Lokoya Winery

Lokoya Winery (established in 1995) by Jackson Family Wines, specializes in premium small lot wines (100% varietal Cabernet Sauvignon) exclusively from Napa grown fruit from select mountain appellations. Founder, Jess Jackson wanted to create a wine that showcased some of the best mountain vineyards in Napa Valley. He began acquiring specific properties in the early to mid 1990s. The name Lokoya is a tribute to the Native American tribe that inhabited what is now known as Mt. Veeder in the Mayacamas mountains rising above the western side of Napa Valley.

While in the early years of its production, Lokoya was produced by several winemakers – it is really winemaker Chris Carpenter who has become such an integral component to producing these wines each year (he became Lokoya’s winemaker in 2000). Chris is from Chicago and is arguably one of Napa Valley’s most well-rounded individuals. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois while playing Big-Ten Football (followed by his MBA, also at the University of Illinois). While selling medical products he simultaneously worked at an Irish Bar in Chicago and he began to explore both music, food and wine in Chicago (from personal experience, a great food and wine town).

Eventually he moved to Napa Valley and earned a master’s degree from UC Davis in viticulture and enology. He joined the wine making team at Cardinale in 1998 as an enologist. Oh, and he never gave up his passion for bar-tending – he bar-tended at the Rutherford Grill for nearly 20 years before eventually retiring from this gig (it was one night a week on Fridays).

Today Chris oversees the wine making for Cardinale, Lokoya, La Jota and Mt. Brave wines. He knows the vineyards very well and keeps only the highest quality fruit for Lokoya. In certain cases, this comes down to merely a few select rows in specific blocks in the vineyard. All of the Lokoya wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered and fermentation is conducted with indigenous yeast already on the grapes.

After many years of looking for a ‘home’ for Lokoya, Jackson Family Wines located this special property (77 acres in total of which approximately 25 are planted to vines). They grow a select number of Bordeaux red varieties on site and perhaps somewhat surprising, several acres of Riesling.

Previous property ownership
The property that is now the home of Lokoya was purchased by Switzerland born Fred Aves in 1965; he was an engineer who invented and manufactured airplane and automobile accessories, including remote controlled mirrors on vehicles and a light bulb tester for lightbulbs in airplane instrument panels. He founded his first company, Aves Electric Company (AECO), in 1934 in Beverly Hills. He also was very successful in the self-storage business. We never met Fred, but he sounds exactly like the quintessential brilliant southern California engineer who could make anything out of any material. We were first introduced to these types of individuals, primarily from Los Angeles, during our years attending Cal Poly in Luis Obispo and through our work helping build a solar car.

According to an article published by the Venice High School Alumni, the high school from which Fred graduated from and the beneficiary of a sizable amount of money donated upon his death, his interest in winemaking began before he moved to Napa Valley. The article mentions that he took a winemaking class at UCLA, later traveled to northern California and purchased grapes for making home wine. And then he purchased land in Beverly Hills and planted a few wine grapes and built a small wine cave to store his home wines.

He called this special slice of Napa Valley, Yverdon, named after his mother’s hometown in Switzerland, located along the shoreline of Lac de Neuchatel. Fred initially planted grape varieties found in Switzerland, but these were not successful. Winemaker Cathy Corison of Corison Winery worked with Fred for two full vintages including in 1979 and 1980. Fred (died 1997) and his son Russell (died in 2019) built a small ‘castle’ of out of local stone quarried from Napa Valley and completed construction in the early 1970s. Their first harvest here was in 1971. According to an article in the The Napa Valley Register dated August 31, 1973 Yverdon’s Johannisberg Riesling was listed in wine writer Robert Balthazar’s list of top 50 wines from California that year. And an ad for Vallergas Market in the city of Napa in The Napa Valley Register dated August 13, 1983 listed a 750ml bottle of Yverdon Cabernet Sauvignon for $5.29.

Aves closed the winery operations in 1986.

