Marchelle Wines - Greg La Follette

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Hello, friends and listeners of Wine Soundtrack. This is Alison Levine, and today I have the pleasure, the privilege, and the honor to be sitting with Greg Lafollett, the proprietor and whymaker of Marshall Wines. And while you may not be familiar with Marshall Win's a younger brand, the name probably you've heard of over the years, because Greg has pretty much been everywhere anywhere any winery you name, which we're going to talk about now. But we're sitting here in

Well, Marshall Wines was the idea of my now managing partner, business partner, Kevin Lee. I had a brand called Alchemista and before that Lafolllett Wines. But the same goreer as I've had for gosh, almost forty years, a lot of them have just gone with me with each project, and so I started Alchemista as a white tablecloth brand, and during the pandemic, of course, all the restaurants closed.

And we're white tablecloth restaurants for a while, right.

So what happened was I've been making wine for Single Thread, which is knocked the French laundry off their perch, is the top dog restaurant. They got all three Michelin stars in two years and are now rated one of the top fifty restaurants in the world. And they'd been buying some of my Alchemista wines. They called me up and said, we want you to make our house white.

And two provisos.

It's got to be from Sonoma County because they're in Healsburg and it can't be chardonay. Well, I'd been working on a Columbard project from vines planted in nineteen oh two that had kind of been abandoned with Clark and Bonnie Lestra, and we've been resuscitating these vines together and just doing it out of passion. When Single Thread called me up and I said, boy, I've got just the thing for you.

Columbard. Who's heard of that, you know?

Even though it was the most widely planted white wine grape up until the early seventies or late sixties.

No one does it anymore, and so.

They loved it. They loved the idea. I made the wine for them. The pandemic hit and then they quote sold me back for a song and a dance. Thirty five cases of Columbard.

Who knows about that? What are you going to do with it?

Yeah, well it's so unknown that it's hip and it was all Shiner's.

So I said, well what am.

I going to do with thirty five cases of Columbard? And Kevin at the time he was helping el Chemista, because I don't know anything about it or computers or anything. He said, well, here's what we're going to do, Greg, We're going to start a brand. We'll name it after our wives, Mara and Michelle, so we'll call it Marshall and his thirteen year old daughter designed the label, and we're going to name some of the wines after our

Wow. And I know you still make Columbard, But what are you making today and what is your total case production?

Well, I have six kids, we're stopping there and a bit we're getting grandkids now. But we make on a yearly basis around nine hundred cases. Most of our different lots of wine are between fifty and one hundred cases of wine, so we don't make a whole lot. It's very artisanal and it's hard to find, so but that's the way I like it. And my wine maker ev and Domiano, we've promoted him to winemaker last year. Go through every barrel all the time, every barrel counts. We

Great, and so of those nine hundred you've got, I know you do some traditional varieties like chardonnay and pino noir, and then you're doing weird varieties wonderful weird varieties like colmbard. What other lesser known forgotten grapes are you working with?

Well.

In addition to Colmbard, we make a one carbonic maceration Pino manne. And for those of you who haven't heard of pinomnie, it is the most widely planted red grape in Champagne. It's one of the three Champagneoi grapes, and very little of it's ever made into a table wine, let alone carbonic macerations, So that's really odd. For the wine officionado who's had everything that will not have had

We make.

Some sins from the world's oldest and sou vineyard, the Bechtold Vineyard in the mccoulmay River Aba. We make one of the oldest zinfandel vineyards wines ever, the Royal Tea Vineyard, also in the mccoulmay River Aba, that was planted in the eighteen eighties, and then we make a Carinnon that was planted in nineteen hundred, so it's only one hundred

Yeah, you put her to work. She has to do. The winery is named after her.

Yes, that's right.

But I wouldn't be here without her because when I had my brand tandem, she fed our entire crew, twenty four people of the custom crush facility had then seven days a week for eleven weeks, and she ran a daycare center for my crew who had been together so long they were starting to pair up and have babies and such.

Wow.

Wow, so you've been in the wine industry a long time. I know that this. You've been doing it for forty years and since you've worked around the world you've done I think you said this will be your sixty ninth harvest. But I'm curious, what is your first memory relevant to wine? How old were you and what do you remember?

