Raise a glass of cheer
Lodi native named Winemaker of the Year by Wine Enthusiast magazine
Adam Mettler will turn 40 years of age in November.
While many celebrate milestone birthdays with a big party, Mettler would prefer a quiet evening at home with family and friends. He’s not comfortable in the spotlight.
Mettler likely will be a little self-conscious after Wine Enthusiast announced Thursday the Lodi native has been named the 2018 Winemaker of the Year. Mettler and nominees and winners in 16 categories will be honored at the magazine’s 19th annual Wine Star Awards gala on January 28, 2019 in Miami.
Wine Enthusiast reaches trade, media and wine enthusiasts around the world, so the recognition is a bit humbling, if not overwhelming.
“I like to think that they’re going to look at a person’s character and select people that they like as a person on top of winemaking successes,” Mettler said. “I consider myself a down-to-earth person.”
Down to earth, yes, but Mettler’s responsibilities keep him on the move constantly. Though Mettler is involved in many ventures, he is best known as the lead winemaker for Michael David Winery in Lodi, where over his tenure the past 14-plus years, the company has grown from a relatively small producer to a recognized brand distributed nationwide and in 35 countries with annual case sales numbering close to 800,000.
Mettler has had a hand in crafting the best-selling Zinfandel in the country, 7 Deadly Zins, along with the Earthquake, Freakshow, Inkblot, Michael David, Michael David Reserve and House Favorite brands.
Mettler’s title with Michael David is director of wine operations, meaning he’s responsible for all aspects of wine production and logistics for a multi-site network of crush and storage facilities in Lodi and elsewhere in the state.
Mettler also makes wine for his family’s winery, Mettler Family Vineyards. Between Michael David and Mettler Family Vineyards, Adam and his team work with dozens of wine grape varieties. And if that weren’t enough, Mettler is a wine grape grower with a couple hundred acres in Lodi that he contracts to outside wineries.
“He’s just had a steady hand at the helm the last 14 years he’s been with us,” said David Phillips, co-owner with his brother Michael of Michael David Winery. “He took wines that Mike and I were making when he came on board and took our styles and made them better and kept improving them year after year after year.”
Mettler’s background prepared him to handle every aspect of the wine business from farming to sales to winemaking to operations and management.
Mettler was raised in a farming family, the son of growers Charlene and Larry Mettler. Adam sold organic produce at his family’s fruit stand in Lodi with his sisters, Kim (Eells) and Kelli (Costamagna) and crafted beer and wine as a hobby. Educated at Lodi High and California State University, Fresno, Mettler worked at Fresno State’s winery and a local wine shop, Bailey-Cannon Wine Merchants, while studying oenology and chemistry. After graduating, he worked a harvest at Bleasdale Winery in South Australia before he returned to Lodi. At the time, the Mettlers decided to expand their farming business by launching a wine label. Adam worked with noted winemaker and consultant Barry Gnekow on the new venture.
“I kind of came in and shepherded him,” Gnekow said. “I started guiding him in the early stages of him figuring out to handle the winemaking side. He’s smart. He’s got a palate. He’s easy to work with and he’s real efficient. He’s a great winemaker.”
Adam needed full-time work as Mettler Family Vineyards found its footing, so he accepted an assistant winemaker position at Fenestra Winery in Livermore. While there, Mettler helped craft more than a dozen varieties under the guidance of owner/winemaker Lanny Repogle, a former chemistry professor at California State University, San Jose. Repogle said he helped Mettler gain a better understanding of the scientific side of winemaking.
“He was a very good assistant,” Repogle said. “I trusted him to do the right thing. He had enough knowledge and confidence to handle a question if I wasn’t around. He was quite confident, a good worker, very good.”
After a few years at Fenestra, Mettler looked for a job closer to home. Kevin Phillips, Vice President of Operations for Phillips Family Farms, the wine grape growing operation for Michael David Winery, hired Mettler in 2004, when Michael David produced roughly 25,000 cases per year.
Said Kevin Phillips: “Within a couple years, he was basically running the show in terms of winemaking and hasn’t missed a beat since.”
Mettler is a master at the art of blending and tastes wines from around the world to hone his palate. He strives to craft well-made wines free of flaws behind the mantra “never bottle a bad wine.”
“Even if you look at Michael David’s portfolio, we have wines anywhere from a real fun, easy-going rosè to an off-dry Symphony to a barrelfermented Chardonnay to a real light oaked, light-profile Cinsault red wine to big, crazy, monster tannic wines,” Mettler said. “I’d like to think I can build a wine around the direction of what the wine should be.”
Mettler and the Phillips work closely when launching a new brand, a process that seemingly is never-ending. Michael David offers more than two dozen wines and at least six different brands. Coming soon will be a Bordeaux blend called Politically Correct that Mettler and his team have created.
“We’re always looking at new brands and trying to keep growing with our Earthquake and Freakshow brands and those have been doing very well,” said David Phillips, whose family recently sold the 7 Deadly brand to the Wine Group. “We kind of tell Adam we’re coming out with a new brand … and Adam and the winemakers can usually figure out a way to blend and get the profile we’re looking for with certain blends.”
Michael David’s growth has been phenomenal. The company had about 25 employees when Mettler came on board and now has more than 250 employees, including 55 fulltime and seasonal workers under his purview.
“He has one of those minds where he has logical thinking,” said Jeff Farthing, who crafts several wines at Michael David and has known Mettler since college. “He puts things together that might be multi-steps in order to get an answer and he does that really quickly and that’s a strength of his.”
Mettler said he’s proud of the team he’s put together at Michael David.
“I definitely want to make sure the team I have created gets its due because without the teams that are supporting me,” said Mettler, “I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing in any regard.”
Mettler’s work has been noticed throughout the Lodi winegrower and winemaking communities.
“We’re talking about many things that are extraordinary,” said Richard “Rip” Ripken, a winegrower and the owner/winemaker of Ripken Vineyards & Winery in Lodi. “To have a winemaker with a repertoire like that is unbelievable, and it really helped the Lodi area.”
In 2016, a then-37-year-old Mettler was named among Wine Enthusiast’s Top 40 Under 40 Tastemakers and in 2015, the magazine named Lodi Wine Region of the Year.
Mettler certainly has made his family proud.
“Adam’s a self-made guy,” Larry Mettler said. “He didn’t get any extra help. He deserves everything he’s got.”
Mettler and his wife, Alyson, live in Lodi and have three boys: Cooper, 10, Brixten, 8, and Everett, 5.