You don’t need me to tell you that times are tough.  Everywhere you hear terms like the “new normal,” “double-dip recession” and the like.  Look no further than the farmer to see the reality that is our changed landscape.  In this case, I visited Thomson Vineyards in Los Carneros, an American Viticultural Area (AVA) that spans the southern ends of both Sonoma and Napa counties.  Here, the Thomson family, which has farmed here since 1938, is having to adjust to the new normal and doing it in innovative ways using the latest in social media technologies, but still relying on the tried-and-true foundation of building personal relationships.

Los Carneros

As already mentioned, Carneros is on the south end of Sonoma and Napa and has a much cooler climate than its neighbors to the North due to its closer proximity to the San Pablo Bay and the Petaluma Gap.  This allows for great growing conditions for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which are heavily sought after in this region.  Recently, Carneros has been growing more Merlot and Syrah as well.  Thomson Vineyards focuses mainly on Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot.

The Farmer

The Farmer

George Thomson is the third generation farmer of this property and is often referred to in tweets as just “The Farmer” by his millenial daughter, Jennifer, now becoming the fourth generation “farmer.”  Electrician by day (working 6 10-hour shifts a week!), The Farmer has been solely responsible for the 30-acre vineyards off of Los Carneros Avenue since 2003 after about a 10 year hiatus from the business.  He is a firm believer in experience as I found out first hand after several questions about how young I look and to what extent my wine studies lent any significant level of experience.  That’s OK.  That’s what I would expect from my farmer if I was sourcing grapes from them.  I would want them to be the experienced ones and help me get a hold of the best fruit possible in order to make the best wine I could if I was a winemaker.  This the precisely the type of relationship they try to create with their winemakers, one that creates synergy utilizing the best and most experienced knowledge of both parties.  More on this below.

The Farmer's Daughter

The Farmer’s Daughter

As I mentioned above, The Farmer’s millenial daughter is now just hanging up her Marketing Communications hat working for the city of San Francisco to work for the family business.  A fourth generation farmer.  However, she has chosen to bring her education including an MBA and her skills in MarCom to change how farmer-winemaker relationships work and throwing in a little social media to help as well.  This is how I came to meet Jennifer.  These days you can easily find winemakers tweeting and Facebooking away.  But, how many winegrowers are doing it?  I am seeing a trend where the children of winemakers and winegrowers are coming back to the family business after forays in the “regular” business world and applying their innovative and technology-backed skills while bringing some fresh views and approaches to relationship-building.  See my upcoming post about how the same thing is happening with Bulmaro Montes’ daughters at Marita’s Vineyards.

Relationships

While developing relationships near the back-end of the winemaking supply chain are still dominated by phone calls, emails and face-to-face meetings, Jennifer explained how the newer and younger generation of winemakers are looking for more real-time communication and information and are keen to the new social media options.  While not necessarily making it rain with direct sales via Twitter, she has admitted to several block sales being procured via the micro channel and only expects it to grow as she continues to educate her winemakers in the value of social media for their individual brands.

Thomson prefers to build a close relationship with their winemakers such that they fill the role as mentor to help ensure the winemaker gets the best fruit possible representing Los Carneros.  More often, as I understand it, the winemaker tends to look for specific Brix and acid readings when the final call to pick is made.  The Farmer and Jennifer shared an incident where this occurred against The Farmer’s recommendations only to have the winemaker call back to say the grapes’ flavors were still “green.”  No shit?  You’d think with over 70 years combined family experience on this property, buyers might consider listening, especially if they want the true essence of Los Carneros to come through in their product.  Sadly, this is often not the goal of some winemakers.  Many of them have their own thoughts of what they want to make or what they think their market wants to drink.

But, this situation goes both ways.  Unfortunately, there are also growers who will sell fruit of any level of quality to unsuspecting winemakers who may not know any better or know the right questions to ask.  All the more reason to have a tight, TRUSTED relationship between the two roles, which is the basis of any successful social interaction or exchange.  If you have questions about Carneros or are looking for some fruit, you can reach Jennifer via Twitter @ThomsonVnyrds.

The vines are getting pretty close to going completely dormant this time of year, as many have lost most of their leaves and those that remain are brown and yellow.  Nonetheless, this changing of the seasons doesn’t diminish the beauty of the valley on this crisp weekend in early December as I find myself making a quick weekend jaunt to the land of wine, specifically to attend a class about preparing vines for next year’s bounty.

But, that, my friends, is just where the story begins.  Having just flown from the east coast the night before, I find myself wide awake at 5 am Saturday morning and thinking about some brekky.  Knowing I’ll be walking some vineyards most of the morning, I’ll want to eat something fairly substantial, if not also to help soak up the impending imbibing of gameday beer and, of course, wine that most certainly lies ahead.  With the sun soon just barely rising on the horizon I reach for Twitter to see who might be awake in the area and offer some recommendations of decent restaurants nearby.  Right away I am greeted with two responses naming Gillwood’s Cafe in St. Helena from @TrevR (not even a mile north of my motel) as well as Auberge de Soleil from @pmabray.  Paul, what were you doing up so early?  Having brought mainly casual pruning attire, it didn’t seem Auberge de Soleilwas going to work out, so Gillwood’s it was and it was perfect.  Nice little joint right on mainstreet St. Helena, where the locals were getting their day started.  The service was excellent and the coffee hot and fast.  Finally, I settled into some biscuits, gravy, eggs and hashbrowns that warmed my soul.

After some vineyard walking, pruning and meeting some great people learning about wine, I headed to Paul’s to watch the SEC championship game that really disappointed as my Gators went down to the better team that day.  Paul and his wife were gracious to invite me over to their house on a weekend day realizing I was flying solo in town for the day and for that I am gracious.  Finn was a treasure, with his dad’s social skills, not shy a bit.  Additionally, I got to meet Clay Wallin, also a Vintank partner, not once but twice!  Not to be realized until after he showed up at Paul’s, but he and I shared a chat in the checkout line at Trader Joe’s about Papaya of all things, being both south Florida boys.

The evening ended, or should I say started (?), after an awesome meal at the new Cantinetta Piero Italian restaurant in Yountville, with another set of tweets as some “old” friends made from way back in the summer at the Wine Blogger’s Conference invited me up to Calistoga for a tractor parade and them some late night wine.  Many thanks to Andrew (@winesoiree), Jill (@jilldever) and Marshall (@mcoffy) for hanging out and sharing some great wines and great stories.  There was much rejoicing in “storming the castle!”

It was a great ending to a full and wonderful day in Napa Valley and I owe it to recent and new sociable friends for being open, friendly and helpful.  That’s what it’s all about.

If you’re like me, my wife and our friends, there is a high probability you are reading this with a glass of wine in your hand.  You will rarely find us without one in the evening hours after work or on the weekends.

If so, then we think you’ll enjoy participating in this online community where our goal is to educate each other in the basic characteristics and styles of wine as well as the social aspect (i.e. tastings, dinners, visiting wineries, wine clubs, etc.) of wine by sharing stories and knowledge as average, everyday wine drinkers like you.

We will also tend to be biased toward what we call “value” wines, which we define as those wines that are relatively inexpensive ($<=20), easy to obtain and taste well beyond their price point.  All of this being shared from our, and your, own non-expert experiences, as we are not wine store owners, sommeliers, nor winemakers – at least not yet! But, of course, should any experts show up, we would love to hear from them too as we all would like to educate and be educated in the ever growing and increasingly accessible world of wine.  Cheers!