Episode 226

Guest: Richie Allen

Recorded: November, 2026

Jim Duane:

All right, Richie. I'm super excited to be here. I do appreciate the tour and seeing the facilities. It always kind of spurs conversation and things to talk about.

But for the listeners that didn't get the tour, can you start over and tell the story of how you came to Rombauer?

Richie Allen:

Yep. I've been at Rombauer now, and this year was my 23rd harvest. I came here after working a few years in Australia and New Zealand. I was born and raised in Melbourne and studied winemaking in Adelaide.

I sort of got the itch to go do a Northern Hemisphere harvest, if that makes sense. I went through an exchange company because I didn't know anybody, and you basically tick the box of what region you'd like to go to. So I ticked that I'd like to go to Napa.

I'd been to Napa when I was 19. I came to the U.S. for the first time to go rock climbing, and some friends brought us to Napa. I thought it was pretty cool, and I thought, I want to go back to Napa.

Jim Duane:

So is that why you didn't want to go to Europe?

Richie Allen:

It was a little bit easier at the time to get a visa here for the U.S. I really wanted to go to France, but it was a little more complicated to get a visa, and you had to have a job lined up.

Whereas the exchange organization, CAEP, said, "We'll help you get a job and do your visa paperwork." So Napa would be sweet. I basically came from Europe to Napa, and then when I left, went back to Europe.

But it was funny. I gave them my resume, and about 12 weeks later, I got this email, and it was a job offer from Rombauer Vineyards. It was an internship that was 12 weeks long. They had housing on site, and it paid 10 bucks an hour. And I thought, sweet, perfect, right?

I didn't know what Rombauer was. Didn't look it up. Didn't know where St. Helena was. And I thought, 12 weeks, how bad could it be?

That 12 weeks ended up being about four months, and then I left. I had a job lined up in New Zealand on the North Island. Before I even started that harvest, Rombauer was calling to say, "Hey, when can you come back?"

So I literally finished harvest, flew back to America the next day, stayed for a couple more years, got promoted, and had a great time. I tried to leave again, and the Rombauer family said, "No, we're not accepting your resignation. We'll just give you a raise, and you can stay."

So I did that and stayed for another year. After that, I'd really sort of had enough of being over here. It was a long way from home, and my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, was back in Melbourne.

I thought, I need a job closer to home. She said, "Well, why don't you get another job in New Zealand?" Because Australians can work in New Zealand without a visa. It's a reciprocal relationship.

So we moved to New Zealand, and I was there about a month when Rombauer called and said, come back. So I finished harvest there and came back again, and that was about 19 years ago.

Then I kind of got thrown in the deep end. One of the winemakers at Rombauer left, and the job just grew from there. Six months later, I was in charge, and I was not quite 28, which is a little bit scary.

Jim Duane:

That is young for real production.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. I told this story recently. I got called up to a Rombauer family meeting. Just up above the winery here, at the top of the hill, is the Rombauer family home.

It was the head of HR, the CFO, and the Rombauer family at their normal weekly meeting, and they told me that I was going to take over. I thought they were joking and started laughing. Once I realized they weren't joking, that laugh sort of turned to panic.

I remember walking out of there, calling my wife, and saying, "Honey, we're fucked." I was in over my head. As a young winemaker, you think if you mess up a job, that goes on your resume, right?

By that stage, you know how small the industry is. If you get a bad reputation, your ability to find desirable roles becomes very, very small. And I thought this was too much for a young kid. I remember my wife saying, "Suck it up, you'll be fine."

There was another young Aussie, Luke, who was working here. He was a year behind me at university, and he stayed on, and the two of us took over. I was late 28, so I turned 29 a few months later, and Luke must have been about 25. Somehow we figured it out. It was 20 years ago.

Jim Duane:

So I assume in that first year, you were working in the cellar as an intern?

Richie Allen:

The very first year, yeah, I was in the cellar and sort of took over running the red pump overs. We had about five other interns from around the world.

Rombauer was very chaotic back then. It was growing really, really fast. There was still a little bit of custom crush here, so we still had a few clients, but there was just so much wine being made here. Everything was jam packed.

You would literally rack a tank of Chardonnay, and before you could even get the heavy lees out of the bottom, there was a line back on the tank with a press load of juice going straight back into it. It was chaos. There weren't enough pumps, hoses, or tri-clamps.

It was almost a bit Lord of the Flies, survival of the fittest. I just sort of took over managing this group of interns, who were all a little bit younger than me and had a little less experience.

The Rombauers and the winemaking team were like, "Yeah, that kid knows what he's doing. We should try and keep him." And that was that.

Jim Duane:

How involved was the family in the business or the winemaking?

Richie Allen:

They weren't dictating winemaking. They knew the styles of wine that they wanted, and you had to hit the target. They would come drive forklift, help, and weigh grapes.

Jim Duane:

I'm going to make you pause for a second here. I'm going to switch chairs. This one is squeaking.

Okay. I used to have a vineyard manager at Seavey. Prior to working at Seavey, he would grow a lot of grapes in Carneros. So he'd deliver them up here to Rombauer.

Richie Allen:

Yep.

Jim Duane:

And apparently he came up one day and hopped on a forklift, and apparently that was not okay. Apparently that was Koerner's.

Richie Allen:

Oh, that's Old Blue. We still have that forklift. That forklift is old. Koerner had his forklift, and he would come down and drive forklift pretty much all day.

Same with K.R. Rombauer if he was around, and Sheana's two kids. If we were having a really big day during crush, they would come down and just help all day. You could tell them what to do.

