The Fizz #45: Corinne and Katie of Birdhorse Wines are celebrating the underserved grapes of California
Birdhorse Wines winemakers Corinne and Katie talk about being resources for queer folks interested in winemaking, their love of Verdelho, & the importance of tenacity.
The Fizz is back from winter break! This week, I spoke to winemakers Corinne Rich and Katie Rouse of Sonoma County’s Birdhorse Wines. These winemakers are dedicated to finding grapes that you wouldn’t usually associate with California wine production. After a mindset shift while working in South Africa, the pair decided to bring home the mission of celebrating California-grown grapes that didn’t get the love they deserved. Since 2018, they’ve focused on grapes like Arneis, Verdelho, Barbera, and Vermentino, working with growers they know and respect.
In this issue, we spoke about how they fell in love with wine, what they’ve learned from Katie’s family winemaking history in Virginia, their love for Verdelho (and why it’s inherently a “winemaker’s grape”), and how they connect their queerness to their brand and ethos. I’m excited to see more from these passionate winemakers in the coming years.
Margot: How did you come into the wine industry and where does your love for wine come from?
Corinne [to Katie]: That seems like a very appropriate question since we are at your ancestral home right now.
Katie: Yes, my family has a winery in Virginia where we are now for the holidays. I grew up on a winery and vineyard, and it's something that as siblings, we all were required to participate in all avenues of the family business. Thirty whatever years later, I'm surprised to be back in this industry. When I went off to college, I was involved in soil science and geology, and I always loved being outdoors. Having the background of the winery in my childhood was something that I really connected with. Tending the land and seeing the full cycle of seasons throughout the growing and production cycle, I really connected with that process and wanted to learn more about it.
I moved to San Francisco in 2011, and got a harvest job in Napa in 2012. That was kind of the kickoff of my journey of working in production. Since 2012, I've worked all over California, in South Africa and France, and now as of 2018, with our own brand, which is super exciting.
Corinne: I'm originally from Sonoma County. My parents have nothing to do with the wine industry other than enthusiastic consumption. I grew up not even really realizing it was a professional option. It was just sort of the background to my upbringing. I left California, went to college on the east coast and studied chemistry. Around age 21, I had a real quarter-life crisis. I had wound up in a job in pharmaceuticals post-grad and realized very quickly that I had no real desire to do that. So I packed up the car with some good friends, drove across the United States and moved back to California, back to Sonoma County.
I was planning to live at my mom's house and being unemployed and living with your mother is not a super good look when you're in your early twenties. So I started looking for work and I had a friend tell me that wineries needed help with analytical work during harvest. I thought well, I don't know anything about wine, but I sure am competent in a laboratory setting, so I applied to like 20 different wineries. They all said no, except for one Three Sticks Wines. Thank you for all you've given me. I worked my first harvest and I loved it. I started in the lab and then moved into the cellar pretty quickly. I was really excited about how physical the job was and how it was also very creative, but how it required a high level of attention to detail.
A lot of people say the balance of creativity and science and physicality really draws them into wine, and I think it's very true for me as well. I started working harvests in Sonoma and then worked a couple harvests in New Zealand. I went to Oregon, to Australia, to Washington and built up a pretty large baseline of the how of winemaking, but didn't really understand the why, so I applied and got into the master's program at U.C. Davis. In my second year, Katie started at Davis and that's where we met and it all kind of happened.
We went to South Africa together and it was there that we really got the bug for wanting to do our own project, and Birdhorse was born.
Katie: There's a really exciting movement going on in South Africa. The Swartland Revolution is what they call themselves. A lot of younger winemakers, in a region that has been kind of pushed aside, reinvigorating and re-energizing old vineyard sites that have been forgotten and varieties that have historically been planted across South Africa that also were less celebrated.
It was really exciting to be a part of that movement. That was the bug that inspired us to start our own brand. Seeing that energy of these regions and these grapes that had been there for a long time—we're excited to bring that back to the United States.
Corinne: It’s part of what we saw happening in California too, and what stoked that desire to re-explore what many people think has already been established. We have one of the youngest wine industries in the world, comparatively and nothing is set in stone. What are people not talking about that we can get excited about? What can we, especially in the advent of rapidly changing climate and marketplace, how can we showcase some things that we think are really fun?
