arl Wente is a mind-altering experience. Tall, athletic, charming, handsome, well-educated, well-bred, and a font of knowledge about winegrowing, Wente makes you feel liked there’s nothing he can’t talk about with great enthusiasm and at great length. Particularly if it concerns vines, wines, barrels, yeasts, irrigation, pruning, vineyard management, wine sales trends, the future of Livermore Valley wine, and music.

Wente is a music fanatic. For him, life is all about the matchless harmony of wine, food and music. His house is filled with a score of musical instruments: guitars, drums of all kinds, a violin, keyboards, and most recently a banjo. With the help of a friend who is a violin virtuoso, Wente is teaching himself to play jazz on his guitar. This discipline, this curiosity, this constant need to learn something new and to delve more deeply into the understanding of what makes things tick, also drives him to new levels of winemaking.

When Karl came back to his hometown of Livermore in 2002, after earning multiple degrees at Stanford and UC Davis, and after a year of bumming around Australia in a tent, he began working in the vineyards. Even though he comes from a family culture entirely immersed in wine and ranching, Wente told me, “I was never pressured into becoming part of the wine business. I tried to keep an open mind, and majored in Chemical Engineering at Stanford, thinking it would come in handy for being a winemaker. When I got to UC Davis, I fell in love with the whole wine culture: the people were so passionate. It became crystal clear that I needed to spend my life in the vineyard: I fell 100 percent in love with growing grapes. It is so complex and beautiful, and made me really appreciate winemaking in a new way.”

Going Natural: Shaking Things Up

His initial winemaking experience at the family winery was for the 2002 harvest. “I challenged my Dad, my Uncle (Phil) and Claude (Bobba, longtime Wente winemaker) to a Chardonnay contest. I wanted to see how our different styles might reflect in the wines.

“True to his style, my dad, who the cellar workers all call ‘Big Daddy,’ picked at 22° Brix, pressed it off immediately, let it ferment cold, stirred the lees twice and put it in neutral barrels. Does that sound like Chablis? He loves Chablis. The others chased yeasts. I, on the other hand, chose to go natural. They couldn’t believe I wasn’t inoculating. They thought I was crazy. Sure, natural fermentations can get a little stinky, but my philosophy is ‘Have a little faith. Let it ride!’ You have to manage your fermentations more carefully, and they tend to take longer.

“When I worked at Peter Michael, there was no yeast purchased at the winery. I believe native yeast adds a complexity you can’t achieve in any other way.” He notes that frequent battonage also plays a big role in getting the texture he so desires in Chardonnay: rich and dense, yet never heavy, like a perfect New York cheesecake, complete with graham cracker crust. The 2002 experiment proved Karl had something of a gift, both in the vineyard and in the cellar.

Thinking Large about Small Lots

From working in the family’s nearly 3k acres of vineyards, the majority of which are in Livermore, Karl stepped into an official winemaking role, starting with Small Lots, then Nth Degree, and eventually taking over all winemaking for the entire Wente brand. The most exciting enterprise of the bunch, by far, is the Nth Degree project. Karl says that his father Eric, his Aunt Carolyn and his Uncle Phil had been talking about the pre-Prohibition days and how Livermore had taken the first International Gold medal in a wine competition.

“Uncle Phil said let’s see what happens if we take the best blocks in the best vineyards and farm them intensely, to the Nth degree, as it were. Get to know what each vine is doing. Really focus on the flavors. And so I have become a flavor farmer, a tannin farmer. I’m trying to get the purest expressions of flavors out of each block. I’m looking for intensity of flavors and tannins.” This is terroir winemaking on a micro scale. It’s like caring for each vine as if it were a personal pet, or an African violet.

Vines selected to be part of the Nth degree program receive at least fifteen passes per season by vineyard workers, who carefully prune, pull leaves, remove shoots, and thin clusters in an effort to ensure that the grape clusters remaining at harvest are of the highest quality. Each block is handpicked, sorted and brought to the new “micro winery,” which lies in back of the old facility, and feels somewhat like a startup company in makeshift quarters.

A new building will eventually house this all important operation. All the work here (as opposed to in the main winery), is done by hand and Karl oversees every step of the process. He vinifies small lots in thirty one-ton fermenters. In contrast, some of the other Wente wines are processed in 500k gallon tanks. To have two drastically different production lines in the same facility seems odd, but this is certainly not unusual in the world of Big Dog winemaking.

Over a beautifully executed lunch, Karl is quick to point out that the new wine programs are critical to the family’s long-term plan of elevating the reputation, not only of the Wente brand, but of Livermore wines in general. It is apparent that the Wentes, celebrating their 125th anniversary this year, along with the neighboring Concannons, are beyond passionate about their commitment to the unique wines that Livermore alone can produce. If the Nth Degree project could throw down the gauntlet, Karl would be delighted.

"The Nth Degree vintages require careful treatment from vineyard to barrel because the lots are typically quite small and must be kept separate until blending," says Karl. "We make every effort to express the distinctive vineyard and varietal characteristics of each wine." This exacting and unrelenting approach is one that Karl wishes more Livermore winemakers would embrace.