They ran their business, but they were there to help you, and they weren't dictating how wine should be made. They left that up to winemaking. But if you knew you were having a massive day of crush, they'd ask, "Oh, how big is it going to be?"

I'd say, "Hey, could you stay for 14 hours and unload trucks for me?" And they would do it. It was very cool.

It was very much a family-owned and operated business. That changed over time as Koerner got older and the business grew, but it was definitely a family-owned and operated company. There's no doubt about that.

Jim Duane:

Did you like that as a young guy?

Richie Allen:

Yeah, I loved it, because there weren't any layers of management or layers of approval. If something broke, Koerner would just look at you and say go get it fixed, and you would do it.

Really early on, I was really young, bullish, and confident. I'd say, hey, we need to do this and we need to do that. We need two optical sorters. We need to have all the tanks on auto pump over. We should acquire that vineyard.

The Rombauers had ultimate trust in you. They would just say, "Okay, do you think it's a good business decision?" And you'd say, "Yeah, here are the financials." Looking back at it, I was maybe a little more confident than I should have been.

I had to put in a new bottling line for them, things like that. It was an amazing time, and we worked our asses off. But you were working with them.

There was no "I need approval from the CFO, then approval from a capital committee, and accounting has to sign off on the financial plan, and what's the ROIC," and all this other rubbish that we deal with now. If it was a good idea, it was a good idea, and we were just going to do it.

Jim Duane:

Did you have a good perspective or vision into what was coming in the future in terms of volume?

Richie Allen:

Yeah, we knew we wanted to make a little bit more every year, and the Rombauer family very much relied on us to say, here's what we have in the ground in terms of vineyards. Here's what we're contracted for. Here's our barrel capacity and our crush capacity.

One of the first big things I did was ask, okay, how much are we making? How long is it in barrel? How do we match our vineyard capacity to our crush capacity to our tank capacity to our barrel capacity, so everything flows from one to the next?

Jim Duane:

And then you can absorb the variability of seasonality.

Richie Allen:

Oh, exactly. Whatever number I gave them, I'd always make it 10% lower than it needed to be, to have that flux.

So if we knew we were going to run out of space, we'd say, "Look, if we hit our targets and these certain products keep growing the way we're seeing now, we're going to need X, Y, Z in terms of capacity."

We kept building this five-year plan, which honestly changed every year, but it allowed us to plan. The Rombauer family took some risks, I won't lie. But they never decided to make more of anything if it didn't sell, if that makes sense.

Jim Duane:

Yeah.

Richie Allen:

We were only allowed to keep making more of something if it was selling, and we didn't have to push it down the distributor's throat and the public's throat. We never discounted product.

One big thing is that whatever we do, it has to be at our full margin. Our wines were never super expensive, so they weren't being greedy. But it was, how do we make more of that but hold our price point?

That's what we did, and we still do it that way today. It's awesome fun, but I had to learn a lot about business.

---

Jim Duane:

Right. So for a lot of people, Rombauer is synonymous with Chardonnay. I'd like to hear more of the story about Rombauer beyond just Chardonnay, but maybe we can start there.

Was that always a standout SKU within the mix, or was there a certain point in time where it kind of exploded on its own?

Richie Allen:

It exploded on its own around 1990. We started making Cabernet in 1980, Chardonnay in '82, and Merlot in '83. We added Zinfandel in 1990, Sauvignon Blanc in 2014, and Pinot Noir in 2021.

In those first couple of years, we had this big winery here in St. Helena, which we just walked around, and there was a lot of custom crush. I think at the peak, we had about 35 custom crush clients.

Jim Duane:

That's insane.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. If you go through these desk drawers next to me here, it's like a Rolodex of a who's who of the Napa Valley. At one stage or another, some of the most iconic wines today were made here, which cracks me up.

Over time, we started to grow into the winery, so Cabernet production grew and Merlot production grew. Chardonnay was sort of ticking along.

There was a custom crush client here, a good friend of the Rombauers, who was sourcing fruit from the Sangiacomo family in Carneros. The Rombauers tasted that custom crush wine and said, "Well, you need to talk to the Sangiacomos."

So in 1990, they went down, met with the Sangiacomos, and got a little bit of Carneros Chardonnay. That was the first year they did full barrel fermentation and put it through malo. That was sort of the genesis, and it just took off.

Every year since then, we've tried to make a little bit more. We still make it exactly the same way. We still work with the Sangiacomo blocks, a lot more of them now, obviously, and bigger blocks. And we own a lot more Carneros fruit.

But Cabernet has always been the backbone of what we do. We still make a good amount of Cabernet here in St. Helena. We own vineyards throughout the Napa Valley, from Calistoga down to Stags Leap and up on Atlas Peak. We have estate Cabernet vineyards, and everything's sort of growing around it.

Chardonnay is still half of our production.

Jim Duane:

Okay.

Richie Allen:

But everything is growing around that. The one that caught us off guard was when I got back from New Zealand and said to the Rombauers, "We should make a Sauvignon Blanc." They were very against it. It took about five years to convince them.

Jim Duane:

For a specific reason?

Richie Allen:

The Rombauer family always liked to keep it simple. We make Cabernet, Merlot, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay.

Jim Duane:

You get your white wine.

Richie Allen:

Koerner used to always say, just focus on what we do and do it better than everyone else, and we'll be successful.

But there were people coming to the tasting room, and occasionally I'd be upstairs helping guests. They'd come and say, "I don't drink red wine. I only drink white wine. Can I try your white wines?" They'd get a glass of Chardonnay, and that was the end of their experience.

