Kenny Likitprakong. Photo by Jamie Soja.
The ancient practice of turning grape juice into wine is wonderfully Old World and low-tech. But just like the rest of the world, winemaking undergoes generational shifts. In spite of its culture of age and wisdom, it needs new blood.
For our Food & Wine issue, we’re celebrating the Santa Cruz Mountains winegrowing region—a rambling appellation that runs from Woodside to Watsonville and from Santa Cruz to Saratoga—along with a new class of young winemakers who are writing the next chapter of a local winemaking story that began 130 years ago.
Martin Ray, a protégé of Paul Masson, proved the power and grace of Santa Cruz Mountains wines nearly 70 years ago with his pinot noir and chardonnay grown in vineyards high above Saratoga. Mount Eden Vineyards winemaker Jeffrey Patterson carries on Ray’s tradition on the same mountaintop site where Ray once lived and made wine. Just to the north, Ridge Vineyards showed the world that California wines were every bit as good as those of France in the now famous Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976.
Do any of these four winemakers, all in their mid-30s or younger, have what it takes to make a wine for the ages and prove once again that California’s best wines don’t all come from Napa and Sonoma? Time will tell. —Stett Holbrook
Kenny Likitprakong
Everything about Kenny Likitprakong’s story is filled with independent attitude. Growing up in Healdsburg of Thai, Chinese and Jewish ancestry, he exercised his passions for skateboarding and snowboarding in tandem with plenty of world travel. His umbrella Hobo Wines group is named partly in homage to songwriter/vagabond Woody Guthrie and the free spirit of wandering.
He had launched the Banyan label with his father to showcase a line of crisp white wines, including varietals like riesling and viognier, when a new idea came along. “We started with Banyan for aromatic whites that would pair with foods I grew up eating,” explains the winemaker, now in his mid-30s, “and Hobo for Sonoma County Reds, where I am from originally.
“Later, some wines came up that didn’t really fit that well into either of those categories, so we added the Folk Machine label to have an outlet for more ‘experimental’ type wines.”
That includes, at the moment, a rare and feisty valdiguie. Likitprakong makes no promises as to what grapes might show up in his bottles from one year to the next, something that gives his fan base plenty to look forward to.
The winemaker admits that his “career path” has tended toward many forking paths, rather than a single, obvious goal. In fact, Likitprakong refuses to pin down ultimate goals, as might be expected from an experienced traveler who left arts studies at UCSC to snowboard in Tahoe; sample wines in Italy, Peru and the south of France; crush his first grapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains and surf a bit in Mexico before settling into his current oenological explorations. His avant-garde blends and unexpected varietal bottlings have already made him a cult figure in a domain well-stocked with mavericks.
The story behind his Ghostwriter label began in Santa Cruz. He made connections with Santa Cruz Mountains grape growers and winemakers when he worked at Felton’s Hallcrest Vineyards in the early 2000s. This connection led him to the Woodruff Vineyard, a hallowed patch of ground in Corralitos. The vineyard has yielded a particularly intense dose of Santa Cruz Mountains terroir in the form of the 2009 Ghostwriter Pinot Noir. Jon Bonné, wine editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, named it one of 2011’s top 100 wines. The wine is a collaboration between Likitprakong and partner Brian Wilkerson.
“The Woodruff Family Vineyard is special,” Likitprakong acknowledges. “It has the right geographic orientation and natural hillside drainage. The vines are old and well taken care of. They’re dry farmed and always have been.”
But there’s more to the story. “I have walked through and worked in a lot of vineyards over the last 15 years or so, and each vineyard has a certain energy or feeling somehow,” he says. “You just know which ones are special. The Woodruff Family Vineyard carries a certain peace and tranquility, where you feel like things are right and as they should be.”
Like many restless creators, the winemaker has a strong sense of place. “There is no doubt in my mind that the vines feel this too—and the resulting wines are a testament to it.” Many palates agree.
—Christina Waters
