Behind the Mind of Au Bon Climat's Jim Clendenen

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In May, @kt_canfield and I met Jim Clendenen, one of the most charismatic and influential winemakers in California. Here's the account of our lunch with him.
 
Meeting with Jim Clendenen, “the mind behind” Santa Maria’s acclaimed Au Bon Climat, would be a difficult feat for any journalist hoping to come out with a clear argument to their story. This lack of clarity, however, only reinforces how integral Clendenen’s work is for California wine, still just a teenager in search of its place in the global industry.

California Pinot Noir is emerging as a serious wine category, particularly in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, so it was enlightening to meet one of the original architects. Clendenen, who made his first vintage in 1982, is based in Santa Maria Valley and his iconoclastic and individual wines are standard bearers for California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Katie Canfield meets Jim Clendenen

Clendenen wasn’t always considered so mainstream. Like many of the old guard of California wine – think Frog’s Leap in Napa – his wines were not especially fashionable in the 1990s and early 2000s: not brash, fruity, or alcoholic enough. “The concept of 16% wines is one I never understood,” Clendenen exclaims. “Are you so stupid with your palate that you’re paying $300 for wines from Napa that are undrinkable? … Do you want to fight with your wife every night?”
 
The global reputation of California wine has for many years been based largely on Napa Valley, which has succeeded in producing collectable wines at sky-high prices. “Some of the most disappointed people as they get older are collectors of [Napa wine],” Clendenen counters, as they realize that the $50 bottles of wine they had purchased before the 2008 crash were better and more drinkable than the $350 bottles they had bought to collect. 

The question posed in recent trade discourse has been whether or not California wine is changing, evolving into something more restrained and food friendly – and if this trend is just a passing fad or truly an evolution. If so, many California wineries are well placed to take advantage of these new attitudes toward food and wine.

Clendenen preparing lunch at his winery

“Food and wine pairing in America has simultaneously gotten more informed and more complicated,” Clendenen says. “Wine and food pairing is a slam dunk. If you’ve got food and you’ve got wine, that’s already good. If you’re drinking wine as a cocktail, that’s already bad. That was America in the ’70s and ’80s. The bigger, the more opulent, the more single, stand-alone statement the wine got, the more delicious it was.” For Clendenen, wine and food are ideally suited counterparts, an idea augmented by the home-cooked meals that he serves regularly to his staff, alongside a line-up of new and older vintages of the wines.
 
Part of Au Bon Climat’s reputation has been gained by their presence in restaurants across the US. Clendenen has long made house wines for many of the restaurants he supplies. This is also helping make Clendenen’s wines fashionable once again, even if he isn’t doing anything differently from what he has always done. His food-friendly wines link into the US’s sommelier-led wine culture, and are readily available on wine lists suddenly short of Burgundy.
 
Although Clendenen has a tremendous respect for others in the wine industry, he does not mince his opinions. “Oregon is the most confused place on the planet,” he claims. “The whackier you plant, the less chance you have of making any money. There are limits to profitability because of yields.” He does see Oregon providing competition to California in that the state is attracting elite French winemakers, especially due to the recent “nightmare” vintages in Burgundy: “What they don’t realize is that Oregon is always a nightmare.”
 
Burgundy itself presents an opportunity of a different sort. The 2013 vintage in Burgundy looked good “until greatness was snatched away at the last minute.” As a result of three consecutively difficult vintages, consumers have had to turn elsewhere and established producers such as Au Bon Climat are well placed to take advantage. “I believe that Burgundy and I peacefully co-exist. With yields so low there right now it’s a huge opportunity, but only because I’ve been doing it for thirty-three years.” 

Much of what Clendenen says applies to the winemaking scene throughout California. Brian Mast, of San Francisco’s Wait-Mast Cellars, also believes that, “I don't feel like we're competing with Burgundy, for example when we're trying to get our wines on a list at a nice restaurant. I think it is a little more compartmentalized, where some lists will have a mix of Burgundies and domestic Pinot Noir.” It is the vibrant food scene that will draw consumers to these wines “as winemaking and consumer tastes are starting to lean towards more balanced, food-friendly wines.” 

The dynamic of US wine culture is changing. With Jim Clendenen’s long experience making world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, smaller-scale producers in California can follow his lead to put the regions in the global spotlight.