The Fizz #51: Flowers winemaker Chantal Forthun believes preservation is progress
Chantal Forthun touches on her winemaking process, her history as an oenologist, the complex terroir in their high elevation coastal vineyards, and preserving their vines.
For the 51st issue of The Fizz, I sat down with Flowers winemaker Chantal Forthun at Flowers Winery. Chantal has been in the California wine industry for seventeen years, and has worked as a lab technician, a harvest employee, an assistant winemaker, and is now the Director of Winemaking at Flowers Vineyards and Winery. Aside from making some of my favorite California Pinot Noir, Chantal is also an incredibly warm human being, whose love of her region colors her descriptions of her day to day work.
In this issue, Chantal speaks about her history in winemaking, her winemaking process and her desire to make a wine that speaks to the grapes and their terroir, as well as where she sees the future of Flowers going. From the effects of climate change to her focus on preservation, Chantal is clearly a passionate and dedicated winemaker with a love of her grapes, her region, and her team. I’m so happy to have taken a peek into her process and history. I hope you enjoy it.
Margot: I would love to get a sense of your wine history and how you got into the space.
Chantal: My first vintage was in 2005 and just by chance, I worked as a lab technician at a very large winery in Lodi. I didn’t know this is what I wanted to do, and ultimately I think I am very lucky to have found something that puts art, science, camaraderie, teamwork, nature, and packages it all up into what it means to be a winemaker. I worked in Lodi for about three years and then moved to Santa Cruz. I worked for Randall Grahm at Bonny Doon Vineyard for about three years. That was really my first introduction into natural winemaking—native fermentation, biodynamics, and organic farming. It was a very inspirational and obviously pivotal experience. Randall is one of the original Rhone Rangers, very well known for those varieties.
He had a soft spot for Pinot Noir and felt like he could never really conquer Pinot. He inspired me to go to New Zealand and do a Pinot Noir harvest in Central Otago. I worked for Rudi Bauer at Quartz Reef, another pioneer of Central Otago in native fermentation and biodynamic farming. I came back from that and had scored a really coveted experience at Rhys Vineyards in Santa Cruz Mountains. Same deal—native fermentation, small lot, high-quality, estate vineyard focused. This was an introduction to high elevation coastal Pinot Noir. Then, I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to be at Flowers. Originally it was a harvest experience, and if I wanted to make it longer, I could. Ten years later, I'm still here.
Margot: That's awesome. How did you move from that harvest into the position you are now?
Chantal: The person who is the General Manager and the Director of Winemaking was wonderful to work for. He told me—this is a really big job, winemaking and growing grapes, doing what we do, and you cannot do it without the support of a team of people. He really cared about people. His name is Jason Jardine. He's the general manager at Hanzell today. He said, “this is a really special place. It is in the middle of nowhere, but it it's really special, and if there are special people that work here, which we are, then we're doing a really cool thing”. He told me that if I wanted a full-time job once I did that harvest, there would be a job for me and I’d become the assistant winemaker. If I didn’t, no hard feelings. Great harvest either way.
I drove up the switchbacks overlooking the Pacific and got up to the top of the ridge, and before I went down to meet the team, I got out of my car at the highest point of the vineyard, and the fog rolled in that day. The ridge felt like an island in the sky surrounded by fog and forest. I just thought, wow, I'm not leaving.
Margot: I love that. So you started your career as an oenologist at Oak Ridge. What was that experience like? What does it mean to be a working oenologist?
Chantal: I actually started as a harvest lab technician. It was a huge winery. Essentially a bulk wine production, and I feel very lucky to have gotten that out of the way at the very beginning because it taught me a lot. We would get a hundred samples twice a day during harvest, and they’re coming in 375ml bottles. By the time you drew 100 samples, some of those bottles are overflowing—they're fermenting! So that's a huge mess. We ran brix with the old school method with a hydrometer. We poured the juice into the cylinder and measured it. Now we all use density meters, and this was old school, hundred samples twice a day, checking brix.
