Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with which producers narrate their winery and their world. Team thirty answers discover their stories, personalities, and passions. Hello, friends and listeners of the Wine sound Track Podcast. This is Kim Cashmore and today you are about to get a behind the scenes look of high altitude winemaking with Molly Lonborg from Alta Kalina. Alta Qualina is located
in Passa Roblaze and Molly here is the winemaker. I'm so excited to bring this conversation to you today because Mollie is the most friendly, bubbly person and I think you're really going to enjoy this, So welcome Mollie. Hello Kim, thanks for having me. So to start this off, can you tell me a little bit about the winery where you're located and the grapes that you're growing. Of course, so we're Alta Kalina Winery. We're located in Paths
of Roebletz, California. As you mentioned, it's about halfway between San Francisco and la We're on the west side of Passa Roeblets in what's called the Adelaida District. So there's actually fourteen avas in Pasaoblis. It's a very large expanse of land and we are owned by a father daughter duo Bob and Maggie Tillman, and we grow estate Roan wines, so all Rowan for idols. We have Grenoche Sama Vedra and Petite Sera for our reds, and grenaches Blanc Marsan,
Roussan Vigner and soon become Pickpool blanc for our whites. We farm everything organically here and being an a state vineyard means that the grapes never leave the property, so from berry to bottle, it's all here. Oh wow, I'm very excited about Pickpool's. That's like a light, refreshing white. Right, it's kind of like the thing you'd low alcohol. Just making sure I remembering correctly. Yeah, like your typical picked Pool d'panee has lower alcohol.
Pickpool literally or like loosely translates to lipstinger in French, and so it's known for it's high acid. Although it's really interesting because a lot of times we think these high acid grapes and we just think really lean and clean, where Pickole blanc actually has a lot of body behind it and weight and so it can create just like this beautiful textural wine. Oh, I can't wait to try that one day. If you guys haven't, if you haven't caught on
yet, I am definitely a fan of all to clinap personally delicious. I love a good rown wine, and I think that in pass So they make some amazing ones and the quality is truly truly unmatched. So but before we get into more about the wines that you make, I think everyone here is really curious to know how you got into wine making. You know, was this something you always wanted to do, or did this come about later in life? Tell us, Yeah, so it's not something that I always thought
I was going to do by any means. I'm from a little town in northern California called Mendocino. We had substantial crops there, but it was not wine. So, you know, we grew up driving through the Anderson Valley to get to anywhere pretty much from the coast, and so we always drove through grape vines, but didn't come from a wine family anything like that. I left Mendocino, traveled for a while and decided to come to San lis Obispo to go to kel Poly and study earth and soil science. So I
did that. I spent a year in New Zealand, not doing wine. Actually spent a year studying geology in southern New Zealand. And when I came back, I noticed that cal POLYI had created this wine and viticulture department. So I was like, well, this sounds pretty fun, and I decided to pick up the miner or do a concentration in wine in it. And at the time, I was thinking that I would go into the vineyard. Do you know, I have all of this soil experience, climate experience,
and so that was kind of where I was planning on heading. When I graduated in two thousand and nine, I knew if I went right into the vineyard that I would just never leave. And I felt like my education was good, but I didn't quite have the knowledge of wine making that I knew I needed if I wanted to be able to grow good grapes. So I decided to work my first harvest in a lab and then I traveled a bit and that was down at in a valley, and then I decided to work
my second harvest in a cellar up here and pass the roeblist. So I thought lab cellar and then go to the vineyard. But I just got hired full time, and then that wine maker left and went somewhere else and brought me with him, and so I just ended up becoming like staying on the wine making track. I've been really lucky because every winery I've worked for has had an estate vineyard. So even though I'm never fully in the vineyard, I've always been able to kind of walk out the door and be in the
vines. And so I feel like, even though I didn't end up on that track, I still have a really close relationship with the vines. And my husband is vineyard manager over at Talless Creek, so of vineyard conversations around the dinner table. Absolutely well. I mean this is a compared to some of the other wineries in this area, this is considered more of a boutique, smaller winery. So even as you said, even if you're not fully doing, you know, all of the vineyard things, you're still really involved
in the vineyard. Yes, yes, And here at Altaclina, I oversee the entire vineyard as well. So Daniel Martinez, our vineyard manager, and I we work really closely on everything. From you know soil health. Bob is still involved in irrigation and soil health decisions. So the kind of the three of us really work closely on all those decisions. And Daniel and I are walking every block every week during the growing season and kind of watching vine
balance and discussing, you know what it is. I'm trying to get out of the grapes to craft in the winery, and so how we can achieve that through you know, proper crop and canopy management in the vineyard. So tell us a little bit more about Alta Qualina. This is a high elevation place. It's actually really interesting when you come here. The winery is at the base of a hill and then you take this long, winding steep road up to the top, and at the top is this beautiful rolling hills at