My parents, when we lived in Europe, would drag me through every keller and shae on the continent, and I just remember visiting a lot of these wineries, but the ones that impressed me the most were the ones on the Rhine River with lots of castles around, like right around the Laurel Eye. So Schlos Johannesburg was an early memory for me. That was around seven years old.

Wow.

And then when you got a little older and could drink wine, is there I mean, in your illustrious career and with all the wines you make. I hate to ask if there's one, because I'm sure there are many. But what is one of those memorable wines that sticks out to you that you had in aha moment with I mean, was it at the beginning of your career? Was it somewhere along the way? Did it surprise you when you tasted that because you were so much f in your career.

Well, yeah, one of the most profound moments was when I was in the cellar at Domain Romani Conti and got to taste a sixty one macachet.

And I guess nothing comparison to that.

Yeah, that was pretty spectacular. I really felt like I was home at that point. So that's probably the single most peak, or the first one of my life. But I have others that I've since done since then.

I love that. So if we were to come home to your house now and go into your cellar, what kind of wines would we find? What do you like to drink, what do you like to collect?

Well, my house burned down, unfortunately, and so my whole life's work. I had verticals of a lot of the wines that I've made over the years, like Porter Bass, dating all the way back from my Flowers days in the mid nineties, and so I now have the philosophy not to collect wine. I just drink it and I trade it. But I love drinking pinos and Chardonnays. Of course, I love these ancient vine varietals, and so I've really put my focus into ancient vines and the pinot and chardonnay spectrum.

And are there particular regions in the world that you have in affinity to or is it a lot of like local wines you like to drink.

Well, there's a lot of local wines. But I also I love wines from all over the world. I used to live in Australia and I made wine there for many years, and so I love the wines from the Hunter especially what they call Hunter River Revelings, which are actually semi on. I love the pinos from the Ara Valley, where one of my kids was born. And I love a lot of the wines from Beechworth and the outlands of the Snowy Mountains.

I love New Zealand wines. It's hard for me not to love any of these.

So is there a wine you opened up recently that drank really well?

Yes? I had an six.

Peloton recently that some Assemolier brought to me when we were doing the Pino Forum and boy, that wine was still singing. The Peloton is a blend of between eight and eleven grapes. It's like a mongrel, but it's meant to be the winner of the first empty glass to contest. And I didn't mean it to age for a long time. But it was tasting really good.

Wow. Wow, So you're working you know, you said that you love Peano Noi and chardonnay, but you like these odd ball varieties. And you've worked with so many different grapes and had such an illustrious career. I'm curious if you think there's a such thing as a perfect variety.

No, no such thing.

They're all perfect, all perfect in their own ways.

Yes, just like the cherry blossoms in the Last Samurai. They are all perfect.

So then talking about perfection in your career with all the wines, and you've worked for some big name wineries b V. Flowers, La Crema, Hartford, all hardcourts. Are you so many great wines that have gotten big reputations and big scores. What's your opinion on wine scores and critics? I mean, what kind of a role do they play for you as a winemaker and now working with a smaller brand. You know what does that mean for you?

Well, wine scores are helpful, I think to the general public, especially people who don't get a chance to taste a lot of wines. But I think rather than looking at wine scores, I think listening to a critic who maybe doesn't even give scores, but instead describes the wine and talks about it.

And it's kind of like films.

You know, it's much better to not give a film a rating and listen to a critic that you really like, And if you have tasted wines that this critic likes and believe in them, then you can use them as a guidepost. A good example is Dan Berger. He doesn't give any scores, but he is very very good at describing wines and talking about how they're made, and he researches his notes really thoroughly. Those are the kind of critics that I really admire.

So as a wine drinker, taking the critic out of it, red whiter rose, Yes, still are sparkling, Yes, equal opportunist.

It's whatever my wife likes best at that time. She happens to really love bubbles, and I've made bubbles all over the world.

But with Marshall.

We started making sparkling wine because she loves sparkling wine.

And it's a sparkling old wine Co Lombard.

