Peter Posert sits down at a table in front of 50 bottles of red wine of various sizes. None are adorned with the usual labels but instead with generic, lab-like descriptor stickers listing the varietal, appellation and amount available along the lines of "Cabernet Sauvignon," "Red Hills," "32,372 cases." The name of the winery that may have provided each of these is cleverly blacked out, for discretion is key here. These are all samples of bulk wine for sale and it's time for Posert to taste.
Posert is a negociant, someone who assesses and buys wine that's already made, blends it into his own concoction, then bottles and sells it under his own label. The practice can work in good times and bad as a way of repackaging wine deemed perhaps not worthy of its pedigree, or simply made in excess, and then made available at reasonable prices by entrepreneurs like Posert, who are unburdened by overhead costs.
"I have this enormous freedom because I can just go make wine," Posert said. "If I was tied to an estate winery or estate block of grapes I would be locked into what I could make that year. And if I can't produce 2,000 cases it'll only be 1,000 cases; four to six months later there'll be a whole new set of samples available."
There are lots of ways bulk wine makes its way into the market. One year's crop may have been bigger than a particular winery may have budgeted for or can manage; or a winery may not be able to make as much as it would ordinarily for other reasons -- perhaps they haven't sold out of a previous vintage, can't afford the barrels and the bottles, and want not to deal with so much juice.
Cameron Hughes and Joel Gott are other locally based negociants who have gained some name recognition over recent years, though their case productions are much larger -- in the hundreds of thousands -- compared to Posert. Gott also buys a lot of grapes to make his wines.
Posert likes to think of what he does as artisanal, taking very close care with the selection of his sources. He makes only 1,000 to 2,000 cases at a time, very small in the negociant world. In selecting from small, higher quality lots of wine, the 50 bottles he's about to taste through are just the beginning. He'll rank each bottle a 1, 2 or 3 -- 1 being the best. He likens the process of finding what will blend together best to the striking of musical chords.
"You get to the point where they lock in, these moments when the flavor profiles of the wine, the aroma and texture are in sync and harmony and moments when they're in discord," he said. "Trial and error is how you find that."
Over the next several months, Posert will put in significant time and palate expertise to create the best bang for consumers' bucks -- in this case $10 to $20 a bottle which will inlude a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon blend, a very rare find indeed.
"I figured a $20 Napa Valley red wine was a niche not being served," he said. "Napa Valley as an appellation has pretty much priced itself out of the glass pours and stacks, where the volume is. At my price point, I'm at the higher end and still getting that business."
His Napa Valley cabernet blend, as well as a chardonnay, can be found under the "Gain Bay" name, which translates phonetically as "Bottoms Up" in Chinese. He made only 129 cases of 2007 chardonnay and only 1,482 of what he calls his 2006 "cabernet family," a blend of 54 percent cabernet sauvignon, 16 percent malbec, 15 percent cabernet franc, 11 percent merlot and 4 percent petit verdot. Released last fall for $20 suggested retail, it can be found locally at Bottle Barn and the St. Helena Wine Center.
In less than two years, Gain Bay has expanded its reach to 20 states and a few markets abroad. Posert's goal is to make fruit-forward, lush, drinkable wines. Ageability is not the point. These are affordable wines intended for immediate consumption with deliciousness the primary goal.
"I don't own any barrels, don't own any vineyards, employ any people," he added, "I do it all myself which is how I can hit the price point."
Posert, who grew up in the Napa Valley, is in his mid-40s and the son of Harvey Posert, who was Robert Mondavi Winery's longtime public relations man. The elder Posert now works with Fred Franzia's Bronco Wines, among others. The younger Posert likes to say that he's learned the art of blending from a lifetime spent with old winemakers in cellars.
His upbringing has proved helpful in providing him with hush-hush connections to great sources of bulk wine. His discretion in keeping those sources a secret has helped lead to more sources. But like many other negociants, Posert also works with a handful of local bulk grape and wine brokers such as Ciatti, Mancuso and Turrentine.
Many of the bottles Posert is assessing today have been provided by brokers -- a selection of cabernet franc from Paso Robles, Lake County, Lodi and the Sierra Foothills, cabernet sauvignon from Monterey, Temecula and Lake County, merlot from Mendocino. Posert always starts with cabernet franc, followed by malbec, and then judges the cabernet sauvignon, which will typically make up the bulk of his final blend. Petit verdot, a red Bordeaux varietal known for its full body, high tannins and deep color, will make up a tiny but mighty part of the blend and is the varietal Posert prefers to judge last.
Today, he has enthusiastically stopped on a sample of 2008 vintage cabernet sauvignon from Lake County's Red Hills appellation, a growing region for reputable cabernet whose grapes often go into Napa wineries' wines. Perhaps some of those wineries had fueled demand in the boom years, spurring on more planting. Now there's too much.
Posert thinks it may just be exactly what he needs to make his next wine, a $10 California appellation blend retailers have been begging him for. He's still got more assessing of the other components to do, but hopes his $10 offering, under the label name Buccio, will be on shelves by February of next year. Once that's launched, a $15 Sonoma County red wine is next. Ultimately, Posert doesn't think the average consumer cares if the wine they are buying at his price point for dinner that night is made by a particular winery or by a negociant.
"The wine buyer will care," he noted, "but the person buying wine from them may not."
Virginie Boone is a freelance wine writer based in Sonoma County. She can be reached at virginieboone@yahoo.com or visit wineabout .pressdemocrat.com.
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