Reflecting on year one: An interview with Garrett
How did you end up in winemaking?
This is a career change for me! I studied sports medicine at San Diego State. During COVID, high school/youth sports were mostly cancelled, so I had to find another way to provide some income. My girlfriend at the time (now wife and mother of our 10-week-old baby girl!) worked at La Finquita Winery in San Diego, and I would occasionally go and hang out there at the bar while she worked. At this time, I didn’t like wine at all! They often needed help with various tasks (washing dishes, bar back during industry nights or wine club parties, etc…) and I would happily offer up my services to help however I could. That quickly snowballed into me pouring in the tasting room more frequently, to then leading tastings and learning more about the wine. The more I learned, the more I loved it, and I quickly started to appreciate and enjoy wine.
When harvest of 2020 came around, my wife and I helped them pick the fruit and get it back to the winery. That was my first look into wine production, and I was fascinated by it to say the least. What started with just picking turned into helping process the fruit on the crush pad, then punch downs, fermentations, barrel work, and ALL of the cleaning associated with it. Fall of 2021 I was helping at the winery with harvest from about 6am-11am a few days a week, then I would drive to the high school for my regular job from about 12pm-8:30pm. The following year, I decided that there’s a possibility that wine is more than just a side job and hobby, so I took a leap of faith and accepted a harvest internship at Cakebread Cellars up in Napa Valley. This would really help me decide if this is actually what I wanted my career to be. It was exhausting. It was hard. My hands were cracked and stained purple. I was working 12-14 hour days, 6 days a week…and I loved it. The experience and the satisfaction of seeing the whole process of making wine was everything I was hoping it would be. Being able to see, feel, and taste the *actual* fruits of your labor is a pretty cool and rewarding thing. Plus…it’s making wine, so it’s fun too!
I was fortunate enough that the internship resulted in a full-time job offer. I then spent 2 years as a cellar hand for Cakebread Cellars before making my way back down to Southern California and landing here at Melville!
What’s something new you’ve learned this year at Melville?
The amount of knowledge I’ve gained from the farming and viticulture side is astounding. Something I truly love about Melville is the dedication to the vineyards. The growing cycle and viticulture is something I have always had a surface-level understanding of, but here we are diving so much deeper. The impacts of soil, climate, weather patterns, row orientation, hillside aspects, block-specific microclimates, etc… But also learning what the vineyard crews are doing at each step of the way to create the best possible environment for the vines and vineyard to succeed and produce the best quality of fruit possible. Here, we are not only looking for the grapes to be ripe when we harvest, but also the stems as well because of our signature usage of varying amounts of whole cluster in the fermentation process of our red wines.
Which wine or project are you most proud of?
At this point, there are only two wines that I have had a hand in producing from start to finish and those are ’24 Inox Chardonnay and ’24 Rose of Grenache. Going back to something I mentioned previously, it is so rewarding to hold a bottle of finished wine in your hands that you spent so much time/effort on and shed blood, sweat and yes, tears working on. But not only that, a wine that I resonate with due to its purity and intentionality. Another wine that is coming down the pipeline that I am stoked to continue to work with is the ’24 Sandy’s Pinot Noir as it is one of my favorite wines we produce here. I top up the barrels every two weeks, so I get to frequently smell and check in on them…needless to say, there is a lot to be excited about for the ’24 vintage wines!
What excites you most about year two?
Year one is always a whirlwind. Learning the Melville style and protocols, applying what I’ve learned in the past when I can, but being open to doing things differently than I ever have before. In short, year one is learning the “what” and “how” specific to Melville, and year two and beyond allow for a deeper dive into the “why.” Now I know what Chad needs and how he wants it to be done, we can have more conversations regarding the “why” behind what we do. For someone like me who is soaking up as much as I can, the “why” is extremely valuable and creates opportunities for me to think more critically about winemaking as a whole, and Chad is a great wealth of knowledge to learn from.
