Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with which producers narrate their
winery and their world. Team thirty answers discover their stories, personalities, and
passions. Hello, friends and listeners of the Wine sound Track Podcast. This
is Kim Cashmore and today you are about to get a behind the scenes look
of high altitude winemaking with Molly Lonborg from Alta Kalina. Alta Qualina is located
in Passa Roblaze and Molly here is the winemaker. I'm so excited to bring
this conversation to you today because Mollie is the most friendly, bubbly person and
I think you're really going to enjoy this, So welcome Mollie. Hello Kim,
thanks for having me. So to start this off, can you tell
me a little bit about the winery where you're located and the grapes that you're
growing. Of course, so we're Alta Kalina Winery. We're located in Paths
of Roebletz, California. As you mentioned, it's about halfway between San Francisco
and la We're on the west side of Passa Roeblets in what's called the Adelaida
District. So there's actually fourteen avas in Pasaoblis. It's a very large expanse
of land and we are owned by a father daughter duo Bob and Maggie Tillman,
and we grow estate Roan wines, so all Rowan for idols. We
have Grenoche Sama Vedra and Petite Sera for our reds, and grenaches Blanc Marsan,
Roussan Vigner and soon become Pickpool blanc for our whites. We farm everything
organically here and being an a state vineyard means that the grapes never leave the
property, so from berry to bottle, it's all here. Oh wow,
I'm very excited about Pickpool's. That's like a light, refreshing white. Right,
it's kind of like the thing you'd low alcohol. Just making sure I
remembering correctly. Yeah, like your typical picked Pool d'panee has lower alcohol.
Pickpool literally or like loosely translates to lipstinger in French, and so it's known
for it's high acid. Although it's really interesting because a lot of times we
think these high acid grapes and we just think really lean and clean, where
Pickole blanc actually has a lot of body behind it and weight and so it
can create just like this beautiful textural wine. Oh, I can't wait to
try that one day. If you guys haven't, if you haven't caught on
yet, I am definitely a fan of all to clinap personally delicious. I
love a good rown wine, and I think that in pass So they make
some amazing ones and the quality is truly truly unmatched. So but before we
get into more about the wines that you make, I think everyone here is
really curious to know how you got into wine making. You know, was
this something you always wanted to do, or did this come about later in
life? Tell us, Yeah, so it's not something that I always thought
I was going to do by any means. I'm from a little town in
northern California called Mendocino. We had substantial crops there, but it was not
wine. So, you know, we grew up driving through the Anderson Valley
to get to anywhere pretty much from the coast, and so we always drove
through grape vines, but didn't come from a wine family anything like that.
I left Mendocino, traveled for a while and decided to come to San lis
Obispo to go to kel Poly and study earth and soil science. So I
did that. I spent a year in New Zealand, not doing wine.
Actually spent a year studying geology in southern New Zealand. And when I came
back, I noticed that cal POLYI had created this wine and viticulture department.
So I was like, well, this sounds pretty fun, and I decided
to pick up the miner or do a concentration in wine in it. And
at the time, I was thinking that I would go into the vineyard.
