A new generation of young winemakers is surfacing on the artisanal fringes of the wine world.

As much farmers as winemakers, coming at the craft with a refreshingly new, unencumbered, and personal point of view.

A clean slate for the imagination driven to make wine not out of reaction to an industrialized farming heritage, but inspired by the pioneering work of the great natural winemakers in the States.

To Aaron and Cara of Frenchtown Farms, coming out of the NY area, this inspiration was no less than Gideon Beinstock of Clos Saron.

They told me the story of how they happened on a bottle of Gideon’s ’08 Black Pearl and were simply smitten. How they then ‘hunted him down, sought a lease on the old vines where his fruit came from, and likewise changed the direction of their lives and an understanding of what wine could be’.

Cara and Gideon

They now live adjacent to their leased vines, and just down the road from Clos Saron where they interned with Gideon through two harvests and produced their first vintages at his winery.

If you are unfamiliar with the back story of Gideon and Clos Saron, this takes place in North Yuba County in the Sierras, some 2 hours north of Sacramento in the tiny town of Oregon House.

This off-the-grid-farming community is what a handful of resident winemakers consider the very center of a yet to be rediscovered, historic and unique high-altitude wine region.

During the Gold Rush days, vines were planted locally and the namesake of Aaron and Cara’s domain—Frenchtown Farms–comes from French immigrants founding a nearby town of that name. They planted this steep and challenging terrain (1700+ feet) where the winters are cold and rainy, the summers very dry and the cool, moist air of the high Sierras wafts down to the foothills in the evenings cooling the vines and the fruit.

These original vignerons by dint of instinct or knowledge must have known this was wine geography for the terroir inspired.

Aaron and Cara’s leased plot of vines it turns out, was none other than a portion of the famed Renaissance Winery. Planted in the late 70s/early 80s, noted for its ungrafted plantings, organic farming, deep minerality, tiny yields and intense fruit. Five years of drought demanded a focused reconstructive labor with the defining potential for this small and semi-forgotten piece of the North Yuba AVA as new hands and fresh ideas took over as custodians.

My road to discovering Aaron and Cara was through a bottle of their 2016 The Pearl Thief that I happened on at Chambers Street Wines in TriBeCa where I live. An intriguing Sauvignon Blanc/Viognier blend. (See all details in Deconstructing note at end.)

I fell for it hard. An unrepentant addict to the quiet murmur of restrained skin contact fermentation and overt minerality.

The bottle registers on that rare scale where natural wines can be at once both interesting and intellectual yet satisfying. A bit inscrutable to boot.

I kept going back to Chambers Street and buying another bottle, then another. Weighing it in my hands, staring at the unique label, and talking with friends at the shop. In awe of  how it all works together so well.

As is often with new wine discoveries, I find a bottle with a big hidden aha, connect, write about it and get to know the producers. They, more than the variety or the vintage, become the center of gravity for grasping what I drink.

There is an old adage that wine is made by hand and the product of people with intent and restraint, not nature alone. So it is with Aaron and Cara.

I just naturally liked them.

Young (he 36, she 29), smart, educated, opinionated without a hint of bravado. Urban East coasters who found each other in DC and wandered West to farm and discovered inspiration in a bottle of wine and the friendship of great producer along the way.

They are intuitive and open thinkers who embrace their youth while respecting the knowledge of those they are learning from. Admittedly lucky to have stumbled into a mentor like Gideon who has the soul of an artist, the work ethic of farmer, a minimalist sculptor’s point of view coaxing something personally unique in the face of such a distinctive and powerful terroir.

Aaron and Cara are just getting started with wine, on their third vintage, focused on the details of the year-round process and the bonds of their relationship as co-vigneronnes, farmers and life partners. Truely hard working, lovely folks.

They described their winemaking to me as a perpetual conversation between the two of them, a personal relationship to the vines, the joy of the backbreaking work in the vineyards, the lure of wine as a way to share their place with others and the openness to doing things in their own way.

By what just feels right and unafraid to fail.

I was drawn to the poetic mythologizing of their journey through their choices–the why of their domaine name, the storied yarn behind each cuvee’s moniker, the elegance of the labels created by Kelly Patton, an artist friend with a plan to evolve the art as a project adding color to the line drawings as the wines develop over the years.

They are certainly natural winemakers with strong beliefs (and Olive Oil makers as well) but there is a lack of dogma here that leaves everything a bit down home. This is refreshing, as are their wines.

I just really enjoyed chronicling this story.

Getting to know them a bit. Having the depth of enjoyment of drinking a number of bottles of  The Pearl Thief grow over the week of talking with them and writing this post.

I strongly recommend this bottle from this unique, out-of-the-way spot with awesome defining terroir made by this young and just unabashedly honest winemaking couple. Available from Chambers Street Wines for $30.99.

Their red cuvees and rose are in the market but a bit hard to find at times. Contact David Bowler Wines who distribute them into NY along with Clos Saron for assistance. Ask for Alex Miranda and tell him I sent you.

Big thanks to Aaron and Cara for sharing their story. To Ariana Rolich and the Chambers Street team who bear with me incessantly on a daily basis for years.

*Photos are from Cara and Aaron. The one at the top of the post is them on Slope 23.

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Notes for the curious.

Frenchtown Farms Chronology

  • 2014 Befriended Gideon after tasting his vintage ‘08 Black Pear
  • 2015 Moved down the road from Clos Saron and made wine with him through three harvests
    •  Leased Renaissance Vineyards Slopes 23, 9 and 1
    •   Produced 1200 bottles, 3 red cuvees
  • 2016 Produced 5000 bottles, added a white blend and a rose
  • 2017 Produced 700 cases with the same 6 cuvees as 2016.
    •   The Pearl Thief this harvest is 75% Sauvignon Blanc, 25% Roussanne  single vintage from Renaissance Lot 23

Deconstructing The Pearl Thief (2016)

  • Grape mix in cuvee
    • 60% Viognier, from Bokish Vineyard in Lodi.
    • 40% Sauvignon Blanc, from Renaissance Slope 23
  • Grapes stomped in open containers, macerated on skins till fermentation started (two days), pressed into neutral oak barrels
  • Aged in a puncheon and half barrel for eight months
  • 25ppm SO2 at bottling
  • First Frenchtown Farms white, 60 cases made
  • The Pearl Thief name refers to the wild hares that pilfered grapes overnight on Slope 23
  • Wine is a beauty–Irresistibly fresh and flavorful. Tangy acidity. Layered acidity on finish
  • 2017 vintage
    • Approx.125 cases, still in barrels
    • Single vineyard 75% Sauvignon Blanc and 25% Roussanne from Slope 23