An Afternoon with Byron Kosuge

A week ago I sat down for an afternoon wine tasting with Byron Kosuge, a veteran winemaker and consultant for several wineries and estates in California, as well as Kingston Family Vineyards in Chile. He’s probably best known these days for his own B. Kosuge label. It’s still a pretty small brand, but the wines are subtle and understated, just like Kosuge himself.

Kosuge was fortunate to land his first wine job at Saintsbury, a rising star in the Carneros Pinot Noir and Chardonnay scene in the mid-1980’s. It was an exciting time for American Pinot Noir as Napa wineries focused on the cool southern part of Napa – Carneros – as a source of higher quality Pinot Noir.

After working his way up to the head winemaking position, Kosuge would help that Saintsbury cement itself as a leading California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay brand in the 1990’s.

To hear the story told through Kosuge’s own memories, it sounds like the story of an unassuming guy who was just tossed into the roiling surf of a fast-changing California wine trend. Sure, he did catch a big wave, but he also deserves credit for what he made out of that wave, at Saintsbury and beyond. 

His most recent work is a demonstration of what he has learned and what he has become. 

“I started out at Saintsbury after college in 1985. They had just built a winery and they were only making about 7,500 cases a year. Between ‘85 and the early ‘90s it grew a lot, up to about 40,000 cases. They also started buying vineyards and planted 3 estate vineyards.” Kosuge told me that watching those vineyards being planted and seeing the thought process that went into the process taught him a lot.  

“Working there turned me into a Pinot and Chardonnay guy, where before I didn’t have any specific ambitions,” Kosuge told me.  

These days, Kosuge comes across as really well grounded. He’s modest, thoughtful, introspective, and soft-spoken. He’s making a different style of wine than he did in the 1990’s. It’s a more minimalist, delicate style of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that’s less sweet and opulent, uses less new oak, and aims to make wines that are more bright and elegant.

Kosuge isn’t the only winemaker that has headed down this aesthetic path. He’s one of quite a few. Most of them are small producers that know that they’re catering to a fairly small, but fast-growing, audience that appreciates this fresher California style. But where some old school California Pinot and Chardonnay winemakers are still being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era, Kosuge has been along for the ride all along and has invaluable perspective. And it shows in the nuanced ripeness, richness and elegance of his wines.

“My guiding principles: have changed over the years. I had two not-particularly-reconcilable guiding principles about making Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Burgundy was the model everyone wanted to emulate. People copied the techniques. On the other hand, it was also important for me not to try to make wines into something that they were not. California Pinot Noir and Burgundy just don’t taste the same. It wasn’t really possible to make California Pinot Noir taste like Burgundy through manipulation. I learned to appreciate Pinot Noir by drinking Burgundy and appreciated the perfumed style of wine.”

“It was a slightly uneasy compromise. “California shifted toward riper styles of wine and there were people richly rewarded for pursuing that style. I want to make fresher wines that aren’t Burgundy, but that have some of that energy. The way to get there is not to copy Burgundy. This process started around 2011. I started backing off of new oak, bottling earlier, and choosing the right sites is really important.”

For a lot of winemakers pursuing a more elegant style led to a migration of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay specialists from Carneros in the 1990s, to Russian River Valley in Sonoma, and then to even cooler sites on the Sonoma Coast, Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, and the high coastal and inland ridgelines of Mendocino County. 

Kosuge told me that in the 1990’s Carneros was a great source of grapes for larger Napa Valley brands that wanted to source decent Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes from the cooler southern end of the valley. There really weren’t that many boutique Pinot Noir and Chardonnay brands that were based in Carneros and that were really raising the bar. Saintsbury was one of them. Etude was another, and there were a few small brands like Ancien, but Carneros was essentially delivering the ripe, fruity style of grapes that would appeal to the same folks who buy big, rich Napa Cabernets. And some of the vineyard sites are better than others.

There are still great Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays made in Carneros. And Kosugue knows the best sites as well as anyone. Carneros still has a special place in his heart. “I do still make Carneros Pinot, but I try to make it in a fresh, energetic style. I’m not picking way earlier… well, a little maybe. I’m also drawn emotionally and intellectually to making wine in a relatively natural style. Not making ‘Natural’ wine per se, but not using a lot of remedial techniques.”

Today Kosuge makes about 1,200 cases of wine a year, most of it Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast and Carneros, but he does consult with a number of other wineries, as he has done for years. His own wines are distributed by Swirl in California, Skurnik wines in NY, NJ, Connecticut, and he sells a bit in Massachussets and North Carolina.