Do you know, I have all of this soil experience, climate experience,
and so that was kind of where I was planning on heading. When I
graduated in two thousand and nine, I knew if I went right into the
vineyard that I would just never leave. And I felt like my education was
good, but I didn't quite have the knowledge of wine making that I knew
I needed if I wanted to be able to grow good grapes. So I
decided to work my first harvest in a lab and then I traveled a bit
and that was down at in a valley, and then I decided to work
my second harvest in a cellar up here and pass the roeblist. So I
thought lab cellar and then go to the vineyard. But I just got hired
full time, and then that wine maker left and went somewhere else and brought
me with him, and so I just ended up becoming like staying on the
wine making track. I've been really lucky because every winery I've worked for has
had an estate vineyard. So even though I'm never fully in the vineyard,
I've always been able to kind of walk out the door and be in the
vines. And so I feel like, even though I didn't end up on
that track, I still have a really close relationship with the vines. And
my husband is vineyard manager over at Talless Creek, so of vineyard conversations around
the dinner table. Absolutely well. I mean this is a compared to some
of the other wineries in this area, this is considered more of a boutique,
smaller winery. So even as you said, even if you're not fully
doing, you know, all of the vineyard things, you're still really involved
in the vineyard. Yes, yes, And here at Altaclina, I oversee
the entire vineyard as well. So Daniel Martinez, our vineyard manager, and
I we work really closely on everything. From you know soil health. Bob
is still involved in irrigation and soil health decisions. So the kind of the
three of us really work closely on all those decisions. And Daniel and I
are walking every block every week during the growing season and kind of watching vine
balance and discussing, you know what it is. I'm trying to get out
of the grapes to craft in the winery, and so how we can achieve
that through you know, proper crop and canopy management in the vineyard. So
tell us a little bit more about Alta Qualina. This is a high elevation
place. It's actually really interesting when you come here. The winery is at
the base of a hill and then you take this long, winding steep road
up to the top, and at the top is this beautiful rolling hills at
high elevation of vineyards. So how many acreages do you have here? So
the property itself is about one hundred and thirty acres, thirty one of which
are planted. And so you had you were lucky enough to come up to
the vineyard yesterday and as you noticed, it's this deep road to get up
there, and pretty much Bob purchased the property in two thousand and three,
started planting in two thousand and four, and that was a four wheel drive
road to get to the top, so there was nothing here. It would
have cost about four million dollars and lot of moving of the land to be
able to build a road that was in compliance to have a winery and a
tasting room up at the top of the hill. That's why this is at
the bottom of the hill. And funny thing but Alta calina literally means high
hill in Spanish, so all this reference to our high elevation high hills,
hence our name Alta Calina. So we do we have kind of these two
hills that face each other. And I'm not sure how much we can see
in the video here, but we have a beautiful map behind us that pretty
much shows for two hillsides that face each other. And it's really unique because
we have a huge south facing hill. We have a pond in the middle
with five vintage trailers around them we call the Trailer Pond that you can rent
out. And then we have another hill that adds a full north face kind
of a top, and then a south face to it. So that kind
of comprises our thirty one acres of vineyard land, And as I mentioned yesterday,
the start of the project, you know, started really small. We're
still pretty small in comparison to many wineries, but we really started as what
I like to say, a farmer's market for local wine makers. So the
majority of the fruit was sold, and then we made a little bit of
wine for ourselves, and over time that started to shift, so now we're
keeping about eighty percent of the vineyard for our own program. So can you
tell us a little bit more about the different grapes that you grow and the
wines that you make? Yeah, of course, so I mentioned are eight
to now almost nine varietals. So our whites, our whites have become so
popular they are amazing. The vigner just stop now. I think it's already
sold out right, the last vintage. So we're waiting for spring for the
new bottling. We are, but lucky you I did grab you a barrel
sample. So sorry for all you listeners and watchers, because I know that
that is not as exciting to hear other people enjoy wine, but we will
at some point, but it'll might entice you to try it. So yeah,
exactly, Yeah, So our whites have been selling out so fast.
We do single varietal grenache blanc, Vigna, Marson and Roussan. We also
do I do a metro chumpin' wase so a traditional sparkling wine out of grenache
blanc. We'll be releasing our our twenty nineteen. I'm going to disgorge this
spring and we'll release it in the summertime. So that's had about four years
entourage, which is really exciting. And then for our red program, we
do a GSM so a classic grenache sama Vedra blend, just a very classic
roan blend. We do a wine called Sun Worshipper, which is our Mavedra
focused blend. Always it's usually about seventy five percent of bed and then a
little bit of Sarah in there just to kind of be a little backbone.
We have two main sarahs Toasted Slope, which is all from our south facing
slope, two different clones, and I love that wine. It's I like
to colle it's like our voluptuous woman. And then from the north facing side
of the hill we make a Sah called Old nine hundred, which is another
clone, but a single clone, and that is this real beautiful but like
a masculine, earthy Surrah, and so it's so interesting to have, you
know, just three clones literally one hillside apart, and different aspects, but
just completely different expressions of that varietal. In certain years, we do one
Sarah called Keystone that's actually one puncheon, which is the equivalent of two barrels.
