by Andrew Chalk
They produce just shy of a million cases of wine a year. That makes them the 25th largest winery in California. They market with ten brands. That means they cover the field from the casual wine drinker to the collecting connoisseur. They make wine from their 2,800 acres of estate vineyards and purchase fruit from more.
If all of this is too cryptic to identify them, their brands include Metz Road, Ryder Estate, Fog & Light, Grandeur, VDR, and Scheid Vineyards. That last one is the giveaway, as they are Scheid Family Wines, a family-owned wine firm founded in 1972 by Al Scheid as a grape grower in Monterey County.
Contract wine production followed in 2000 using custom crush facilities, and a winery in 2005. Now Scheid Family Wines not only produces ten brands as described earlier, they are also heavily into private labels for supermarkets and restaurant chains.
Regional Manager John Smylie and winemaker Ellie Loustalot (one of four!) came through town recently and took me through a tasting of some of their wines.
We started with a refreshing Scheid Vineyards 2021 Estate Grown Sauvignon Blanc from Monterey County. Crisp and herbaceous. Ideal for a hot Dallas day. No oak.
It was followed by Grandeur 2022 Estate Grown Rosé, also from Monterey, which was equally enticing, crisp, but not too acidic, and the perfect foil for the Crab and Corn Bisque that I chose with it.
Next, my favorite white wine of the tasting: Metz Road 2021 Chardonnay Estate Grown in the Riverview Vineyard in Monterey. This wine showed a really impressive phenolic backbone, complex tropical fruit of pineapple and guava, and a creamy note in the mouth from barrel fermentation and lees aging with natural malolactic fermentation. This belies the cool (Winkler Zone 1) growing conditions. Native fermentations. 30% new French oak.
The Metz Road 2021 Pinot Noir from the same Riverview Vineyard exhibited a range of ‘all that’s best’ attributes of California’s Central Coast. Gushing cherry fruit, a formidable herbaceous note in the nose, and a chewy tannic structure that made it ideal for current consumption. In this case with ahi tuna poké with quinoa. Interestingly, output of this wine is so low (101 barrels) that it is basically handmade. As Ellie put it “we were literally bucketing this into the press”. The color saturation is light, reflecting a dry year.
Both Metz Road wines are made in their own winery in the vineyard so that their natural yeast is not supplanted by other yeasts.
These wines were but a prelude for what might be described as a selection of ‘big dog reds’. Fog & Light 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Vintage Reserve, Paso Robles. The VDR (Very Dark Red) 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon, California and VDR (Very Dark Red) 2021 Red Blend, California. The cabernet sauvignons both showed lush fruit, minerality, and herbaceousness. With 35% new French oak, 5% new American oak. The red blend is complex and should prove a success. Blend is cabernet sauvignon, merlot, petite verdot.
Stoke’s Ghost 2020 Estate Grown Petite Sirah, Monterey. An ‘inky monster’ of deeply textural petite sirah. Chewy tannins mean it can be drunk now or aged for 5-7 years.
There is a heavy emphasis on sustainability throughout the winemaking process. The growing is in 100% sustainable vineyards and the whole winery (and 125 homes) powered by wind power.
I may not have known this big winery before but i am glad that John and Ellie swung through time and eviscerated my ignorance. Please come back!
