Small-production winery’s pinot noir lassos rodeo double gold
Note: In this year’s Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo’s International Wine Competition, nearly 140 wines earned double-gold status — signifying that every judge on the tasting panel thought it worthy of a gold — with the vast majority also winning Class or Reserve Champion status. I’ll be singling out many of them as they become available locally. The unanimity achieved from a variety of palates that’s required to earn double gold parallels how the Houston Chronicle tasting panel typically selects recommended wines — blind tastings by industry professionals and knowledgeable consumers.
Kerith Overstreet has a number of vintner friends back home in Sonoma County in California who have brought cool cowboy stuff back from Houston — big silver belt buckles and even a saddle or two, the result of how well their wines have shown in the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo’s International Wine Competition. And Overstreet has a supercompetitive streak.
“If the person on the treadmill next to me is riding faster,” Overstreet said, “I can’t help myself. I’ll pick up my pace.”
She admits to coveting her neighbors’ swag. Winning a buckle had been an objective for a while, and now she’s going to own one. Her 2015 Bu Bruliam Sangiacomo Vineyard (Sonoma Coast) pinot noir earned both a double-gold medal and was named a Reserve Class Champion for New World pinots in the $46-$60 price range.
Overstreet’s Sangiacomo pinot is one of four she makes in what can only be described as a tiny, labor-of-love operation. We’re talking about maybe a thousand cases produced total — including a zinfandel and a rosé — and it’s not even a for-profit venture. Overstreet covers her cellar, marketing and travel costs, then donates what’s left to causes supported by restaurants and wine bars across the country that have Bruliam on their lists. Camerata in Houston has benefited from her largesse, using the donation to fight multiple sclerosis.
The Bruliam part of name? It honors her three children, Bruno, Lily and Amelia: BRU+LI+AM. There’s just nothing not to love about Overstreet’s relentlessly cheery approach to the big, bad wine business. Another example: Grizzled growers have come to know her as the “Cupcake Girl” because she shamelessly barters gingerbread cupcakes with cream icing in order to score fruit from first-rate vineyards, such as Gap’s Crown in the Sonoma Coast AVA. Even when that special plot changed hands a few years back, Overstreet kept her tiny allotment because the vineyard crew craved the cupcakes and unanimously went to bat for her.
“When you’re as small as we are,” she said, laughing, “nobody sees you as competition. I’ve had so much help from so many great people, winemakers like Bob Cabral, Michael Browne (of Kosta Browne) and Jeff Pisoni. There aren’t a lot of 1,000-case wineries who get to play with the big boys.”
It was her now husband, Brian Overstreet, who introduced Kerith to wine while he was attending University of California-Berkeley. “Trying to impress me with his sophistication,” she said, recounting how he had suggested a trip to Napa Valley for some romantic swirling and sipping. There she fell in love — with him and wine. The kids are now being indoctrinated, too. Bruno, who’s 14, and Lily and Amelia, 12, do the artwork for the label on Bruliam’s mostly Torrey Hill Vineyard (Russian River Valley) wine, which comes the closest to being Bruliam’s estate bottling.
Overstreet comes from a family full of doctors. Her father, in fact, told her as a child that she could grow up to be anything she wanted — as long as she gave medicine a try first. So off to med school she went, passing her boards with high marks and going on to do an internship in general surgery before switching to pathology. A detour through culinary school followed, but she couldn’t get wine thoughts out of her head. It was her passion. Everything else would only be a profession.
“I quickly realized that being a chef would be more time-consuming than being a doctor,” she said. “And the path from pathologist to enologist isn’t as
difficult as it might seem.” Science is science. In September 2008, Overstreet bought a single ton of grapes from Hahn’s vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands, and, “after staying up all night reading” a textbook on wine-making, she took them to a customcrush facility in San Francisco, where they “treated me like a real winemaker.” A couple of barrels of pretty decent pinot noir resulted, and Bu Bruliam was born. (The “Bu,” by the way, is a made-up, just-for-fun periodic table symbol, playing off her aborted career path.)
Overstreet’s recent trip to Houston for the Rodeo Uncorked! Best Bites competition and tasting was a doubly gratifying experience. Although her prized buckle wasn’t yet ready for pickup, it was a time for counting blessings and celebrating Bu Bruliam’s having narrowly escaped last fall’s catastrophic wildfires, which reached within a mile of the property and forced them to evacuate twice. However, because they never lost power, the precious fermenting juice was safe, and the Overstreets were able to help neighbors who’d lost access to their tanks or couldn’t process their grapes because the electricity had gone out.
“A friend’s house burned, so they moved in with us,” she said. “Then we got evacuated again, for the second time in 24 hours, so we all went somewhere else. Everybody pitched in together. It was a frightening time, but it brought everybody closer.”
There would, of course, be plenty of cupcakes for all.
Anyway, the double-goldwinning Sangiacomo, a blend of the Pommard and Dion 115 clones, is available at Spec’s Midtown store for $43.97. It’s the result of a super-small-yield, early-ripening, winemakerskill-testing vintage. What fruit there was — less than 2 tons — prompted Steve Sangiacomo to send Overstreet a succinct email that read, “Sorry it wasn’t more. Tough year.” The harvest was completed Sept. 11, a full two weeks earlier than in 2014. But she dug deeply into her winemaking bag of tricks and good things happened. Obviously, the rodeo judges loved it.
And the Chronicle’s tasting panel loved Overstreet’s 2014 Soberanes Vineyards pinot noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands in Monterey County, giving it a unanimous recommendation last summer. That wine may still be available at select Total Wines stores for $42.99.
For the recent Rodeo Uncorked! Best Bites soirée at NRG Center, Overstreet sported a pink western shirt with a embroidered turquoise trim that she’d been saving for a special occasion. A pair of cowgirl boots with pink and turquoise stitching completed the look. Her plans for next year? Despite pointing out how “you can’t wear a saddle any more than you can pin a Wine Spectator score to your back,” Overstreet admits she’s targeting the same.
It’s that competitive thing. Aim high and good things can happen. That’s how she ended up making the rounds in Houston.