It's like a really big barrel, and we do one from each of
the three blocks, and we put it in American oak, so it's kind
of a different program. And then we do a single varietal Petite Sarra,
so that's kind of our main lineup. And then we have some fun wines
like we do a grenache rose pet Nat I make grenache rose and also do
a carbonic grenache, and we do canned rose. So we have kind of
something for everyone, which is really fun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Can you explain for everyone, for everyone what carbonic is because I think this
is a term that someone lest I was saying it's like hipster wine drinking.
It's kind of like a new style of wine making, and so could you
give us little more detail what that entails. Yes, of course. And
it's so funny because you know, I have my own brand called Little Soul
wines that I only do rose and carbonic, and my carbonic is called the
old school carbonic. It's funny because you can because I knew school, but
really, carbonic maceration is such an old school style of making wine. My
label is literally a hand with a boom box on it, because to me,
that's my old school roots and so and then it's like a nod to
Boujelat. So carbonic maceration is a style of making wine that's so different from
typical red wine making and it's been done for centuries. Specifically, it's most
famous for the Beaujelat region, so it's usually done with the gammet grape.
If anyone's had Baugelat Neveau, you know, you get that right around Thanksgiving
every year, and that's usually one hundred percent carbonic maceration. So what it
is, I'm just a backup little bit. So if you think of a
typical red wine fermentation, we're usually destemming the fruit. Sometimes there's some whole
cluster in there, but for the most part, we're pumping over, punching
down, so we're kind of separating the juice from the skins a little bit,
and we're we're moving them, so we're trying to extract a lot of
phenolic compounds from the skins, be that color, tannins, flavor molecules,
and so that's how we get this kind of dark colored wine. When we
do carbonic maceration, we take whole clusters and gently layer them into a vessel
filled with dry ice. So we put some grape, some clusters in,
put some dry ice in, clusters dry ice, and what we're and then
we seal up the whole vessel. And what we're trying to do is rid
the environment of any oxygen. So whereas some people think carbonic maceration, they
think the wine is going to be carbonated, and that's not the case.
It just means that it was fermented and an environment that was filled with carbon
dioxide. And so what happens is inside the berry. I'm gonna get a
little nerdy here just for a minute, please do okay. Sometimes I can
lose people on my nerdiness. But pretty much what happens it starts out as
an intracellular reaction, and so there's an enzymatic reaction that occurs inside the berry
and it starts to break down some of the sugars and then the berries will
just kind of slightly pop open, and we have native yeast that are all
over the fruit, you know, we have yeasts that are coming in from
the vineyard. Some people choose to inoculate on top of that, some people
use their native yeast to do their fermentations. So those native yeasts will start
to kind of ferment, which means they're starting to convert that sugar to alcohol
and CO two. So once that yeast gets going, that dry ices has
already dissipated, but they're just producing more CO two and thus filling the environment
with more carbon dioxide. And so what happens, though, is the fermentation
literally occurs inside the bar and without movement, and so you get this really
light bodied red wine that has completely different flavor and aroma characteristics. And generally
speaking, we're not looking for the same color, you know that we want
for a typical red wine. So we're harvesting early and therefore we've got higher
acid usually have lower alcohol. And these wines are really fun because you can
even serve them slightly chilled, and so it's just like this amazing wine.
Like we're in Passerobas it is hot here and so to be able to come
home. Sometimes you want something a little more than a wider rose, but
you're not quite ready for a big red and carbonyic just like fits that.
Yeah, yes, absolutely it is. From my personal experience, I really
do enjoy it. And if you're a listener that hasn't tried it yet,
you really should go out and try this new style. I mean, it's
not really new, but it's a style that is becoming more popular and it's
worth it's worth experiencing on your wine journey. Okay, So you studied earth
sign as you said, in university, and I'm assuming that sustainability and caring
for the environment is very important. I think most winemakers feel that way.
