Can Bill Leigon and His Team Pull Off Another Hit with Red Phoenix?

It's not easy to have a string of hits in the beverage industry. Too often, fortunate souls manage to have a hit due to fortunate timing and a marketing message that the industry giants haven't quite mastered. They often lose the fortune they made by doubling down and thinking they could do it again.

Fritz Maytag stands out as one of the greatest beverage industry success stories. He caught the first craft brewing wave with Anchor Steam, followed it up with Junipero Gin, and then Old Potrero Rye, the latter a trend he saw coming so far away that he had seasoned product waiting in barrel for years. Ultimately he was smart enough to cash out and walk away a very, very, wealthy man. He has even delved into wineries, but that might be the only blemish on his record.

Sidney Frank wrangled the import distribution rights to Jagermeister, turned it into a midwest fratboy shot phenom, and followed that up with Grey Goose Vodka, which of course was a massive success. His next investment was Blue Angel vodka, which failed to launch in the flagging vodka category. It was a minor failure, to be sure.

Now let's talk about Bill Leigon. 

Bill Leigon

 

In a wine industry dominated by a few big players in the value category (I'm talking about Gallo, Constellation, and The Wine Group), Leigon has repeatedly found seams that allowed him to create growth brands using clever marketing, crack teams of winemakers, and distribution partners and sales teams built over decades.

I first met Bill when I was working in a bottle shop and delicatessen in St. Paul, Minnesota called Vannelli's Four Seasons around 1990. Bill was pounding the pavement selling wine for a brand called Mark West (now huge) and a couple of other labels. Winemaking consultants like Barry Gnekow and Kerry Damskey were instrumental in the creation of these wines and would remain on Leigon's team for years in varied roles, including re-building that little old Mark West brand, which would eventually become one of the biggest selling Pinot Noir labels in California.

I liked and admired Bill Leigon and endeavored to stay in touch after I moved to California in 2000. By then he as working as an executive at Hahn Winery in Monterey, where he transformed the estate strategy, bringing on talent and helping them to transition from an ill-conceived Bordeaux-modeled plan to a pan-Central Coast winemaking strategy that spawned HRM Rex Goliath the 47 lb. Rooster, a somehow-scalable brand that would rocket to 1 million cases per year at a very low price point. He, Nicky Hahn, and the winemaking team had beaten the big boys at their own game. The Rex Goliath brand was to Constellation for a substantial sum.

Bill's next move was the creation of the Cycles Gladiator brand (again for Nicky Hahn) with a fanciful art nouveau label featuring a bawdy woman cyclist. Adam Lazarre, then lead Hahn winemaker made the wines and they were widely lauded and over-delivered at every turn. Bill and his winemaking teams had figured out that they could mix warm climate red grapes from the Paso Robles area with cooler climate red grapes from Monterey County and come up with harmonious, affordable recipes. Cycles Gladiator was yet another affordable hit.

After leaving Hahn, Leigon moved on to take on management of Jamieson Ranch in the southern end of Napa. He eventually bought the ranch, supervised re-planting of the property, and sold it. 

Recently, Leigon embarked on his next venture: a red blend brand called Red Phoenix. Can he do it again?

Quite possibly. Leigon is pretty damn good at hitting key affordable price points with formidable wines, finding young talent, and he has a ton of experience in the wine business as well as a lot of great relationships with distributors and regional brokers. The loyalty that he has shown to others in the trade may be instrumental to his continued success.

The Red Phoenix blend, with much of its fruit sourced from Lodi, is deliberately aimed at the $19.99 price point (though there is also a reserve wine, "Rubeus" priced at around $40).

Part of Leigon's fortunes with Red Phoenix may be determined by whether the red blend category continues to grow, or if it the category fades after tremendous growth over the past two decades.

There is also a new, notable addition to the Leigon team: Joseph Smith, a protégé of Barry Gnekow, winemaker at Klinker Brick winery in Lodi, and quite the Cinderella story in his own right. 

Smith is a native of Belize who came to California to work a construction gig at a winery with no winery experience whatsoever. It was supposed to be two week gig, but the more questions he asked of Gnekow, the more interest Gnekow took in Smith. Gnekow offered Smith a permanent position and took him under his wing. Smith proved a fast study, and remarkably soon took over winemaking duties from Gnekow at Klinker Brick in Lodi (now producing a formidable 100,000 cases per year). 

Red Phoenix winemaker Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith has sound aesthetics, tremendous enthusiasm, and  a genuine European sense of  balance (read the rosé review below), and an understanding of how wine ages and why that should matter. This is remarkable considering how recently he has come to the industry. Though his career has been built on California wine, I have seen first hand how often Bill Leigon refers back to the European classics in what he drinks personally. I think he always demands this study of his winemaking teams, and the shared sense of what a 'balanced' wine is always seems to shine through.

Another interesting marketing tactic that Leigon is employing this time out is the inclusion of nutritional infomation like calorie and carbohydrate counts on the back label of each of the wines. The competition from alcoholic seltzers and other innovative drinks is real, and some customers are certainly counting calories. Transparency in labeling is always a good thing.

On to the wines!

Amarose Rose back label

 

 

Amarose 2021 Rosé Lodi, CA ($20) This is a brilliant rosé that I might not have thought possible coming out of Lodi. It's a blend of grenache, cinsault, carignan, and mourvèdre that's genuinely zesty and picked early for a honest to Provence style of rosé. It has racy lemon, pink grapefruit, rose, and strawberry notes. It's lightly pressed immediately and fermented in stainless steel, blended at bottling with no added acid. (92 Points) 

Samuel Lindsay The Gandy Dancer Cabernet Sauvignon, Lodi, CA ($25) This companion brand to Red Phoenix is named after Bill's grandfather who worked on the railroad in Texas laying track.  It has dark blackberry fruit that's pretty brambly, with some lighter black cherry notes, subtle vanilla, chocolate, spice and dried herb notes on the finish. Some of the Lodi fruit comes from slightly elevated sites, contributing a little more tannin that some Lodi reds possess. (90 Points)

  

Red Phoenix 2019 Red Wine, CA ($25 / probably on the shelf at $19.99) The use of flash détente wine processing helps to eliminate green flavors and maximize extraction of fruit, tannin, and aromatic components in quick order. This is not natural winemaking by any stretch, but it is smart winemaking, and if you want to drink a very pleasant red blend at a fair price, I would  recommend this one. (90 Points)  

Red Phoenix 2017 "Rubeus" Napa Valley Red Wine ($40) The vast majority of grapes that went into this wine came from sources at the southern end of Napa Valley, a cool part of the valley near the bay that can struggle to mature Cabernet Sauvignon. Bill says "We didn't set out to make a cabernet sauvignon, just the best wine possible." The result is a 95% cabernet sauvignon blend with deep red currant flavors, good acid, a bit of dark chocolate, vanilla, anise and a well-placed hint of dill on the finish. (92 Points)

- Tim Teichgraeber