You'd move on to pH and TA and VA and depending on the finished samples, alcohol as well. It was lots of repetitive lab work and all the chemistry was wet chemistry. There wasn't a whole lot of technology in this lab. Over time, I moved out of being the person who did all the analysis, and started to manage the lab and train seasonal interns. I got familiar with the database and then ultimately became the oenologist. What it meant to be the oenologist at this winery was writing a lot of work orders. The winemaker spent a lot of time at the blending bench—his name is Chue Her. He's still the winemaker there, and I believe he's the very first Laotian winemaker in the States. He has an incredible palate and he actually is the one who taught me how to taste.
I would sit and go through these blend samples—you're blending thousands and thousands of gallons, and you're looking for something that is repetitive, that you can repeat. He taught me how to taste for flaws. Now, it's so ingrained in my tasting mechanism that often instead of enjoying that first whiff or the first taste, I can be very critical about how I taste the wine. It has taken a long time to recognize that you don't have to taste like that. You can still evaluate wine in that sort of way, but start with what's wonderful about it before you get to the critical part of it.
Margot: Absolutely. You mentioned biodynamics in the vineyard. How are you employing those practices?
Chantal: This is something that we're really just beginning to reintroduce to the properties. The owners of Flowers are very passionate about organic and biodynamic farming. We're taking a lead from what they're doing at Quinntessa and beginning to reincorporate that into what we're doing at Flowers.
In 2020, we started with silica sprays. Out on the coast, we call it spring fever. Because we're high elevation and our soils tend to not hold very much water, we often are at the mercy of an early bud break. Being at high elevation that close to the ocean, we aren't at risk of frost very often. That seems to be changing a little bit, but what does happen is we get bud break. We get six to twelve inches of shoot growth, and then nothing happens because the spring is so cold.
In 2019 we noticed we have these shoots that are six to twelve inches, maybe eighteen in some of the stronger areas, but everything's starting to get a little bit yellow. It's not that bright brilliant new green growth that we'd expect—the growth has really slowed down because of temperature. Incorporating silica was a really easy thing to begin with in bringing biodynamics back. By doing that, we are increasing the amount of light and reflection of light within the vineyard in order to both raise the temperature of the vineyard as well the amount of photosynthesis that's happening.
Margot: Interesting. I'm not the most well versed on this—can you help me understand what silica does in the vineyard, how it's applied?
Chantal: Silica is essentially a ground up quartz crystal, and you can either buy the powder from one of the biodynamic outfits that's preparing preparations, or you can grind it up yourselves. We share with the Quintessa team. You dynamize this powder, and so the powdered quartz gets added to water and then we stir it at sunrise for an hour. It's an incredibly energizing experience. Doing something like this with natural elements and energizing it with your own energy, it’s special.
We always joke, but not really—you can't come stir unless you're going to show up and be in a good mood. This is part of you putting your energy into the vineyard as well, and quartz, because it's associated with so much light and energy and growth, you almost get a little bit high when you like take part in this. If you kind of get a sprinkle of dusting of it on yourself, you kind of feel like you get that spark of energy as well.
Margot: That's really neat. Your vineyards are right up on the coast. How does that coastal influence translate into the vines and then the wine?
Chantal: The coast itself is still incredibly remote. There aren't a lot of vineyards out there. There aren't a lot of people out there. I think when people picture wine country, it's often the Napa Valley, the Russian River Valley, where all these vineyards owned by different people are kind of butted up against each other at the bottom of a valley floor, in this patchwork aesthetic. At Flowers, this isn't a patchwork aesthetic of vineyard. This is a patch of vineyard in the middle of forest. Having this coastal forest surrounding the vineyard plays a part in the botanical nature and earthiness and spiciness of our wines.
I think the estate wines from Flowers in particular, fruit is never the first thing that comes to mind when you put your nose in a glass. It's much more earth toned and spiced and botanical. A lot of that forest wouldn't be able to exist if it wasn't right on the coast, because a lot of this Redwood forest, for example, relies on these cooler temperatures and this fog intrusion in order to exist.
The Pacific Ocean is a very consistent temperature year round, so that really helps to moderate our temperatures in our vineyard, where there's much less of the diurnal shift. In comparison to the Russian River Valley where we talk a lot about warm days, cool nights. You have this ripening in the daytime and then everything kind of arrests at night. The closer you are to the coast, the more profound the impact it has on your growing grapes and making wines. This minimal diurnal shift actually allows for more even ripening and more even flavor development, and a longer season. We have more layers and more complexity in these wines, while retaining acidity and freshness.