Prior to this being the home of Lokoya Winery, Angus and Margaret Wurtele owned this property. Angus purchased what was called Yverdon Vineyard in 1996 and then the separate but nearby winery in 1999. Angus earned his MBA from Stanford University in 1961 and the following year became president of Minnesota Paints Inc. Over the decades he built the company into what became Valspar Corporation; for reference, Minnesota Paints merged with Valspar in 1970. Eventually he was chairman of the company; today it is one of the largest painting and coatings companies in the world. Eventually he sold the company to Sherwin-Williams and retired as CEO in 1995. The Wurtele’s were generous philanthropists in Minnesota. The Wurtle Center for Leadership at Smith College in Northampton, MA is named in honor of their financial contribution to the college. And Angus generously donated both time and money to his alma mater, Stanford University.

Margaret is an author having published several personal memoirs after her son Phil, a student ranger died climbing Mt. Rainier at age 22 in 1995 on a rescue mission. These books are: Taking Root: A Spiritual Memoir (1998) and Touching the Edge, A Mother’s Spiritual Path from Loss to Life (2002). Following his tragic death, Margaret and Angus created the Philip Otis Environmental Authors Program at The Blake School in Minneapolis. This program is still active; and the student courtyard at the Upper Campus (one of four campuses) is named in his honor.

Another Napa Valley vintner who wrote two books on the subject of losing children was Arlene Bernstein, the co-founder of Mt. Veeder Vineyards. Margaret wrote her first fictional novel in 2012 called: The Golden Hour.

Prior to the Jackson Family ownership, the winery was named, Terra Valentine after his Angus’s father whose first name was Valentine. Like his son Angus, Valentine spent a long career in the paint and coatings business in Minnesota. He became director of Minnesota Paints, Inc., in 1923 and from 1931 until he retired in 1952 he was the president of the company. After his ‘retirement’ he became chairman of the board.

During his career, Valentine Wurtle served on a number of boards and executive committees directly related to paints and grain products. He died at age 86 in 1972 and is buried in the Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. We will pay a visit to his grave, hopefully in 2024. When you combine retirement with starting a new winery, the word “retirement” loses its meaning rather quickly. When they purchased the physical winery on Spring Mountain, it needed much work; they completely remodeled and added a state-of-the-art wine making facility.

In 1999 the Wurtle’s partnered with winemaker Dennis Fife (died in 2016), who used to be married to wine writer Karen MacNeil. Fife also used to own Fife Vineyards with two sites, one on Spring Mountain and the Redhead Vineyard in Mendocino County; we visited his production and hospitality operations in Mendocino County years ago.

The Wurtele’s later hired Phillip Baxter as their consulting winemaker who also used to help make wine at Fife Vineyards. Phillip moved to Napa Valley in 1969 and worked at Charles Krug Winery; later he became the head winemaker at Rutherford Hill Winery. His son Phillip Jr and his wife Claire currently own and operate BAXTER, a hillside located winery about a 20-minute drive from Elk on the coastline which focuses on wines from Anderson Valley and other parts of Mendocino County. They also operate a small tasting room next to Highway 128 in Philo (Anderson Valley) which is about a 30-minute drive from the winery. It was through his father’s role at Terra Valentine that his son Sam Baxter was hired as cellarmaster in 1999 a year after he graduated from the University of California Davis with a degree in enology. Later Sam became head winemaker and ultimately General Manger of Terra Valentine.

After the Wurtele’s purchased the property, they changed the name to Terra Valentine and the winery produced these wines here until 2013 when it was sold to Jackson Family Wines.

Hospitality
We first visited the winery many years ago and recall the interior being dark, framed by original stain glass windows and not very roomy at all. This decades old building was wonderfully refurbished by the team at Backen, Gillam & Kroeger Architects. The interior is contemporary and spacious, the stained glass has been replaced by large clear glass allowing plenty of light into the space and a wine cellar/library has been added. CoorItalia provided the contemporary windows and doors. The hospitality center opened in November 2016 (by appointment only). Tastings are for serious wine enthusiasts and collectors of luxury wines.

