Gone Hunting
DAVID
HUNT
•
57 •
Winemaker-Owner •
Hunt Cellars •
Paso Robles, CA
Restless,
confident and proud, David Hunt is an affable jokester and
self-promoter, a lively, coaxing conversationalist with a
Carolina drawl. He’s also a fanatic in the lab and
crush-room, an inveterate tinkerer when blending. His Hunt
Cellars produces boutique quantities (nearly ten thousand
cases) of almost all red wines that win a disproportionate
number of awards. Being afflicted with retinitis pigmentosa,
a degenerative eye disease, doesn’t slow Hunt down a whit. A
pianist who’s likely to sit in his red mahogany bar
entertaining guests from his white grand piano, Hunt
whimsically names his wines in musical terms. A keen
competitor, he exudes an enthusiasm for his wines that’s
boyishly infectious.
BEING
BLIND Blindness in
some ways helps me making wine. I’m totally hands-on: I
analyze seeds, grapes. The Good Lord took away my eyes but
gave me an extra-sensitive palate and nose. I trained my
palate before I started making wine. You have to practice.
In a restaurant the other day, my wife picked up the wrong
bottle. “Debbie, this ‘O3 sure tastes like the ‘O1.” Turned
out it was. I’ve developed my wine memory: it’s critical for
blending; when I do 1OOO blends, I have to find the perfect
combination by touch, memory and taste. I can actually hear
the weight and texture of a wine by its sound, the timbre
changes as the wine pours into a glass. I use my sensory
abilities to remember freeway exits; I keep people from
getting lost.
PERFECT
VINEYARDS After
looking at numerous parcels of vineyard potential property,
we eventually (in 1996) settled on our uniquely beautiful
property of over 55O acres in the foothills and mountains of
Creston. This area met our criteria for topography, soil
composition, unparalleled beauty, and ideal terroirs – its
varied elevations and mineral soil composites mirror some of
the world’s great wine regions. That said, I want the very
best grapes when I make my wines. If my Syrah is not as good
as my neighbor’s, I’ll buy his. I’m in the marketplace now
for Cabernet Franc. I’ll buy grapes if I can, juice if I
can’t.
HILLTOP
CABERNET Since we
can’t extend growing seasons, I try to make the wine in the
vineyard. Our vineyards are all hilltop and mountain fruit.
We say we have the French kiss and the farmer’s curse: our
grape berries stay small and intense, but we can’t grow a
decent tomato! The soil’s light, shallow, loamy, potassium
deficient; some vineyards have white calcified rocks,
oceanfront at one time distant. We have planted 4O%
Cabernet. Every winemaker’s goal is to win Best of Class at
LA’s International Wine Fair; we won it out of 25OO entries
in 2OO2, our second harvest. In our premiere year, our
Zinfandel and Syrah won.
TERRIOR
CENTRAL Destiny
Vineyards has six distinct terroirs; I’ll give you a few
examples. Our Cabernet “Bon Vivant” – 4OO feet below our
Cabovation block – brings out the red fruits: wild cherry,
bing cherry red currant. Cabovation gets darker hues: black
currant, black cherry, a darker personality, more structure,
lower yield. Our Syrah is on slopes and swells; I chose four
clones and four rootstocks, following UC Davis’ correct
assessment. The grapes ripened in four different colors, and
the wine-geeks at Aspen Food & Wine Festival dubbed our
‘O2 Hilltop Serenade the “Screaming Eagle” of Syrah. Our
5-acre Sangiovese plot is also in good Cabernet soil, so we
treat it likewise: cold soak, long hang-time. People go wild
over “Rhapsody in Red” our Supertuscan (Sangiovese, Merlot,
Barbera).
GO
for the GOLD Every
wine in our current release has won Multi-Gold Medals, Best
of Class and/or scored 9O+. Since I think a Gold Medal means
more to consumers than a magazine’s 9O, if we win a medal I
don’t enter that wine in further competitions. We won seven
Gold medals in 2OO4 at Florida International Wine
Competition. We’ve won ever year since 2OO2 at the San
Francisco Chronicle Event – Double Gold, Gold or Best of
Class. (Wine guru) Robert Balzer said of my Sauvignon Blanc,
our only white, that it was best he’s ever had. Its huge
viscosity gives it a big mouth feel, so ‘red only’ drinkers
say, “I can drink this!”
OAK
PROGRAM I went
through two cycles of oak in ‘O1 and ‘O2. Some of the big
wines soak it up and the oak induction dissipates, so I had
to give them some more new oak. I don’t rush a wine to
market, I give the wine what it needs to mature. I let them
stay in barrel 32 months, where they gather expression, but
not too much extraction. I try various combinations of
French heads and American staves. All my reds get 2+ years
in barrel, it takes that long to exude the
expression.
MUSICAL
TOUCH As a musician
I name my wines “Symphony” or “Rhapsody”. I was in show
bands at 12, doing college tours and playing clubs. I came
to California to make it as a musician – almost got on The
Dating Game – wrote songs but couldn’t make money. Dave
Benoit was my pianist for three years. I play piano for
tasters and guests; after eight flights, they think I’m
good! But some music does not go with wine; you have to
watch it with certain blues and classical pieces.
TINKERING
‘TIL the END I
treat each wine as if I’d never make another one. I work the
wine and make changes on the bottling line – or I can’t
sleep at night. There’s no winemaking team; it’s all up to
me; I get feedback from tasters later. I almost didn’t
release the last Sangiovese ‘O1; I was about ready to sell
the whole batch, despite its 32 months in barrel. But I
added 😯 gallons of Cabernet into the final blend and that
did the trick! It was only 3%, but it made all the
difference: added more beef, made mouth feel better, brought
out the strawberries. The Critics Challenge made it a Gold
Winner!
MARKET
DARLING Marketing
and networking are the hardest part of the wine business. It
never ends, and you’re only as good as your last bottle. But
we’re close to establishing ourselves. Dartmouth College
School of Business picked us as the next cult
winery.
FAMILY
INVOLVEMENT My wife
Debbie is good at marketing, she does the shows. We named
Cabernet Sauvignon vine blocks after our sons, the high
Mount Christo (“Cabovation”) for Chris (he’s 6’7″) and Derek
Heights (“Bon Vivant”) for Derek (6’4″). Our daughter
Destiny’s name goes as vineyard designation.
BOSTON
PRESENCE Scott
Dahill – of Andy’s, our Massachusetts distributor – has us
in 5O Boston area restaurants. Blue Ginger rotates six of my
wines. Others that come to mind are Excelsior, Azure, The
Ritz Carlton, Blackfin, Smith & Wollensky, Ruth’s
Chris.
RECENT
TRAVELS It’s mostly
business now. We’ve been to France and Italy, going back to
Tuscany. When we had a blind tasting of 2OOO Sassicaia
($4OO; Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet) with my 2OOO “Rhapsody
in Red” (as above with 5% Barbera; $48), all five Italian
sommeliers chose mine for more expression of fruit. We were
in Manhattan in April for a Paso Robles Winery Tasting with
my neighbors EOS, J. Lohr and Justin.