Margot: Very cool. Katie, I want to go back to your history a little bit. Your family owns a winery in Virginia—can you tell me about that? How did they get it? Are you one of those old colonial families?
Katie: [laughs] No, no we’re not. This winery and this property started in 1990. My dad got a Fulbright in his undergraduate to go to Germany, studied German and wanted to go travel. While he was there, he worked as part of a wine harvest and loved it and got really interested in German wine. He’s just a very analytical mind and had gotten interested in learning more about how wine is made. He moved up to California from Virginia and applied to the Davis program, which was then fermentation focused. He worked at a lot of wineries in California, but never really wanted to end up in California. He ended up going back to Virginia, which was a super fresh wine scene back then.
Rockbridge Vineyards, my family's winery, started in ‘91. There were 20 wineries, maybe 30 in Virginia back then, and now there are 400. He was part of a re-invigoration in Virginia's industry. We do about 8,000 cases, part of which is grown on property, and a lot is purchased from other vineyards across Virginia. Virginia's climate is very different from California in terms of growing grapes, that makes it much harder, so you have to find these niche pockets within the landscape.
Margot: Have you taken any inspiration from your family winery or are you feeling pretty separate from the way that wine is made there?
Katie: It's been interesting to see the journey. The resources here are so few compared to where we make wine in California. I think the resourcefulness is something that I've really admired and tried to take to heart for our project for Birdhorse. The ability to work on a smaller budget or with fewer tools is something that I certainly hope has been inspired by my dad and by the industry here in Virginia, because you just have to figure things out for yourself. Rockbridge Vineyards is maybe an hour from the closest city. Seeing the relationships that are fostered with the wine community out here, and how important those are, has been really impactful.
Margot: That's very cool. There’s a really amazing history in Virginia for winemaking. It's our first winemaking state and they had a tough go. Now we're seeing all these people come back and try to move forward this industry in the very first place where we tried to nurture it in this country, which I think is just very cool. You mentioned your growers and the relationships that you have. How do you find the growers that you work with?
On your website, you have a quote here that says “we try to work with small operations that pay people a living wage, and invest in the employees”. How do you know they’re doing that?
Corinne: What a great question. There's the 2018 answer to that and then the 2021 answer to that. To your initial question, how did we find our growers in 2018? It was me cold emailing people saying, hey, do you have fruit available? What do you have? How do you grow it? I think every year it changes and it builds and we're able to vet more and more, the more buying power we have.
One of our favorite things is being able to find—I think most winemakers would say this—to find these treasures. These very small backyard vineyards where the people working on it are dedicated. Glenn McGourty is a great example—it's literally his backyard vineyard. He's been the extension research specialist in Lake and Mendocino County for the past 30 years. He had two and a half acres of Arneis in a backyard.
We definitely still buy from some larger growing operations too, because there's a lot more fruit available. As we've had more buying power, we've definitely tried to become more selective. We try to work with growers where we know other people who work with them, who are able to tell us yeah, this person is as they seem and doing what they say they're doing, or say no one really knows this person and they're kind of coming out of the woodwork.
I think what you're alluding to is that it’s hard, right? It's hard to know who's being honest, who is treating their people well. It's a constant learning process. I'm trying to always refine and improve who we're working with and trying to have candid conversations and keep asking those questions.
Katie: I think a lot of times the question just doesn't get asked. We're excited to see that it is becoming more of a conversation and more important to producers and consumers. In general, more conversations have been happening between growers and winemakers—for our Verdelho vineyard, he sells to a lot of small producers and he just continues to hear the feedback of needing to have better farming practices. He’s said “I need to change what I'm doing so that I can have a more marketable product”. As a result, from the first year we bought from him in ‘18 to 2021, he has changed his farming practices toward organic farming. It's just an exciting thing to see the heft of bargaining through buying power.
Katie: I think one of the biggest lessons we've learned over the last four years is that there is always more fruit out there. I'm not above walking away from something, if it turns out that we've been misled or if it’s not to our standards. I also don't want to just say, I'm just going to cut this relationship off. I always want it to be a conversation. I think we have just learned to be really flexible and if we need to seek elsewhere, we can seek elsewhere. That resourcefulness we found within ourselves is something we’re really proud of.