Tastings are unscripted and hosted at a pace desired by the guests; there is never a feeling of being rushed during a visit. Guests will learn about both the wines, history of the property and the various vineyard sources for each of their bottlings. And one does not want to rush through a tasting in such a comfortable space such as this; oh, and the excellent views through the trees of Napa Valley in the distance do not hurt either.

Tastings include four current releases and a library vintage (usually of their Mt. Veeder wine as that is the most produced of their wines). The sit-down tasting is paired with tasty small bites (including some cheeses) prepared by their culinary team.

Select Wines
Lokoya carefully focuses on the types of wines they produce each year. They craft four 100% varietal Cabernet Sauvignon wines each year from four premium mountain appellations within Napa Valley: Diamond Mountain, Howell Mountain, Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder. Jackson Family Wines owns vineyards in each of these appellations and in certain cases, such as on Spring Mountain and Diamond Mountain, they also purchase fruit from other select outstanding vineyards). Across these appellations, the vineyard elevations range from 1,000 to 2,100 feet.

Each of the wines is different from the other; they highlight the terroir differences of their source appellations while showcasing the varietal that Napa is most famous for – Cabernet Sauvignon. The wines are generally tasted in order of both evolution of flavor intensity and structure.

Diamond Mountain
The 2014 Lokoya Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is deep ruby, opaque and sports an amaranthine rim. The bouquet is darkly fruited with ripe aromas, which do not quite cross into the hedonistic territory but come close. These include black cherry, Pakistani mulberry, boysenberry, blackberry and crème de cassis with milk chocolate, espresso and mocha. Also generous across the palate, this wine is showing in a sweet spot right now 10 years post vintage at the time of our tasting. The palate sports flavors of blackberry, boysenberry, dark plum, black cherry and dried herbs including sage and bay leaf. Still bearing the approachability of the vintage, but with a mountain character, the palate features grainy and granular tannins which linger with a dusty and chalky attribute on the finish.

The 2013 Lokoya Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is an exemplary wine; it is sourced from soils that Chris refers to as “moon dust” or volcanic ash. This wine shows an intriguing mix of aromas, more so as it has time to breath including black fruit interwoven with cedar and hints of toffee. There is a wonderful lightness on the palate, not of flavor but more so with structure – velvety almost. This bottling offers flavors of darker cherry, black currant and blackberry. Rounded somewhat chalky well-integrated tannins caress a very smooth finish. It drinks extremely well young.

The 2005 Lokoya Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon (sourced from Wallis Estate) is deep ruby in color; the nose shows some bottle bouquet, 19 years post vintage at the time of our tasting with some tertiary characters creeping in. It offers scents of sweet tobacco spice, dried blackberries and cherries, dried ginger, cooked plums, dark mulberries, boysenberries, mocha and roasted coffee bean. The palate is still very much alive and is focused on its fruit attributes, revealing flavors of bramble, cherry, dark raspberry, plum, mulberry and dried herbs. The gravelly textured tannins parallel the fruit in step on the extended finish. Lingers bright and savory. This wine has aged well; we would consume it now or in the next few years.

Howell Mountain
The 2013 Lokoya Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is very dark in the glass; this is a beautiful wine which has an exotic fruit profile complemented by herbal notes on the bouquet. Somewhat savory to smell (hints of smoke at times with leather and notes of chocolate), this quality also carries onto the palate. It is a powerful wine that is balanced. Arguably it is the most aromatic of the four wines. Dry and dusty tannins linger for some time on the intense and persistent finish.