high elevation of vineyards. So how many acreages do you have here? So the property itself is about one hundred and thirty acres, thirty one of which are planted. And so you had you were lucky enough to come up to the vineyard yesterday and as you noticed, it's this deep road to get up there, and pretty much Bob purchased the property in two thousand and three, started planting in two thousand and four, and that was a four wheel drive
road to get to the top, so there was nothing here. It would have cost about four million dollars and lot of moving of the land to be able to build a road that was in compliance to have a winery and a tasting room up at the top of the hill. That's why this is at the bottom of the hill. And funny thing but Alta calina literally means high hill in Spanish, so all this reference to our high elevation high hills, hence our name Alta Calina. So we do we have kind of these two
hills that face each other. And I'm not sure how much we can see in the video here, but we have a beautiful map behind us that pretty much shows for two hillsides that face each other. And it's really unique because we have a huge south facing hill. We have a pond in the middle with five vintage trailers around them we call the Trailer Pond that you can rent out. And then we have another hill that adds a full north face kind
of a top, and then a south face to it. So that kind of comprises our thirty one acres of vineyard land, And as I mentioned yesterday, the start of the project, you know, started really small. We're still pretty small in comparison to many wineries, but we really started as what I like to say, a farmer's market for local wine makers. So the majority of the fruit was sold, and then we made a little bit of wine for ourselves, and over time that started to shift, so now we're
keeping about eighty percent of the vineyard for our own program. So can you tell us a little bit more about the different grapes that you grow and the wines that you make? Yeah, of course, so I mentioned are eight to now almost nine varietals. So our whites, our whites have become so popular they are amazing. The vigner just stop now. I think it's already sold out right, the last vintage. So we're waiting for spring for the new bottling. We are, but lucky you I did grab you a barrel
sample. So sorry for all you listeners and watchers, because I know that that is not as exciting to hear other people enjoy wine, but we will at some point, but it'll might entice you to try it. So yeah, exactly, Yeah, So our whites have been selling out so fast. We do single varietal grenache blanc, Vigna, Marson and Roussan. We also do I do a metro chumpin' wase so a traditional sparkling wine out of grenache blanc. We'll be releasing our our twenty nineteen. I'm going to disgorge this
spring and we'll release it in the summertime. So that's had about four years entourage, which is really exciting. And then for our red program, we do a GSM so a classic grenache sama Vedra blend, just a very classic roan blend. We do a wine called Sun Worshipper, which is our Mavedra focused blend. Always it's usually about seventy five percent of bed and then a little bit of Sarah in there just to kind of be a little backbone.
We have two main sarahs Toasted Slope, which is all from our south facing slope, two different clones, and I love that wine. It's I like to colle it's like our voluptuous woman. And then from the north facing side of the hill we make a Sah called Old nine hundred, which is another clone, but a single clone, and that is this real beautiful but like a masculine, earthy Surrah, and so it's so interesting to have, you know, just three clones literally one hillside apart, and different aspects, but
just completely different expressions of that varietal. In certain years, we do one Sarah called Keystone that's actually one puncheon, which is the equivalent of two barrels. It's like a really big barrel, and we do one from each of the three blocks, and we put it in American oak, so it's kind of a different program. And then we do a single varietal Petite Sarra,
so that's kind of our main lineup. And then we have some fun wines like we do a grenache rose pet Nat I make grenache rose and also do a carbonic grenache, and we do canned rose. So we have kind of something for everyone, which is really fun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Can you explain for everyone, for everyone what carbonic is because I think this is a term that someone lest I was saying it's like hipster wine drinking. It's kind of like a new style of wine making, and so could you
give us little more detail what that entails. Yes, of course. And it's so funny because you know, I have my own brand called Little Soul wines that I only do rose and carbonic, and my carbonic is called the old school carbonic. It's funny because you can because I knew school, but really, carbonic maceration is such an old school style of making wine. My label is literally a hand with a boom box on it, because to me, that's my old school roots and so and then it's like a nod to
Boujelat. So carbonic maceration is a style of making wine that's so different from typical red wine making and it's been done for centuries. Specifically, it's most famous for the Beaujelat region, so it's usually done with the gammet grape. If anyone's had Baugelat Neveau, you know, you get that right around Thanksgiving every year, and that's usually one hundred percent carbonic maceration. So what it is, I'm just a backup little bit. So if you think of a
typical red wine fermentation, we're usually destemming the fruit. Sometimes there's some whole cluster in there, but for the most part, we're pumping over, punching down, so we're kind of separating the juice from the skins a little bit, and we're we're moving them, so we're trying to extract a lot of phenolic compounds from the skins, be that color, tannins, flavor molecules,
and so that's how we get this kind of dark colored wine. When we do carbonic maceration, we take whole clusters and gently layer them into a vessel filled with dry ice. So we put some grape, some clusters in, put some dry ice in, clusters dry ice, and what we're and then we seal up the whole vessel. And what we're trying to do is rid the environment of any oxygen. So whereas some people think carbonic maceration, they think the wine is going to be carbonated, and that's not the case.
