The weather is nice, not warm, but that delicate spot between uncomfortable extremes where wine grapes like to live. I’m meeting Charles Hendricks (CH), the winemaker and co-owner of hope & grace wines for the past twelve years at a renowned local restaurant, steps from the Yountville tasting room, a perk of the tasting room location.
I always identified with Maverick from Topgun. There is a natural knowledge of how to do things… I joke that I come stupid to each vintage without pre-conceived ideas of what’s going to happen.
Charles Hendricks arrives promptly, dressed in a clean black t-shirt and tan cargo pants. He elicits a comparison to Dr. Drew from TV, crisp, and casual. His attire is functional while still expressing a clean aesthetic. He informs me he’s primarily working in the cellar today and won’t be in the vineyards.
He approaches the lunch confidently, he’s familiar with the menu, the dishes, and most importantly the wine; his Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir graces the list at this restaurant.
RM: When you eat somewhere where your wine is on the wine list do you order it?
CH: Not usually, I like to try something else, see what other people are doing.
So he selects a Russian river Pinot Noir as a comparison. After the initial pleasantries are completed and orders made I continue.
RM: Not taking into account any wine you personally have made, what is the best wine you’ve ever had?
Charles stops only for a second and responds with surety.
CH: ‘78 Domaine de la Romanee Conti Grands Echezeaux I think it was in 1992.
RM: Where were you?
CH: I was in San Francisco at the restaurant of a friend and I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t find any good pinot noir and I was going to write off the whole category, and the chef goes ‘no you’ve got to try this.’ She pulls something off the shelf in their wine cellar and it’s this bacon fruit bomb that overtook my whole system from mouth to belly, everything was echoing those flavors; it was ethereal and I still remember that… and I said ‘ok I’ve got it now’ and it laid out where I want to be.
RM: And nothing has stood up to that since then?
CH: Nope (no hesitation).
RM: You talk passionately and eloquently of wine, is that what you want to be since boyhood?
CH: Growing up all I knew was veterinary medicine… my dad was a veterinarian and when an animal was injured in the middle of the night he’d wake me up and we’d go down to the veterinary hospital and I’d be doing treatments with him or helping with a surgery… I liked it, I liked to make them better and work in the animal hospital. It was very fulfilling.
RM: And how did you go from that to the wine world?
CH: Coming from Anaheim, CA there wasn’t a wine culture at that time. And UC Davis was the only school with a veterinary medicine program so I applied there and got in. In college everyone took ‘Introduction to Winemaking’ because you got to drink the wine… but after I took the class it struck me.
RM: What was your favorite part of the class… besides drinking wine?
Charles chuckles, he has a calm and friendly air about him. The staff have recognized him and we are graced with a salad compliments of the chef: Artichokes two ways, shaved and fried with an anchovy vinaigrette. He is gracious in his acceptance and he digs into the salad as we continue.
CH: The agriculture really appealed to me. I took a year and two thirds under my physiology major and I changed my major to viticulture… and then I was kinda one of the first that wrote my own major that included the viticulture and the winemaking courses. The programs had not yet been integrated because of politics. Back in the ‘70’s the grapegrowers and the winemakers were always fighting each other. The grapegrowers were trying to put the peddle to the metal and make the highest yields possible, to hell with the quality, and the winemakers were reading about Bordeux and low grape yields… so they didn’t understand each other.
RM: You were interested in the viticulture… what do you think drove the division?
CH: Back then the grapegrowers were paid on sugar points and the higher the sugar content the more they got paid, as opposed to now. It showed that there weren’t the common goals of today. Today when you contract with a grapegrower you contract for tonnage and you develop a relationship, some of my wines I’ve been sourcing from the same growers and the same vineyards since almost the beginning. The grower knows what you want and knows he has to provide clean fruit of high grade.
RM: You were at UC Davis which is now world-renowned for their Food and Wine Institute, but you were there before that… how did you learn what you know now?
CH: Yeah I was there in the dark ages… (Charles chuckles). In the California wine world back then it was an active time of experimenting trying to figure out what we had… it took us 5-6 years before we found out the Text Books had lied to us. Everything was technically correct but we discovered that it doesn’t work that way in real life.
RM: Where did you learn your secrets then?
CH: Trial and error… probably 10 years experimenting with different problems in wine. Working at different wineries that each had unique issues, barrel issues, cellar issues, etc. I got really good at working with difficult wines.
RM: You’ve worked in a lot of places with a lot of different people in the industry, how would other winemakers describe you?
CM: That’s a good question… probably a cowboy, (Charles smiles feeling comfortable with this idea)I don’t keep the best notes. I always identified with Maverick from Topgun. There is a natural knowledge of how to do things… I joke that I come stupid to each vintage without pre-conceived ideas of what’s going to happen. I’ve watched larger companies try to computer model when the grapes will be ready. I never made wine from a laboratory model… you just have to be out there in the grapes doing it. I don’t follow a textbook or a computer model and that’s where the cowboy comes in…
… to be continued.