Where We Have Traveled

Randy Kemner

I’ve been fortunate over my 36 year love affair with wine to have visited many of the world’s most hallowed vineyards and dined with some of the most well respected vintners, sometimes in their own homes.  This has given me insight not only into the wines themselves, but the culture of the people who produce them.

Barely 21 years old, I was traveling up U.S.101 in the fall of 1970 when I stopped at my first tasting room, the old San Martin Winery in Gilroy.  While there I sampled blackberry wine, chocolate wine, chocolate-mint wine, and my favorite, Aprivet, an apricot wine that tasted like fresh apricots.  I remember nothing about San Martin’s dry wines served that day.

I had met Ely Callaway at a book signing for Robert Benson’s Great Winemakers of California the day before where he invited me to his new winery in a brand new wine growing area.  I drove the 90 miles past Lake Elsinore and found the winery and Ely.  It was fall and crush was in full swing.  He asked if I’d ever tasted unfermented wine before, and as I replied in the negative, he poured a glass of black Petite Sirah juice.  It was sweeter than any fruit juice I had ever drunk.  I don’t know what I expected.  I supposed at the time that Cabernet juice would taste dry, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Sirah juice would be the same.  Little did I know about fermentation and sugar and alcohol and all that. 

I was still working as a musician in May of 1981, when I finished up a playing date at Harrah’s in Reno.  I had 10 days to kill before my next gig, so I decided to go to Napa Valley for the first time.  Driving up highway 29 was a transformative experience.  The vines were leafy green and beautiful.  I stopped in Yountville and registered in the Napa Valley Lodge, then traveled under the bridge to see Domaine Chandon.  Going further up highway 29 there were vineyards on both sides and my heart was full.  It about exploded, though, when the Robert Mondavi Winery mission façade came into view in Oakville.  The image I had seen on the labels of countless bottles of Robert Mondavi wine I’d downed was there in person, like Notre Dame or Niagara Falls.  It was one of many wine tours I took that week. 

Further up the two-lane highway was the Rutherford crossroads, with Inglenook winery to the left and Beaulieu Vineyards to the right.  Scattered along the road were Louis Martini Winery, Christian Bros., Beringer, the Heitz tasting room, Charles Krug, the Sterling tram and many, many more.  I was in heaven—the most thrilling place and the most beautiful place I’d ever been. 

I stopped in one tasting room on the highway and tasted several spicy Zinfandels from Amador county.  Then the hostess offered a pale pink wine that was a little sweet, delightfully fruity and very refreshing.  It was delicious.  The wine was called white Zinfandel and the winery was Sutter Home.  I’d never heard of white Zinfandel before, but I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget to order it once I got home.

In my room at the Napa Valley Lodge I was slicing some cheese and drinking a bottle of Cabernet I’d bought that day.  On T.V. Fernando Valenzuela pitched his eighth consecutive shutout that night against the Giants, and during the game a woman ran out from the stands and grabbed the young sensation in front of the mound and hugged him gleefully.  The only thing that would have made life any better would have been to have someone there to share this amazing day with.

After having experienced the bliss of Napa Valley in the spring of 1981, I stopped playing music for a living in August the following year and drove around the United States and Canada for the next three months.  During that time I toured wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley, Michigan, New York’s Finger Lakes, and finishing back in the Napa Valley at the beginning of December.  A few days later I got my first job in a wine shop for $4.50 and hour, and as happy as I could be.  A few years later I would visit wineries in La Crosse Wisconsin and Hermann Missouri.

In 1992 and again in 1993 I participated in a wine tour of Kermit Lynch imports throughout France where we traveled through Alsace, Champagne, the Rhone Valley, Provence, the Languedoc and Burgundy.  Vintners we visited included Alsace’s Olivier Humbrecht at Domaine Zind-Humbrecht, Hermitage’s Gerard Chave, and Robert Jasmin and René Rostaing of Côte Rôtie, Daniel and Frederic Brunier at Domaine de Vieux Telegraphe, Lucien and Lulu Peyraud at Bandol’s Domaine Tempier, Aimee Guibert of Mas de Daumas Gassac, Champagne’s Paul Bara and Chantal Lassalle, Michel Colin, Jean Marie Raveneau, Jean Marc Roulot, François Jobard and Jean-François Coche.