Margot: You're retaining that acidity because of your high elevation?
Chantal: Primarily we’re retaining that acidity because of the moderation in temperature. The ripening is actually slower, so not having the extreme heat is going to burn less of that acidity off over time. You bring up a good point about elevation. We're very close to the San Andreas Fault, which is what's provided all of this geological activity, which over the course of millennia has been incredibly chaotic and violent. That's why we have these coastal ridges and those ridge tops are both in high elevation, but also with very little soil and lots of bedrock. The tension and texture in these wines is actually coming from that elevation impact as well as the rockiness in the soils.
From a winemaking standpoint, making sure that the acidity and the texture are matching is important.
Margot: How do you do that?
Chantal: I remember when I first started working here, it was one of the things that was the most challenging. It felt like they were so disconnected. We’ve been working really hard to understand the vineyard and also figure out where we can invest resources within the vineyard that help build strong soils. Using organics, using very prescribed cover crops, pruning in such a specific way that we're not pushing the plants to have too much yield. That way we are supporting the even ripening that we are able to get thanks to the climate. The skin to juice ratio is very important in choosing that balance.
We already are having pretty small clusters in comparison to other parts of Sonoma County. We have the elevation impact of the thicker skins, and some pretty crazy acidity as well because of the climate. Not having enough juice to support both the texture and the acid will create that disconnect. It all begins with making sure that these plants are healthy enough to produce a well-balanced crop, because the way that I'm making wine, which is very minimal intervention—we're not adding things or manipulating things to achieve a certain flavor or texture profile from an artificial sense. We're really only using the natural material that's there. It always comes back to what's going to support the plant in order to produce this balance in the vineyard before you can get to the fermentation.
Margot: That makes sense. Are there particular stressors—fungi, diseases, pests that are in your area?
Chantal: Not in particular. I think 30 years ago when the vineyards were planted, there was a lot more disease pressure being that close to the ocean and having that kind of fog intrusion. Now the fog is pretty regular during the growing season. It moves in in the afternoon and is burned off by the morning and the intrusion in the afternoon is fairly minimal. It doesn't really roll into the vineyard anymore. It just kind of sits out right at where the land and the water meet. We have a lot less disease pressure from powdery mildew.
There are certainly seasons where we'll have more of that risk, but it's been an interesting thing to discuss with the team because we used to farm to that risk. Over the last number of years, we don't need to farm to that risk anymore because the risk has diminished. Our team are farmers and they've been working this property for over 15 years together. It's in all of our best interest to protect the crop, but we don't need to be reactionary here. Let's be proactive to a point, and let's not overreact. If we have a little bit of a foggy day, let's send people in and scout everything before we apply something to the vines.
Margot: That makes sense. I'm hearing that there's both a lot of stability with your climate, and there's been some change. Are you feeling pretty protected and insulated against climate change or are you feeling the effects?
Chantal: I definitely think we're feeling effects. We don't have the technology to measure that as well. It's hard to say. We have people who have worked the vineyard who’ve said 15 years ago it was a lot foggier or a lot wetter. We can certainly pull things like rain reports, and look at how the amount of water has changed over time. We were in one of the wettest areas in Northern California. We've received significantly more rain out on the coast than even where I'm at right now in Healdsburg. I would say that the hundred year average for that property is over 70 inches and we're now at 27 inches for this year. We were at 20 inches last year, the year before we had 60 and the year before that we had a hundred or something like that.
We have some stability being that close to the ocean, and we're lucky that it's having its moderating impact, but at the same time, some of those very significant things that make that area really different from areas inland are beginning to diminish. Things like rainfall, things like fog, intrusion, and daily temperatures as well. You can look back at temperature, and having that elevation effect, you're going to have warmer summers anyway, but I think some of the temperatures we've seen in the last few years have been warmer than I've seen in the last ten years. There’s a little bit of security, but there are also really obvious things that seem to be changing. It's hard to predict. There are other people who get to predict these things for a living.
