The Winemaker and the Custom Crush

Back when I worked in Manchester for hangingditch wine merchants, one of our most popular wineries was Napa's Peter Franus. This was partly because my colleague Sophia Luckett adored the wines and would sell them to unassuming customers at any opportunity; she even hosted a winemakers' dinner in an underground, disused bank vault with Franus. The wines' popularity was also because of their forward, fruity style: these were wines that spoke loudly and clearly, true to their California origin.

Sophia visited Napa last week, exploring the genesis of some of the wines we once sold in the shop together. On her very last morning before braving the San Francisco traffic to get to the airport, we made something of a pilgrimage to visit Peter Franus's production facilities just a few miles north of Napa.

assistant winemaker Tim Dolven, Sophia, and Peter Franus

The experience was somewhat different from what we had been expecting. Rather than the romantic image of the winemaker slaving to make the perfect wine in dusty, dirty, ramshackle conditions that the name "Peter Franus" had evoked in far away Manchester, Franus makes his wine in a custom crush facility shared by forty other labels, together producing 400,000 cases a year. With his 4,500 cases, Franus is just a small cog in the machine, but the mechanical reality of winemaking was evident.

Peter Franus has been making wine for decades - he was winemaker at Mount Veeder winery from 1981 until 1992. He has had his own label since the late 1980s, but he has never had his own physical winery. He first used Mount Veeder's facilities, then others', before settling on Laird Family Estate in 2002, where he's still based.

Laird themselves make 25,000 cases a year, but their large and impressive facilities are mainly used for custom crush, an enterprise they established in 2001. Custom crush is a brilliant idea, mainly - I thought - used for amateur enthusiasts to make wine. It allows the latter to use the facilities of large, established operations without having to buy any of the equipment themselves, while drawing on the wineries' experience and expertise. They can be as active and involved in the winemaking process as they wish, or be completely hands-off and allow the winery to produce the wine for them.

Peter Franus isn't the first producer I've met who has used custom crush facilities at other wineries to make wine. Waits-Mast, an excellent producer of Sonoma and Mendocino Pinot Noir, first started making their wine this way, although they now have their own (shared) production facilities in San Francisco. What surprised me about Franus continuing to use a large operation like Laird's is the lack of control it affords him over the winemaking. Everything is done by Laird rather than Franus, albeit under his instructions: the pressing and crushing of the grapes, fermentation, any treatment of the wines in barrel, bottling. The only thing Franus has to take charge of is storing and selling the wines.

Does this make the wines less 'authentic'? Everything is still done as Peter Franus and his assistant winemaker Tim Dolven ask; he buys the grapes from his favoured vineyards around Napa; the wines are aged and blended as he wants; they are bottled under his label and taste recognisably his. Franus also follows the philosophy of intervening as little as possible in the development of a wine. I still find it difficult, however, to imagine many other serious winemakers willingly ceding so much control to such a large operation.

In the meantime, Peter Franus is becoming increasingly popular in a UK more attuned to California's wines - in fact, very little of his wine is sold locally. Compared to the extortionate prices many Napa wines fetch, they present very good value. We got to taste several of his wines, mainly from the barrel.

2015 Chardonnay

Still fermenting in its barrel and a little bit sweet and grapey. Even at this early stage, though, it was possible to sense its potential: there was already a bit of spiciness from the oak, with rich stone and tropical fruit flavours. The wine will also undergo some malolactic fermentation.

2014 and 2015 Albariño

It's very unusual to see Albariño in Napa Valley. The grapes are sourced from a vineyard just south of the city next to Highway 29, where it's not that far from the cooling maritime influence of San Pablo Bay. This allows the wine to maintain its acidity and gives it a saline quality that makes it surprisingly similar to those of wet Galicia, which Albariño is native to. Even though the still-fermenting 2015 was a little bit sweet, it was still possible to sense the stony, drying acidity that was more immediately apparent in the bottled 2014.

2014 and 2015 Zinfandel

From a vineyard on Mt. Veeder, these two wines had the rich fruitiness typical of the grape but with noticeable tannins from the cooler altitude. The 2015, again still fermenting in its stainless steel tank, tasted like acidic, fruity, tannic grape juice; the 2014, ageing in oak, now tasted like wine, and a very good one at that.