In the fall of 1999 my wife and I visited the Loire Valley, Perigord and Provence with friends and took in the sights, but made time to visit the Charles Joguet winery in Chinon during harvest, Catherine Champalou in her cellar in Vouvray, Sylvain Bailly in Sancerre and a memorable lunch with Didier Dagueneau in Saint-Andelain at Pouilly-sur-Loire.  We drank aged Cahors and ate Tournedos Rossini with enormous helpings of seared foie gras in Gourdon and ate Bouillabaisse and drank Cassis rosé in Marseille after visiting Clos Ste. Magdelaine, the incredible seaside Cassis estate on the Mediterranean.

My German wine tour of spring 2001 took me to the Mosel—Saar—Ruwer, Rheingau, Ahr, Nahe, Pfalz, Rheinhessen, Baden, Franken and Wurtemberg.  With importer Brent Wiest of Cellars International as host, tour guide and translator, I was able to sample wines and dine with a who’s who of great German winemakers.  It was the season of spargel, Germany’s white asparagus, and we ate it nearly every day, prepared in various ways from soups to salads to side dishes.

On the tour we visited the estates of Karthauserhof, Zilliken, Rheinhold Haart, Wegeler, Joh. Jos. Prüm, Dr. F. Weins-Prüm, Monchhof, Gunderloch, Von Buhl, Wirshing, Fritz Haag, Franz Kunstler, Robert Weil and many, many more.  The Franken wines of Wirshing were as refreshing as they were exciting, and visiting the ancient capital of Franconia, Wurzburg, was a happy highlight.

Some of my most memorable moments were sipping wine and eating sandwiches with Wilhelm Haag high up the Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr, enjoying Auslese and cheese with Norbert Breit in the Bernkasteler Doctor and playing “name that vineyard” with Manfred Prum after dinner in his Wehlen estate overlooking the Mosel. 

Southern Germany is a breathtakingly beautiful country, and experiencing the greatest white wines in the world in their birthplace was nothing short of a revelation.

I was invited to join Michael Sullivan’s Beaune Imports tour in the early spring of 2002 where we toured Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Northern and Southern Rhone, Provence, Languedoc, Catalan Spain, Bordeaux, the Pays de Loire near Normandy and the Loire Valley.  On that memorable tour we visited some of the greatest wine personalities of France including Didier Dagueneau, Dominique Lafon, Etienne de Montille, Nady Foucault of Saumur-Champigny’s Clos Rougeot, Eric Bordelet (the world’s greatest cider artisan), and toured the estates of Montlouis’ François Chidaine, Chinon’s Phillipe Alliet  and many more family producers.  It is one thing to taste magnificent wine in the cellar where it was created, but it is another thing entirely to share an older bottle at lunch or dinner with the winemaker in his home eating authentic regional home cooking!

I had never been to Italy before being asked to join Marc DeGrazia’s 2004 supplier tour of Tuscany and Piedmont, a two week adventure that was as life-changing an experience as any wine tour I’ve taken. 

Spending the first night in Florence our 28 person entourage ate dinner at a wonderful Florentine restaurant and drank wines from all over Italy.  It was the bistecca fiorentino, steak grilled in the Tuscan style, I remember most vividly.  It set the culinary tone for the trip to come.

In Tuscany we visited the Brunello producers Ciacci Piccolomini, Sassetti, Uccelliera, Collosorbo and Le Potazzine.  In Chianti, Giacomo Mori, Il Palazzino, Rocca di Montegrossi and San Giusto.  Dinner with Caterina Dei and drinking the estate’s Vino Nobile de Montepulciano in her home was as charming as it was delicious.  Being caught in the rain at Piaggia and dining with a movie star at I Campetti were among the flood of memories that competed with drinking Vermentino and eating the best seafood meal of my life near Santa Pietra.

Several lunches and dinners under the Tuscan sky featured ribolita, Tuscan bread soup, Tuscan bread salad, quail, fish, lots of pasta (my favorite was papardelle cingale, wide noodles with a wild boar sauce), and plenty of salads, fresh fruit, prosciutto and cheeses, particularly Parma Reggiano.

In Piedmont, celebratory Italy turned to the sensual and the cerebral.  It was the time for Barolo, Italy’s greatest wine, and we visited many of Italy’s greatest Barolo estates.  Sandrone, E. Pira, La Spinetta, Azelia, Clerico, Enrico Scavino, Cavallotto and more.  We were learning about the perfume of Nebbiolo, the playfulness of Dolcetto and the joy of Barbera while eating Vitello Tonato,  veal slices with a tuna sauce, prepared a half dozen ways, prosciutto, parma reggiano and Fontina cheeses.  All meals had bread sticks, not loaves or slices, as accompaniments, and everyone was gracious.

The expressive wines of Piedmont are haunting there, and they continue to haunt me back home.