Mt Veeder
The 2018 Lokoya Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon is deep ruby/purplish in color and nearly opaque in the glass; the bouquet is dark, brambly and opulent. It offers aromas of blackberry, dark plum, boysenberry, violets, a woodsy spice, tobacco and darker baking spices. This wine is dark and savory across the palate; it has depth, plenty of character and power without being overtly “muscularly mountainous”. It reveals flavors of plum and blackberry, crushed peppercorn and dried tobacco. The ripe tannins are dense but not course in their textural and are chewy, woodsy, dusty (almost chalky) and very long lasting. This wine is clearly built to age. If your a serious Napaphile collector of mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and you haven’t yet put Lokoya on your radar, start with this bottling. It spent 22 months aging in 94% new French oak barrels. We tasted 5 years post vintage.

All of the wines we tasted show very dark in the glass, but the 2013 Lokoya Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder is decidedly the darkest of the four 2013 bottlings, showing a deep purple in color. The nose is perhaps a bit more subtle than some of the other wines, but these aromas disguise the depth, concentration and power found on the palate. It offers notes of dry gravel with a sweetness of fruit (blackberry) and becomes somewhat briary showing hints of coffee as it opens. Powerful grippy tannins persist on a very long finish. This is a big wine!

Spring Mountain
The 2013 Lokoya Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon reveals a pretty floral aromatic to the bouquet including dried rose petals and perhaps violets. Very bright and lively aromatics. It offers dessert spices and a ripe plum spice along with cocoa powder as it continues to breathe. A soft entry quickly gains in complexity across the palate. It features bright acidity and shows a mix of both red and darker fruits with a lingering tartness and depth of tannin structure.

And these are wines that are built to go the distance and will certainly age well. The 2007 Lokoya Mt. Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon is the perfect example of this. The wine shows bright and lively fruit aromatics including bright cherry, a spicy plum note and sweetly fruited scents which are teased out as the wine continues to open. Great acid, intensity of flavor and a structure. This wine actually tastes younger than it is while still nurturing plenty of life ahead for graceful aging.

For more information and or to schedule an appointment, visit: www.lokoya.com

Jackson Family Wines
The remarkable success story of Jackson Family Wines began with Jess Jackson; San Francisco raised, he founded a law firm in the city in the 1950s focusing on real estate and land rights issues. Later, with his first wife Jane in 1974, he bought an old 80-acre pear and walnut orchard near Lakeport, Lake County. They converted this to Chardonnay and began selling the grapes to local wineries. Eventually the market for grapes softened and Jackson had more grapes than he could sell.

He decided to make Chardonnay – the fermentation on one of the lots ended up not fully completing leaving the resulting wine with a little bit of residual sugar. With the help of Napa Valley vintner, Ric Forman they created the first Chardonnay from a blend of multiple lots from various vineyard sources. The 1982 vintage was the first wine from Jackson Family Wines – called Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay. Priced reasonably, not to cheap and not too expensive, this was a premium made fruit-forward Chardonnay, soon made in large amounts with a flavor profile that appealed to many people.

With the popularity of the Chardonnay, Jackson began expanding to other parts of California and eventually outside of the state including international properties. The Kendall-Jackson Winery and tasting room is located in tiny Fulton, just north of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County. The company headquarters is located in Santa Rosa. Kendall was the maiden name of Jackson’s first wife.

In 2003 Jess became involved with professional horse racing including purchasing horses (some went on to stand-out careers) and establishing Stonestreet Farm (Stonestreet is Jackson’s middle name); this horse farm and racing stables is based just outside of the small town of Versailles in Kentucky. This is prime ‘horse’ country’ with numerous thoroughbred horse farms in the region. Stonestreet is also the name of their winery in Alexander Valley (not far from Field Stone Winery). And it should be no surprise that the horse stables are named after grape varieties.

In 2009 Jess was inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame. He died in 2011; today his wife Barbara Banke oversees the growing company and its operations. For reference, in addition to Lokoya, their Napa Valley owned wineries or brands are the following: Cardinale, Freemark Abbey, Galerie, La Jota Vineyard Co, Mt. Brave and the Spire Collection.

Stonestreet Farms, Kentucky