THE GRAPE ESCAPE
HOW VINEYARD BOSS WENT FROM WORKING PART-TIME IN AN OFF-SALES TO MAKING THE PRESIDENT’S FAVOURITE WINE
Andy Smith says he got the job at the Edinburgh off- licence because he was the only person strong enough to carry two cases of wine up from the cellar.
But the part-time post quickly became a passion and, 27 years later, he now owns and runs one of the finest vineyards in California. Andy is one of the world’s leading “grape gurus”.
His DuMOL winery’s finest chardonnay and pinot noir have been served to the guests of presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama at White House dinners.
They had no idea what they were drinking was made by a Scotsman who used to work at Oddbins in Edinburgh’s Bruntsfield while a student.
Andy still chuckles at the thought. He said: “I was so fit, they employed me because I could run up and down to the cellar carrying bottles of wine all day.
“I had absolutely no knowledge of wine whatsoever but I picked it up very quickly. Even though I was just the part-time laddie working 20 hours a week, there was a real investment in my education.
“Fairly early on, I was hooked by the whole thing. As a history and humanities student, the culture, history and travel elements were very appealing. It was easy to throw myself into. And, of course, it’s a very social subject.”
Andy, who swam for Scotland as a teenager in the 1986 Commonwealth Games, knew this was what he wanted to do in life. After years of European dominance in wine, the new world was beginning to assert itself.
The 48-year- old said: “Australian wine was on the march, they were making a lot of exciting wines. If you grow up in the UK, France and Spain are kind of boring. It was California, Australia and New Zealand that spurred the imagination.”
Andy’s first job after university was with a Scottish wine importer. Years of zipping around the globe to swimming competitions meant he had no fear of different continents.
So he headed to New Zealand. The next few years were spent following ripening grapes across the world. Andy said: “The southern hemisphere harvest is in March and April while the northern hemisphere is September to October.
“For three or four years, we bounced California – New Zealand, California – Australia. All the time I was getting experience of the physical aspects of making wine.”
In New Zealand, Andy completed his winemaking degree. In California came the kind of sweet opportunity that allows you to make the wines that presidents serve to other presidents at state dinners.
Paul Hobbs, the nearest thing the US has
to wine roya lt y, , needed an assistant. t. Andy got the job.
He said: “That opened up the prestige market. Most of the world’s wine is what we call industrial wine. Then there’s the quality sector. “I hadn’t done all this travelling to make £1.99 wine.”
After three years with Paul, he was ready to go it alone.
Andy said: “Imagine a Scotsman going to Europe in the early 1990s and saying, ‘I’m going to be a winemaker.’ They would have just laughed at me. In California, they
were, ‘ Yeah, sure. Whatever.’ Silicon Valley was booming , there was lots of investment, lots of new wineries starting.
“California had an entrepreneurial spirit that I didn’t see anywhere else. People were willing to take the chance, start something and, if it didn’t work, they moved on to something else.”
DuMOL was born. Two par tners brought the cash and the business nous. They shared Andy’s vision of making high- quality, naturally- produced wine and were happy to leave him in peace to get on with it.
They bottled their first 1000 cases of wine
Guru I got taste for it and never looked back
– a chardonnay and a pinotpin noir – in 1998. It was an instant hit, quicklyqu appearing on the wine lists of the bbest restaurants and winning glowing praise f rom influential critics.
The White House, who have their own wine buyer, discovered it a year later.
The next stage was growing their own grapes. It took a couple of years to find an organic orchard, check that the soil was suitable for vines, buy the land from the farmer, rip out the trees and plant grapes.
In 2007, Andy bottled the first wine he had grown from scratch. Planting and watching the vines grow is, he says, the easy bit . The harvest is when the adrenaline kicks in. He said: “It’s back to my swimming career. When do I fire the starting pistol?
“The most important decision of the year is when you pick the grapes.
“I’m out in the vineyard every morning, tasting the grapes, deciding when to start the harvest.
“Wine is a personal expression, it’s a very creative endeavour. It doesn’t just reflect the land where the grapes are grown and the climate that year. It’s about the people who work the vineyard and have the vision for the f lavour of the wine. It’s part of you. It’s natural you want to be in control and driving that creativity.
“This is not like making beer or whisky, when you can make these products every day of the year. This is an agricultural product – you get one chance each year to do it. In my career, I might have 50 chances.” The next stage can be equally sweaty. Andy added: “The wine’s in the barrel and I’m waiting for it to age. I know what we’ve harvested and what we’ve fermented.
“Then there’s a few months when the wine’s progressing quite rapidly in the barrels, hinting at what it might be in the future.”
I’m out in the vineyard every morning, tasting the grapes, deciding when to start the harvest. That’s when the adrenaline really kicks in