So what do you do with Altakalina to you know, get back to the
earth, make sure that you're taking care of your vineyards so they can keep
producing. What are some of the things that you're doing. Yeah, I
mean that's a huge, huge part of our thought process for me personally in
my life and for us here. You know, we're in agriculture, and
we're in we're in an ag We farm in an area that is hot,
and we have a lot of plants to sustain, so we do have to
irrigate, and so anytime we're using water to irrigate, you know, that's
just we're using a resource. And so for us to be the best stewards
of the land, we need to be thinking about everything and making sure we're
using that properly. So water management is huge for us. We use like
special SAP flow monitoring devices on our vines that help to tell us exactly what
kind of use the vines are requiring based on the current weather, and that
is huge. So we've been able to cut down our water usage a lot
by that. We also use another company to calculate our exact appotransporation on the
property rather than referencing a square of grass that's grown somewhere else, and so
that also helps us really dial in our irrigation needs. We're also so the
other facet of this is all soil health right, and so having healthy soil
is what's going to propel our vineyard for generations to come. And so we're
a hotel vineyard site in between the vine rows. So the vineyard has not
been tilled for eighteen years, which is pretty impressive. We do have a
little bit of tillage that goes like under the vine row, just for weed
control, but nothing in between the vine rows. We've been doing. We
made a couple of capital investments this year which are really excited about. We
got a seed drill, so we've used just pretty much our native cover crop.
Generally speaking, if you want to seed cover crop, you need to
till the ground first, but we bought a seed drill that's going to allow
it. That's allowing us to actually put seeds in the ground without having to
till. And we also just bought a crimper, which is really fun.
So instead of having to mow down the cover crop, we're going to let
it grow and then we're going to run this implement over and it's gonna kind
of crimp it down and create a habitat for all of these micro organisms and
fungi and also just hopefully helps build our soil. Yeah. So yeah,
and I feel like you can really taste that in the wines too. Speaking
of I know, we saw each other yesterday and you were mentioning about the
quality and how important that is here at Alta Qualina, and even to the
point where you might not make as much wine as you could because of like
quality standards, So what is your mentality around that, because I think that's
what really can create an amazing wine, but it comes a little bit of
a risk, so i'd be curious to hear, Yeah, it's you know,
it's a little bit of a different way of thinking about it. The
wine wineries in general were backwards businesses. You know, we farm to grow
less fruit, we you know, and then here we make these lines and
we're so careful about what actually makes it into our final product. So,
you know, I just was looking in the twenty three vintage. I have
twenty six red blots of wine, So those were different picks that I did.
Out of those, they could be anywhere from one barrel to six eight
barrels. And I don't taste, says a lot. I taste every single
individual will barrel multiple times, and so I kind of grade everything and then
I use that for blending trials to always help determine what's going to be the
best wine. And when it comes down to it, I've had many times
where it's like the wine club could really use another twenty five cases. But
everything here is quality driven, so we're never pushed. It's always whatever makes
the best wine, that's what we're going to go with. And so we've
had to make that hard decision multiple times of you know what, this blend
is better than that blend, and we taste everything blind, so we're not
you know, we're just picked straight up picking whatever is best, and sometimes
we end up having less wine than we want. But if we don't have
those standards, then we're not going to have a good product. And the
consumers you know, our clients, our family, and you know, they
trust us to be giving them the best product, and so that's that's our
job. Yeah, I love that as a mentality for sure. Or is
this something that you kind of picked up over time in your wine making or
is this something that you believed in from the beginning about like the importance of
quality and what you need to do to attain them. I think it's been
an evolution. You know, it always depends where you work and what that
company's ethos is. You know, there's and I understand when you work at
a large winery that has distribution, you know, you have certain targets that
you have to meet, and so you know there are times when compromise comes
into play. Well, I kind of like this blend a little better,
but this one's still good and it gives me another thousand cases, so you
know, there's nothing wrong with it. I just prefer this one. And
the fact matter is most people probably they're not going to have no idea there
was a better blend. So you have to make those decisions as long as
you always believe in the product you're still putting out. You know, just
because one blend's better than the other, it doesn't mean another blend isn't good
at times, but having that having the full company behind you and everyone kind
of saying no here, you have the freedom to just make the best wine.