So I was convinced we should make a Sauvignon Blanc. One, there was a good amount of Sauvignon Blanc growing here in Northern California. Two, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, while popular, can be a little bit lean, racy, and grassy, and it's not for everyone.

Jim Duane:

It's kind of all the same thing.

Richie Allen:

It can be a bit ubiquitous, let's face it. I've made more New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc than I care to admit.

But often in Napa, I'd try these Sauvignon Blancs that were 15% alcohol with no acid. They were picked so ripe they would just taste like generic white wine, without any varietal intensity.

I was convinced the climate would allow us to make something that wasn't as grassy and high in acid as New Zealand. If we picked a little earlier, for peak varietal intensity rather than just sugar, we could make a more appealing Sauvignon Blanc.

After five years of badgering the Rombauer family, they finally said sure. I'll never forget it, because Koerner said, "It doesn't matter, nobody's going to buy it anyway."

I made 1,200 cases that first year. It sold out in six weeks, and now it's our number two SKU 12 years later.

Jim Duane:

No way.

Richie Allen:

Yeah.

Jim Duane:

Oh, cool.

Richie Allen:

I had to build a winery for it, I'll put it that way. The growth of that product and its popularity caught us off guard. I never thought that would happen. I was just happy if it sold out in the tasting room.

We've had to acquire vineyards in Sonoma Valley specifically for that wine, just to try and meet the consumer demand, and it's exciting. I always joke that I don't need to create more work for myself, but somehow I always do.

Then the newest wine is Pinot. The first vintage was 2021. We had a false start in 2020 with the fires, and that's sort of taken on a life of its own as well. That's from the Santa Lucia Highlands, about three hours south of here, down in Monterey.

Jim Duane:

So with Sauvignon Blanc, when you say peak varietal intensity, what are your cues? How are you deciding when it's ready to pick? Because pick date is when you're setting your style, right? That's super important with a wine like that, and they can change very quickly.

Richie Allen:

I'm looking for a particular flavor on the vine. I find Sauvignon Blanc is very, very easy to tell when it's ripe on the vine. It just takes on a certain flavor, more so than any other white variety we work with.

There's a point of inflection where sugars accumulate and acids drop, and all of a sudden the acid just drops rapidly. If you miss that point, you miss that peak varietal intensity. I call it falling off the cliff.

You'll make a nice wine after that, but you won't have that punchy, juicy, mouthwatering key lime and gooseberry flavor. You'll have white stone fruit, it'll be a little bit generic, and you'll lose the aromatic complexity.

We're just looking for that cusp of where the acid starts to drop, and every block's a little bit different. Everyone asks, "Oh, what Brix do you pick at?" And I'm like, "Well..."

Jim Duane:

Right. Depends on the block. Depends on the year.

Richie Allen:

I'd say on average it's somewhere between 22 and 23 and a half, depending on the vine age and the block.

Jim Duane:

Are you particularly concerned with the TA, the titratable acidity?

Richie Allen:

We're tracking it and we're tasting. There's a point where the TA drops rapidly and the pH starts to climb. Acid's easy to adjust, but we don't like to add too much acid.

Some blocks, like the cooler sites, will be super grassy when the acid hits that inflection point, and we might push those a little bit further. But we are definitely looking at the acid for sure.

Jim Duane:

Okay, so Chardonnay has a big oak component to the profile of the wine. Obviously Sauvignon Blanc is a different variety with a distinct flavor profile.

Richie Allen:

Yeah.

Jim Duane:

But did you want to go more tank and less barrel with Sauvignon Blanc, or would that be outside of the style?

Richie Allen:

No, it was definitely tank. We didn't want to make a Fumé Blanc sort of style. Rombauer is obviously very well known for the barrel impact on its Chardonnay, but we weren't making Sauvignon Blanc for our Chardonnay customers. We were making Sauvignon Blanc for Sauvignon Blanc customers.

It's all hand picked and whole cluster pressed. We get the juice really, really clear, and then 90% of it is fermented in tank, all stainless steel, with a very cool fermentation. We just keep it as clean and pristine as possible.

Jim Duane:

When you say cool, how cool?

Richie Allen:

At peak fermentation, we're probably dropping the temperature as low as 47 to 48.

Jim Duane:

Okay, that's cool.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, we're just trying to keep it going at about a Brix a day. Then usually about 10% of the blend is done in very old, neutral French oak barrels. We have a huge selection of old barrels, and most of those are about 12 years old now. I also have a couple of concrete tanks.

The whole idea of that comes from working in New Zealand and growing up in Australia in the '90s, when New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was huge. You can talk about Cloudy Bay forever.

Traditionally, Cloudy Bay was from the Wairau Valley, outside of Blenheim in Marlborough, on these quite rocky soils. But it wasn't quite as grassy or as high in acid as some people think of it today. It had this roundness and richness to it, a lot of gooseberry, a little bit of grassiness, and quite a bit of palate weight.

They always did a small amount in old oak, quite often large vats, just to give the wine a little more texture and fullness on the palate. I've seen that technique used a lot in New Zealand, and I felt like our wine needed a little more depth, if that makes sense, to be from California.

Jim Duane:

Do you use any Semillon?

Richie Allen:

We don't use any Semillon. The Semillon we've seen doesn't add to the blend, if that makes sense. It doesn't help lift the wine, it doesn't fill in a gap, and it doesn't add any depth or concentration. It almost just thins it out and makes it slightly more neutral.