Yeah, I mean not your typical but quite delicious because I've had the pleasure to drink that one as well. So sparkling co Lombard that you've never heard of?

That no, And in fact Co Lombard is the perfect grape grown in Sonoma County for sparkling because it never gets really ripe, It never gets above ten and a half or eleven percent alcohol, So you pick it at the end of October just when it is not going to rot all the help and you can make both a regular table wine from it, but it's low enough alcohol that you can do a charge to it and do a secondary fermentation.

And then your wife loves you.

Well, your wife cooks these great meals for well, she did cook these great meals for your harvest teams and such like that. It sounds like she's.

A good cook.

And food probably plays a very important role in what you do. So how do you pair those combinations of wine and food? Do you follow rules? Do you think there are rules people have to follow? You know, the old saying of white wine and fish, red wine and meat, or do you have other guidelines that you suggest when selecting a wine to pair with your food or a dish to pair with your wine.

Well, I don't really have any guidelines, but someone who really knows a lot about that is Randy Caparoso, and he's actually writing a new book right now that goes over that much more in depth than I ever could. I'm just good at stuff putting. I'm good at putting wine into a bottle, not taking it out and pairing it with food. I tend to leave that more to Mara my wife, are winemaker Evan and Jackson, who's our trustee every man. He's really good at food and wine pairings.

Do you open up the wine and then let them pair the food or they pick the food and then the wine comes later.

We usually have so many different wines that we're opening. I have been trying out that there's bound to be something else that goes with them.

And we make so many different kinds of food.

We grow a lot of our own vegetables, we make our own bread. My wife pretty much makes everything from scratch. So and there's a lot of food going on around all the time, and there's always wine. There's always good food, and we were always finding amazing things to pair with them.

I love that. God, I want to just kind of hang out here all day. So for somebody who hasn't had the pleasure to taste your wines yet, what do you think they're missing out on?

Well, I think I'm best known for mouthfeel, so one of the threads all of my wines are really different. So when you taste like a Bien Decito Chardonnay or a Lorenzo Chardenay, one of my blends, I really want that particular wine to speak of that particular site. So if people want to explore my wines, they're going to explore the different tear war that I do, and they're also going to explore mouthfeel. I did my postgraduate work

And how do you achieve mouthfeel with wine? And how do you describe that to somebody who may not quite understand what Mauthfeeld means.

Well, I actually wrote a book on it. Well it's very so horrific if you have trouble sleeping at night. But basically, mouthfeel is the presentation of how a wine feels in your mouth and how the flavor persists after the wine is swallowed or expectorated. And it involves things like viscosity, salivatory response, and how much salivation you have, fruit characters, late palette, temporal aspect. So it's quite complex,

And so if space aliens were to land on your property right now, walk on over here, which of your wines would you say, Welcome to Marrow?

Oh boy, I'd probably say the Pino mine that's done carbonic maceration, because it's very light in color. It's a light red, very pretty color, but it packs a lot of mouthfeel. It just fills your mouth up with flavors and persists a long time. And I think I wouldn't want to spoil my extraterrestrial friends on some big ass Cabernet or something like that.

You don't make that kind of stuff, do you.

I do.

I've made a lot of cabernets over the years, and I still consult a little bit in the Napa Valley. But and I'd like making cabernet too, But really my favorites to make are these ancient vines and pino and chardonnay, and the pino mignet has been a real delight from the Vandercamp vineyard is just one of the best places in the world to grow pino mine.

So we're sitting here in your vineyard. You have three point three three acres of pino and shard and then of courser sourcing fruit. You've worked around the world, You've worked for sixty nine harvests, are coming up on sixty nine harvests, and we know that every vintage tells a different story. In your experience, especially in a place like this, do you see more variation from year to year? Do you see more commonality? Have you what is your sort of assessment of looking at vintage variation?

Well, when I've worked for big companies, and I work for big and small, you look for sameness. You try to have a product that from year to year is very reliable, and that's not a bad thing. But for my own wines, which I make in very small quantities, like two to four barrels for each lot, I am looking for a story that's being told for each vintage and for each block of wine. And for instance, where we are right now, we've gone through some big swings.

