Sonoma Valley’s Jake Lorenzo launches new book

Jake Lorenzo has returned. The man of mystery, private-eye of the vineyards, intrepid sleuth of wineries, both here and abroad, has a new book out that’s brimming with wine-biz insights and viticulture wisdom that could only come from someone who has lived the life.

“Mature Surveillance: Wine Country Musings” by Jake Lorenzo is the fourth collection of articles written by longtime Sonoma resident Lance Cutler.

The stories first appeared in a column Cutler pens for the Wine Business Monthly under the pseudonym of Jake Lorenzo. Each story mingles fictional characters with real people in situations that reveal the glory of wine, the magic of its creation and the heroic effort of cellar rats.

“That’s who my book is targeted for, the cellar rats,” Cutler said. “Winemakers are just managers. It’s the people who drive the tractors, clean the barrels, fix the crushing equipment, work from morning till sundown to make it happen. It’s the cellar rats who appreciate what it takes to make fine wine.”

Cutler was once a cellar rat himself. In 1977, he left the security of a teaching position in Los Angeles for a low-paying job at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma. He knew little about making wine and nothing about agriculture, but he was a young, smart guy, with a devilish sense of humor and the kind of confidence that comes from not knowing how much you don’t know.

“A piece of machinery broke,” Cutler recalled. “I had no idea how it worked or how to fix it, but I found the schematic and we figured it out. That was the wine business back then; everyone pitched in and worked together.”

In a few years, Cutler became the winemaker. He jokes that he got the position because he was the only employee. Gundlach Bundschu may be the oldest family-owned winery in Sonoma Valley, but at the time it was a small player in the valley’s budding wine industry, known more for its tongue-twisting name than its meager output of fine wines.

With the support of owner John Bundschu, Cutler set out to turn “Gun Bun” into the powerhouse winery it is today. He produced a series of promotional posters that mixed irreverent humor with Fellini-like photography that celebrated the joy of wine and the carnival of life. He and his cohorts pulled off promotional pranks such as boarding the Napa Wine Train to stage a “hold-up” and misdirecting a bus load of travel writers bound for Napa who ended up in Sonoma, drinking wine compliments of Gundlach Bundschu.

Cutler and his Gun Bun crew thought it was all in good fun and rejoiced in the free publicity. However, some boosters of Napa Valley took a dim view of the shenanigans. A few thought the Wine Train caper may have crossed the line of legality.

For a while, Cutler laid low, but his reputation as the bad boy of local viticulture grew. His creative marketing and outside-the-barrel thinking so impressed Sonoma County vintners that in 1983 they named him Sonoma County’s Winemaker of the Year.

He stayed with Gundlach Bundschu until the late ‘90s, when he stepped aside as general manager so the next generation could take over. “That’s the way the industry used to be,” Cutler said. “Growers would risk it all and struggle for years in the hope of passing the family winery on as a legacy to their sons and daughters. Now they just sell out, and often the cellar rats and employees who have worked there for years are given nothing more than a cardboard box with orders to pack up.”

While he remains a sharply opinionated man, Cutler appears to have aged well. Now, on the backside of 60, he’s become less bitter, mellower, with strong accents of healthy realism.

“The local wine industry has been taken over by corporations run by businessmen,” he said, holding up a clenched fist, “and they are determined to squeeze every last drop they can out of the revenue stream. And that’s not about to change, with more wine being consumed in America than anywhere else.”

Of course, a good portion of that wine comes from Sonoma County vineyards, a region Cutler helped promote and popularize back in his day - a legacy he is happy to pass on to his literary sidekick, Jake Lorenzo.

“Mature Surveillance: Wine Country Musings” is $17.95 through Wine Patrol Press, lctoon@winepatrol.com. Or call 996-5730 and ask for Jake.