Collaboration 003: Scott Schultz & Jenny Schultz Red Blend 2022

STYLE: Red

COUNTRY & REGION: Sonoma, California

VINTAGE: 2022

ABV: 12.5%

VOLUME: 75cl

THE WHAT:

This is 50% Cabernet Franc & 50% Valdiguié from Sonoma, California. Cabernet Franc is an interesting grape, best known for it’s production in the Loire, or in as an addition to Bordeaux-style blends. It’s often the unsung hero, and has beautiful black fruit characteristics including hedgerow, tomato leaf and green stems. Valdiguié on the other hand is an anomaly. You very seldom see this, but its home is in the south of France. It’s a lighter grape variety, that adds boatloads of freshness and lift to wines as a blending component. So when you mash together the austerity of the Cab Franc and the bubbliness of the Valdiguié, well, that’s when the magic happens.

THE WHO:

Scott Schultz and Jenny Schultz are the proprietors of cult Californian wine label Jolie-Laide. They are long time friends of Wasted Wine Club, and when the time came to bottling our first wine from California, well, they were naturally the first port of call. Their wines are really special, and the fact that we managed to get a bottling with them is mind-blowing (we’re still pretty smug about it.) These wines are all about vibrancy and freshness: they pick their fruit a bit earlier than usual, meaning that they retain a lot of natural acidity, and always present themselves with an energy that is quite often hard to describe. Scott and Jenny work with super healthy, sustainably farmed vineyards, which allows them to add lower doses of sulphur to their wines. They are the type of people we love to work with; they’re creative, collaborative, and love an ice cold beer at the end of a hard day in the cellar.

THE WHY:

This is a totally random blend. You’ll probably never see it again. But when we tasted the two grapes individually, we knew there was something there. Production at Jolie-Laide now simmers around 120,000 bottles of wine every year. That’s a pretty formidable number. Amongst the tried and tested staples always lies a bunch of trials, experiments and new vineyards that don’t necessarily always make the cut. In this instance: we have a barrel of Cab Franc that Scott and Jenny felt didn’t quite fit the Jolie-Laide profile and style, and then a barrel of Valdiguié, which Scott describes as their ‘secret weapon’. It adds a bunch of freshness and crunch to their wines, and so will often sit on bigger volumes of this and use it as a blending component for wines that perhaps need a bit of pep.

THE TUNES:

You always need good music with good wine. Our pairing playlist for our third collaboration is leans into some old funk and soul. We hope you like it. Pour a long glass, light the candles, cuddle up to someone special.

LISTEN HERE