The Experroir of the West Coast
A SCOTTISH-BORN SONOMA COUNTY CHAMPION CREATES A WINE PERFECTLY OF THIS TIME, AND THIS PLACE
Terroir is a French wine term that describes how the characteristics of a specific place influence the wine that is produced there. It comes from the Latin root meaning “earth.” Noted wine journalist and author Hugh Johnson wrote, “Terroir, of course, means much more than what goes on beneath the surface. Properly understood, it means the whole ecology of a vineyard: every aspect of its surroundings from bedrock to late frosts and autumn mists, not excluding the way a vineyard is tended, nor even the soul of the vigneron.”
But what about the story surrounding the when and where and with whom a wine is consumed? I don’t know of a specific term used for this, but, for me, there is also an emotional landscape imprinted onto my experience of a particular wine.
I remember opening a bottle of Medlock Ames Merlot to share with my mother and siblings on the last Christmas before our mother passed away. My mother loved Merlot, Sideways be damned. When my friend announced her engagement to the man she had been dating on and off for five years, all of us, including the bride-to-be, were a bit surprised, but happy. I broke out my special bottle of Tuscan Ruffino Brunello to celebrate. I was served Poseidon Vineyards “Rosé for the Bay” at an event at San Francisco’s South End Club, and I credit the wine with my agreeing to swim a relay from the Golden Gate Bridge to AT&T Park, to raise money for San Francisco Baykeeper, the environmental organization. The taste of that wine now reminds me of the moment when I realized, with great relief, that the fin moving alongside me in the Bay belonged to a Mola Mola sunfish—not a Great White.
My semi-regular foraging adventures along the Sonoma Coast, gathering wild mushrooms in the fall and seaweed in the spring, often culminate with a nosh fest of coal-roasted line-caught rockfish, flash fried nori and thick chunks of divine McKinley Cheddar and Bodega Blue, a Stilton-inspired cheese, from Sebastopol cheesemaker Wm. Cofield. The wines at these gatherings need to evoke a distinctly West Coast attitude—outdoorsy, uncomplicated and food friendly.
Lucky for me, these outings almost always include my friend Kenneth Rochford, co-founder of West + Wilder, the Sonoma County–based upstart wine company that is, yes, canning wines.
I first met Kenneth, known to most as Kenny, at the 2008 Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. Instantly likeable and funny, the Scottish-born Kenny was at the time the general manager of Medlock Ames, the highly esteemed winery located in Sonoma’s Alexander Valley. I was new then to the Bay Area and fascinated with Medlock Ames’ progressive farming methods. Kenny also impressed me with his very down-to-earth attitude toward wine.
One of the aspects of Medlock Ames’ practices that Kenny was the most proud of was the winery’s community garden that all employees were encouraged to participate in. “Everyone helps,” he said when I visited him at the winery. “And every Friday, they take vegetables home to their families. It’s sort of a team-building experience.”
This wasn’t the only garden championed by Kenny. An impassioned pickler and marmalade maker, when his own cupboards, and those of his friends and family, began to overflow with the fruits of his labors, he founded an organization called School Garden Preserves, selling preserves to raise money for school gardens in Sonoma County. He brushes his good deed aside, “My wife teaches at the schools, my kid is a student.”
In 2013, Kenny became the director of sales and marketing at Kosta Browne Winery. The prestigious Sebastopol winery is known for big Pinot Noirs, and their wine club often has a waiting list of almost two years. So why, in 2018, did Kenny decide to make a move to canned wine?
Kenny refers back to a brainstorming session with his friend and West + Wilder co-founder, Matt Allan. Matt was just leaving Medlock Ames to earn a Green MBA at San Francisco’s Presidio Graduate School when Kenny was arriving at the company. Matt had been at Medlock Ames since the beginning. “I learned a lot about growing grapes and winemaking. Since it was so early, there wasn’t much wine to sell. So I fixed a lot of tractors,” Matt explained.
After earning his Green MBA, Matt worked in the solar industry, but says that after a while he missed the outdoors and walking through the vineyards. He also missed the creativity of start-ups.
One night in 2016, while the two friends were discussing wine and its innovations, or lack thereof, they came to the topic of the burgeoning world of canned wines. Due to advances in manufacturing, aluminum no longer imparts a metallic taste to what lies within. Cans are also considered to be eco-friendly— aluminum is more likely to be recycled, and it’s lighter than glass, which, producers argue, makes for a smaller carbon footprint from transportation.
Canned wines are also very outdoor activity friendly—lightweight for hiking, and permitted on beaches and poolside where bottles aren’t allowed.
And yet, presumably because of the longtime connection between cans and mass-produced cheap beer, canned wines, although currently exploding in popularity, especially among certain segments of the population, suffer from a certain “downscale” stigma. So the two thought: Why not capitalize on that and offer delicious, high-quality wines without the pretense of varietal and vintage designation?
“Wine is a code,” Kenny posited. “Do people really know the difference between Viognier and Chenin Blanc? Should they need to know it to enjoy the wine?”
And, thus, West + Wilder was born.
Currently, West + Wilder offers four different canned wines: a white blend, a white sparkling, a rosé and a sparkling rosé. All come in slender cans bearing gorgeous illustrations from The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits (1897), by Mary Elizabeth Parsons and illustrated by Margaret Warriner Buck. Parsons and Buck were Bay Area artists who hiked around California in the late 1800s, researching the book.
Walking the walk, West + Wilder donates 1% of its profits to the organization “1% for the Planet.” According to the company’s website, their 1% is designated the preservation of wild spaces for all of us to enjoy—now and tomorrow.
But it’s definitely not all about the trendy, beautiful cans. “The motivation behind how each wine is made is simple: to make something that tastes delicious each time you open it. We didn’t want there to be any guessing about when to open our wines, or how to enjoy them,” Matt said. “With that goal in mind, our fruit sourcing is not restricted by vineyard, region or even varietal. We source from a variety of vineyards up and down the West Coast so that we can create wines that deliver quality regardless of vintage, climate or even wildfires.”
They source their grapes from Washington, Oregon and California. What they like about this is the surprises, Kenny explained. “Freeing ourselves from working with just a specific grape or region allows us to make wines that consistently exceed our expectations—and sometimes the results surprise you, like that 60-year-old Washington State head-pruned Chenin Blanc you find really likes to blend with an Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc.”
He likens the canned wine craze to the other recent wine “rule breaker.” “It used to be unheard of to drink rosé outside of summer months, but now we’re drinking it all year round,” he said. “And nobody is saying that’s a bad thing.”
After our most recent mushroom hunt at Salt Point this past December— a bust, by the way, but we still stoked a fire and had a cookout with local rockfish, mussels and clams, that divine cheese and plenty of delicious canned wine—we perched on the rock-strewn coast to watch the sun cast orange hues over the blue Pacific as it sank toward the horizon. I asked Kenny if he knew a word for this part of the wine experience—the time and place and conditions where it’s enjoyed. He thought about it, and answered, “Wine always tastes better with good company. Re-tasted, that wine can transport you back to the time of discovery and the food, friends and fun of that meeting.”
He paused, then said, “If there’s not a word, we should create one. Experroir, perhaps?”
West + Wilder wines can be found at numerous markets and cafés in the Bay Area, including Rustic Bakery, Flour Craft and Fisher’s Cheese and Wine in Marin County, Jimtown Store in Healdsburg, Oakville Grocery in Healdsburg and Oakville, Miracle Plum in Santa Rosa and Pacific Market in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa. WestAndWilder.com