It just means that it was fermented and an environment that was filled with carbon dioxide. And so what happens is inside the berry. I'm gonna get a little nerdy here just for a minute, please do okay. Sometimes I can
lose people on my nerdiness. But pretty much what happens it starts out as an intracellular reaction, and so there's an enzymatic reaction that occurs inside the berry and it starts to break down some of the sugars and then the berries will just kind of slightly pop open, and we have native yeast that are all over the fruit, you know, we have yeasts that are coming in from the vineyard. Some people choose to inoculate on top of that, some people
use their native yeast to do their fermentations. So those native yeasts will start to kind of ferment, which means they're starting to convert that sugar to alcohol and CO two. So once that yeast gets going, that dry ices has already dissipated, but they're just producing more CO two and thus filling the environment with more carbon dioxide. And so what happens, though, is the fermentation literally occurs inside the bar and without movement, and so you get this really
light bodied red wine that has completely different flavor and aroma characteristics. And generally speaking, we're not looking for the same color, you know that we want for a typical red wine. So we're harvesting early and therefore we've got higher acid usually have lower alcohol. And these wines are really fun because you can even serve them slightly chilled, and so it's just like this amazing wine. Like we're in Passerobas it is hot here and so to be able to come
home. Sometimes you want something a little more than a wider rose, but you're not quite ready for a big red and carbonyic just like fits that. Yeah, yes, absolutely it is. From my personal experience, I really do enjoy it. And if you're a listener that hasn't tried it yet, you really should go out and try this new style. I mean, it's not really new, but it's a style that is becoming more popular and it's
worth it's worth experiencing on your wine journey. Okay, So you studied earth sign as you said, in university, and I'm assuming that sustainability and caring for the environment is very important. I think most winemakers feel that way. So what do you do with Altakalina to you know, get back to the earth, make sure that you're taking care of your vineyards so they can keep
producing. What are some of the things that you're doing. Yeah, I mean that's a huge, huge part of our thought process for me personally in my life and for us here. You know, we're in agriculture, and we're in we're in an ag We farm in an area that is hot, and we have a lot of plants to sustain, so we do have to irrigate, and so anytime we're using water to irrigate, you know, that's
just we're using a resource. And so for us to be the best stewards of the land, we need to be thinking about everything and making sure we're using that properly. So water management is huge for us. We use like special SAP flow monitoring devices on our vines that help to tell us exactly what kind of use the vines are requiring based on the current weather, and that is huge. So we've been able to cut down our water usage a lot
by that. We also use another company to calculate our exact appotransporation on the property rather than referencing a square of grass that's grown somewhere else, and so that also helps us really dial in our irrigation needs. We're also so the other facet of this is all soil health right, and so having healthy soil is what's going to propel our vineyard for generations to come. And so we're a hotel vineyard site in between the vine rows. So the vineyard has not
been tilled for eighteen years, which is pretty impressive. We do have a little bit of tillage that goes like under the vine row, just for weed control, but nothing in between the vine rows. We've been doing. We made a couple of capital investments this year which are really excited about. We got a seed drill, so we've used just pretty much our native cover crop.