Since 2004, Karl has begun each harvest with the intention of selecting the grapes he thinks will make the finest expression of the varietal. After about a year in the barrel, he decides what makes the premium Nth Degree cut; the rest goes into the Small Lots program.

A critical component of the Nth Degree program is wood, and Karl has been experimenting with barrels from everywhere, sparing no expense. When he came on board, the company was buying from 4 or 5 coopers in two countries. Now, he is buying from 30 coopers in 8 countries. This has increased his spice rack exponentially.

In addition to offering Wente wine club members something really special, Karl’s efforts on the Nth Degree program have been well rewarded. In an October, 2007 tasting of 12 iconic California Cabernet Sauvignons, hosted by the American Vintners Club in Bordeaux, Wente Vineyards 2004 Nth Degree Cabernet Sauvignon ranked 4th. Not bad for a guitar player who also coaches high school basketball.

Nth Degree Chardonnay:
Here’s a Toast to Not Too Much “Toast”

Have you ever played in an orchestra or band? If so, then you’ve had the distinct pleasure of hearing not only the whole composition being played, but also the individual instruments playing their parts. Barrel tasting the components of the upcoming 2006 Nth Degree Chardonnay, the fruit for which was grown in Livermore on the Wente estate vineyard (from the Wente clone, natch), was very much like the dress rehearsal for a performance where every section plays their part solo one more time. Then, it’s “all together now.”

We sampled all 10 barrels that made the final cut, and in each, the voice of the wine was strong and constant, although each barrel played its own part of the composition. Translating the music of the wine into flavors is part of Karl’s talent. The new Latour barrel from Beaune was creamy and sweet like a brioche, while the Francois Ferrer from Burgundy was like thin crust pizza, with crunchy graham and butterscotch notes. The Kadar Budapest was very spicy and toasty, bringing out flavors of mango crème brulee.

Another Burgundy barrel from Billon produced a creamy, smooth taste of lemon meringue pie. A used French barrel from the 2000 vintage delivered the essential voice of this wine: bright acidity and flavors of lemon and guava. On the other hand, a new Taransaud from Bordeaux delivered big toasty crème brulee with hints of spice and graham, while the Demptos barrel from central France kicked in tremendous woodiness and baking spice.

From Eastern Europe, the Trust barrel was resiny and extremely spicy, while the Damy Meursault barrel from the Alliers forest was sumptuous, delivering a huge mouthfeel, like rich lemon pudding. The Canton barrel added aromas of buttered corn and flavors of caramel corn candy with gobs of butter. The final blend should be something like a lemon cream cheesecake drizzled with butterscotch, or perhaps, something by Gershwin or Brahms.

Nth Degree Pinot Noir: Sniffing Out The Winners

Karl gets his Pinot Noir from Arroyo Seco, in Monterey County, where the family has about 700 acres of vineyards. Thank goodness he doesn’t source Pinot from Livermore, although some are doing so. He looked aghast when I brought up the subject. “It may say ‘Pinot’ on the label, but it doesn’t have any varietal character. Livermore is no place to grow Pinot,” insists would-be Pinot master Karl.

He’s got his work cut out for him, freely admitting that this wine is the biggest challenge of all. He has 8 clones of Pinot in 16 different barrels. They range from Clone 114 to Clone 29, one of the older Martini clones. There is also an unknown clone at this site: Karl found some vines growing at the top of a hill where they get lots of wind exposure. He liked the flavors so much that he encouraged the vineyard manager to propagate this clone and plant more. This “unknown clone” barrel sample aged in a World Cooperage French oak barrel, which was toasted according to Profile 13, was rich and dark, with meaty and bacony flavors.

The same clone in Francois Freres was filled with peppery spice. We tasted Clone 29 in four different barrels. The Radoux Evolution produced floral and cherry nose, with lots of wood tannin. The Taransaud was mighty toasty with scratchy tannins. From the Francois Frere came wonderful aromas of forest floor and earth, and flavors of toasty caramel and deep woods: this barrel really had personality. The Damy barrel produced an intriguing nose of clay and delivered a gorgeous texture with pleasant coffee and chocolate flavors.

After sampling the Nth Degree components, and some of the Small Lots barrels as well, Karl shared the proposed blend he had come up with for both. The Small Lots was medium-to-light in style, more fruity and approachable, with a nice core of cherries and strawberry. Definitely nice, but nothing worth somersaults.

Then there were two samples for Nth Degree: the first one was complex, layered and big in the mouth, but it was missing something. I thought it needed more fruit, zest, acidity. Wente handed me another blend: it was exactly the same, except it contained no wine from the Demptos barrel. Karl concluded that its influence was too strong on the fruit, dampening its spirit and diminishing the wine over all. This blend was lovely, in a Beethoven Moonlight Sonata way. Karl couldn’t have been more right: sometimes less is more, even when you’re doing things to the Nth degree.

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Photos by Laura Ness and courtesy of Wente Vineyards