Margot: I love to hear you say that there's always more fruit because often I talk to winemakers in California and ask, how do you choose your grapes, and they say well, I take whatever's available. If I can afford it, I'll take it. That’s completely fair, but it's nice to hear you say no, if it's not right, we're not gonna do it. I think that can be a rare sentiment in California sometimes.
Katie: Yeah, through developing our brand, we've been able to say that more often. I think our first year we probably would have said ah! Just give them to us! It's a journey, but I would also say the ethos of our brand gives us more flexibility than others, maybe. Our ethos is that we're just trying to rediscover the uncelebrated, and that gives us a huge broad brush stroke in terms of where we get our fruit and what kind of fruit we're getting. That flexibility is built into our brand.
Margot: I love that. It's great to hear you comment on that ethos. Your mission on your website says you have a passion for diversification. What does that mean, and how does that play into your choices?
Corinne: That's sort of how it all started. When we were in South Africa, the grapes that had been the flagship grape for that industry are Pinotage and Chenin Blanc, and there's so much more than that grown there and grown well that is delicious. We started thinking about that in California and thinking well, there really are only seven, eight grapes that get most of the shelf space, and California has a tremendous diversity of climate and soil types. It just seems really unlikely that eight grapes could just shine across all of that. We thought we really want to show other varieties that we feel can do really well in these regions that maybe people aren't as familiar with.
Katie: One thing that we originally didn't intend to celebrate as much or be at the forefront, but because we are a partnership, as a couple, it's exciting to be sharing that story as well in an industry that has so long been white male dominated, and a pretty exclusive industry. As women, and as a couple, it's been an important part of sharing the language of diversity in the wine industry as well.
Margot: I really appreciate that you all don't shy away from your queerness in your brand. As a queer person, I'm always interested to find other queer winemakers. It's great to see that representation.
Corinne: If someone doesn't want to drink my wine, because I'm queer, I don't really want them to drink my wine. That comes from years of work of finding a comfortable place within myself and my being a queer person. I realize that's a privilege, but it's sort of my reaction to that.
For queer folks in the wine industry, we've really learned that visibility is not enough for queer folks. We're also kind of the invisible minority in a lot of ways. I think being really vocal advocates is a really important lesson we've learned. We are in sort of a position of privilege where our queerness is visible because we are a couple, but I think we've also been so mindful about wanting to be out and be open about being queer and try to be welcoming to other queer folks who are interested in wine. That's how you bring more people to the table. Just so you know, even if you can't see it, there is a space for you here.
Katie: It's just been really impactful to see how that visibility has been received. We’ve gotten a lot of amazing feedback.
Margot: How are you being helpful or welcoming to queer folks who are interested in making wine? Do you get people asking questions?
Corinne: We actually do, which was really surprising. We did not have any sense that that was going to happen. I think right around our second year in the business, we started getting the occasional email from somebody who was like “hey, I'm queer. I was Googling queer wine industry people and you came up. What's the deal? I'm moving to California. Can we grab a coffee?” It's really exciting. All we want to do is talk to you and tell you that not every place in this wine industry is awesome for you, but there are a lot of awesome spaces and we want to help and try to be an advocate for you if you want that.
Margot: That’s awesome. I would love to better understand how you get your grapes. You source both inside and outside of Sonoma County. Are there certain qualifications you look for in the grapes you get—does an organic certification matter to you?
Corinne: To the question of does it have to be organic—I think we would always like it to be more organic than not. I don't ever want to say we only work with organic growers because what I would love more than anything is to invest in a grower who is organic curious where we can be a part of getting them there. The folks who are already farming organically, I absolutely want to support those people too, but I think supporting those on the cusp is even more important. That's how we get more people to shift to that style of farming.
With sourcing, it usually starts with what variety do we really want to work with? What are we excited about? There've also been a couple of instances where we've been approached and people have said hey, I have this grape. Are you guys interested? Once we have a variety that we're excited about, we just kinda start knocking on doors and asking around.
We'll also do our own research for producers who are already making that variety and where it comes from. There've been a number of times where we've gone to a grower and the answer has been no, because there isn't enough or because they're selling to other people already. Then it’s just tenacity. I went back every year and asked “what about now?”.