“I started my own brand in 2004, but I had done a lot of consulting on Carneros projects, sometimes with larger wineries that were sourcing grapes from Carneros. It was fun being part of the brain trust of some of those programs,” said Kosuge.

 I had also met Courtney (Kingston) and started to work for her around the same time,” Kosuge explained. Kingston Family Vineyards is one of the handful of family-owned estates that has been pioneering the cool, coastal frontier of the Chilean wine scene in the last 15 years. Working with Kingston has been a great education for Kosuge, allowing him to work two harvests per vintage under circumstances that are both similar and different.

“My experience in Chile has been one of the most oenologically invigorating thing I have ever done. I first went down in December of ’02. I had met Courtney and talked about pioneering in Chile. At Saintsbury, I had some interns and assistants from New Zealand – there was a lot of back and forth. I thought they had an up and coming pinot industry, and I was really interested in working there. It’s beautiful, people are nice and I sniffed around for opportunities, but nothing really turned up.  Then the Kinsgston thing happened when the Kingstons visited Saintsbury doing their homework.  Our paths crossed several times in the late 1990s. In 2002, I went to Steamboat Pinot Noir Conference retreat in Oregon.”

The Steamboat Pinot Noir conference is sort of a ‘safe place’ for Pinot Noir makers from around the world to come together in a relatively private setting away from the bright lights to share ideas, tips, and receive some peer reviews. I haven’t been, but that’s my rough understanding of the concept.

“Courtney was there with a bunch of maps. Originally they wanted to be a named vineyard just selling grapes, but they decided they wanted to make some of their own wine. The big Chilean wineries only wanted to market and promote their own vineyards.  Making and marketing their own wine was the way for the Kingstons to develop their vineyard’s brand.” Said Kosuge.  He decided to sign on for the commute.

“A couple of years later, we shared the first wines with some tastemakers like Raj Parr and Debbie Zachareas and they thought the wines had some commercial potential,” said Kosuge

Working with Kingston was an eye-opener for me because I found Central Chile to be very similar to the Central Coast of California. The light was similar, and the plants even looked similar from a distance, even though they were different when you got up close. It didn’t take very long for me to figure out in the tough 2004 and 2005 vintages that the fruit behaves differently and needs to be treated differently in the winery,” Kosuge told me.  

“Chilean Pinot does not like new oak at all. It’s much more tannic, and the tannins are different than California Pinot Noir. After the first couple of years we had more used barrels to work with. It wasn’t easy to buy used barrels when we started. We needed to rethink the extraction and use less pumping over and punching down - that really started around 2011 or 2012. By then, the vines were getting more mature, which made me more comfortable picking earlier and using more whole clusters (including the stems in the fermentation). Dealing with some of those challenges in the first eight or ten years made me think a lot about how I make California wines and I started to think that I could apply some of the same techniques to my California wines - especially in the maturation process,” said Kosuge.

Kosuge has become fond of maturing wines in fashionable concrete eggs. He says he could use square concrete tanks, too, but he also notes that when you ferment wines in egg-shaped vessels they seem to circulate the must naturally and gently.  He first had an opportunity to work with them in Chile and now uses them frequently in California.

Making wine twice a year in North and South America meant that he could learn more quickly by trying more new things.

“Between 2004 and ’08 I was frustrated with how the flavors were developing in the Chilean Pinot Noirs. They have a bit of a tobacco, smoky, not exactly 'green' flavor. I had to acknowledge that it was part of the character of the fruit. If it got strong I didn’t like it, so I knew I had to work on my extraction techniques. It was nice to get taken out of my confort zone, and I think it made me a better winemaker,” Kosuge told me. 

Today Kosuge also makes wine for Miura and Small Vines in Sebastapol where he makes his own wines. He also makes a bit of wine for McEvoy Ranch (probably best known for their olive oil, and Alder Springs, a high altitude estate in Mendocino County.

“Alder Springs is not really a marine climate. It’s mostly between 2,000 and 2,800 feet in elevation, and that combined with how far north it is, gives you a short growing season. It’s cold in spring, hot in summer and cold again in fall,” said Kosuge. For his own wines, he works mostly with fruit from Sonoma Coast and Carneros, including vineyards like Hirsch on the Sonoma Coast and Manchester Ridge in Mendocino County.

THE WINES

I know… finally, right!

