Napa Valley Profiles: Bouchaine Vineyards and Michael Richmond

                    Bouchaine Vineyards in the Napa Valley Carneros District

There is a saying in the Napa Valley that the way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large one. High-powered Price Waterhouse CPA Tatiana Copeland might have had that in mind in 1981 when she first visited the oldest continually operated winery in the Carneros District that she and her husband, Dupont scion Gerrett Copeland, were thinking about buying.  There were just two dilapidated buildings, old redwood storage tanks, and no vines when she first saw it.

 

The Copelands live in Wilmington, Delaware, where Gerrett founded a stock brokerage he later sold to Dean Witter, but the Copelands had dreamed of owning a winery in the Napa Valley where they could produce red and white wines with “softness, roundness, and freshness” to rival the great wines of France’s Burgundy region that they grew up learning to love. 

 

Buy the winery they did, and they named it Bouchaine.  With her “pencil at its sharpest”, Tatiana, as President, oversaw a massive rebuilding, acquired and planted additional acreage, and began producing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines with a distinctive Burgundy character. Tatiana describes her job as balancing beauty and the bottom line. “It’s like a search for the Holy Grail,” she says.

 

But managing a winery from across the continent is impractical, so, in 2002 the Copelands persuaded Carneros Pinot Noir veteran Michael Richmond to join them as Bouchaine General Manager and winemaker. 

 

After emigrating to Napa on a bicycle, Michael learned the wine business with Freemark Abbey, then founded Acacia Winery in 1979.  At the time, wine writers were publishing scathing reviews of California Pinot Noir. Michael’s fine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines changed that prevailing view, and boosted the Carneros region’s reputation for premier Burgundy-type wine.  

 

Michael sold Acacia to Chalone Vineyards in 1986, and continued to work for Chalone until he joined Bouchaine, bringing with him ace marketer Greg Gauthier to handle sales and pricing.

 

Under Michael’s direction, Bouchaine Vineyards has made both farming and winemaking changes to modernize Bouchaine wines and production. Michael says he and the Copelands share Burgundy-inspired wine aesthetics and philosophy, but in the context of modern tastes and technology.  “Most Burgundy wines are mediocre,” he says. “Sugar is added during wine making, which is why you find sugar beet farms next to vineyards.”

 

According to Michael, the California cab/zin model doesn’t work for Carneros Pinot Noir, either. He explains that with Pinot Noir, the transition between growing and wine making is picking, and picking is a soft science, intuitive and existential; it is seeking the diminution of green and the absence of jam – finding the exact point of arrested decay.  It cannot be based on numbers alone.

 

When harvest time approaches, Michael walks the vineyards and picks as many grapes from a cluster as his hand can hold – choosing some from the sunny side, some from the shade; some green, some overripe. He crushes the grapes and tastes the juice. But he also looks at the numbers.  Below Michael checks for sugar with a refractometer. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The difference between Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is more than white vs red, and more than the variety of grape.  “With Pinot Noir, the wine is determined by terroir, plant material (the clone), farming, and picking. It is out of the wine maker’s control. With Pinot Noir, wine making is passive.

 

“You cannot make a good Pinot Noir from a lush vineyard,” he adds.

 

On the other hand, Michael sees Chardonnay as a craft wine, a wine of intention. “It is made by manipulating yeast; using stainless tanks or not; and aging in old or new, French or American, oak, or not. The winemaker can adjust the subliminal elements of the wine to stack the mid palate, or to make the wine resonate with cuisine. 

 

“When you make a good Chardonnay you are proud. When you make a good Pinot Noir you are relieved.”

 

Bouchaine Vineyards does not make a Cabernet Sauvignon. “In California,” Michael says, “Cab has an identity crisis. It has sold its birthright to the devil. It once was an herbaceous walk in the garden. Now it is a pursuit of blackberry syrup and a sock in the mouth.”

 

Michael also shares with the Copelands the need to balance beauty and the bottom line. But, while he shares Tatiana’s notion that it is like seeking the Holy Grail, he adds that he never wants to find it,  “I revere my seminal experiences with the great Burgundies that have brought tears to my eyes. But I don’t ever want to find that Holy Grail, I just want to keep looking.” 

 

Tasting room location: 1075 Buchli Station Rd. Napa, CA 94559 (Click here for a Google Map)

Wines: Pinot Noir, Mariafeld Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier, Gewurztraminer, Bouche d’Or dessert wine

Vineyards: Carneros, Sonoma Coast, Anderson Valley

List price range: $18 to $45