Au Bon Legacy
Co-authors Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay remember long lunches and enduring friendships with Jim Clendenen
The renegade winemaker, photographed by Michael Sager.
“The establishment of mutual respect, as well as a love of great wine and food, kicked off a two-decade-long friendship that would see us not only drink, eat, and taste together all over the US but also travel the world together.”
I had the great fortune to see Jim Clendenen only two days before he died. Laughing and joking as ever, he came over to my house with two other dear friends. While I had no idea that Jim was soon to physically depart this world, I was moved by the occasion. One of two great mentors in my wine career (Larry Stone, master sommelier and co-founder of Lingua Franca wines, is the other), Jim gave me my start in wine making and cooked many, many meals for me over our 20-year friendship. To reciprocate by cooking for him after a tour of the vineyard I now farm and a tasting of the wines I now make brought our relationship profoundly full circle.
I first met Jim in 2000, when I was wine director at the iconic San Francisco restaurant the Fifth Floor. At that time I had only two California Chardonnays on my list: Talley and Au Bon Climat, two of the few domestic wines I felt were truly balanced. When Jim came in, I knew exactly who he was. But he also made an impression. We shared a love of Burgundy, and as he perused my wine list, he tossed off erudite information with casual ease—the nuances of each Burgundian vintage, stories about various producers. I was blown away, thinking, “Wow, this is a guy I can learn from.” Some months later, at a gathering on the Central Coast, I had the chance to impress him in turn by successfully blind tasting a range of different wines.
The establishment of mutual respect, as well as a love of great wine and food, kicked off a two-decade-long friendship that would see us not only drink, eat, and taste together all over the US but also travel the world together, visiting domaines in Burgundy or the Rhône Valley, hitting beaches in Bali, and introducing him to my family in India.
Travel was an important theme; Jim showed me that if you are inspired by a wine and want to understand it, you need to meet the winemaker and see the vines. Only then can you translate that knowledge to your own endeavors. He went everywhere to learn firsthand about all of the (many) varieties he planted. I have done the same.
My most important travels were down to the Central Coast to see Jim, as he generously gave me my start in winemaking. At first he simply let me choose a couple of barrels of his wine, blend them, and put my name on it. (You have to start somewhere.) Later, he would teach me much about farming, fermenting, barrel aging, and more.
There was one totemic bottle that encapsulated our long history and that Jim eerily brought to lunch the last time I saw him—his 2006 Au Bon Climat Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay. That year, preharvest, we went to check the Chardonnay at Sanford & Benedict Vineyard. As we sampled grapes, he requested my thoughts on when to pick. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that. It was early in the season, and no one else had picked yet, but the grapes tasted good to me. I said, “Jim, I think these are ready.”
So with no reason to trust my judgment, he told his crew chief, “Okay, let’s harvest 10 tons right now.” To balance these with some that were more ripe, he added, “We’ll pick the rest in another day or two.”
The catch was, as he would find out shortly thereafter, there were no more. Those 10 tons were it for that year. So the wine he made would be only around 11.5 percent alcohol (significantly lower than usual) with piercing acidity and sharp, lemony flavors. It was the kind of wine we both loved but a bit more racy and pointed than his typical style. That he brought that wine to our last meeting was odd but meaningful. In it lives the heart of our friendship, the essence of our shared vision.
A beautiful thing about being here is that Jim not only lives on in this bottle and every wine he made, his spirit also persists in the vineyards we see every day. In this I take comfort. He hasn’t left us at all. •
Jim Clendenen, photographed by Jason Lowe.
“Jim’s wines were flush with sun-kissed Santa Barbara County exuberance, but their moderate alcohols, restrained fruit, and absence of oakiness made them different from most other California wines of the time.”
My most poignant memories of Jim Clendenen center around lunch. It was midday when I drove down from San Francisco to the Au Bon Climat/Qupé winery to interview Jim.
The completely utilitarian winery was strange to me—there was not even a reception area. Inside was a cavernous open space, with high stacks of barrels stretching far into the distance. In part of the open space was a kitchen where I first saw Jim, phone tucked under his ear as he jabbered away at someone, while stirring pots and flipping pans with his hands. He nodded at me in acknowledgment but didn’t end his call. About 20 minutes later he was off the phone and placing large platters of food on the table as about a dozen bottles of wine appeared, some quite old and valuable. Ten or 11 employees materialized from back in the barrel stacks and took seats for lunch. Food was passed, wine was poured, and conversation began.
I was not the only outsider—a barrel broker from Oregon showed up, as did a writer from the East Coast and a wine shop owner from Atlanta. All the conversation swirled around Jim, as he opined on various topics, answered questions from the writers, and made wry jokes. Trying to keep up, I barely ate, furiously scribbling notes for my article. Eventually, people returned to work, and Jim and I continued talking.
I relate this scene because these lunches were a crucial expression of Jim. Lunch at ABC encapsulated the culture he created. He set a European-style custom of taking a break from work and enjoying a midday meal with wine and with coworkers and guests. The lunches were about tasting, yes, but also about camaraderie, bringing an intellectual cast to a nascent wine region that had risen from cattle ranches, barren hills, and broccoli fields.
Like his wines, Jim’s ABC lunches were classically European in spirit—humane, balanced, and based around food and wine in combination. Jim spent a lot of time in European wine regions and seemingly knew every important winemaker in Italy and France. Of course, the wines were flush with sun-kissed Santa Barbara County exuberance, but their moderate alcohols, restrained fruit, and absence of oakiness made them different from most other California wines of the time.
This difference was significant, because at that time a debate raged about California wine. The ripe, rich, and high-alcohol style was ascendant, encouraged by high scores from dominant critics such as Robert Parker. In pursuit of high scores, it seemed like every winemaker in the state made such wines and justified them with an ardent belief that this style was dictated not by critics but by California’s climate.
To those nonwinemakers among us, it was confusing. Ninety-nine percent of winemakers claimed wines had to be super ripe and high alcohol, yet they were contradicted by the existence of a scant few wines, Au Bon Climat chief among them, that were moderate in both categories and still tasted delicious.
The world must have seemed backward to Jim, as his became a lone voice in a wine world that knelt at the altar of ripeness (and Parker). Compounding Jim’s pain was a perceived betrayal. In the late 1980s Parker had championed Au Bon Climat, helping propel the brand to prominence. But apparently Parker’s tastes changed. As he dished out high scores to extremely ripe wines, the love he showed ABC disappeared. Years of receiving relatively moderate-to-low scores became the source of a lingering bitterness to Jim. Over the years, I often heard him rant about ripeness, scores, and Parker. “Of course, it’s possible to make balanced wines in California,” he would say. “I do it every year.”
In the end he was proved right. His wines found champions in the emergent sommelier community, which shared and amplified his thinking. Soon other winemakers became emboldened to flout the critics and join the growing movement of a “new” California paradigm of balance, energy, and moderation. And at the heart of this movement is the legacy that the stalwart, visionary Jim Clendenen created and perpetuated over lunch. •
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Illustration by Derek Charm
