Joel Peterson, AKA the Godfather of Zin, has been a winemaker for 50 years. Joel founded and built Ravenswood into a powerhouse Zinfandel brand. His latest project is Once & Future Wine, in Sonoma County, where he focuses on making small-production, hand-crafted single-vineyard Zinfandels. He is resurrecting his old redwood fermenters, which honor the distinctive typicity of the site.
Joel was a senior vice president and member of the senior executive team at Constellation Brands for 15 years. A current member and former president of the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance (SVVGA), Joel has also served on the Board of Directors for the Sonoma County Vintners. A founding board member and former two-time president of ZAP, he is also an advisor to the Historic Vineyard Society. Joel was the lead winemaker and chairman of the Heritage Vineyard project, a joint project of ZAP and UC Davis to investigate Zinfandel clones. In 2011, Joel was inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame and voted as one of the “20 Most Admired People in the North American Wine Industry” by Vineyard and Winery Management magazine.
Media Inquiries: joel@onceandfuturewine.com | https://www.onceandfuturewine.com/
What’s the ONE THING most unique, authentic, & memorable about your brand?
When I started Ravenswood in 1976, I wanted to focus on Zinfandel. I planned to make single-vineyard wines in a somewhat gothic, old world style. I hoped to make wine similar to that made in Europe, but with a Californian twist. Small open top, redwood fermenters, hand punch downs, extended macerations, native yeast, gentle transfer, minimal processing and small French oak aging – all done by hand. I thought the winery, if I were lucky, would grow to six or seven thousand cases.
For several reasons, mostly dealing with the hard realities of cash flow and distribution and the necessity of equity partners, I was unable to make that vision a reality. Though I was able to make single-vineyard wines that I hope helped redefine the qualitative ceiling of California’s old vines, Ravenswood also started to make a wine called “Vintners Blend” that proved immensely popular. Starting in 1983, seven years after the first vintage, Ravenswood began to grow. Over the following three decades, its annual production kicked up to nearly one million cases, at one point becoming the bestselling red Zinfandel brand in the world.
Once and Future Wine Company is a return to the original vision I had for Ravenswood so many years ago. A project that specializes in wines from special vineyards made with a sensitivity to place and in a style that I love and believe in. Wines that force me to dust off the old redwood vats and get out a new punch down tool (my original is in the Smithsonian), wines that dye my hands that harvest shade of black/purple, and sometimes force me to take an additional Advil some mornings. In short, wines of sweat, exertion, and love.
Describe how and what you’d do with your winemaking career or winery business if you were not constrained.
I have been in the wine business for more than 50 years. I have definitely lived the dream during the heyday of growth and prosperity of California wine. In that time I have had a hand in saving a number of California’s historic vineyards, many of which are over 100 years old. I would like the resources to advertise, revitalize and preserve these special vineyards. In the best of all worlds these ancient vineyards would be designated California Historic landmarks and the caretakers of these vineyards would receive a significant stipend from a specially designated trust fund dedicated to preserving these old vineyards and the wine that they produce for future wine loving generations.
What is the One Wine most emblematic of your brand and/or winemaking style? Tell us its story.
Situated on the Agua Caliente Bench, Bedrock Vineyards is one of the premier vineyard plots in Sonoma Valley. When Eugene Hilgard, the most important viticulture professor of his time, was asked in 1890 if any place in California could grow grapes to rival the great clarets of Europe, he unhesitatingly singled out this vineyard, whose history is also rife with some of the most notable figures of the nineteenth century. Founded in 1854 by Generals “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker (just back from the Mexican-American War) and William Tecumseh Sherman (a San Francisco banker at the time!), the spot has grown grapes for more than 150 years. Following the first phylloxera epidemic in the mid-1880s, it was replanted in 1888 by Senator George Hearst, a mining magnate and father of publisher William Randolph Hearst; in the early 1900s, Hearst’s widow Phoebe sold it to the California Wine Association, which made wine from it until Prohibition. In 1934, the vineyard was jointly purchased by the Domenici and Parducci families, who ran the Valley of the Moon winery; when that relationship became acrimonious, the vineyard was split, with the Parducci’s taking the winery and smaller land parcel and the Domenici’s taking 152 acres that became known as Madrone Ranch.
In 2005, the Domenici’s sold the property to the Deininger / Peterson family. We renamed it Bedrock with a nod to its soil: Tuscan Red Hill series, washed down from the adjacent Mayacamas Mountains to form the alluvial fan on which the vineyard is planted. Because the place had been cultivated harshly for 100 years, we broke up the pan with a mechanical spader and revitalized the soils with compost and cover crops of vetch, bell beans, rye grass and mob grazing with sheep; the cobbly, well-drained loam, combined with long warm summer days and cool evening air flowing through the Bennett Valley Gap alongside Sonoma Mountain (a climatic profile similar to that of Joe Swan’s domain, the Forestville area of the Russian River Valley) is superb for growing Zinfandel, a tradition we’ve maintained with old-school, head-pruned viticulture. Bedrock Vineyards is one of only twenty certified regeneratively farmed vineyards in the world.
Once and Future Zinfandel is crafted from the 137-year-old vines planted by George Hearst. The wines have an aromatic raciness and fine tannin structure that renders them elegant and long-lived. Read my review of this special vineyard-designate Zinfandel.
Bonus Question: What’s the one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?
I am not just sentimental about old vineyards, but I should probably not be allowed to read sad fiction like Old Yeller or watch Rom-Com movies.