I want that punchy, intense key lime and gooseberry. The Semillon we've had access to just hasn't worked for us, so we've steered clear of it.

Jim Duane:

So how quickly do you get that Sauvignon Blanc in bottle?

Richie Allen:

Usually we have the blend together by Christmas, and we'll bottle it in January.

Jim Duane:

Okay, so quick.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We used to be able to get it done before Christmas. It started as a Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, and over time we found vineyards in the south of the Napa Valley, then moved over to Sonoma, chasing this fruit intensity. So the harvest has become slightly later.

Usually we haven't been able to get it together and bottled before Christmas. This year we're a month early, so it's an exception. But usually it's January.

Basically, I just want to get it in bottle to retain as much freshness as possible. That's one of the only wines we bottle under screw cap. I just don't want it in tank, where something could go wrong.

I want it in the bottle, safe, tucked away.

Jim Duane:

Right.

Richie Allen:

Then usually we release it in the spring, just as it's starting to come out of its bottle shock, so to speak.

---

Jim Duane:

So Chardonnay is obviously what Rombauer is most well known for. Can you take us through the winemaking process for Rombauer Chardonnay?

I almost wish I could roll back the clock. Years ago, when I was at Stags Leap Wine Cellars, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates came in in 2007 as part of the joint venture with the Antinori family.

At one point, some Ste. Michelle person came in and said, "This Rombauer Chardonnay is really popular. We brought you a bottle. We'd like you to make a look-alike." It had this in-house name, the Rombauer Killer Chardonnay we were supposed to make. So the first thing we did was analyze it and break it down.

Richie Allen:

I've heard this story so many times from different competitors. "We're going to make a Rombauer Killer." I'm like, okay, go for it.

Jim Duane:

And it was a huge failure. First of all, this was February, after harvest. It was way too late to make the important decisions you need to make. But we also made a half effort toward the style.

Anyway, that became Hands of Time, which was an awful label that I hope doesn't exist anymore.

Richie Allen:

I don't think it does.

Jim Duane:

But what's the basic processing? Obviously we can talk about vineyards too, which is a big, important part of the story.

Richie Allen:

I would honestly say the vineyards are the secret. The Chardonnay all comes from Carneros, and there's what I call the Goldilocks Strip.

Carneros spans both Napa and Sonoma counties. If we go too far south, we end up in the bay, and that doesn't work. If we go too far north, we end up on Mount Veeder or in Sonoma Valley, and it's a fraction too warm. At the bottom of Sonoma Valley, north of Carneros, the clay gets too heavy.

But there's this strip, about six miles north to south and 20 miles east to west, where 99% of Rombauer Chardonnay comes from. We're looking at a couple of particular soil types for that.

The winemaking is insanely simple. It's handpicked, whole cluster pressed, and cold settled overnight, with no enzymes. If we get sulfur in the tank, great. If we didn't, we were too busy and someone forgot to add it.

It's racked cloudy the next day. We adjust acidity and nutrients if we need to and add yeast. Sometimes, if the Brix isn't too high, we don't add yeast.

It goes straight to barrel, and that's usually a 24-hour period from harvest to barrel. Then it goes into a cold room. The rooms are set at 50 degrees, and the ferments peak at about 65.

We don't touch it for nine months. We stir the lees every week, and malo usually starts naturally. When it's done, we pull it together.

Jim Duane:

I like the simplicity of it.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We're owned by Gallo now, and that's been a big change for us over the last couple of years. Gallo had exactly the same story you just told. "We need to make Rombauer Chardonnay. We need to make a Rombauer Killer."

Gallo has the best research team of wine scientists I have ever seen, and I love this team. Chatting with these guys is one of my favorite things about Gallo. They know more about Rombauer Chardonnay than Rombauer knows about Rombauer Chardonnay.

I've met with them numerous times, and I love talking about Rombauer Chardonnay and all the research Gallo had done to try and replicate it. When they first came to the winery, we walked them through the process.

I remember one of the researchers, someone who has a PhD, has worked for 20 years in wine research, and is a world expert, saying, "Wow, it's a lot simpler than we thought. You guys just have good vibes." I don't know.

I had a lady call up once who said, "I was at a wedding and had a really bad allergic reaction. I ended up in the hospital, and the allergist wants to know what I had at the wedding. I've given him everything, but the only thing we don't know the ingredients of is Rombauer Chardonnay. I drank a lot of Rombauer Chardonnay. Can you give me the ingredients?"

And I said, "Yeah, it's really simple: grapes, yeast, yeast nutrient, and acid. We add a little bit of sulfur, and we go to bottle."

She said, "No, no, no. What do you add to it to make it taste so good?" I said there are no fining agents. We cold stabilize it and heat stabilize it, but there's no PVPP, no gelatin, no casein, no isinglass, no skim milk.

She said, "No, there's got to be something you put in it to make it taste good." I said, I don't know, my blood, sweat, and tears. Maybe you're allergic to that. She could not get her head around it.

It's just super, super simple. If you look at any of the wines we make, we generally keep it pretty simple. Like any great wine, every winemaker knows that if you start with good fruit, your job as a winemaker is literally not to mess it up. That's really it, and that's all that we do.

Jim Duane:

You said something interesting. Above a certain Brix, you're more focused on inoculating, and below a certain level, you may just let it go. What's that inflection point where you feel like there's less risk?

Richie Allen:

With some of the younger blocks, to get the flavor we want, we might push it close to 25 Brix at harvest. Those we'll generally add yeast to. It's more of a safety thing, right? We want the ferment to go dry.

