Tom Gendall has built a career working amongst the vines
After following his heart to (north of) San Francisco, Tom Gendall has established himself in the birthplace of California winemaking.
he was ‘a couple of beers into a round of golf ’ one Saturday afternoon a few years ago. The stroke of fortune had nothing to do with the young winemaker’s golf game. It didn’t even occur where Tom was swinging clubs on the course in northern California. But the flood of insistent texts and calls that afternoon made it clear that something big may have been happening for him somewhere.
Tom was three years into an assistant winemaker stint at a boutique winery in the renowned Sonoma Valley, helping craft acclaimed Pinot, Chardonnay, and Cabernet wines that ranged from $ 45 to $ 125 a bottle. ‘It was awesome, a lot of fun,’ says Tom. But with little opportunity for advancement on the horizon, he’d begun looking for a new challenge.
While he took an afternoon away from the grapes, a little ways away out on the water, the Lincoln University graduate’s passion for wine was about to change his life. ‘Fred Cline, the owner of Cline Family Cellars, was out on a boat with my mother-in-law Sylvia,’ recalls Tom. While sipping on some Sauvignon Blanc from the small Gordenker label established by Sylvia’s family, Fred said he was looking for a new assistant winemaker.
‘My mother-in-law, who is one of my best champions, says, “Oh, my son-in-law is looking for a job like that,”’ says Tom with a laugh. ‘Fred’s like, “What does he do, what can you tell me about him?”, and she basically said to him, “You’re drinking his wine right now!”’
While Tom had worked a variety of jobs for several wineries since moving to California with his then-girlfriend Michele in 2011 (from cellar hand to winemaking), throughout that time the couple had also tended Michele’s family vineyard, making ‘a little bit of wine on the side’.
It was that ‘on the side’ wine that caught Fred Cline’s attention. Within days Tom was interviewed, taken on a tour of the Cline vineyards – ‘I was blown away’ – and had the job offer. ‘It was just one of those fast things, it worked out really well,’ he says.
Advancement hasn’t been an issue for Tom at Cline Family Cellars, a family-owned and operated winery Tom describes as ‘medium-sized’ (1,000 acres of vines, around 400,000 cases produced annually). Since he came on board as assistant to renowned Cline winemaker Charlie Tsegeletos, Tom progressed to become the operation’s North Coast winemaker, the head winemaker for the family’s Jacuzzi label focused on rarer Italian varietals, and helped launch ‘secondgeneration’ label Gust with Fred’s daughters Megan Cline and Hilary Cline.
Earlier this year Tsegeletos retired, and the baton was fully passed to Tom alongside the newly created position of Director of Winemaking and Viticulture. ‘It is a really great honour to have that,’ says Tom. ‘It’s a lot of work, but it’s really cool. I’m really stoked.’
Tom started developing his passion for wine as a 17-yearold at St Andrew’s College. Not at high school parties on the weekends, but in class. ‘In our last two years in high school we had to do these things called options, and they ranged
from ballroom dancing to 4WDing, all sorts of things,’ recalls Tom. ‘One of them was wine tasting. They poured us little tastings, and we talked about different things. It kind of just all fell together for me. I had a friend in his second year at Lincoln University, and when I visited his flat he basically wrote me up my whole three-year degree on a whiteboard. This all happened in about two or three weeks: from starting wine tasting at school to figuring it seemed like fun, to having my friend at university plan out my degree. I was away running. I kind of fell into being “the wine guy” in my final year at high school.’
Tom got hands-on experience at Pegasus Bay while completing his studies for a Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln University. ‘I was working in the vineyard, lifting wires, bird netting, bud rubbing, all that stuff. I did a couple of harvests as well.’
Tom credits Greg Miller, the Vineyard Manager at Pegasus Bay, as an important mentor. Under Miller’s tutelage,
Tom learned about vineyard management and techniques, as well as witnessing how to manage a variety of personalities. Tom’s first full-time role was as Assistant Vineyard Manager at Pegasus Bay when he was 22, where he helped Miller plan and plant a 50-acre organic vineyard and manage the main vineyard and all the crews.
That grounding in the vineyard has been a bedrock to Tom’s career, he says. ‘I always wanted to be a winemaker, but I also understood that to be a really good winemaker you had to understand all facets. Getting early into the vineyard side is one of the things that slightly separates me from a lot of my peers, having that detail-oriented vineyard experience.’
Nowadays, Tom is kept busy making an extensive portfolio of wines under various labels for Cline Family Cellars. Rather than focusing on a small handful of varieties, Tom is juggling dozens of different wines. ‘We make about 60 different wines a year, so it’s a lot.’
But he still keeps his hand in with vineyard work at his
own family’s plantings, spraying vines himself and overseeing the day-to-day work. ‘Vineyards are really important to me.’
While he’s had to battle fresh challenges in California, such as smoke from wildfires which can taint grapes on the vine (Tom and Michele also lost their house in the 2017 fires), it’s clear that Tom loves what he does. The passion bubbles through his conversation.
And later this month, he gets to start enjoying his very favourite thing about his job. ‘Harvest time is the culmination of a year of hard work in the vineyard and planning in the winery, where everything comes together if Mother Nature plays along,’ says Tom.
On a typical harvest day, he begins by driving between their various vineyards, tasting grapes, walking the blocks, and working with vineyard managers and crew about what and when to pick. Then it’s back to the winery, and tasting up to 50 ferments that need to be checked daily, before planning the next day’s cellar work and pressing schedules.
‘Most of what I do is record keeping and planning – when the plan works it is great, but doing all the paperwork necessary is challenging,’ says Tom with a laugh. ‘It’s more fun spending my time in vineyards and tasting wines.’
Rather than focusing on a small handful of varieties, Tom is juggling dozens of different wines. ‘We make about 60 different wines a year, so it’s a lot.’