How East Coast Millennial Chefs Are Changing California Winemaking

Mary McAuley, now in her early thirties, remembers visiting Paris years ago. She stayed with a friend. Both were on a strict budget.

“We’d go out and buy a baguette and some butter and cheese and two bottles of wine. They were probably the best meals of my life. The food was awesome and the stunning wine cost four Euros a bottle. I said—why don’t we do this in the U.S.?”

At the time Mary was studying at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York. She later studied to become a sommelier. Afterwards, recalling her Parisian epiphany, she formed Ripe Life Wines with two objectives to differentiate her product. First, she wanted to produce craft wines that matched specific foods. Second, she wanted to produce craft wines for less than $20 a bottle—affordable for millennials.

After setting up operations in Napa and then Sonoma in California, Mary needed a full time winemaker. A serendipitous trail of events put her in touch with Jason Driscoll, another millennial who grew up on the East Coast before studying cooking at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in St. Helena, California. After working both at Charlie Trotter’s Restaurant in Chicago and later in a Napa kitchen, Jason realized that 17 hour work days were not conducive to starting a family. He and his wife discussed alternatives. When an opportunity to work in a winery arrived, he seized it. He first worked at Hunnicutt Wines and later at DeSante Wines in Napa Valley. Jason now works with Mary as the winemaker for Ripe Life Wines.

“We both have a passion for terroir and the European mindset when it comes to wines,” Mary explained. “We have this Old World mindset—find the best fruit and let it speak for itself.”

But making well crafted, good quality wine for less than $20 a bottle poses a huge challenge.

“The sub-$20 price point in America?" Mary said. "The wine is really not that good. The sub-$20 price point in Europe? You can find great wine. In Europe there’s a demand for good wine. People won’t tolerate bad wine the way we do. Prohibition really set us back, in that we aren’t really a wine savvy country. For under $20 people are not making craft wines. They are doing science projects from left over bulk. Everyone I am in bidding wars with have bigger pockets because their wines sell for much more. But I like the challenge.”

Culinary school honed thought processes that set Mary and Jason apart from winemaking peers. For Mary, it provided incentive to develop wines that match specific foods, such as her Clambake Limited Edition Rosé. For Jason, culinary school grounded him with a sound work ethic (“the grind of spending hours on your feet,” he said), attention to detail (“mise en place is religion not only in the kitchen, but in the cellar”) and an appreciation for using only the best ingredients.

Jason appreciates Mary’s determination for matching a reasonable price point with well-crafted wine.

“Millennials want this,” said Jason. “Fresher wine. Also wine and food are becoming one for our age group. It’s nice to make wine our generation can afford. Mary is ‘site driven,’ not ‘process driven.' A lot of other wines at her price points are doctored. She’s making an affordable gateway wine for $16—way over-delivering. We’re genuinely making this wine as clean as possible. Everything is handpicked and we use whole cluster preparation. Mary insists. I’m stoked to work with someone who has those ideals for approaching a project.”

Mary confirms that maintaining a sub-$20 price per bottle can be accomplished, but requires enormous work in terms of sourcing good quality, affordable grapes.

“We source our grapes from Napa and Mendocino counties,” she explained. “Mendocino a few years ago was kind of like a secret hot spot. Now everyone is starting to catch on that the fruit there is incredible. It’s a little colder up there so there is higher acidity.”

Another problem with creating wine at her price point relates to customer expectations.

“As we started to scale up, we sourced from multiple vineyards. We keep these grapes separate and make the wine in small batches. But in the sub-$20 market, people are used to consistency. They are used to it flavored with additives. Distributors like it because it’s consistent, so bottle number one and bottle number one million are exactly the same.”

She is also clear about what ‘craft wine’ is.

“If you put a craft wine at the same price next to a mass produced wine, nine times out of ten a person is going to choose that craft wine. There’s a lack of harshness, a lack of flaws, an interesting character, a natural acidity that is not an additive. There’s a cleaner, refreshing finish.”

Mary suspects her more notion of producing a more European price/value rapport may be ahead of its time.

“Eventually America may become more of a food obsessed culture, more quality over quantity. I think we’ll see a return to more of an Old World style of approaching food and wine, and our relationship to the land. We’re seeing it in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Portland. Those are markets I target.

“What I am banking on is that people, as they start to care way more about where food is coming from, won’t mind that my wine has some variation—vineyard and vintage variation. However what is consistent is that this is craft wine, and it’s good for you, and it’s beautiful and it over-delivers.”

Her vision is unwavering.

“I don’t believe in muddled, weak concepts. They do not have longevity. I think you really have to stay the course with a strong concept.”

She also realizes the value of understanding her generation.

“My advantage? I’m talking to 50 and 60 year olds, and I’m 30. I'm telling them I am more engaged with people who are pulling this wine off the shelf, who are reading articles they see on Facebook and little blurbs on cool brands or sharing stuff on social media.”

She would appreciate having a large buyer not fixated on the consistency of a wine style, which naturally fluctuates depending on weather and soils.

“In America about 90% of the wine at my price point is run by about 10 people," she generalized to make a point. "We’ll see if one of those 10 buy into this concept; if someone at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's click with that concept. Having that bread and butter account will let us bring craft, small batch wine to the masses."

She laughed, pleased at the uniqueness of the challenge.

"That," she added, "has never been done before.”