Katie: It's definitely a labor of love in that way. Corinne is amazingly persistent, and I think that's been really important in our success of finding new sites that are harder to gain access to, because as a small unknown producer, you don't have a lot of buying power, and it makes it really hard to be say “can we buy one or two tons” when they have 25 tons to sell.
Making the effort of going to the vineyard, talking with the grower, having the face time in has been really important for us. Going back, not only during harvest, but going throughout the growing season and checking on the vines. That's been really valuable to our equity in those relationships—showing that we really are invested and that we do care.
Margot: You’re showing up.
Katie: Right, exactly. That has gained us a lot more credibility in the eyes of these growers and in the end, helps us foster that long-term relationship, because that's what we are looking for.
Margot: Which grapes that you've worked with so far have taught you the most?
Corinne: All of them is kind of a shitty answer to that question, but I do think that there's been so much to learn from every one. One of my favorite examples is the Verdelho that we make, which is a Portuguese white grape. We’ve made it from Contra Costa grapes and we've also made it from Lodi. I think that grape delivers on all the promises that Chardonnay made in California once upon a time made. It's a grape that is so neutral—if you just press it and ferment it, it feels like a perfectly adequate white wine, a ton of character initially, but what it has, like Chardonnay, is the ability to hold structure. It can take on a little wood and it can also have some weight and some density and some texture. It really ends up being a bit more of a winemaker's grape, which is really fun for us to be able to play with.
In some areas, it’s a little more well-suited than Chardonnay because it really holds its acidity. It's a grape that once we started working with it, we were like, yes, this is so well suited for the California climate because we have these crazy hot summers. We'll go out to sample grapes in the heat of the afternoon, and the fruit will be warm in your mouth, but it still has a bright acidity. You're just like, man, this is really working—it’s really well suited for this.
Katie: It's taken a couple of years to really get the hang of things with how the wine is finished, how it's manifested. That learning has been really fun.
Corinne: Yeah, I feel like our Carignan is a great example of that refining process, where when we first started working with it, we were getting it from Contra Costa and we had this vision of doing a really light and bright style. The more that we worked with it, we thought, I think this grape, to be a really complete wine, just needs a little more ripeness. It has the ability to maintain this bright red fruit and this lovely acidic tension, but in order to get it so it's not quite so crunchy and it feels more balanced, it needs to be a better reflection of the places that it is grown because we've tended to source it from pretty hot, more intense climates, like the foothills in Mendocino. Just taking it in a little bit riper has made a much better wine.
Margot: Gotcha. Corinne, you're the assistant winemaker at Scribe. What have you been learning from that experience?
Corinne: I should say I'm very recently the assistant winemaker at Scribe. I just started that job last summer, so I'm feel like I'm still taking a lot of it in. One of the things I really love about Scribe is that they really don't shy away from trying new things. I think it's really cool to work for a brand that is so young, but also quite established—they're making a lot of wine, they've really carved out a place for themselves. It would be really easy to just lean into the wines they already make in the styles that they make them, and be really successful, and they would do really well. But I think they are constantly thinking about how they can evolve and improve.
That’s something we've always tried to emulate, and it's something that is really inspirational to see in a brand that large and successful—that desire to innovate is still really there.
Margot: That’s really great to hear. You all are pretty new on the winemaking scene having started your brand in 2018—what is exciting for you? What do you hope to see in American winemaking as you move through the future?
Katie: One of the things that is inspiring to us is that education of consumers or the engagement of consumers to be willing to drink new and different wines. That's been so exciting to see in so many different facets. There is a totally new generation of wine drinkers out there looking for something different. They don’t all want the Cabs and the Pinots and whatever that their parents were drinking. Being a part of introducing these new varieties to that landscape has been really fun.
Corinne: The bringing in of a greater diversity of voices and types of people into the wine industry is definitely exciting. From the consumer side, and also from the professional side, the more types of backgrounds we have in the wine industry, the richer our knowledge base is going to be. There's so much energy right now, and it's so exciting to be a part of bringing in more people of color and more queer voices and empowering women in the wine industry. I just want to see that momentum build and continue on. I want to bring more people in and bring more people to the table and have this conversation.
Margot: Thanks so much for taking the time with me—I’m so excited to see you both thrive in 2022 and beyond.
You can support Corinne and Katie by buying their wines on their website. Follow them on Instagram to stay up to date with their journey.
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