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Renwood Winery
Robert Smerling, owner
Robert Smerling is a striking figure. He greeted us at his winery’s entrance, decked out in black, from his signature cowboy hat down to his flawless cowboy boots. He led us into the winery’s tasting area, where he grabbed three glasses and uncorked a bottle of his award-winning Zinfandel. We then adjourned to Renwood Winery’s courtyard, finding a quiet table for our interview.
Enjoying the sunshine, wine, and conversation, we learned that
Smerling is a man with lots of opinions. He said (with a grin) that
sometimes those opinions get him into trouble, but he stands by what he
says. Smerling is very passionate about promoting Amador County, telling
us that he says the words “Amador County” more in one day then some
locals will say over their lifetime. He also firmly believes that his
one-man crusade to educate others about the county has greatly helped
the region. And, mind you, he promotes Amador County in its entirety,
not just his own winery.
A self-proclaimed history geek, Smerling fell in love with the foothills and its history. His particular favorite is Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. In his gift shop, there’s a poster of Twain and a quote from him: “My books are like water; those of great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.”
The consummate host, Smerling made sure our visit was fun, relaxing, and informative. When we finished with the interview, he took us on a tour of the entire winery operation, ending up in the tasting room where he poured us “the good stuff.” When we said our goodbyes, he had another appointment waiting for him and also a black-tie charity event to attend that evening—yet another opportunity for “Mr. Amador County” to promote the region he so dearly loves.
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Can you tell us a little about your background?
I studied history in college, then I was in the furniture industry, then I went to work for Paine Webber in investment banking in the biotechnology field. The biotechnology industry moved from Boston to California one year—overnight like the computer industry—so I was commuting back and forth every week. A friend told me about a grape in California called “Zinfandel” that was similar to one in Italy. I only knew about White Zin because I was a big Bordeaux drinker. I grew up in an environment that was French and Italian wines. When I started drinking Zin, I fell in love with it.
Is that what led you to the Sierra foothills?
Eventually I read about the foothills and was fascinated to come up here and learn about the Grandpére story. I decided it would be a fun hobby to preserve these vineyards and make great wines and share them with my friends.
Was it a difficult transition?
One day I told my wife that I finally got that
hobby she wanted me to have, and it wasn’t stamp collecting. We were
living in Boston so it was a little bit of a shocker to say we “were
going to be making wine in California.” When I first came to Amador
County, the wine that blew my mind was Barbera. I tried the Barbera and
said, “That’s it. I want in.” I acquired the winery and we went forward.
If you liked the Barbera, why focus on Zin?
When we came up here, it was Barbera that turned me
on. But it was amazing that Zinfandel was going to be the breadwinner. I
knew the local Zinfandel winemaking was flawed, so the first thing we
did was buy new barrels. We found everyone up here was using one strain
of yeast. Today we do 20 or 30 different yeast experiments.
You say some of your vineyards are over 140 years old?
They are the original vines. The age of a vineyard or the ownership of land is irrelevant. It’s the age of the vines.
We’ve heard people saying their vines are over 100 years old,
but they’re young vines that are cuttings from a 100-year-old vine.
Well, there are different definitions for everything. We at Renwood have set a benchmark—50 years. We believe that 50 years old should be “old vine.”
What makes having old vines so important?
Old vines are important because they are consistent. The best example is what happened here last year with the frost. Frost will affect the flavor even if it doesn’t wipe out the crop. If it left you some crop on young vines it’s going to alter the flavor. On old vines, generally what happens, in our experience, is that the flavor is never altered, it’s just the quantity that’s altered. Something that’s producing three tons an acre will produce a ton and a half. But the flavor is there because those vines are used to producing.
Where did the name of your winery come from?
The original name of the winery was “Rene’s
Winery,” named after my wife Rene (REE-nee). But René Barbier of Spain
blocked us from using it because René was her name and her wine label.
So we came up with “Renwood” as a joke on redwood trees. We thought it
would be fun to use a wren as the logo because in Boston we had wrens in
our backyard
What’s your background as a winemaker? Did you go to school for
it?
It’s all self-taught. I’d spent time in Portugal as a young guy, but I was never really intending to make the wine and give up my day job. I always had a good palate and I always wanted to taste the wines and choose the way we were going to go. I like doing the marketing, so I found an incredible winemaking crew.
How many acres of grapes are you growing?
