At the end of 1997 Leslie Rudd contracted David Ramey, a winemaker who had made a name for himself at wineries such as Dominus, Matanzas Creek, and Chalk Hill, to take over for Girard winemaker Mark Smith.
During his four-year stint with the winery, Ramey shaped the standard of excellence beyond Leslie Rudd's greatest expectations laying the groundwork for future winemakers.
David Ramey left Rudd in March 2002 to develop his own wine brand. In April 2002, Charles Thomas stepped in to take over the helm and launch Rudd's estate wine program. Like David, Charles believes winemaking is ultimately an expression of the vineyards and their soil.
"Rather than have a certain model in my head of what I
want the wine to taste like, if my job is to make a wine that's
expressive of the vineyard characteristics there's a lot less
work and ultimately a higher quality level achieved if you
don't try to push a wine into something that it's not going to
be."
~ Charles Thomas, Rudd winemaker 2002-present
Today the Rudd philosophy of ongoing evaluation continues to shape the future of the winery and its wines.
As an example, during Rudd's first few harvests, the grapes were first loaded into 35-pound picking trays, then transferred into ½ ton boxes and transported to the nearby crush pad. But during 2001 and 2002 Rudd began investigating whether the grapes and, as a result, the wine, were affected by experiencing 500 pounds of pressure during the brief journey from the vineyards to the gravity-flow tanks. The winemaking team transported half of the fruit in the more gentle picking trays. The other half made the trip in half-ton bins. Thomas realized that although the grapes in the half-ton bins traveled a very brief time and distance, there was an affect on the wine. He found the macro bin system to be gentle, but the smaller bins to be a little gentler.
Referring to the trials during 2002 crush, Charles Thomas said, "You could see differences within a day or two. The clarity of the juice was clearer from the smaller boxes. Was it a dramatic difference? Not really, but it was there and there were flavor differences that paralleled that as the wines went through fermentation and skin contact. And those parallel differences are still there now in terms of the mouth feel and texture."
For more detail on each of the Rudd wines, please click on the links below:
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