by Steve Edmunds » Thu May 01, 2025 2:00 pm
Back in the early '70s, when I first began in the business, there was an importer in the Bay Area who sold the wines from the negociants Philippe Bonsal and Freddy Seggerman, which included wines from a number of the Beaujolais Crus, and they quickly became favorites of mine at that time: Gamay's charms in consistent abundance, beguiling as could be.
When I first tasted wines from California labeled either Gamay or Gamay Beaujolais, I was always disappointed. Didn't take long to discover that Gamay Beaujolais was actually a clone of Pinot Noir, and it seemed like a pretty bad idea to permit those wines to be labeled as Gamay.
And then there's the other wine permitted to be labeled "Gamay," the late-ripening Valdiguie, without anything like the charm of Gamay, and back in those days labeling that variety by its own name would have made it even more difficult to sell. (At least you could pronounce Gamay, even if it didn't taste right.) I think with those two blunders got wrapped around the name of the grape that wasn't even growing (except in, perhaps, one or two mixed-black field blends) anywhere in the state, combined with the growth in the demand for Cabernet, and a few other grapes for making "important" wines (i.e., lucrative), nobody got too interested in charming wines.
By 1999, when ESJ was in its 15th year of existence, the all-Cabernet, all-Chardonnay model had begun to elicit a few yawns, and I'd gotten interested in exploring the possibility of getting Ron Mansfield to plant a little Gamay for me at one of the cooler high-elevation sites near Placerville. I'd also
discovered that John Caldwell, a Napa grower and Cabernet producer, had started a nursery operation, and when he called me one day to see if I was interested in any of the plant material he was developing, new clones of Syrah, etc., I asked him if he might be able to offer any Gamay--the real stuff. He said he had a couple of clones. I told him where I though we might want to plant it, and he narrowed it down to one. I told him I'd stay in touch.
A week or two after that, Ron told me he'd like to drive down to the Central coast and visit some vineyards to see what was going on down there that might be of interest. (Ron managed a lot of properties in the Placerville area, that supplied small-scale wine producers like me, and he wanted to expand what he might have to offer)
We set off one morning in late Spring of '99, and on our drive he told me about a client who'd grown Bartlett pears for a few decades, who had decided he'd be better off growing wine grapes (globalization seemed to be killing the market for orchard fruits). He told me the property was at between 3300 and 3400 feet elevation, and the soil was volcanic clay-loam--Aiken loam, to be exact, a predominant soil type around Placerville. He asked if I had any ideas for what variety might do well there. "Pinot Gris?" he asked, knowing I was interested in a new source for that.
"Well, sure," I said, "that does sound like a good match." I paused, my heart skipped a beat. "But what I'd love to see in a site like that would be Gamay." I knew Ron was unlikely to know just what I meant. "Isn't that what Ken Johnson had planted at his place on Carson Road, just a ways up from GoldBud? He had trouble getting that stuff ripe, a lot of years, didn't he?"
"That's a grape called Valdiguie," I said; "it's legal to call it Gamay, but it's a completely different grape. Gamay ripens at the
beginning of the harvest season; Valdiguie gets ripe way toward the end." I told Ron all the things I knew about Gamay that made it attractive for a farmer, and also the things about the wine it made that I really liked.
That evening Ron had dinner at our house in Berkeley, and stayed the night. Before dinner I pulled three bottles of Cru Beaujolais from the cellar, a Fleurie, a Morgon, and a Moulin a Vent. I think we had pork, vegetables, and a salad. Ron was amazed at how lovely the wines were, like a kid in a candy store for the first time.
He went to see Bob Witters at the pear orchard site up above Placerville, and the following Spring Bob planted four acres of Gamay and three of Pinot Gris. The first intentional planting of Gamay ever, in California.