If it's an older block that we know really well, it ripens at a lower Brix, and it has the flavor we want, we just let it do its thing.

I have some 45-year-old blocks of Chardonnay that we'll pick at 22 and a half. They finish around 13 to 13.5% alcohol. You would not be able to tell the difference in alcohol compared to something we picked at 25 that's closer to 15.

You'd say, "Wow, that wine's awesome. What's that?" And I'd say, "That's just a really good vineyard." It doesn't matter what the alcohol is; it just tastes fantastic.

We own so many Chardonnay vineyards across Carneros, and we work with so many blocks, that I can literally walk anywhere in Carneros and tell you exactly what the soil type is, who the neighbors are, and what's going on. Carneros is our playground for Chardonnay, and we just know it really well.

Jim Duane:

So Carneros, being in the cooler southern part of Napa Valley, is going to have higher malates.

Richie Allen:

Yep.

Jim Duane:

I kind of think of you as a malate expert, because I only make wine up in St. Helena, and mostly reds. I have so little malate that it's almost something I don't even think about.

I imagine you may have some lots as high as five grams per liter.

Richie Allen:

Oh, absolutely. It very much depends on the block and the soil type. The more we get into the heavier clays and move away from the clay loams, the higher the acids we'll generally see.

It's a balancing act between getting the flavor you want and understanding how much of that total acidity is malic. Because we're going 100% through malo, it becomes a balancing act with some of those high-malic blocks.

How much malic is too much? How much can we adjust the acidity? What's the total TA, and what's the pH?

If we know we're going to put it through malo, and say it's five grams of malic, we know we'll lose two and a half. Now, if it's already eight grams of TA and I want to add two and a half, that's quite often going to bring the pH below three. That's really hard to get through malo, so it becomes this balancing act.

Jim Duane:

I see.

Richie Allen:

So there's a lot of understanding what the components of the acid are at harvest, and how to adjust those to get as close to the target as possible. Not every block does.

Jim Duane:

Right.

Richie Allen:

But that's the beauty of blending, right? I have some blocks that I know will go through. They've got lower malic, maybe they're on a loam soil on the slightly warmer side of Carneros, and there's just less malic. That gives us a little more wiggle room.

Jim Duane:

Obviously you've got to be thinking about where that final wine is going to end up, both in terms of perceived acidity and staying within certain ranges of pH and TA, I assume.

Are you using math and coefficients to look at your TA in context with your malate at the start, like you described, or are you going based on taste and feel?

Richie Allen:

It's a bit of both. There are definitely blocks where you just know through experience. A lot of the original blocks of Rombauer Chardonnay we started with back in the '90s, we still work with today. We own a lot of vineyards, and I've been making Rombauer Chardonnay now for 23 years, so there's a certain feel component to it.

But we also know very much where we'd like to finish to stay within the style, so there is a math component to it. I'd say the math component gets more important when you're at the extremes.

Jim Duane:

Yeah.

Richie Allen:

With really high malic, high TA, and low pH, understanding what you're doing mathematically is very important. The inverse is true when you have really low acidity and really high pH, in knowing how far you can push it by adding acidity. But everything in the middle is kind of done by feel. It just tastes right.

If you had asked me that question 16, 17, 20 years ago, I would have been spouting off number after number after number.

As I've gotten older, I've gotten more confident in my artistic ability to make wine. When I was younger, it was all about the science, the math, and the chemistry, and I'd default back to that every time because I wasn't as confident in my ability.

Now I feel like I've gotten better at the artistic side of it, and I enjoy winemaking a lot more.

Jim Duane:

Don't you think that's kind of a natural progression for a long career in winemaking? I would hope so. I aspire to that, either way.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. I don't know if I'm quite there yet. I've definitely still got a lot to learn.

Jim Duane:

Well, you still have to manage risk.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, that's what I'd say. It's managing risk. But I love it. I have the three wineries, and each one is a special facility.

I have my core team of guys and girls who have been with me a long time. Some of them have been with me as long as I've been at Rombauer, and the rest of the core team has been here at least 15 years. So there's that trust.

We're not a one-person show, if that makes sense. Yes, Richie, you're the head winemaker, but there's a whole team behind me who understand exactly what I want and exactly how I want it done. They're all perfectionists.

It only works because of the people I have. You can't make wine at this quality level and this volume unless you have true professionals working with you who understand what you're trying to do. And every time someone talks about maybe leaving, I freak out a little, I won't lie.

---

Jim Duane:

I have questions about the facilities and production, but just to put a button on Chardonnay, what is your relationship with diacetyl?

Richie Allen:

That's an interesting one. Rombauer Chardonnay has this reputation for being the oaky, buttery Chardonnay, but when you try it in a blind lineup, it's seldom the most oaky or the most buttery.

Diacetyl is interesting. When I first started here, the winemakers couldn't explain to me how the wine got buttery. They said, "Oh, put it through malo, and it'll be buttery." But then I tasted lots in the cellar that had been in barrel a long time and been through malo for a while, and they weren't buttery at all. And I thought, what is going on?

It wasn't until I was working in New Zealand that a winemaker was able to explain it to me. We're not chasing diacetyl. We want that citric metabolism, but we know that once the bacteria finish with the malic, they'll go after the citric, and you get diacetyl as a byproduct.

If you leave it long enough without sulfur, they'll then remetabolize that diacetyl, and it's gone. I honestly think most people confuse the vanilla in the wine from the barrels we're using with diacetyl.

