J. Lohr builds lore
Winery strikes rodeo gold with individual and overall titles
The last bottle standing? This year it wore a J. Lohr label with the founder’s John Hancock on it. In just the second vintage of production, the expansive California winery’s flagship Signature Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 from Paso Robles won out in a blind tasting of the more than 3,100 wines entered in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s 2018 International Wine Competition.
To be sure, J. Lohr CEO Steve Lohr — J(erry) Lohr’s 56-yearold son — couldn’t have been more pleased to have the wine selected as the Grand Champion Best of Show, then get sold at auction for $145,000. He said he was “deeply honored,” given Houston’s stature as one of the country’s largest and most prestigious tests of cellar acumen. However, it was only Lohr’s second-favorite thing about what went down during the two days of judging back in November.
Asked if J. Lohr’s also claiming Best All-Around Winery honors might have been an even bigger deal, he replied, “Definitely.”
The Signature Cab is an intensely special wine for the Lohr family — four of them, including father Jerry are part of the upper-management team — because it represents the very best of a place, Paso Robles, the Lohrs loudly championed before most folks had any idea what was going on “down there.” But Best All-Around speaks to the depth and breadth of what J. Lohr has been able to accomplish in three different locales — San Luis Obispo County, where Paso Robles is located, plus Monterey County just to the north and St. Helena in Napa Valley — with a variety of white and red grapes and a wide range of prices.
J. Lohr, in fact, is the first winery since Alexander Valley Vineyards in 2004, when the competition was in its first year and had far fewer entries, never mind high-end ones, to pull off the double of claiming both the individual and overall Rodeo Competition titles.
Their wines collected four double-gold medals (meaning every panelist awarded a gold), and each was a class champion. Three others went gold with one of them winning a sixth class championship and another being designated as its Reserve Class Champion. Three of the wines in this decorated mix were cabernet-centric. The others featured merlot, petite sirah, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.
That’s a remarkable spectrum. What’s also remarkable is that the Signature prevailed in the $100-$195 price category, although it can be had for $99 through wine.com. The 2015 J. Lohr Seven Oaks Cab, also from Paso Robles, turned the most heads in the $20-24 category, yet Total Wine sells it for $7.99. Yeah, really. So Lohr would be presented with the “problem” of transporting two saddles back to California, where he must try to figure out how and where to display them. Note that he could, in theory, actually put them on horses. The dapper Stanford man, a high-end homebuilder on the San Francisco peninsula in his previous career life, may not resemble a cowboy in any shape, form or fashion, but he owns up to being an accomplished horseman.
“I learned English-style first,” he said. “But I can ride Western.”
Paso Robles still has something of an Old West flavor, so the J. Lohr Wine Center three miles east of town is an obvious destination. The main tasting room in San Jose, easily accessed by far more folks, would be a fine spot for the other. There’s also the new state-ofthe-art white-winemaking facility in Greenfield, where Jerry’s grand wine adventure began in 1972.
At the age of 10, Steve helped his dad, who had been a successful engineer and also a homebuilder by trade but was always a South Dakota farmer at heart, plant the family’s first vines on a 280-acre property in what became the Arroyo Seco AVA. Fast-forward to 2017, and Lohr père was proclaimed an official “American Wine Legend” by the Wine Enthusiast, an honor only bestowed twice previously. Then, in January, Lohr fils had his moment, being named Paso Robles Wine Industry Person of the Year.
The Lohrs have been to the Central Coast region what the Mondavis were to Napa Valley, true believers who evolved into priceless assets. But, as J. Lohr’s Houston haul proves, nobody’s resting on his laurels, the patriarch included. Although Jerry celebrated his 80th birthday last year and relinquished the CEO reins to Steve in 2013, he still oversees the family’s 3,700 acres of vineyards, about two-thirds of which are in Paso Robles.
All those grapes make possible a total production of 1.4 million cases, a staggering sum when the consistent quality of the wines gets factored in. It’s all accomplished with certified sustainable farming methods, too. The Lohrs have been committed to the same from the get-go.
“That,” Lohr said, “is something we’re extremely proud of.”
They have a lot to be proud of these days.