Tag: Wild Horse

Exploration Fun

This being the middle of the harvest, we’re pretty busy here at OddBallGrape.  Put almost 1,500 miles on the car last week and the week before in three trips to Paso Robles, California, to go pick and bring back cabernet franc, syrah, primitivo, vernacchia and merlot grapes for our own home winemaking efforts.

And, gee, since we were in the heart of the Central Coast wine country and since there just happen to be…  (ahem) a few wineries up there (like almost 100) and on the way back through the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Rita Hills.  Yeah, we did a little tasting here and there, catching up on some old friends and making a couple new discoveries.

Some of those will be featured in future posts, but we did want to mention the fun we had at Wild Horse winery in Templeton, which is just south of Paso Robles.  Yes, Wild Horse is a label you can find in your local grocery store – Trader Joe’s, in particular, carries it.  So normally, we wouldn’t have bothered.  But since it’s right next door to our merlot grower and since we’d heard that wine maker Clay Brock, formerly of Zaca Mesa, had joined the crew there (and we really liked Clay’s wines), we thought, what the heck.

The thing with Wild Horse is that this is where wine maker Kenneth Volk got his start, and he’s the one who instituted their blaufrankisch and negrette programs.  They also make a white from a grape called malvasia.  And it’s also where we got interested in odd ball grapes – we loved the blaufrankisch, and you can’t get it at the store.  It’s only available in the tasting room.

We’d been back since Volk had moved on to start his own label, about a couple, three years ago, and were sad to see that there was no blaufrankisch available.  Huzzah, huzzah, it’s back now.  Along with negrette and malvasia.  And we don’t have notes because we went in just for the fun of it.

However, it is a lesson in wine tasting.  While avoiding the supermarket labels has its place, it’s sometimes worth it to check out the tasting rooms of such wineries anyway.  Some of them have wines you can’t get in the supers, including varieties you don’t see anywhere else.  In fact, it was Blackstone Winery that introduced us to tannat – and they are one of the biggies out there.

By the way, in the interests of full disclosure and transparency, the guy in the tasting room at Wild Horse comped us for the tasting fee as being part of the trade.  We don’t think he heard us talking about the blog, but we were talking about being home winemakers, so….

From Whence Comes the OddBallGrape

Ken Volk doesn’t know this yet, but in a way, he is a major inspiration for this site.  The president and director of winemaking for Kenneth Volk Vineyards, Volk has a long history of experimenting with grape varieties that no one else has even heard of, let alone tasted.

Ken Volk with his negrette (Photo courtesy of Kenneth Volk Vineyards)
Ken Volk with his negrette (Photo courtesy of Kenneth Volk Vineyards)

Some years back, when Volk was still at Wild Horse, the Paso Robles winery where he made a name for himself, there was this little red called blaufrankisch.  Most folks were a little wary of it.  We dove right in and discovered what a joy trying something really new and different can be.  Ever since then, finding those odd ball grapes has been one of our passions.  And when this site came together, it seemed only natural to name it after that passion.

Volk sold Wild Horse in 2003 and the next year bought the facility he has now in the Santa Maria Valley.  His first wines under his namesake label rolled out in 2006.

Mike’s first experience with the Kenneth Volk product occurred as the last stop on the bus tour from hell.  Anne was working.  The weather was beyond miserably hot.  The wines at the other wineries were all over-oaked.  And the rest of the winemaking club was cranky, to say the least.  But Volk not only took the time to talk to the group, the wines (13 different bottles) were a revelation.  Pinots, cabs, chards, maybe even a negrette or a tempranillo or something like that.  Mike didn’t take notes that day.  But it was an impressive tasting both in terms of the scope and the really good flavor.  When the wine tastes that good at the end of the day, you know you’ve got something special.

We also recently spoke with Volk at the Family Winemakers event in Del Mar, California, and yes, he will be producing some blaufrankisch starting as early as this year.

“I’ve got an acre and a half of blaufranckisch, which I’ll be getting a crop off of this year,” he said.  “It was a graft that I did last year, so I expect it to…  I’ll probably get two tons of it this year.”

But we’ll still have to wait another couple years or so before anything gets bottled and/or released.

But what drives his interest in different…  Okay, odd ball grapes?

“There’s so many interesting grape varieties out there that have interesting flavors and unfortunately, the industry is dominated by a handful of them,” Volk said.  “Every year I try to do a new variety I’ve never done before.”

Negrette (photo courtesy of Kenneth Volk Vineyards)
Negrette (photo courtesy of Kenneth Volk Vineyards)

And we’ll be featuring his negrette and his verdelho over the next few days.  You can find out more about Volk and his winery at his website, volkwines.com.