Generally speaking, if you want to seed cover crop, you need to till the ground first, but we bought a seed drill that's going to allow it. That's allowing us to actually put seeds in the ground without having to till. And we also just bought a crimper, which is really fun. So instead of having to mow down the cover crop, we're going to let it grow and then we're going to run this implement over and it's gonna kind of crimp it down and create a habitat for all of these micro organisms and
fungi and also just hopefully helps build our soil. Yeah. So yeah,
and I feel like you can really taste that in the wines too. Speaking of I know, we saw each other yesterday and you were mentioning about the quality and how important that is here at Alta Qualina, and even to the point where you might not make as much wine as you could because of like quality standards, So what is your mentality around that, because I think that's what really can create an amazing wine, but it comes a little bit of a risk, so i'd be curious to hear, Yeah, it's you know,
it's a little bit of a different way of thinking about it. The wine wineries in general were backwards businesses. You know, we farm to grow less fruit, we you know, and then here we make these lines and we're so careful about what actually makes it into our final product. So, you know, I just was looking in the twenty three vintage. I have twenty six red blots of wine, So those were different picks that I did. Out of those, they could be anywhere from one barrel to six eight
barrels. And I don't taste, says a lot. I taste every single individual will barrel multiple times, and so I kind of grade everything and then I use that for blending trials to always help determine what's going to be the best wine. And when it comes down to it, I've had many times where it's like the wine club could really use another twenty five cases. But everything here is quality driven, so we're never pushed. It's always whatever makes
the best wine, that's what we're going to go with. And so we've had to make that hard decision multiple times of you know what, this blend is better than that blend, and we taste everything blind, so we're not you know, we're just picked straight up picking whatever is best, and sometimes we end up having less wine than we want. But if we don't have
those standards, then we're not going to have a good product. And the consumers you know, our clients, our family, and you know, they trust us to be giving them the best product, and so that's that's our job. Yeah, I love that as a mentality for sure. Or is this something that you kind of picked up over time in your wine making or is this something that you believed in from the beginning about like the importance of quality and what you need to do to attain them. I think it's been
an evolution. You know, it always depends where you work and what that company's ethos is. You know, there's and I understand when you work at a large winery that has distribution, you know, you have certain targets that you have to meet, and so you know there are times when compromise comes into play. Well, I kind of like this blend a little better, but this one's still good and it gives me another thousand cases, so you
know, there's nothing wrong with it. I just prefer this one. And the fact matter is most people probably they're not going to have no idea there was a better blend. So you have to make those decisions as long as
you always believe in the product you're still putting out. You know, just because one blend's better than the other, it doesn't mean another blend isn't good at times, but having that having the full company behind you and everyone kind of saying no here, you have the freedom to just make the best wine. It's so refreshing. Yeah, so learned over time, I would say, gotcha, And have you you've worked at bigger wineries in the past, correct, yes, Yeah, this is the smallest winery i've worked at.
Where have you worked before? What what's been your journey in winemaking? I know you said you were, you know, sellar managing and working in the lab, but where were you doing more wine making up? Yeah? So I started as just a lab tech intern for Baileyana down in Enna Valley, and then I went and worked as just sellar intern up at justin winery in twenty ten, just before they sold, and then I was there. I got hired full time there and I stayed on for about seven months, I
believe, maybe a little more. I think I was there for maybe nine months total. And then I left there and went over to Halter Ranch and started as lab manager and then enologist assistant winemaker, and then I was there for nine years and left as the associate winemaker over there and then came here to Alta Qualina. It started March second of twenty twenty, kind of precarious
beginning of a new career or a new job. And yeah, Bob Tilman, our founder, had been the winemaker since the inception, but he had been kind of looking for somebody to take over the reins as he was looking at maybe a ten year plan of phasing out of the winery or out of the business for him. And so yeah, it just kind of worked really well. We're both very nerdy people. We both liked to experiment and we like facts, but we've also had a strong passion for wine and it's beauty
and the craft, and so we've worked really well together. And he's kind of just he pretty quickly just passed over all the rains. Oh well, that's awesome and congratulations. I mean, just on your journey. I think it's exciting for any winemaker to get to a place where they're really running with
it, you know. And and I know that you were always trying to make the best wines and kind of go with the philosophy that was put in place by you know, out at Alta Kalina, So I you know, but I know it's really exciting as winemaker to get to run the show. It is it is. I mean, when you have complete control from berry to bottle, it's such a different thing, you know. I mean I was really lucky at Halter Ranch because when I came on, they were a
small winery and we were growing and creating a wholesale presence. And as an assistant winemaker was the winemaker general manager and I that were sitting down and creating, Okay, what wines do we want to make, what grades do we want to grow, and how do we want to get there? So and I did have a lot of creative control there as well, so that was really special. But it's different, you know, when you go from making thirty thousand cases to three thousand cases, you know everything. It is a
different level. So it's been so fun here and I've been very thankful because Bob has let me kind of do some new creative outlets, things like the Carbonic and the can Rose and you know what. Things. He's always open to these fun ideas and that makes it really special too. So it's he always always said, hey, if you ever think of like a wine club, special wine club wine, like go just roll with it. I'm like,
okay, great. So like my first time, I think my first year here, I bottled a single varietal grenache because I tasted four grenache barrels that I loved, and I said, what do you think can we do grenache? And he said, well, gosh, we haven't bottled a single varietal granach since twenty twelve and there was a bit of issues with that one. So I don't know, we're all a little nervous, but if you think so, that's fine. And so we did it and everybody loved it
and it was great. Okay, So I want to quickly just highlight Little Soul, which is your own personal brand that you make wines for, and what is the ethos the idea behind it? You know, what kind of wines are you making? Yeah, it's funny. So I've at this point now, I've been in the wine making side for fifteen years, and I never never, I never like knew I was going to have my own brand.