And I want my.

Vines to tell the story of the year as well as of the plot of land. I don't want them to be the same, but there are there are There are similarities that you find through these things. Like the Lorenzo Chardonnay has almost an oiliness to it. It's it's almost very viscous. The Haikup Vineyard has a really great single thread of vicinity running into it, and they can't you couldn't have different wines than those two. And you got to taste the Haikup from the barrel and then the Lorenzo so ah.

And so are there any sort of signs or predictors that you look for that are going to tell you what a vintage is going to be?

No, not particularly.

I kind of take it all in as it comes, and I take each vintage as it has. Of course, you do look at the upcoming weather. You take a look at whether or not you're going to have a drought year. That's going to affect how you prune your vines, and we do prune differently. We do a vine has been throughout the year differently with different vintages. An example

I would have very little crop.

So we pulled leaves after the rains changed, and that changed the character of the wine.

So you have to adapt with mother nature and kind of go with the flow in what you do instead of predicting something and then walking away.

Yes, Mother Nature is who we should really be listening to. And our job as winemakers is to translate the speech of the land into the glass. And it's a great honor and it's a privilege to be able to do that. And I think in order to be able to make that translation, you have to first really listen to the land, Listen to the grapes, hear what they have to say. And because the speech of the land is more powerful than any of us, I'm going to be dust in the wind in a few years. But the voice of

Wow, that is beautiful, And I must say you clearly are listening to your vines. There's a reason why you've been called the grape whisper. Now I understand, but as the grape whisper, I'm curious when you walk through your vines, what do you whisper to them? What do you say to your vines? Do you talk to them?

Mostly?

I listen, but I do play my bagpipes to them and my penny whistle. Yeah, And mostly it's listening and then trying things out and then making sure that's the right thing to do to me, my piananoa vines. It's kind of like having a really great partner, but who is also fairly demanding. You know, there's there's some vineyards and some wines that it's It's kind of like it's

I love that. Do you in all the years you've been making wine, have you set up any good luck rituals that you do at the start of harvest?

Oh? Yes, well, I always pipe in the first grapes that come in. I also wrote a poem called an ode to mister Coffee that is, Oh God, the methylated bromine derivative, please grant unto me, and then you ask for strength, and then you promise you're seventh born or something like that. So I read that invocation. I played the bagpipes, and I also wear a talisman from the Vandercamp vineyard that Ulysses vander Camp made for me. He

Wow, it's really quite beautiful as I see it now. That's really fascinating. So you say you play the bagpipes in the vineyard, do you go into the winery and play music for your barrels? Do you talk to your wine once it's in beryl?

Oh, I certainly do. That's where I have more.

Now you stopped listening, Now you start talking.

Well, no, you still have to listen, that's for sure.

But I think that the wine really does enjoy music, and in fact, there's been some pretty good studies done. The Japanese did a study that was published in ajev and they had three different kinds of music playing piped through a fermentation and there was like heavy metal, there was easy listening rock, and there was classical or something

Wow. How fascinating. So, Greg, I'm curious when you were a little boy, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Well, my earliest earliest memories, I wanted to be a garbage collector. I saw those guys coming in. And then as I got older, I wanted to be a forest ranger. And then after a while, I thought when I was seventeen, I thought I wanted to be a winemaker, but living in LA, it's like, you know, who becomes a winemaker, right, It's like going to rabbinical clown school.

You know, no one does it anymore.

So instead I became a professional bagpiper, and I was the ship's piper on the Queen Mary. Yeah, and one of two bagpipers in the La Musicians Union.

So yeah.

But of course that ended up not being very practical. So after a short stint in the seminary of the Catholic Church or six kids later, that didn't take I did the next easiest thing and got another degree in chemistry and became a physical chemist and did HIV research

And look at you now, never looking back forty years later. So when you're not working, how do you like to spend your free time?

What's free time?

I don't know, you and I both Yeah, Well, I really enjoy cooking with my wife. I love hiking music. I love playing with and spending time with my grandkids, and that's been a real joy for me after having raised six kids. I didn't know that grandkids could be so fun, but they really are. And I like traveling, but mostly I like being in the vineyard and winery, and especially if I've got my kids or grandkids around me.