As it gets older, diacetyl does come out in the wine a little bit, but it's not particularly high, and we're not trying to chase it.

Jim Duane:

Are you trying to get away from it? Are you waiting for it to be metabolized?

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We're definitely down in the cellar tasting every lot. Sometimes some of the lots won't get rid of it as much as we would like, but that gives us a tool to blend with.

More often than not, we're not trying to promote that component of the wine, even though we're famous for it. Makes me laugh.

Jim Duane:

Maybe it's like the Mandela effect.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. One of the things about Rombauer is that we were always so focused on making a little bit more wine every year of the wines that people like and that sell out. We just followed that mantra for the last 45 years.

We never had a marketing department. We got our first marketing person in 2017 or 2018, maybe. When you don't have anyone out there telling your story, and it's just a couple of sales guys and the Rombauer family, I think more stuff gets made up about you when you're successful than is actually true.

Jim Duane:

Right.

Richie Allen:

I've heard other winemakers say stuff about Rombauer, like, "Oh, they just do this." I'm like, oh, really? Where'd you hear that? Then they ask, "What do you do?" And I say, "I'm the winemaker at Rombauer," so I know that's not true.

I think there's more stuff made up about Rombauer Chardonnay than any other wine in the world.

Jim Duane:

So how long is the Chardonnay in barrel before bottling?

Richie Allen:

Eight to nine months.

Jim Duane:

Okay, so you're not going over a harvest.

Richie Allen:

No, no. We basically want those barrels empty by the next harvest, so it's an eight-to-nine-month window.

Jim Duane:

Is it all French oak?

Richie Allen:

It's a blend of French and American.

Jim Duane:

Okay.

Richie Allen:

The proportions of French and American are almost a trade secret, I'd say. You deal with coopers, right? The barrel guys see how many barrels I buy, and they think they're all going to retire and move to the Amalfi Coast. And I'm like, I'll take two barrels.

We have such a set program. We know exactly what we like.

Jim Duane:

Right.

Richie Allen:

We're not going to deviate from our barrel program. It's constantly evolving, I won't lie. But usually when we start off with a new cooper, we say, "We'll take two barrels from you. We'll put them in a trial lot, taste them, and evaluate them. If they work, we'll take four the next year."

Usually it's about a seven-year process before we'll take more than five or six barrels from you. So it's a pretty closed group, but it's constantly evolving. There are definitely signature barrels that we love.

Jim Duane:

Like core coopers.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, core coopers have become our yardstick by which all others are judged. Then there's this periphery of a couple thousand barrels from guys we're constantly trialing.

Maybe they don't have the consistency we want, maybe their cooperage sold, or maybe their oak sourcing changed over time, and it's just not working for us now. We're pretty open with them about it. We want very consistent barrels year over year, and if they can't do that, we don't buy barrels from them. It's really simple.

---

Jim Duane:

Okay, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some of these satellite facilities and how they've been a part of Rombauer's growth, because it sounds like you're all over the map.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We have this winery here in St. Helena, where you and I are now. It's the original winery, built in '82. Everything used to come through here.

Back in the day, we used to own half of Frank Family, so we had a lot of Chardonnay barrels stored over there, and the company bottling line was there. We bottled all our wine there.

As Chardonnay and red wine production grew, we started to outgrow this St. Helena facility. So in 2007, we acquired a large building down by the Napa Airport, and over two and a half years, we built a production facility specifically to make Rombauer Chardonnay.

We wanted to keep doing it exactly the same way: same presses, same way of doing things, same temperature control, everything, just more of it. So we purpose built a state-of-the-art facility just for Rombauer Chardonnay.

We put a new bottling line in down there, and that was a fantastic project. One of the things I used to harp on to the Rombauers about was this: we put all this effort into the vineyards, spending millions of dollars managing them, acquiring property, and making sure they're perfect.

We spend all this money on the winery and all this time and effort making the wine. If we don't have a good bottling line, all that money is wasted. So we put in a new state-of-the-art bottling line in 2010 and grew into that facility. A few years later, we started outgrowing our red wine capacity.

Jim Duane:

Can I pause you there? In the Chardonnay facility, do you have zones where you can warm and cool and have differential temperatures?

Richie Allen:

Yep. There are multiple barrel rooms. They can all be chilled down to 47 or warmed up to 85, so as things progress through ferment, we can have the room a little bit warmer. It's about five large barrel rooms, all temperature and humidity controlled.

Jim Duane:

Do you care how long ML takes? Is that a concern for you?

Richie Allen:

We don't. We track it. I'd love it to take exactly nine months, perfectly, but it does what it does.

Jim Duane:

So you would like a long, slow ML?

Richie Allen:

Yeah, in an ideal world, that would be awesome.

Jim Duane:

Why?

Richie Allen:

Because I just want that little bit of CO2, along with stirring the lees, to protect the wine.

Jim Duane:

Okay.

Richie Allen:

So it can just take care of itself.

Jim Duane:

So in that scenario, if you do have a very long ML, then you're not adding any sulfur.

Richie Allen:

Nope, no sulfur.

Jim Duane:

Which is just right before bottling?

Richie Allen:

Yeah, as soon as it gets racked to tank. We stop stirring about two weeks before we rack. It gets racked to tank, and that's the first time it gets sulfur. Usually it's one sulfur add. We know how much works for us.

Technically, if you were to look at Rombauer Chardonnay, the total sulfites are usually around 60 parts.

Jim Duane:

That's pretty awesome.

