4 minute read
On the Vine
On the Vine Barry Jackson and his Equinox Champagne Cellars
Santa Cruz’s bard of bubbles—very good ones, in fact
By Kurt Foeller Photography by Ted Holladay
California’s sparkling wines need a dosage of originality.
That’s the conclusion I came to last holiday season, when I attended a tasting of 10 boutique producers that represented the diverse Champagne region of France. Each of these wines was so unique that I left the event questioning why I had never tasted a sparkling wine from California with such attributes.
I wondered: Why do most of our state’s premium offerings taste surprisingly like their equivalent foreign counterparts such as Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot? Is there a single sparkler being produced in California today that has a distinctive personality that is not or could not be made anywhere else in the world? And if so, who are the people behind it? Is there a Randall Grahm or a Paul Draper of sparkling wine?
These were the questions that led me on a six-month quest to discover our country’s boutique sparkling wine producers. To be sure, there aren’t many to be found, but a few breadcrumb trails led me to the humble operation of Barry Jackson of Equinox Champagne Cellars in Santa Cruz.
“Economically it doesn’t make sense to make small volumes of premium sparkling wine,” he says. “So you are either operating at the scale of Iron Horse or above, or else you do it because it’s your passion. I made a few hundred cases last year, so you can easily figure which camp I’m in.”
Barry is a different camper indeed. He’s not the suited guy leading a tasting in the front of the Champagne house, and scolding you for not holding your flute glass properly. Instead, you’ll likely find Barry in jeans and a T-shirt, crushing the grapes himself. And he’s not pretentious at all. He wants you to be really happy with the wine you’re drinking now. Even if it’s not his.
By day, he makes award-winning still wines for his value-priced Bartolo brand and many storied producers in the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions such as Kathryn Kennedy. By night, he is something of a local bard of bubbles, speaking poetically about the terroir of the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that go into his sparkling wines, and how he’s experimenting with extended tirage—long periods of futzing and aging on yeast to add even more distinction to them.
“Still wines are simple compared to sparkling wines made in the méthode champenoise tradition,” says Jackson. “With still wines, you
pick perfectly ripe fruit, you make the wine with as little human intervention as possible, and get the hell out of Mother Nature’s way. Sparkling is nearly the opposite. You harvest the grapes early when they taste like little balls of acid, then put them through an elaborate process, and must remain committed to constant tinkering over years of time in order to make a superior product.”
This complex process—and the time it takes to complete it— is precisely why there aren’t a lot of small producers of sparkling wine in our country today. “It’s a money pit, and an obsession,” Jackson admits. What’s more, most winemakers today have no experience with sparkling. And that is why when wineries like Bonny Doon decide to offer a sparkling Albarino, they outsource it to Jackson rather than make it in-house.
If you are looking to experience something truly different—and local—in sparkling wines this holiday season, I strongly recommend that you check out Barry Jackson and his Equinox line sometime soon. In the hundreds of Champagnes and sparkling wines that I have tried from all over the world, I can vouch that Jackson’s bubblies are extremely well made and have tropical flavors and complex toasty elements that I have never experienced before. The Prince of Pinot blog is equally enthusiastic about Equinox, and one K&L Wines review calls his Blanc de Blancs “a national treasure.”
However, you should be forewarned: Equinox wines are not cheap. The non-vintage brut is priced at $45 and his recently released 1998 vintage is $75. Comparatively speaking, the standard non-vintage Veuve Clicquot (orange label) is $45, and it’s a threeyear-old wine. But Jackson’s NV Brut is eight years old, and his 1998…goes to 11. So if you consider Equinox’s age and craft, I’d argue you’ve stumbled on a bargain.
Kurt Foeller is a lifestyle and business writer based in San Francisco. He aspires to be the first non-professional contestant on TV Food Network’s Chopped. His favorite wines at the moment are whites from Italy’s Alto Adige region.
For a sparkling wine primer, go to the online version of this issue on our website, www.ediblemontereybay.com.
Equinox Champagne Cellars • 427 Swift St., Unit C, Santa Cruz 831.423.3000 • equinoxwine.com