It's so refreshing. Yeah, so learned over time, I would say,
gotcha, And have you you've worked at bigger wineries in the past,
correct, yes, Yeah, this is the smallest winery i've worked at.
Where have you worked before? What what's been your journey in winemaking? I
know you said you were, you know, sellar managing and working in the
lab, but where were you doing more wine making up? Yeah? So
I started as just a lab tech intern for Baileyana down in Enna Valley,
and then I went and worked as just sellar intern up at justin winery in
twenty ten, just before they sold, and then I was there. I
got hired full time there and I stayed on for about seven months, I
believe, maybe a little more. I think I was there for maybe nine
months total. And then I left there and went over to Halter Ranch and
started as lab manager and then enologist assistant winemaker, and then I was there
for nine years and left as the associate winemaker over there and then came here
to Alta Qualina. It started March second of twenty twenty, kind of precarious
beginning of a new career or a new job. And yeah, Bob Tilman,
our founder, had been the winemaker since the inception, but he had
been kind of looking for somebody to take over the reins as he was looking
at maybe a ten year plan of phasing out of the winery or out of
the business for him. And so yeah, it just kind of worked really
well. We're both very nerdy people. We both liked to experiment and we
like facts, but we've also had a strong passion for wine and it's beauty
and the craft, and so we've worked really well together. And he's kind
of just he pretty quickly just passed over all the rains. Oh well,
that's awesome and congratulations. I mean, just on your journey. I think
it's exciting for any winemaker to get to a place where they're really running with
it, you know. And and I know that you were always trying to
make the best wines and kind of go with the philosophy that was put in
place by you know, out at Alta Kalina, So I you know,
but I know it's really exciting as winemaker to get to run the show.
It is it is. I mean, when you have complete control from berry
to bottle, it's such a different thing, you know. I mean I
was really lucky at Halter Ranch because when I came on, they were a
small winery and we were growing and creating a wholesale presence. And as an
assistant winemaker was the winemaker general manager and I that were sitting down and creating,
Okay, what wines do we want to make, what grades do we
want to grow, and how do we want to get there? So and
I did have a lot of creative control there as well, so that was
really special. But it's different, you know, when you go from making
thirty thousand cases to three thousand cases, you know everything. It is a
different level. So it's been so fun here and I've been very thankful because
Bob has let me kind of do some new creative outlets, things like the
Carbonic and the can Rose and you know what. Things. He's always open
to these fun ideas and that makes it really special too. So it's he
always always said, hey, if you ever think of like a wine club,
special wine club wine, like go just roll with it. I'm like,
okay, great. So like my first time, I think my first
year here, I bottled a single varietal grenache because I tasted four grenache barrels
that I loved, and I said, what do you think can we do
grenache? And he said, well, gosh, we haven't bottled a single
varietal granach since twenty twelve and there was a bit of issues with that one.
So I don't know, we're all a little nervous, but if you
think so, that's fine. And so we did it and everybody loved it
and it was great. Okay, So I want to quickly just highlight Little
Soul, which is your own personal brand that you make wines for, and
what is the ethos the idea behind it? You know, what kind of
wines are you making? Yeah, it's funny. So I've at this point
now, I've been in the wine making side for fifteen years, and I
never never, I never like knew I was going to have my own brand.
