Scott Shirley joined JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery team of Paso Robles, CA in 2012, when he assumed the role of winemaker. Today, in this role Scott continues to oversee JUSTIN’s award-winning winemaking team, managing all cellar and laboratory operations, while working closely with his team to nurture and grow the acclaimed winery’s estate vineyards and grower relationships.
A graduate of the University of California, Davis with a degree in Biochemistry, Shirley took an introduction course to winemaking and fell in love with the art. He spent two years working at a blending lab in California’s Central Valley and then moved to Napa Valley, where he trained his palate at Opus One. Throughout these early years of his career, Shirley took an interest in the dynamic topic of microclimates. He quickly developed a passion for blending and took his love to JUSTIN where his Bordeaux-style blends have consistently earned rave reviews from the top wine critics, including in 2017 being named by Wine Spectator as a top wine in the world for the 2014 JUSTIFICATION.
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What’s the ONE THING most unique, authentic, & memorable about your brand?
JUSTIN is an avid advocate of blends and almost every finished bottled wine is a blend of some sort. Whether a blend of grape varieties, vineyard blocks, or clones, even a “Vineyard designated” wine is likely to have been aged in a variety of barrel types, which are combined just prior to bottling. As a winemaker, I believe we can accomplish more through the art of blending. I never want to restrict our winemaking team to a single plot of earth, betting that it will consistently perform marvelously, regardless of vintage peculiarities. Instead, we source fruit not only from our Estate vineyards, but also from the best sites across the eleven sub-AVA’s in Paso Robles, to assemble a compelling wine that represents both our appellation and the unique growing conditions of a particular growing season.
During Harvest, I spend the mornings walking our vineyard rows to make picking decisions. I taste both the grape skins and crunch the seeds between my teeth, spitting them into my palm to inspect their color. Are the seeds still green and astringent or have they turned nutty and brown? Are the skins tough and tannic, requiring more hang time in the abundant Paso sun, or have they softened, ready to be picked? After determining which blocks have reached the perfect balance of fruit, tannin, and acidity, I return to the winery to organize the next day’s schedule and then to taste fermenting tanks. Whether it’s our widely distributed Cabernet Sauvignon, or one of our exclusive, smaller case productions, we are consistent with our hands-on approach, with harvest and blending decisions driven by taste instead of numbers in the lab.
Describe how and what you’d do with your winemaking career or winery business if you were not constrained.
I want to engage younger generations of wine drinkers, to demonstrate the artistry behind winemaking and the complexity of the entire process. My hope is that we can welcome a new generation of wine lovers who will visit wine-growing regions to learn more about wine, try new wines at restaurants, explore wine aisles in stores to try at home, and just enjoy wine with family and friends wherever they are. As an industry, we need to all come together to make wine more approachable to this new consumer demographic.
The world of wine is so vast – there are more appellations and winemaking styles than most people realize. My “unconstrained” dream would be to travel more and visit every appellation across the globe! By exploring other wineries’ unique approaches, we can bring techniques and skills back to a new audience. I think it’s inspiring to explore how different techniques would fare in other regions and be received by consumers. I’ve always admired JUSTIN Founder Justin Baldwin’s ability to bring Bordeaux-style wines to Paso Robles, and the success he built for the whole region through this idea.
What is the One Wine most emblematic of your brand and/or winemaking style? Tell us its story.
Our flagship wine, ISOSCELES is really the heart and soul of what our Founder, Justin Baldwin, set out to achieve when he first purchased property in Paso Robles. His goal was to emulate his favorite winery in the world – Chateaux Margeaux – and so he planted the Estate to the same relative proportions as Margeaux, with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot. As a result, ISOSCELES is a blend of these three grape varieties. Back when those vines were planted in 1982, the Paso Robles AVA had not even been officially recognized. Justin was one of the pioneers in creating the Paso Robles AVA, joining just a handful of other wineries in the area.
When blending, I use each barrel lot as an artist would use paint on a palette. For the ISOSCELES blend, we begin with a Cabernet Sauvignon “core” and then taste it to see what is missing. We can use Cabernet Franc or Merlot to soften or amplify the edges, to add lovely aromatics, mitigate a drying finish, or build the texture and complexity. Every vintage is different, and the final blend composition is never an exact recipe. For each vintage, our goal is to make a wine which is enjoyable upon release but continues to improve in the bottle with proper cellaring. It should have both power and elegance, expressing the distinctive personality of Paso Robles, of the soils and climate, the vintage, and most of all, of JUSTIN’s long history of making wines which deserve to be in the company of the best in the world. Read about the 2022 Isosceles red blend here.
Bonus Question: Why Winemaking?
I have always been drawn to the artistry of the blend, working with mother nature, and I enjoy the surprises that each vintage can bring. I am not stuck behind a desk! I can only learn the idiosyncrasies of each vineyard block by getting outside and walking the rows to observe how weather events affect distinct microclimates. Finding the personality of each site – not following a one-size-fits-all approach – allows for each program in the JUSTIN portfolio, whether ISOSCELES or JUSTIFICATION (a Right-bank Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Franc & Merlot), to have its own profile. There is not one “best” wine each vintage. My philosophy is to create an array of blends for bottling, each appropriate to complement an occasion, regardless of the price or variety. Pairing wines (whether with a celebratory seven-course dinner, or a mid-week pizza night) should be fun.
My first harvest out of college was in Lodi in 1997, and after meeting Robert Mondavi, I moved to Napa in 1999 to pursue Winemaking as a career. I was inspired by a remark he made – he wanted to make wine an accepted part of everyday culture in the United States, occupying a natural spot at the dinner table. Not to make a cult wine exorbitantly priced, to be cellared as a trophy, but to share the joy of enjoying wine along with a meal, beside family and friends.
With this philosophy in mind, it has been the highlight of my career to work with Chef Rachel Haggstrom and The Restaurant at JUSTIN, our MICHELIN Star on-property restaurant. The Restaurant at JUSTIN is the only winery restaurant in the United States located on a winery’s Estate to receive a MICHELIN Star, and it was also awarded the MICHELIN Green Star for the restaurant’s sustainability efforts!