We have about 350 acres of grapes, we lease another couple of hundred, and we contract for another 1000 or so. They aren’t all Amador County grapes.
The red flag flying in front of your tasting room has the
letters ZAP printed on it. What’s its significance?
ZAP—Zinfandel Advocates and Producers. As one of the founders of ZAP, we helped put Zinfandel on the map. Almost every Zinfandel producer in America belongs; there are about 270 members. We started with four wineries.
Isn’t there an annual ZAP conference?
The big annual tasting event is in about four weeks
at Fort Mason in San Francisco. It’s the largest single varietal wine
show in the world. Look at the tables at the conference and it’s all the
premium Zin producers, not the mass producers. This event is sold out
and you just taste Zin.
Why start such an organization?
Sixteen years ago, the world only knew White Zin, it didn’t know Red Zin. In some parts of this country you could ask for Red Zin and they’d say, “When did they start making Red Zin?” ZAP was very important to the success of Zinfandel, in my opinion, especially in the Sierra foothills. ZAP helped us get onto [restaurant] wine lists. Today, Wine Spectator will not view a domestic wine list without a Zinfandel category. So, for Renwood it was very important because when we were out selling our Barbera, Zinfandel, and Syrah, all three of those could go on the “red—other wine” list. But, it was difficult to get more than one wine from a single winery onto the “red—other wine” list.
So the ZAP shows have grown in popularity with the producers and
buyers?
We started the first ZAP show 16 years ago with 10 wineries. I think there were about 150 people who showed up. Now it’s about 9000 people. Many of these are members who fly in from other parts of the country. And they are loyal members. That’s why we have the ZAP flag out in front of the building. ZAP was amazing in the fact that it got all of the retailers and restaurants in America to make Zinfandel an unusual, but important, category. I don’t want to say a mainstream category, even though [Zinfandel] has the fourth largest grape sales in California vineyards.
It appears that you’ve become one of the larger and more
successful Sierra foothill wineries.
We’re sold in all 50 states and in 16 foreign countries, and we have seven top-rated wines in Wine Spectator right now. I realized that after my first four or five years at this, we were up to about 40,000 cases, all pre-sold, and that we were in the wholesale wine business. That’s a very tough business. You can make a crappy wine and sell it in your tasting room because people have stopped at five other wineries and they’re hammered when they buy bad wine. We had to make better wine at the same price point as other regions because then nobody knew about Amador. Today, more people know about Renwood than they do Amador [County].
You have a huge wetlands behind your winery. How does that work
with your winery operations?
We realized in 1993 that there was nothing here that was environmentally friendly and I was aghast. To me, Teddy Roosevelt was a great President, he started the National Park System; he understood that businesses had to be respectful of the environment. We started erosion control when we planted our first vineyards, long before it was mandated by the county. We have one of the top erosion control vineyards—we have subterranean drainages, we have silt ponds, we put extra millions of dollars into those vineyards. The water that we drain from our operations goes into our pond adjacent to our wetland preserve. The water is like watered-down Welch’s Grape Juice, but it can affect the little toad we have up here or the salamander, so we want to get that water into our pond, aerated, and back into ground in our vineyards. We were ahead of the curve in reducing our carbon footprint. We always understood reducing the extra use of energy by using insulation, but we also didn’t like the extra packaging. So we decided to go beyond green friendly. I got some ridicule from some of our neighbors asking, ‘Why were we doing these things?”
It’s obvious you have become an integral part of the community.
We’ve been giving scholarships to the high school
for 14 years to anyone who wants to go into the agricultural or human
sciences, forestry, anything of that nature. We’ve given books to the
public school. In Sacramento, we’ve been a big contributor to Jazz at
the Crocker Art Museum, we sponsor programs with them to get kids to the
art museum. We’ve sponsored a program for high school seniors to learn
about viticulture or winemaking.
After a hard day at work, what do you drink?
It’s interesting that you ask that. I really like the wines we make. I have a 2000-bottle cellar off my kitchen. I like our wines. I drink a lot of our wines. If I don’t drink our wines, then my wife and I are big Macallen fans, 18-year-old Macallen (single malt scotch). I grew up in Boston and you drink beer, you go to Europe and you have your beers for lunch and when you’re wine tasting to break-up your palate. My first time at the California State Fair, I saw the wine judges having hamburgers and beer for lunch.