You said you like music. Do you have a favorite band or genre?

Yeah, classical music, and I love jazz. I love a lot of vintage rock. My first major in college was music, actually, and so I love all forms of music, but mostly I really really like the music that my wife wants to listen to.

Well, clearly, your wife dictates the happiness in your home, which sounds like great because she cooks well and if she's happy, you're happy. So I'm curious what makes her happy when planting a romantic evening in terms of the wines are going to open?

Well, she leaves that to me.

Actually, she literally says, just put something good in my glass. And I am the luckiest man I know, in part because my wife really loves my work.

So what can I say?

It's one of any wine you've made she's happy with.

For the most part, there's some wines that I make for some clients that have a lot of acidity. So, for instance, I make a reasling. The one that I made in twenty two had a pH of two point nine two, so that was a little bit too much for her. But most everything, Yeah, wow.

So I'm sure that you have been a mentor to many people. I'm sure you are a mentor to many people. But is there a mentor somewhere along the way, or a teacher or a parent that gave you a piece of advice that you've carried through your life and either how you live or how you work.

Yeah.

The best winemaking advice I've ever gotten was from my dad and from my grandpa, and they had nothing to do with wine making, but it was trying to treat each person that you work with with dignity and respect and empowering them. And my dad particularly was really good at that, And so what I try to do with my wine making is the people around me who are

That's beautiful. So when you look back at your work and you know, even pre wine, what would you say as one of your proudest achievements to date?

Ooh, developing the AZTSSA for HIV and AZT is still used to this day, but now as a cocktail of different drugs. The other one that I was really proud of was in two thousand and six when everything was coming in all at once, and I had already sold my custom crush facility to the new guys called owl Ridge. They didn't want to use like my old d stemmer which I had modified myself, or my old grape sorting table which my crew and I had built ourselves out

They bought all that stuff.

And so I was ready to bring my first grapes in. And since I'd sold it, all of my old crew left and the new production manager I came in and I said, I know that my contract says I have to give you twenty four hours notice, but I know it's really tough, so I'm going to give you forty eight. And he looked at his schedule and he says, you could bring in your first grapes in eight days. So I stormed into the new owner's office and I said, you let me because all of my old stuff was

And the great thing is is that you get your equipment back, because that's where you're moving your new custom crush facility into. You're moving back.

Yes, al Ridge unfortunately had to close their doors, so I leased a portion of my old lease, and I bought back a lot of my old equipment that we'd made ourselves, and so it really feels like it's coming full circle.

I love that. I love that so complete this sentence. For me, A table without wine.

Is like a day without sunshine.

First thing that came to mind.

I'm a slave for commercialism. A week without wine that wine makes one week.

How's that?

So we're sitting at a table, Your wine's are on the table, and there's an empty chair next to you. Who, from any walk of life, living or deceased, known or unknown, do you wish you could share a bottle of Marshall wines.

With Andre Cellis Jeff He's He was probably the most influential mentor of my life, and I still think of him all the time. I think of what he would do. And there's a great movie out about him right now called Andrea the Voice of Wine, and nothing that you can ever see or read would ever come close to it. But if you watch Andre the Voice of Wine, I think you'll really catch just how passionate and powerful this

So demanding, picky on things.

He said, but this is the reason I think that he will make a really good wine maker. And he used different words than that, but I think he wanted to make my dad feel proud of me.

So that's wonderful. I love that. I love that. Well, you know, he knew your talent, so you can only imagine what he would think of your wines, especially at Pino Mine because or the Columbard, Well, all the wines that I've had so far pretty darn good. So, as I have said before, and you have mentioned, you have worked many harvests, You've seen many vintages. You said that you have to listen to nature because nature lives on beyond us. Do you think wine will live on beyond us?

Oh?

Yeah, greapevines are survivors. We've been drinking wine ever since before history, and we may be drinking wine after history. If we bomb ourselves off the face of the planet. Whoever's ever left wine is probably going to be there along with cockroaches and wine makers. Wine makers and cockroaches are hard to get rid of.

