FOR THE LOVE OF (CALIFORNIA) WINE
Panic attacks aside, winemaster Randy Ullom ’77 still gets excited about overseeing one of the largest wine sellers in the country.
The job of a California winemaster might sound enticing, but should that job involve overseeing the harvest of 12,000 acres of vineyards that produce more than 24 million bottles of wine a year, you might understand Randy Ullom’s daily stress level.
“I look at all of the vineyards we own, and all of the individual lots of wines that we make, and the thousands of barrels we have sitting in our cellars, and sometimes I think, you gotta be kidding me!” Ullom said. “After I’ve sufficiently recovered from my daily panic attack, I take off my coat, dig in my heels, and take it one barrel at a time.”
Ullom, who graduated from Ohio State in 1977, is winemaster at Kendall-Jackson. The family-run enterprise is based in Sonoma and owns vineyards from Mendocino down to Santa Barbara County, and overseas in South America, Australia, and Europe. Currently the eighth largest wine seller in the country, Kendall-Jackson produces some 20 brands. Its Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay is the top seller of that varietal in the country.
Ullom supervises a staff of 40 wine makers and enologists who blend the superior qualities of each variety of Kendall-Jackson’s grapes to produce wines with more flavor and complexity. He also makes decisions about the timing of the harvest and assists with marketing. To assure quality, Ullom and his staff may sample as many as 100 wines a day.
A native of Michigan, Ullom first planned to study mining engineering. Then he took a sabbatical from college and headed to Chile to ski. He ended up staying three years, falling in love with the country’s food and wine.
“I was infatuated with all the wines in Chile and the expectation that everyone drank wine with every meal,” Ullom said. He learned how to tend grapes and make wine in the Old World manner and returned to the U.S. having decided to change his career path from “rocks and geology to dirt and grapes.”
Ullom enrolled at Ohio State to study crop production with a specialty in viticulture and enology—an unusual combination at the time, but it helped land him a job he unabashedly loves.
After graduation, he worked for six years as a vineyard manager and winemaker in northeast Ohio and upstate New York before succumbing to the allure of California. After a stint at a vineyard in Sonoma County, he moved in 1993 to Kendall-Jackson, where he’s been winemaster since 1997.
Ullom advises those new to wine drinking to “go with your heart and your palate” and not pay attention to connoisseurs’ recommendations. “Either you like it or you don’t,” he said.
He recommends buying wine at restaurants by the glass, not the bottle, so as to expose yourself to a variety. To educate your palate, he suggests a sequence starting with white wines: semi-sweet rieslings, then pinot grigio, then chardonnay. From there, move to the reds: pinot noir, then merlot, “and then off to that bad boy, cabernet sauvignon.”
California’s 2005 vintages will be sensational, Ullom predicts. “I’m jazzed!” he said. “It should be a shining year for us.”
Story by Rich Warren
Photo courtesy of Kendall-Jackson
