Behind the vine

Elizabeth Vianna - Chimney Rock - Napa, California, USA

When do you think you fell in love with wine, enough to make a career of it?

I went to Vasser, studied Biology and graduated Pre-Med. I wanted to work in the hospital environment before I went to Med School, and I got a job at a New York Hospital doing research and clinical lab work. At the same time, I really started to get into wine. My friend's dad had an amazing cellar and I fell in love with wine through enjoying these high-end wines. My Dad's a wine drinker, and wine was a part of our table growing up, but until then I'd never paid close attention to it. I'd never thought about how complex wine was.

So I started going to tastings, buying wines, reading Wine Spectator, and one of the tastings I went to in 1996, was at Christie's and we heard Christian Moueix from Chateau Pétrus speak. He talked about inheriting the Chateau when he was 24 years old and how he went to UC Davis to study winemaking. I'd been interested in wine as a consumer and exploring flavour and what's behind wine, but hadn't thought of the production aspect - it was a lightbulb moment. Even though I was expected to become this paediatric oncologist, I saw myself do a 180 very slowly and applied to winemaking at UC Davis. It felt like destiny. I was a specialist in the lab using the same techniques that studied aroma compounds in wine - and I got accepted and I never looked back.

At Davis, we were a graduate class of 13 people who were equally interested in wine. It was challenging academic program, but you're doing what you love and surrounded by people who feel the same. People who get into wine are not people who think they're going to make money. It's a labor of love, a passion, something you discovered later in life.

From the get go, my grape was Cabernet Sauvignon. When I came out of Davis, my first job was at Napa Wine Company with people like Heidi Barrett, Celia Welch, Pam Starr - the majority of the winemakers there were women. As a young woman, to be exposed to that right away, helped me to build confidence. Chimney Rock was a serendipitous second place to land. The assistant winemaker was a friend of mine, so she recruited me in. When she left Chimney Rock, I was invited back to take her role.

What story does your wine tell?

I believe wine should be reflection of place and time. I believe in wines of terroir. That's why I fell in love with Chimney Rock. We have 105 acres in Stag's Leap district, but in just 1 AVA, we have an amazing diversity of hillside, valley floor, some warmer, some cooler sites, and every little piece of land is different and interesting. My goal is to get to learn that piece of land and tell its best story.

I really believe wine should tell a tale of vintage. If it's a cool vintage, the wine should tell you that. You don't try to homogenise wine. Our wines have finesse, they are graceful with no massive tannins. The style was that way when I arrived, and I've honored that.

Wine is a reflection of people as well. People are the unmentioned part of terroir, and I've had the same team for a while - 6 super passionate and dedicated people. That continuity, us living through these different experiences, these different vintages together makes for a great story and we're really telling the story of that place.

What misconceptions about wine do you think people should forget?

The worst misconception about wine is that it's snooty and beyond people's grasp. The way the wine culture evolved was in a snooty way - you score things and no one knows why and unless you've taken some fancy course, you can't possibly know what you like. The knowledge of wine has also been dominated by men - it was seen as a gentlemanly skill to have - the man chooses the bottle of wine, but we can quickly decide what kinds of fruit, books, films we like, so why can't wine be equally accessible? Anyone can choose a bottle.

As a wine educator, one of my objectives reaching a consumer is all you have to know is what you like, and you just need to be open to exploring. You should consider the question: What pleases your palette? You don't need to know chemical compound. It is nice to have vocabulary, and it helps you discover new things, but you don’t need to make everything measurable.

What great things about wine do you think people should remember?

Wine is a way to travel, to transport you to places. You can take a wonderful trip to Italy and bring a bottle home and have that moment or bottle take you back.

I love how a bottle of wine can mark a moment or a memory much in the way that music can. It’s like time travel. Wines take you to a period of your life. Very few other food or beverage products that can do that. Very few have that gravitas.

I also love that in the age of technology and the speed of everything that wine is something that forces you to sit and share and stop time. It's a time where we might put our phones away.

What is a piece of advice you would give to a woman interested in breaking into the wine world?

I think if you want to go into production, get in it. Get an internship. Get dirty. Do the physical aspect of the work. A good winemaker is someone who has done every aspect of the winery. Your team will respect you more if you show you can get in the tank and shovel it. Don't let yourself be pigeonholed into anything.

Drink a lot. Explore a lot of different regions, don't limit yourself to what people say is great.

Explore other varieties. The broader your exposure, the more prone you'll be to understanding differences in wine.

Network. Join an organisation that's going to expose you to tasting with other people, talking with other people - there's so many webinars, so much information. Educate, educate, educate. Wine is one of those areas that it is easy to get an education - you can self-educate by doing a bit of research.

Where can women find your wine?

You can discover single vineyard Cabs, and interesting bottles on our website.

In the UK, we’re sold at Handford Wines in South Kensington and Hedonism wines.

In the US, the Estate Cab is widely distributed so you can find it at places like Total Wine and small boutique shops.