proposal to his girlfriend (PinotFile, Vol 5, Issue 9, “Love Among the Must”) was only fitting, since wine has played an immortal role in the seducing, loving and marrying of women by men.

Jamie released his inaugural wines from the 2005 vintage: a Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley and a Rosé from the Sonoma Coast. By 2009 he was still refining his style, looking to Burgundy for inspiration, and emphasizing earlier picking, some whole cluster in vineyard-designate bottlings, native fermentations, and aging in air-dried, tight grain Francois Frères oak barrels. His goal is Pinot Noir that is food friendly but age worthy. Although he denounces his first two vintages as veering from the direction he is now taking, the initial response to his wines was very favorable, and he quickly became one of the new young hounds in the Pinot race. His wines have been well-received by the wine press including James Laube of the Wine Spectator.

With the 2009 vintage, appellation Pinot Noirs from the Anderson Valley and Sonoma Coast and vineyard designated Pinot Noirs from Savoy, Falstaff and McDougall Ranch vineyards are offered.Two Pinot Noirs are produced:

Bohan Vineyard

George & Nikki Bohan are the current guardians of 1,100 acres of land on a remote ridge of the Sonoma Coast, 1400’ in elevation, and just 3 miles from Pacific Ocean. In 2013, I was provided the opportunity to purchase their fruit.  As I stepped foot onto the property for the first time, I immediately was captivated by the breathtaking beauty of the landscape. My connection to the site only grew deeper as I heard firsthand the incredibly rich, storied history of their family.  

Today, Bohan is just one of four vineyards we proudly partner with and place their family’s name on our bottle as a single vineyard designate. The fruit closely resembles their happy, kind and carefree personalities, and upon smelling the wine in a glass, the aromatics provide an instantaneous smile. George and Nikki, along with brother Mick, barely sleep during harvest, as they work relentlessly to pull 150-200 tons of grapes off the vines for Failla, Flowers, Sandlands, Arnot Roberts and Kutch.  They are real deal, fourth generation farmers.  After 161 years of their family making a living off what the land provides, this is the true definition of sustainability.  How they got here is a story that I am fortunate to have the opportunity to share with you today.

William Shakespeare’s fictional character, Sir John Falstaff, was a great fat knight who was vain, boastful, cowardly and spent most of his time drinking at the bar while living on stolen or borrowed money. Despite these unsavory characteristics, many scholars say that Falstaff was one of Shakespeare’s greatest inventions alongside Hamlet and Cleopatra. So, what is so special about a drunken, gluttonous, lazy old man? His appetite! Falstaff not only has a boundless appetite for food and wine, but also for language, laughter, people, and life. It is these qualities that I share with Shakespeare’s grand character and hope to translate through the wine that shares his name. 

Falstaff Vineyard is located eight miles from the Pacific Ocean on Falstaff Road, just outside of the town of Sebastopol. The town was established in the 1850’s and became a trade center for farmers from the surrounding agricultural regions. As California’s population boomed post gold rush, more people began to settle in the region to try their hand at farming. Sebastopol quickly became a premier farming area and was known as the Gravenstein apple capital of the world. Today, apples have given way to grapes but its reputation for high quality agriculture remains. 

Falstaff Vineyard 

Ron and Judy Lougheed purchased their 6-acre Falstaff Road property in 1999 with the intention of growing grapes. Ron, a retired chemist, and Judy, a retired micro biologist for the state of California, were passionate wine lovers and spent many weekends in wine country exploring and imbibing. Excited to start a vineyard of their own, they planted 5.75 acres to Pinot Noir less than a year after they purchased their property. At the time, there were no other vineyards on Falstaff Road and now, two decades later, there are three with a fourth likely to be planted soon.

After digging soil pits and working with Jim Pratt of Cornerstone Certified Vineyards, Ron and Judy chose to plant three different clones of Pinot Noir- 828 (ASW2), 115 & 777.  The 828 was a “suitcase clone” meaning that the bud wood was brought in to the United States from France by Gary Andrus of Archery Summit. The cuttings skipped quarantine and a laborious, legal certification process and have been propagated throughout Oregon and California. This particular clone of 828 can be easily identified by its peculiar skyward growing clusters (as you can see in the photo). 

