My Manifesto

Standing in a rocky, chalk-covered vineyard a few years ago, I listened as a winegrower friend talked about the current state of wine. “Fruit in a wine is easy”, he said. “Purity is elusive.”

He was right, of course, but I’d never really thought about it in such stark terms. He continued, “Purity comes from hardship. It comes from the struggle of the vine’s roots through the rocks it is planted on, it comes from the fight against every other plant vying for the same water and nutrients, and it comes from the plant learning to fight for itself and not having man fight its battles for it.”

In creating this portfolio, I was looking for these kinds of wines, and I found them planted on a massive swath of chalk and slate that runs from the Atlantic Ocean through the Loire river valley and into Champagne. This “chalk line” produces wines of extraordinary purity, minerality, and soul and represents the heart of my portfolio. The properties with which I work are consumed with making true wines – wines that are true to where they come from, true to the earth, and true to the winemaker’s obsession with quality. We work with properties who farm using either organic or biodynamic methods. 90% of our properties are certified and most have been for many years. We wholly support winemakers who harvest by hand, use indigenous yeasts, and who vinify with little intervention. All are leaders in their appellations and harvest at dramatically lower yields than their neighbors. Above all else, they are farmers.

In selecting properties for this portfolio, I seek purity first, eschewing heavy-handed usage of oak and opting instead for wines with excellent ripeness, minerality, and above all, balance. The presence of balancing acidity is absolutely crucial in my view to world-class wine and I’m not afraid to represent wines that have startling acidity if there is fruit to support it.

And finally, and perhaps this is the most important part, I only work with people with whom I enjoy breaking bread. I don’t work with wineries because I like a certain wine in a certain vintage. I select wineries because the wines are extraordinary year after year and because the people who make them are extraordinary humans. I don’t care how delicious someone’s wine is, if there isn’t a human connection, it’s just not for me. I work with winemakers for whom wine is very important, but not the most important thing in life.

I hope you can meet them someday. I think you’ll see what I mean.

JD