August/September 2014 77 Clockwise from top left: The one-of-a-kind tractor invented in Germany and modified by Rodgers to farm the slopes at Domaine Lois Louise is capable of operating at a 45-degree grade; chips on the Clos de la Tech bottles are all placed by hand; Rodgers’ custom-built press functions like a French Melior coffee pot and is so gentle on the pumice that the press wine doesn’t need to be separated; Domaine Lois Louise Twisty Ridge; footcrushing all the winery’s grapes requires a wetsuit for Massey during cold soak when it’s chilly; the barrel-aging cave, designed to accommodate 1,052 barrels stacked two-high. He dove headfirst into wine research journals, traveled to France for input and consulted with experts at UC Davis. Says Rodgers, “I’ve read as many articles on wine and winemaking as I did on electrical engineering before I got my Ph.D.” PAIR WITH A WINE PASSION However, it hasn't been a solo effort. Whippet-slim, blonde, pretty-withoutmakeup Valeta Massey has been there for the whole ride and is officially the assistant winemaker. Rodgers’ companion of 29 years and his wife since 2008, Massey oversees much of the day-to-day work. “My joke is, he’s the wine thinker, and I’m the wine doer,” she laughs. “He does all the smart stuff, but I execute it really well.” The pair acquired and had planted a 3½ -acre mountain parcel a hilltop away from famous Ridge Vineyards, naming it Domaine Valeta. Of her namesake vineyard, Massey says, “It’s a beast. It’s like taming a lion. I used to call it Caber-noir. We’re finally getting a handle on it, and it’s starting to become a very special wine.” But this vineyard was just a warm-up for the main event. In 2000, the couple bought a 165-acre plot of land located two miles down a dirt road off Skyline Boulevard, where the 30-acre Domaine Lois Louise vineyard—named for Rodgers’ mother—was planted to the same French pinot noir clones as their other vineyards. With the steepest slopes in California, this land gave Rodgers the kind of colossal challenge he relishes. Here, he would create a winery reflecting his well-researched beliefs about how to make world-class pinot noir. Placed in the middle of the sprawling vineyard, the winery consists of three adjacent 300-foot-long caves designed with help from a French cave builder that handle, respectively, production, barrel aging and bottling and storage. Stair-stepped into the hill, the caves make possible gravity flow operations from juice to bottling, thus ensuring gentle treatment of this finicky grape. But the ambitious project hit some stumbling blocks. Months of blasting with dynamite enraged some of the area’s few inhabitants while neighbors also complained about possible erosion and contamination of the water supply. Thus it took several years to get permits and complete the winery. Along the way, there was a construction mishap that caused a large chunk of the vineyard to tumble into one of the caves, so Rodgers and Massey turned this $1 million mistake into “the world’s most expensive skylight,” explains Massey. However, such setbacks were trivial when compared to Rodgers’ overall ob
South Bay Accent - Aug/Sep 2014
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