These upright bunches brave an exceedingly cold, foggy coastal climate that, according to weather station data on the property, is consistently colder than Burgundy. “If you want grapes at 25 Brix, you need to go elsewhere. This is a marginal site and ripening is tricky.” cautions Lougheed. Each year, we find ourselves anxiously waiting for the fruit to ripen while threats of the first fall rain loom large. Falstaff is always our last picked Pinot Noir vineyard of the season and historically, the smallest yielding (< 1 ton/acre at times). In 2016, I asked Dr. Paul Skinner, a soil and viticulture scientist, to offer some insight and techniques to increase crop size and maximize phenolic ripeness in such an extreme site. Ron put Dr. Skinner’s advice into practice and together we have increased the quality of the wine significantly. As an added bonus, yields have been up year after year. I can confidently say that 2017 Falstaff is our best from the site to date and my personal favorite wine of the vintage. 

In the pursuit of trying to create the highest quality balanced wines possible, the old saying goes, “wine is made in the vineyard.” Following that philosophy, we strive to use well positioned, cold climate sites, having appropriate soils.

It has been a challenge to locate and secure such sites, causing our production to grow at a slow but steady pace. Once the fruit is harvested, it is handled with the utmost care, sorted meticulously and moved only by gravity. We attempt to pursue a minimalist philosophy, trying to provide the purest expression of Pinot Noir from a particular place and time, taking great care not to over-manipulate our wines in the cellar. This minimal interventionalist style of wine-making is reflected in our use of indigenous yeast, native malolactic bacteria and élevage in 100% neutral oak barrels (no new).  

All punch-downs are done by foot. Upon completion of fermentation, the wine is gravity flowed into French oak barrels, where they remain unmoved while aging sur lie (on the fine lees). The wines are never racked until we are ready to bottle, between 11 and 16 months after harvest. At Kutch, our wines are encouraged to express all of the natural greatness of their vineyard origins.

I have profiled Jamie extensively over the past twelve years since I first met him. Jamie’s interest in Pinot Noir developed while he was working as a stock trader at Merrill Lynch in New York. He has admitted that part of his interest was fueled by reading the PinotFile. Upon the urgings of other young winemakers in California, including Andrew Vingiello (A.P.Vin), Brian Loring (Loring Wine Company) and Michael Browne (Kosta Browne), Jamie quit his job, talked his wife-to-be, Kristen, to move west with him, and began learning winemaking under the tutelage of Michael Browne. I first met Jamie when he was working for Michael while Michael was making wine at Freeman Winery in Sebastopol in the early 2000s.

Jamie did not follow the path of Kosta Browne Pinot Noir stylistically after his first two vintages. He developed his own style through tasting many older vintages of top-shelf California Pinot Noir looking to discover their desirable wine traits such as balance and age ability. Travels to Burgundy allowed him to learn more about stem inclusion and time spent with accomplished California winemakers and growers fueled his passion. His talent as a thinker and innovator led him to push the envelope successfully. He has become respected by wine cognoscenti for the individuality of his wines and his accomplishments in a relatively short period of time.

Jamie’s first commercial vintage was 2005, the same as for Benovia Winery. Since then, he has become a strong proponent of whole cluster fermentation. Inclusion of whole clusters in fermentation adds an extra dimension to the structure, texture, sensuality, and aromatic and flavor profile of Pinot Noir. That said, there are a number of potential pitfalls to this technique such as green aromas and flavors, so appropriate vineyard sites must be chosen carefully vintage vagaries taken into account, and vinification protocols adapted accordingly. Jamie began extensive whole cluster trials in 2009 and was cautious at first, but he found that it was the wines he produced with 100% whole cluster fermentation that he liked the best. By 2012, he was all in so to speak, vinifying all of his wines with 100% stem inclusion.

In the winery, after the grapes are carefully sorted, Jamie puts the whole clusters in open-top fermenters, initiates fermentation with wild yeasts, punches down with his feet, then basket presses the must into French oak barrels where natural malolactic fermentation ensues. The wines are aged on the lees for about 10 months, and left alone until bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Proprietors: Jamie and Kristen Kutch 
Winemaker: Jamie Kutch 
Address: 21660 8th Street East, Sonoma 
Website: www.kutchwines.com. 
Tasting: Available to mailing list customers who have made a previous purchase from the mailing list. Email tastings@kutchwines.com well in advance. Weekdays only. A limited number of appointments are available for those who don’t have a previous purchase ($30 per person). 
Wine purchases: Offered twice a year to mailing list members only by allocation. Prices range from $39-$62. 
Wines: Offered twice a year to mailing list members only. Sonoma Coast Rosé of Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Bohan Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Falstaff Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, McDougall Ranch Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, and Signal Ridge Mendocino Ridge Pinot Noir. Very limited amount of Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay has been produced. Annual production 2,500 cases.

By Prince of Pinot