Richie Allen:

Really, it's a low sulfite wine.

Jim Duane:

Yeah.

Richie Allen:

And that freaks people out. But we don't move it. It's not going from barrel to barrel, and we're not constantly racking it in barrel.

It goes to tank, where we blend it and it's stabilized. It goes from that tank, filtered, to the bottling tank, and then to bottle. It's a five-step process making Rombauer Chardonnay. The less you handle it, the less you have to add.

Jim Duane:

How are you doing cold stabilization?

Richie Allen:

We just chill it. Just get it down, the old school way.

We have a nice big inside building, and all the tanks are inside, so it becomes a very cold room. The room is insulated, and all the tanks are in there. That's just how we do it.

Jim Duane:

Okay.

Richie Allen:

I'm reluctant to step away from traditional methods that have worked so well.

Jim Duane:

Right.

Richie Allen:

You can run it through STARS. Giant wineries back in the '80s were using ion exchange. There are all sorts of things you can do, but it never tastes the same.

We trialed STARS. It's a great technique. I totally understand the science behind it, and I think it's wonderful for certain things. It just doesn't work for Rombauer Chardonnay.

Jim Duane:

Got it.

Richie Allen:

It just doesn't, so we keep it really simple. But yeah, we built that facility.

Jim Duane:

So grapes are coming in and wine's going out from that one facility for Chardonnay. That's pretty awesome.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, okay, it's a turnkey Rombauer Chardonnay facility. We finished building it, and the crush pad was finished for the 2009 harvest. Maybe it was 2010. No, it was 2009.

Then we renovated the original winery in St. Helena. We acquired some of our Zinfandel vineyards in the foothills from our growers, and then started running out of space.

Jim Duane:

For anyone that wouldn't know, that's the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, the Sierra Nevada foothills, Amador County. Except for a couple of blocks from Napa, most of our Zinfandel comes from that region, so our Zinfandel is based on old vine Zin.

We used to truck it over here to St. Helena in refrigerated trucks. As production grew, we outgrew that, so I built a red wine facility next to our Chardonnay facility and was making wine there.

Just as we finished that facility, we started making Sauvignon Blanc, and how quickly that wine grew in popularity really caught us off guard. It was competing with the Zinfandel for space in that facility, so we had to kick the Zinfandel out.

So in 2019, I acquired a winery up in the Sierra Foothills, the old Renwood Winery.

Jim Duane:

And that became...

Richie Allen:

A Rombauer facility. It's our second tasting room. We renovated that. It was in really bad shape, and it cost an arm and a leg to do.

But it's funny, because we actually tried to buy that facility in 2011 and got outbid by Bulgheroni, who has...

Jim Duane:

Oh, Lithology.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, down here by Napa Valley Reserve.

Jim Duane:

Yeah, over by me.

Richie Allen:

The Argentinian billionaire. He outbid us and bought Renwood. Then we came back a few years later and made him an offer, and he said sure. He asked, "Do you want the brand as well?" And we said no, we don't want the brand.

Jim Duane:

No, thank you.

Richie Allen:

So we spent a few years renovating that. We have Rombauer St. Helena, which is the original winery. We have Rombauer Napa, which is the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc facilities. Then we have Rombauer Sierra Foothills.

We have two tasting rooms: the original one in St. Helena and a second one up in the Sierra Foothills.

Jim Duane:

And these are the best views in Napa Valley? I was at Silverado Vineyards before harvest with Alison, doing a podcast.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, Alison's a great friend of mine. I reckon she probably has the second best view.

Jim Duane:

Right. And now it's perfect in November too, with the colors.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. Well, you know, 2020. There were big fires, and we didn't make any red wine here in 2020. We almost lost the winery.

The fire actually started about a mile up the road from here, and I was at work. It was touch and go for a good 36 hours whether we were going to be able to save the winery. Dealing with that was probably one of the scariest things in my life.

Because of the fire, we lost a heap of trees, and our views of the Napa Valley went from being world class to insane. I'll put it that way.

---

Jim Duane:

So are there plans for more expansion at this point?

Richie Allen:

We obviously have capacity at the facilities. Gallo's still asking us to make more, but it really comes down to whether we can find the vineyards and keep the quality the same.

Jim Duane:

So is that kind of the bottleneck to growth?

Richie Allen:

Yeah, the bottleneck to growth for us is finding...

Jim Duane:

Sourcing.

Richie Allen:

Sourcing grapes. Can we find the growers? Can we acquire a vineyard? Finding growers, I would say, is easier, and it's particularly easy right now. You can sort of pick what you want in terms of grapes.

Finding quality vineyards, though, has been easy the last 18 months. We haven't acquired anything. But a couple of years ago, we were outbid on almost everything. It was a little bit crazy.

Jim Duane:

And Gallo bought Stagecoach Vineyard, so that's a great supply of red grapes.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We have a vineyard right next door to that, up on Atlas Peak, just across from Stagecoach, and we do get a little bit of fruit from Stagecoach, which is awesome.

The team up there is great. Brody, the viticulturist, is one of the best vit guys I've ever worked with. We've tinkered with little bits of fruit from there, trying to find the right blocks that work for Rombauer.

If you've been up there, it's one hell of a vineyard. It goes on and on. There are so many sections to it, with different soil types, aspects, and clones.

Jim Duane:

I'm actually doing a podcast with Jan Krupp.

Richie Allen:

Oh, you are?

Jim Duane:

Later this week. He wrote a book, so he's on his promo tour.

Richie Allen:

Oh, well.