Coming to Alta Kalina was kind of just serendipitous. My husband and I
we live on a property that we farm, and we had some extra pino
noir grapes, which is very random for Passa Robliss, and I asked,
Bob, hey, do you mind if I make some wines? Sure,
no problem, And that's you know, decided to start Little Soul. You
know, I craft these these big, luscious wines, is what I do
for Alta Calina. You know, we grow high elevation fruit, like we've
said multiple times here, which means we have smaller berries, which means we
have a lot of color and a lot of tannin. If I tried to
make a really light week wine out of that, I just wouldn't be doing
the fruit justice. And so I'm here to just tell the story of the
grapes right and to not mess it up, to highlight them. And so
I love these big wines that were making. But when it comes to the
end of the day, like when I go home, I usually drink these
like lighter, fresher, low alcohol wines. And I always knew if I
was ever going to start a wine brand, first of all, it had
to be something that I wanted to drink, because if it flops, like
I better be able to consume my product. I also, I used to
do a lot of sales wine. I spent five weeks a year on the
road doing sales, and I it's really fun. You get to go meet
new people, go to new places, eat great food, and have great
time. At the end of the day. Like I love making wine,
I just don't love selling wine. And so I just didn't want to create
a brand where I was gonna, you know, have to have a tasting
room and be there on the weekends. And you know, I have a
family. I have two kids under five, and you know, it's really
important to me to be able to show up and be there as a mom
outside of harvest, not the best mom during harvest. And so with Little
Soul, I knew if I could kind of create a small brand mostly rose
or just rose and carbonic. I do Pino noir, which is first of
all very different for our area, and second of all, in no competition
with my day job, so that's pretty nice. My daughter's name is Alma,
which means soul in Spanish, and so when she was five and a
half months old, we spent a month in Wahaka with her because we both
had to go back to work before we like finished all of our maternity paternity
leave. So we're like, well, let's just baby bond on the beach
in Mexico. So we took her there and immediately the locals started calling her
Almita, which means little soul. And so after that trip was when we
decided to start our own brand, and it just kind of felt fitting to
call it Little Soul. Yeah, so it's pretty fun. It's honestly,
I'm so lucky. I have such an amazing group of friends and family and
network of people from this industry. It's a really special area here in past
the roeb List especially, so my whole brand has been like with the help
of friends and family. Like I was telling you, my friend helped build
my website. My carbonic label is one of my best friends, would Carving.
I have my other friends with all my label design like these are childhood
friends I've grown up with, and so it's just I feel like it's just
this fun kind of fabric that we're able to all like wrap ourselves in in
this special way. And yes, it's fun. That's amazing. It makes
me just like want to buy all your wine selling the story. All right,
so we're clos out, just want to do some rapid fire questions.
This is gonna be hard. I know that wine makers and wine people in
general hate this question. But favorite grape oh granash? Oh that's mine too.
Yeah, okay, favorite food and wine pairing potato chips and champagne.
Oh wow, we're the same. Oh my gosh, No, I love
champagne. It's Champion and chicken nuggets for me. Okay, favorite winery in
Passo That is not any of the ones that you work at Hubbo Wines.
Favorite restaurant in Passo in bloom Oh all right, trying to think of you.
Another good one for the editor. Just cut out our like pauses in
between this and just take the go for the Yeah, the actual questions.
Uh, still or sparkling wines? Still rose white or red? All of
the above? Oh love it awesome? Well, thank you for playing the
game with me, and thank you for being here. This has been such
a wonderful conversation. You were so easy to talk to, and I'm sure
that everyone listening here can agree that this was a really insightful conversation but also
so enlightening, Like I feel so happy talking to you. So thank you,
thank you. This is a pleasure. And before we go, where
can we stay in touch with you? Where can everyone listening follow along on
your journey? Where can we get some of the wines? Tell us all
the things? Okay, yeah, so you can we You know, we've
got the usual social media so Alta Kalinas on Instagram, Facebook, Little Soul
is Little Soul Wines on Instagram, and we both have just the typical you
know, web web presence that you can come and buy wine online. Little
Soul is currently sold out, but I'm pre releasing my next vintage. We'll
release on January eighteenth, twenty twenty four. Great, so if you're listening
to this after that date, that means hurry to the website before it sells
out. All right, Mollie, Well, thank you so much, and
thank you to everyone here that has been listening. Have a wonderful week.
And we will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to a
new episode of Wine Soundtrack USA. For details and updates, visit our website
windsoundtrack dot com.