Coming to Alta Kalina was kind of just serendipitous. My husband and I we live on a property that we farm, and we had some extra pino noir grapes, which is very random for Passa Robliss, and I asked, Bob, hey, do you mind if I make some wines? Sure, no problem, And that's you know, decided to start Little Soul. You know, I craft these these big, luscious wines, is what I do
for Alta Calina. You know, we grow high elevation fruit, like we've said multiple times here, which means we have smaller berries, which means we have a lot of color and a lot of tannin. If I tried to make a really light week wine out of that, I just wouldn't be doing the fruit justice. And so I'm here to just tell the story of the grapes right and to not mess it up, to highlight them. And so
I love these big wines that were making. But when it comes to the end of the day, like when I go home, I usually drink these like lighter, fresher, low alcohol wines. And I always knew if I was ever going to start a wine brand, first of all, it had to be something that I wanted to drink, because if it flops, like I better be able to consume my product. I also, I used to do a lot of sales wine. I spent five weeks a year on the
road doing sales, and I it's really fun. You get to go meet new people, go to new places, eat great food, and have great time. At the end of the day. Like I love making wine, I just don't love selling wine. And so I just didn't want to create a brand where I was gonna, you know, have to have a tasting room and be there on the weekends. And you know, I have a family. I have two kids under five, and you know, it's really important to me to be able to show up and be there as a mom
outside of harvest, not the best mom during harvest. And so with Little Soul, I knew if I could kind of create a small brand mostly rose or just rose and carbonic. I do Pino noir, which is first of all very different for our area, and second of all, in no competition
with my day job, so that's pretty nice. My daughter's name is Alma, which means soul in Spanish, and so when she was five and a half months old, we spent a month in Wahaka with her because we both had to go back to work before we like finished all of our maternity paternity leave. So we're like, well, let's just baby bond on the beach in Mexico. So we took her there and immediately the locals started calling her
Almita, which means little soul. And so after that trip was when we decided to start our own brand, and it just kind of felt fitting to call it Little Soul. Yeah, so it's pretty fun. It's honestly, I'm so lucky. I have such an amazing group of friends and family and network of people from this industry. It's a really special area here in past the roeb List especially, so my whole brand has been like with the help of friends and family. Like I was telling you, my friend helped build
my website. My carbonic label is one of my best friends, would Carving. I have my other friends with all my label design like these are childhood friends I've grown up with, and so it's just I feel like it's just this fun kind of fabric that we're able to all like wrap ourselves in in this special way. And yes, it's fun. That's amazing. It makes me just like want to buy all your wine selling the story. All right, so we're clos out, just want to do some rapid fire questions.
This is gonna be hard. I know that wine makers and wine people in general hate this question. But favorite grape oh granash? Oh that's mine too. Yeah, okay, favorite food and wine pairing potato chips and champagne. Oh wow, we're the same. Oh my gosh, No, I love champagne. It's Champion and chicken nuggets for me. Okay, favorite winery in Passo That is not any of the ones that you work at Hubbo Wines. Favorite restaurant in Passo in bloom Oh all right, trying to think of you.
Another good one for the editor. Just cut out our like pauses in between this and just take the go for the Yeah, the actual questions. Uh, still or sparkling wines? Still rose white or red? All of the above? Oh love it awesome? Well, thank you for playing the game with me, and thank you for being here. This has been such a wonderful conversation. You were so easy to talk to, and I'm sure that everyone listening here can agree that this was a really insightful conversation but also
so enlightening, Like I feel so happy talking to you. So thank you, thank you. This is a pleasure. And before we go, where can we stay in touch with you? Where can everyone listening follow along on your journey? Where can we get some of the wines? Tell us all the things? Okay, yeah, so you can we You know, we've got the usual social media so Alta Kalinas on Instagram, Facebook, Little Soul is Little Soul Wines on Instagram, and we both have just the typical you
know, web web presence that you can come and buy wine online. Little Soul is currently sold out, but I'm pre releasing my next vintage. We'll release on January eighteenth, twenty twenty four. Great, so if you're listening to this after that date, that means hurry to the website before it sells out. All right, Mollie, Well, thank you so much, and thank you to everyone here that has been listening. Have a wonderful week. And we will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to a
new episode of Wine Soundtrack USA. For details and updates, visit our website windsoundtrack dot com.