New California Now: Tasting Wine with Bill Gardner

The New California Wine movement began around the turn of the century but coalesced around 2010. The first wave of its winemakers marked a new chapter in American wine.

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It’s an irresistible October afternoon. The kind of autumn day that makes you embrace morning frost and dying leaves and waxing hours of night. Sun is splashing through windows and across a table where Bill Gardner, the domestic Wine portfolio manager of Left Bank Wine and Spirits, a Wisconsin distributor, has set nine bottles of wine made by his portfolio’s exemplary New California winemakers. “I don’t want our tasting to be about New California wines made in an old European way,” he begins, “but about California wines that taste delicious. But New California is still a useful category to help contextualize and understand where a California winery is coming from.”

The New California Wine movement began around the turn of the century but coalesced around 2010. The first wave of its winemakers marked a new chapter in American wine, a departure from industrialized, high-alcohol, oaky, fruity California Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, and a turn to new varietals and lesser-known terroirs, to wines of greater balance, elegance, and finesse, to wines with an emphasis on acidity and a sense of place, to cultivating grapes and making wines honestly. 

“There have been several waves of New California winemakers,” Bill continues, “and what binds them together is a spirit of adventure and discovery. Have they toppled their predecessors? Not necessarily. But they have garnered their share of the market.” 

Martha Stoumen

“Martha Stouman is lovely, wildly intelligent, down-to-earth, and incredibly conscientious,” relates Gardner. “And she just exudes all of that in the least pretentious way possible.” 

Stoumen is from northern California, but she isn’t from a winemaking family. As a young vinicola, one of her most pivotal experiences was making wine for Giusto Occhipinti at Azienda Agricola Cos in Cerasuolo di Vittoria in Sicily. Occhipinti and Cos make their wines naturally, but they don’t advertise themselves as natural winemakers. It’s just the way they are. “And I think that,” says Gardner, “kind of blew her mind.” As we lift our glasses with Stoumen’s Mendocino County Nero d’Avola, Gardner observes, “When you taste her wines, they taste like the Cos wines of Sicily. They’re high-toned with lots of acid, and they want food.” The beauty, depth, and elegance of Stoumen’s wines reveal themselves to you inexorably, bewitchingly. The more you taste them, the more you fall in love with them. 

A Tribute to Grace 

“A Tribute to Grace is Angela Osborne’s love affair with Grenache,” says Gardner. “Grenache in all its incarnations—Grenache Noir, Grenache Gris, Grenache Blanc.” 

Osborne is a native of New Zealand who arrived in California as a kind of Grenache missionary. “Grenache,” declares Osborne on her website, “encapsulates grace.” Diving into Osborne’s Grenache Noir wines from Santa Barbara County and Cucamonga Valley, Gardner describes their effects. “All of her wines are beautifully textured. They’re soft, and they deliquesce beautifully. They aren’t rustic, but polished and pretty. I would drink these wines every day if I could.”

So would I. So would I.

Jolie-Laide

Jolie-Laide translates to “Pretty-Ugly,” which is how the French fashion world describes somebody or something of unconventional beauty. Scott Schultz is the founder of the winery, and he and his spouse Jenny are its winemakers. “The project embraces many of the values that define New California Wine—a focus on grapes atypical to California, minimalistic winemaking, a stylistic emphasis on acid and freshness,” says Gardner. “Like the A Tribute to Grace wines, I’ve found there to be a textural element to the Jolie-Laide wines that unites them. They’re all quite fresh and clean.” That texture and that freshness shine through each of the three delicious Jolie-Laide wines on the table. Their zenith for me is the lovely Trousseau Gris from the Fanucchi-Wood Road Vineyard in Sonoma County.

Clos Saron

The last wine of the afternoon is the 2016, Clos Saron, North Yuba, Home Vineyard, Pinot Noir. Clos Saron is a singular California winery making small quantities of singular California wines. The Home Vineyard is made from a two-acre vineyard at the home of winemakers Gideon Bienstock and spouse, Saron Rice. The earth of the Sierra Foothills isn't regarded as Pinot Noir terroir, but Bienstock knew the site's cool microclimate would be ideal for cultivating the grape. “Pinot Noir thrives in these granitic, volcanic, ashy, yellow loamy soils of North Yuba in the Sierra Foothills,” Gardner explains. “I think when you taste the wines of these vineyards, they show a similarity with the wines of Beaujolais. Once you’ve tasted wines from granitic terroir, you recognize a set of flavors that only granite can impart.”

If you have yet to explore these wines of New California, this holiday season offers you many occasions to invite them to your table. What they promise you is the discovery of the delicious ways this new America makes wine.

The Wines

Martha Stoumen

  • Post Flirtation Red (Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, Petite Syrah), California, 2022
  • Estimated retail price: $29.99
  • Nero d’Avola, Mendocino County, 2021
  • Estimated retail price: $49.99

A Tribute to Grace  

  • Grenache, Santa Barbara County, 2022
  • Estimated retail price: $35.99
  • Grenache, Hofer Vineyard, Cucamonga Valley, 2022 
  • Estimated retail price: $33.99

Jolie-Laide

  • Trousseau Gris, Fanucchi-Wood Road, Sonoma County, 2023
  • Estimated retail price: $31.99 
  • Glou d’Etat Red Wine (Valdiguie, Mourvedre, Syrah, Carignan, Petit Verdot), Sonoma, 2023
  • Estimated retail price: $24.99
  • Mondeuse Noire, Rancho Coda, Sonoma, 2021 
  • Estimated retail price: 41.99

Clos Saron

  • Pinot Noir, North Yuba, Home Vineyard, 2016
  • Estimated retail price: $69.99
  • Zinfandel, Sierra Foothills, NewZ, 2022 
  • Estimated retail price: $49.99

If you’d like to explore these wines, please ask for them at fine bottle shops, restaurants, and wine bars.