B. Kosuge 2015 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast ($35) Caramel, white peach, lemongrass lemon curd. A blend of two vineyards. 60% from Keller Estate’s vineyard and 40% brom Barlow. Made in Concrete eggs and oak. I wanted to work with something not as neutral as stainless steel but more neutral than oak. What is true about the eggs is that the wine is more in motion while active. I think that’s because of the motion, especially with malo, where the yeast and bacteria stay more suspended. (91)

B. Kosuge 2015 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast ($30) I has a very pretty nose, and is made in a fairly lean style with strawberry ,black pepper and cherry, very lively on the palate with great acidity. It might be on the lean side for some, but it’s a good example of contemporary Sonoma Coast PN. (91)

Byron Says: “I’m not trying to hit 12% alcohol. My style is less sweet than it used to be. In 2004 to 2008 I used to make wines that tended to be over 14% and now then tend to be under. One factor is that the vines are older, and the growers are older and smarter. Many of the improvements have happened in the vineyard like deficit irrigation and vine nutrition. A lot of that happened in the 1990’s. At Saintsbury we sometimes picked riper to compensate for weaker viticulture practices. Now, 25 years later, if you want to pick at 23 brix, you can get it ripe at that sugar level.”

B. Kosuge 2015 ‘The Habitat’ Pinot Noir  Sonoma Coast ($45) Sourced from Barlow Homestead Vineyard  just outside of Sebastapol, which is very densely planted, and a relatively young vineyard planted around 2009. Blueberry, raspberry liqueur, white pepper, and sassafras notes with tangy acidity. It has an intriguing sweetness to the fruit character, but is a very dry, elegant wine. (93)

B. Kosuge 2015 Hirsch Vineyard Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast ($56) Hirsch Vineyard is a fine 

property, but it’s also an extremely cool site quite close to the Pacific and it does tend to make wines that are rather light, fragrant and on the lean side, even for my liking. I like this one more than some other wines I’ve had from Hirsch in the past. It’s perfumed and quite elgant with pretty wild strawberry fruit and great acid. It’s not deep or hearty or dark, but it is very pretty, if a tad fleeting on the palate. Not cheap, and probably not for everyone, but it’s a very interesting, cutting edge wine, and very well made at that. (90)

B. Kosuge 2015 ‘El Galpon’ Pinot Noir Carneros ($30) Supple and spicy with violet and  cinnamon notes on the nose, plum, white pepper, cherry, cola flavors.. Finishes lively. Not a lot of new oak on it. This wine is matures exclusively in concrete vessels. Galpon means shed / workshop . (91)

B. Kosuge 2015 “The Shop” Pinot Noir Carneros ($35) A little more oak here. 60% aged in oak, 40% in Concrete. Toastier, woodier nose with some floral violet and rose and herb notes. Sandalwood, very savory, salty, less fruity with supple plum, cherry flavors, cardamom, mint. More whole clusters to add some carbonic quality for fresh, grapey flavors. Not my favorite, but good. (88)

Next up is a Gamay – a variety that you won’t find much of in Napa or Sonoma these days.

Byron says: “In 2014 I went up to the Foothills and met with a guy named  Ron Mansfield and bought some Gamay budwood because I love Beaujolais. Gamay grapes were impossible to find in Napa and Sonoma. All of the true Gamay was up in El Dorado County, which seemed too far away to source. At The Shop they were willing to graft over ½ acre if I supplied the budwood and promised to buy all of the grapes. GoldbudFarms is Ron’s property.”

“It gets no carbonic maceration as you might get with traditional mass-market Beaujolais, but lots of whole clusters in the fermentation tank, punched down and pumped over. I treated it a little more delicately than I would pinot noir. It has a really low pH and more color than you might think. It really likes to age in concrete tanks.”

B. Kosuge 2016 Gamay Noir Carneros ($25) Kosuge says he is definitely aiming for more of a ‘cru’ style, high quality Beaujolais archetype. The wine has good depth, pretty grape, violet, aromas, but it is still reductive and, needs some air. Tasting it again over the next couple of days, it seems like a really nice wine, but it doesn’t really have the minerally profile that distinguishes Cru Beaujolais. It’s very good, but not spectacular. (87)

B. Kosuge 2016 Rosé Carneros ($18) This saignée from Carneros Pinot Noir and Gamay  grapes makes all kinds of sense. The saignee process involves draining a bit of pink tinted wine off of fully ripened lots of fermenting red wine and tends to result in rosés that are less floral and more fruity and fleshy. Unlike rosé wines made from grapes intended to make a rosé and accordingly picked earlier, it is essentially a by-product of making a red wine. But when you pick grapes when they are still fresh, as Kosuge does, you can make a lovely saignéee rosé. It’s fermented in neutral barrels, displays a bright pink color, watermelon jolly rancher flavors, strawberry, violet, and racy citrus notes. Delicious. (91)

-Tim Teichgraeber