Margot: That makes sense. As you look to the future of Flowers, where do you see potential for experimentation or anything new?
Chantal: These properties have been planted for 31 years. It was 1991 that the first vines went into the ground. We have not redeveloped anything. Everything that's in the ground is still original vine. Some of it's performing really well, and what we've really been able to tease out over the last five years is that there are some plots that are underperforming. Maybe underperforming from a quality standpoint or underperforming from a yield standpoint. Where the team and I are going to invest a lot of effort in the next year or two is figuring out what the right rootstocks and clones are to have out on the coast.
We’ve adopted this Simonit and Sirch pruning methodology. We've been working with them for three years, and they're teaching us how to understand the sap flow of plants and really making cuts in a way that increases that flow and rebuilds the structure of the plants. These 30 year old Chardonnay vines that are clearly producing really amazing Chard—we're not going to redevelop that, we want to preserve the longevity. I see that our investments and our experiments are really going to continue to be rooted in either preserving what we have and continuing to amplify those characteristics in those sites and in those wines or thinking about redeveloping and how we’ll approach that.
Margot: That makes sense. I love that you're focusing on preservation. There's so much excitement from folks around planting new varieties and trying new things, which is so awesome and valid, but there's also a lot to be said for just preserving the history that you have. I think that's really special.
Chantal: Look, I think if you can't grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on the extreme Sonoma Coast of Northern California, that doesn't bode super well for any other Pinot Noir and Chardonnay growing region in California. So how do we figure that out and how do we continue to understand how to make that work and how do we adapt? A lot of our experiments are going to be rooted in adaptability.
Margot: I love that. As you’ve worked with these two grape varieties for such a long time, has there been anything that you've learned that really stuck out to you?
Chantal: I think we talk a lot about how transparent they can be to place. Really digging in and determining what that actually means is important. I think it's something really hard to do if you work with a different site every year, or if you don't have the kind of tenure that I have working with these properties. There's already so much diversity at these properties and I certainly haven't figured everything out yet. One of my favorite learnings, and this has come from the pruning exercises, is that size matters. Everybody is always talking about these tiny clusters, these tiny berries, these tiny seeds. Just because everything's tiny doesn't actually mean it's in balance.
Imagine like a tiny cluster at high elevation and here comes a heat wave. If those berries are really tiny and those seeds are really tiny, there isn't enough structure in that berry to keep that berry intact and survive a heat wave. Size actually does matter. My viticulturist and I want to make a t-shirt next year.
Some clones are always going to be a little bit tinier. If we can build healthy soils and build healthy plants and have a crop that's in balance and have all that energy get poured into these clusters, all of that balance and evenness is applied over the whole cluster and then therefore applied over the whole crop, or at least the whole plant. Then the whole crop may be able to make much better wines that show so much more purity.
Margot: That’s awesome. Where do you find the joy in your work?
Chantal: I've always loved to be outside and that's part of the reason that I studied science. My parents both were suit and tie every day sort of people. That's why I studied science. Traditionally we think about winemakers being in the winery, in the cellar, and of course I love tasting. I love harvesting, love being in the cellar and watching the fermentations and tasting throughout the evolution. But everything is happening outside and in the vineyard. With these particular vineyards, they're your very own parks. Anytime you go out there, it's a hike. To be able to take all of that in and notice and embrace all of that and have time to think and ponder, it’s special.
There's no cell phone service out there, so it's a double whammy to go out and you get to work in the vineyard, but you're also giving yourself time to ponder and reflect on all of the energy that you've put into this for the season. There's a people aspect to it as well. I love the camaraderie in the wine industry.
Part of my harvest kickoff speech every year with the vineyard team, the winery team, the hospitality team, the sales team is saying that everybody on the crush pad right now, if one of us doesn't do our job, it has a trickle down effect. It's so cyclical and it's so involved and we're all here to achieve the same goal at the end of the day, which is to make great wines and share them with people. You cannot do that without people. You need a team to do this. I really love that part.
You can support Chantal by buying the Flowers wines on their website, and following them on Instagram. Find Chantal’s Instagram here.
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