Jamie Kutch: Evolving the Paradigm
Celebrating his 20th vintage, he's about to harvest his first grapes from his own vineyard
I have a luxury most wine lovers would envy — a generous cousin who lives in Sonoma County. I visit Susan whenever I’m in Northern California, to catch up on the family stories (she always seems to remember one I hadn’t heard before) and enjoy her fabulous cooking, while trying to convince her skittish kitties that I’m the one male human they can trust.
Susan also loves wine and is happy to offer me a home base to explore wineries whenever I visit. So when I imposed on her for a weekend in May, we visited a few of my favorite producers, including Jamie Kutch. (We also visited Smith-Story and Inman Family. More on those visits in future posts.)
I tend to favor small, literally “mom and pop” wineries making soulful wines and striving, sometimes struggling, to get their wines before consumers in a tough market. They’re the type of winemakers I most enjoy meeting because they lend a personal, immediate dimension to a beverage that has nourished humankind for eight millennia. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but anyone who believes “wine is just fermented grape juice” is drinking the wrong sorts of wine. You probably have a few similar labels among your favorites; please share them in the comments.
Jamie’s origin story hinges on an event that changed all our lives: He was working on Wall Street as a trader for Merrill Lynch in 2001, and the September 11 terrorist attack prompted Jamie and his wife, Kristen Green, to re-evaluate their life course and head to the west coast.
After Jamie apprenticed at a few wineries, he and Kristen established Kutch Wines in 2005. “I had enough money to make six barrels of wine,” he told me. Since 2012, he has averaged 3,000 cases a year, building a reputation for quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, mostly from the cool vineyards of the West Sonoma Coast and Santa Cruz Mountains. Kristen helps with the business side while maintaining a successful food-and-wine public relations venture of her own. Jamie’s currently pouring 2024 wines, from his 20th vintage. About a third of the wines go direct-to-consumer through his website and club and to some restaurants, while he exports much of the rest to Japan, Sweden, Britain and Norway.
Jamie’s never used new oak, and he’s moved away from full stem-inclusion on his pinots, now averaging about 50 percent destemmed. This technique yields medium-bodied pinot with fresh, spicy cherry flavors and medium tannins.
I won’t go into greater detail here, because Jamie and Kristen will join me on WineLine Live on Thursday, July 24, at 2 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, and I’ll post a transcript later. Their story is interesting because they’ve moved from the business model of buying grapes — a common approach for winemakers who don’t have a large fortune to turn into a small one — to including their own vineyard. During the Covid pandemic (another event that has shaped all our lives), Jamie and Kristen purchased a 12-acre apple orchard just outside Sebastopol and converted 7.5 acres to vines, primarily a Calera clone of Pinot Noir and the Wente clone of Chardonnay. They will harvest the first crop this year, with plans to increase production eventually to 12,000 cases annually.
During our chat, I’ll ask Jamie and Kristen to describe their decision to buy a vineyard and how they are farming it. Spoiler alert — the answer includes “vermicomposting,” which Jamie describes as “biodynamics on steroids.” We’ll also discuss the future of the estate and the first Kutch brandy, a small-production distillate of Pinot Noir.
Here are the wines I tasted with Jamie at a picnic table at the edge of his vineyard, where he plans to host intimate, appointment-only tastings in the future.