Eat, Drink, Savor: Small production Kobza Wines succeed with restraint and elegance

I discovered Kobza Wines at Vertigo Coffee Roasters in San Juan Bautista one afternoon when I was there to conduct an interview for an upcoming article. It was a happy accident: Vertigo is one of the few places in San Benito County that you can purchase these remarkable wines.

Vertigo manager Ryan Morris said that he hopes to stock every wine Kobza makes. “The wine is consistently great and we appreciate the attention to detail that goes into it,” he said. “We also appreciate Ryan Kobza’s use of a local vineyard to make his wines. We’re proud to carry it.”

Ryan Kobza has been on the production side of the wine business since 2009 and said the place he is most proud of working is Calistoga’s Chateau Montelena, famous for winning the “Judgment of Paris” in 1976 with its chardonnay, which was selected by French judges in a blind competition as being finer than their French counterparts. The decision stunned the French wine industry.

“Working for them was a seminal moment for me,” he said. “I was impressed to see the professionalism. Not just in the winemakers and cellar staff, but with the way everything worked there. They treated everyone with respect, which was nice.”

Kobza began working at Chualar Canyon Winery in Salinas in 2012, which is a custom crush facility that also produces Ian Brand wines. 

“Everything in the California wine business is compared to Napa and Sonoma,” he said. “That’s the major leagues. There is a lot of money, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of talent up there. Down here, everything is a little more sparse, a bit more spread out, so you have the choice between working for one of the big conglomerates up there or the smaller companies down here.”

In 2014, he was offered the chance to use the facilities to start his own label. He sources his grapes from Wirz Vineyards in the Cienega Valley. 

“I can’t say enough about Pat Wirz,” he said. “He is dry farming, doing things the old-fashioned way. The vines are all head-trained, the way they would have been when they first started farming that land.”

Head-training is a type of pruning dating back to the Roman era that allows the vine to grow without trellises, looking more like a small bush or tree than a vine.

“I am not overly romantic about it,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with trellising. But it says something about his stewardship of the land. The vines are older and the yield is going to be smaller, which means that every year is going to be drastically different. And I think that is one of the more interesting points in the wine business: it is not a monolith—every wine we are making can be drastically different.”

Kobza’s initial goal was to produce riesling, and the grapes he is getting from Wirz are from vines that are around 60 years old.

“That comes from working at Chateau Montelena,” he said. “They produce a riesling and the quality of the fruit and the wine is impressive. I had not had experience making it outside of that so I reached out to Pat because I knew he had some old vine riesling. After we made that wine, I called him up and asked him if he had anything else available. He told me he had some cabernet pfeffer and I said ‘I don’t know what it is, but I will take it.’”

Kobza was pleased with the results but knew nothing about the vines except that they were planted around 1904. He decided to investigate further. 

“I sent some cuttings to UC Davis and had them tested,” he said. “I wanted to know more and there was no literature about it that was of any use to me. I got the results back and it turned out it was mourtaou, an old Bordeaux variety, and I knew even less about that. But these vines are a bit of history, which is interesting in itself, but to me, they are also alive with a story to be told.”

Kobza says he is not a purist regarding old vine wines. 

“The more they adjust to the climate and the more they extend their root growth,” he said. “They become more balanced. To me, it is an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it kind of thing.”

Kobza is currently producing three wines and experimenting with two sparkling wines. Kobza distributes his wine mostly through wine bars and restaurants in the Santa Cruz and Monterey areas. Vertigo carries several of the wines.

 

2017 Riesling 11.9% ($18) Produced from 100% riesling grapes, this is a very dry and very subtle wine. The aroma lacks the overbearing fruitiness of common rieslings, replacing it with delicate floral and lemon-citrus tones. It has a very nice sweet/sour finish, which Kobza calls “pithiness” that cleanly drifts away just as you start to notice it. The overall sensation is a smooth wine with all the notes of a riesling present, but not stridently asserting themselves. If you focus, you will find them there, but the parts are subservient to the whole, an effect Kobza works to produce. “To me, integration is the key to my wines,” he said. “Nothing really jumps out at you. I want it to be enjoyable, with enough fruit to make it interesting and a flavor that makes you want to come back for more. Kobza produces about 100 cases a year and says this pairs well with pork chops. I was thinking of a turkey-and-mashed potato Thanksgiving spread but it would just as easily be an excellent lunch wine.

2018 Mourtaou 13% ($22) “This is not an overly robust wine,” said Kobza, “but I am not trying to extract that anyway. It reminds me of a nebbiolo with a lot of grip and tannins with some savoriness to it.” The color is a transparent ruby red, the aroma is berries and pepper. The fruit and spice carry into the flavor, with an organic mouth feel that does not overwhelm. It’s aged in neutral oak which emphasizes the subtleties of the grape and underplays the tannins. The common theme to Kobza’s wines is an appealing restraint and this is the finest example of that feature in the three wines we tasted. It is easy and approachable with enough complexity to be interesting, finishing with a fast fade that makes you want to drink more. It’s a versatile wine and if I were going to a lunch or dinner without knowing what was being served, I would feel very comfortable bringing this with me. My favorite of the three, Kobza produces around 100 cases of this distinctive wine a year. 

2018 Red Field Blend 12.8% ($26) “This is typical of a lot of the old vine field plantings, which in this case is made up of carignan, mourvedre, cabernet pfeffer, and zinfandel,” he said. “I don’t know why this mix is common in old vineyards, but those are the cuttings that came over from France and that’s what they stuck in the ground.” Kobza produces around 45 cases of this blend, which is around 60% mourvedre and 40% zinfandel, leaving a little space for a sprinkling of the other two varieties. The aroma comes straight at you with a bounty of cherries and strawberries but the flavor, again, is restrained. You initially taste the fullness of the zinfandel with the slightest hints of tannins that recede into the peppers of the cabernet pfeffer. It has a bit of butteriness to it and a little acid but once again, nothing pushes itself to the forefront and it drifts away cleanly. An excellent wine with heavier or fattier foods, Kobza recommends letting this one age a bit.

 

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