WineInk: Siduri’s Pinot Path

If you want to know the secrets of the California coast, Siduri winemaker Matt Revelette knows most of them.

“I can tell you the best truck stops, the cheapest places to get gas, and the best coffee on the 101,” he laughed as he poured me another glass of his Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir at a wine dinner in Denver recently. He knows these things because the unique structure of the Siduri wine portfolio hinges upon his ability to get to the best Pinot-producing properties in the state (and in Oregon) and seemingly be in two places — or more — at once. Especially during the harvest season.

Siduri is one of the most interesting wine projects in American wine. Owned by Jackson Family Wines, it produces around 26 wines, 25 Pinot Noirs, and a single Chardonnay. Most of these wines are small production, vineyard designate wines that are created to represent the terroir and the site-specific places of their origin. Then there are appellation wines that use Pinot Noir fruit from these same vineyards blended with other Pinot lots to make wines that reflect the distinct viticultural areas of the West Coast that range from Santa Barbara to the Santa Lucia Highlands through Sonoma County to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In all, nine AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) are represented in the two tiers. 

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Siduri was founded thirty years ago this year in 1994 by an audacious Texan who became a Sonoma, California-based winemaker. Adam Lee, and his former wife Diane Novy, had $24,000 and a plan to make cool-climate Pinot, sourced from premium vineyards, using minimalist intervention techniques in an attempt to show the sense of place of each bottling. They named their project Siduri after the Babylonian goddess of wine. 

It was a radical idea, to take just one variety of grape and focus on place, but it worked; and almost instantly, critics — including the influential Robert Parker Jr. and Matt Kramer from Wine Spectator — raved about the quality of the wines and the audacity of the plan. The pair also founded another label, Novy, named for Diane’s family name, and the couple was amongst the most talked about winemakers in California.

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In January 2015, Siduri and Novy were acquired by Jackson Family Wines. Adam stayed on as winemaker, shepherding the Siduri project, and in 2019 when he turned the reins over to the aforementioned Matt Revelette. Lee still makes Pinot with a California project named Clarice that also is focused on single-vineyard wines. Last year, he brought his wines to Basalt as a part of the CS Wines Pinot Posse event at Free Range Kitchen.

At the dinner in Denver at The Nickel restaurant in the stylish and welcoming Hotel Teatro, Revelette said that Lee was both a mentor and an inspiration: “Adam is one of my best friends in wine, and he created this amazing winery. I am so fortunate to be able to make these wines.”

He continued, “Wine is really about relationships, and though Siduri did not own any vineyards, they were able to source some of the best fruit from some of the best vineyards like Gary’s and Rosella’s (two premier Pinot Noir sites in the Santa Lucia Highlands on California’s central coast) on the strength of Adam’s relationships. Our constant pursuit of Pinot perfection has led to long-standing relationships with top growers from Santa Barbara to Oregon.”

But there are also differences for Siduri today as it benefits from the resources of one of California’s most successful family-owned wineries. In addition to sourcing from the vineyards that built Siduri originally and supplied the company with Pinot Noir, Revelette has an opportunity to use fruit from the other Jackson Family-owned vineyards, as well. For example, in the mid-2000s, Jackson Family had purchased two Oregon winerie­s: Grand Moraine in the Yamhill Carlton District and Zena Crown in Willamette Valley’s Eola-Amity Hills sub-AVA.  Both vineyards have been sources for Siduri wines.

In addition, Revelette has access to the vast network of winemaking resources that are under the Jackson Family umbrella. From the ability to process grapes at regional facilities to accessing information instantly needed to begin the harvest in vineyards that are just under 1,000 miles apart, it is empowering to have that infrastructure available. Especially for such a unique project.

Just 38 years old, Revelette already has had a fortuitous path in wine. Raised in Kentucky, he took his first job in wine for the beer.

“I was home for a summer in college, and a buddy said that a winery was looking for some help, and they’ll buy you a couple of beers at the end of the day,” he laughed.

That auspicious debut got him thinking about making wine, and he moved to California for an internship with the acclaimed Pinot producer Williams-Selyem in the Russian River Valley.

He got a Masters in Viticulture and Enology from Fresno State while working for several other wine producers, including Kosta-Browne and Mending Wall, where he learned from celebrated winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown. He then took the position with Adam Lee at Siduri and now works with Kendall Jackson’s legendary head winemaker Randy Ullom.

“It has been amazing to learn and work with the people who I have had the chance to be with,” Revelette said, obviously humbled by his good fortune.

With that, he unscrewed another bottle of Siduri for the guests at The Nickel.

That’s right, unscrewed.

You see, in 2008, Adam Lee began to put all of the Siduri appellation releases in bottles with screw caps after becoming tired of cork-induced TCA — cork taint — ruining between 4-8% of his wines. After three vintages of tests, he felt comfortable with the fact that he was no longer having issues with cork taint in those appellation wines with screw caps and opted to go to 100% screw caps on all of the Siduri wines. A practice that remains in place to this day. It is unique for a premium wine to use screw caps exclusively and a testament to the Jackson Family for their perseverance to maintain the ethos of the brand they bought nearly a decade ago.

In the meantime, if you want to talk about corks versus screw caps, look for Matt Revelette. You just might run into him at a truck stop on Highway 101, somewhere between Santa Barbara and the Willamette Valley.