So if you were being sent off to a deserted island, what three wines would you take with you? Any three wines you could have, which would be your last three wines.

Whatever three wines my wife likes the most at that time. The simple answer, yeah, well, I think well it would have to be in the pino spectrum. Well, pino and chardonay. Chardonnay is like a blanc canvas. I think that you have to make shardonay when you make pino because pino kind of makes you a crazy person, and chardonay is like a blanc canvas. You know, it's very It's like a gumby toy. You can push and pull and stretch

So I'm curious. I mean, I have one more question for you, but I do want to jump aside and play our little game because we have come almost at the very end of this little podcast interview, which I don't want to end because I love listening to you talking, you're a wealth of knowledge, but and your passion comes through. But having tasted some of your wines, I want you to you know, wine soundtrack, pair wine with music, what

The Columbard, Well, that's zippy and minerally high acid. I would say that's probably a fun, high octane as riff. But because it is a classic and oldie, I'd say maybe take five.

Okay, And as we've been talking, we've had the bien Mesuito, Vineyard, Santa Maria Valley Chardonay, So what about.

That one fanfare for trumpets?

Okay, Oh, you're gonna make this. This is I'm gonna throw them out. Okay, let's do your Pino munet.

Oh that would be Samuel Barber's dagio for strings.

Okay, and what about your pino noir from this home vineyard.

Well, that would probably Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony because that has elements of call and response to it, or maybe even better, Well, Takata and Fuguen d minor by Bach is maybe a bit dark, so I would say Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Okay, what about us, since.

Oh, people who know ghosts and so that's really fun and been a little bit rustic, I would say something from Aaron Copeland, like the Grand Canyon Suite.

Okay, wow, you're charbono.

Oh Charbono is gosh, Well that's big guns, So I would say Beethoven's Ninth.

Okay, I'm going to do one more. We didn't talk about this wine, but you make a late harvest dessert pino no ar, kind of a port style wine that's actually quite quite tasty.

So what about that, Foxy lady.

You're good. He did not pre plan for any of this. That was really on the spot, and I'm pretty impressed. But I guess since you did study music at some point in college, you had an advantage.

Yeah, well, foxy lady, is that wine is good in almost every orifice you can imagine. And my wife and I used to shovel out those dairy tanks together late at night at two o'clock and we'd also when you have all the lees, you war paint each other and then you put on Foxy later, lady, and then it's all over.

So well, I love it. It's left quite an image in my head. So I can only imagine. I'm just going to look at the pretty vines, the sunshining. So Greg, it has been such an honor and a pleasure to talk to you today. But I have one final question with a two part answer. Two part question, I should say. The first part is you have made wine in five continents you've traveled the world. Is there one wine region in the world that's on your bucket list that you want to go explore?

Still a bucket list, I would say Mount Parker and Franklin River in southwestern Australia. But really the place that I want to make wine is wherever my family and grandkids are.

Okay, Yeah, And if people want to taste Marshall wines, how can they find you? Where can they find you? How can they taste your wines? And can they meet you?

Yeah? You can get on our website at Marshallwines dot com. That's m A r c h E l l E Wines Plural dot com and there's a section on there where you can sign up for a barrel to bottle tasting or you can order wines from there. That's probably the best way because we're not in very many places. When you only make fifty cases of something, it's not easily found. So look at our website, drop us an email, come and taste with us. We have a tasting room

And that would be a pretty special treat. I mean it's not it's really special. When Greg Leffalette the man, the myth, I mean these wineries that you might have heard of, he laughs, But he is the grape whisperer, the greepe whisper. No, but to be able to spend time and to listen to more of the stories is a real treat. And Greg, I can't thank you enough for spending time with us today on wine soundtrack, and I say cheers to.

You cheers, my friend, and I have to say that I've already said to you. You are a favorite winemaker drug, You're a heroine. You tell the stories of wine, and without gals like you, I just wouldn't go thirsty for a couple of years.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing what you do well.

Thank you, and thank you, and I hope everyone enjoyed listening to this and cheers.

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