Jim Duane:

The book covers that growth and expansion, and that's what I want to talk to him about. How he took on so much risk and expense. They were growing so fast.

Richie Allen:

Oh yeah, it's incredible. We've had our vineyard up there since 2003, when we acquired it, so we've always been neighbors with him. We share a road to our property, and he's always been awesome.

Any time there was road maintenance, he'd say, "Oh, I'll supply the equipment. Can you guys supply some labor?" He was one of the easiest guys in the world to work with. I wish I still got to work with him.

Jim Duane:

I've never seen a vineyard mechanic crew like the one they had up there. Being isolated, everything had to work.

Richie Allen:

They had to have all their own stuff. It is one of those sites. The amount of rock they took out of that vineyard.

This was not a flat valley floor vineyard where you just rip it, put your stakes in, and go. There are steep hillsides, there's rock, and you've got to find the water. That was a passion project for sure.

But the quality of it is incredible. If you go through the Rolodex of people that have made world-class wine off Stagecoach, it's a who's who of the Napa Valley. When you get to go see the site and start to tinker and work with it, you think, wow, I feel pretty lucky.

Jim Duane:

So how much is left in Carneros? It's limited by its geography and what's planted, and then you have other producers sourcing there. There's only so much more you could get from Carneros.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. You're not going to see Rombauer Chardonnay double in production. That's not physically possible.

But there are still plenty of large holdings, large family holdings. There are still a lot of multigenerational family farming companies, like the Lairds and the Sangiacomos, who have big holdings down there. They're two of the people we work most closely with.

There's still opportunity for sure, and there are still good soils available. The challenge with Carneros is finding water. It's so close to the bay that the deep wells all have salt intrusion. There's a lot of boron in the wells down there.

With every property we've acquired down there, the first thing we look at is water. Do we have water to sustain what we want to do with the vineyard? Then we'll look at the soil types and dig our soil pits.

If those all align, we'll try and acquire it. We've found vineyards that have great water but really shitty soil, and it's not going to work for what we want to do. So we're always looking.

Jim Duane:

Do you have any plans for other expansions in terms of winery facilities, or do you think you're pretty well set?

Richie Allen:

We're pretty well set. Honestly, being part of Gallo, a larger organization, gives us a lot of resources we never had before. I spoke about the research team before, but in terms of wineries...

Jim Duane:

Oh, you have the whole ranch area too now.

Richie Allen:

They've leased the ranch out, but they have William Hill, they have Frei over the hill, and they have Martini. They have lots of options if I needed more capacity.

We don't have any new wines coming out per se, but we're always looking. Is there any chance for us to trade up in terms of quality of fruit? Do they have any assets that would work for Rombauer?

I love it. They really do leave us alone, to a degree. We're set up as a separate estate. I still manage all of my vineyards. I don't deal with Gallo's vineyard side or their grower relations.

We work with them, we know them, and we make sure we're not battling each other for the same fruit, but we just do our thing. Joe Gallo has been incredibly supportive of that. From day one, they said, we'll show you everything we have, and you figure out what you need and how we can help.

Jim Duane:

Oh, that's really cool.

Richie Allen:

Don't mess up the joy. But I remember, a couple of weeks after the acquisition was announced, we were also integrating the back-of-house computer systems.

One of the other winemakers, Katie Vogt, who's the winemaker for Pahlmeyer, was asking someone for my phone number. They said, "Oh no, you're not allowed to call anyone at Rombauer. No one's allowed to go visit anyone at Rombauer. Everyone at Gallo has to stay out of Rombauer."

This is stupid. I'm pretty sure she could have my cell phone number and give me a call. We've become really, really good friends now.

I just remember her calling me, and I said, this is so stupid. You have to ask permission to call someone at Rombauer? Here's my cell phone number. Call me anytime you want.

Jim Duane:

That's funny, because when I was trying to get in contact with you, I thought, who do I know? Oh, I'll call Dave Phinney, because he's got connections to Gallo. That's how this worked out.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. I've been in Napa now for 23 years, but I don't know that many winemakers. I know where your facility is, and I recognize you, but we've never met.

I just keep to myself and do my thing. Honestly, I've been so busy the last two decades that socializing hasn't been a high priority. I know a handful of Napa Valley winemakers, but not that many.

---

Jim Duane:

How much are you on the road for marketing?

Richie Allen:

A good amount. Probably at least a week a month.

Jim Duane:

Oh, that's real.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. We have a very loyal fan base for Rombauer, so there's always the request: can we get a winemaker for this event? Being the senior winemaker, I do more than anyone.

Luke and Andrew, the other two senior winemakers below me, do several weeks a year. And Joe, who's my guy up in the foothills, does several weeks a year.

We always joke that we make wine occasionally, and the rest of the time we're performing monkeys for the marketing team. They're very good to us, but we do jump through a lot of hoops to keep the marketing team happy.

But it's fun. We do all sorts of events for our wine club members and our customers. So many wine club members and customers have my cell phone number because I've known them for 20 years. I've done so many events with them, and I've been to their homes for dinner.

Jim Duane:

Where do you like to travel?

Richie Allen:

I don't care. I just like traveling. Where have I been this year? Over the last two years, I've been to Europe twice: the Scandinavian countries, so Finland, Denmark, and Sweden, plus the UK, Dubai, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. Everywhere.

Jim Duane:

That's incredible.

Richie Allen:

Yeah, it's a lot. It's all PR work, right? The thing I love the most, especially traveling outside of the country, has to do with that oaky, buttery Chardonnay reputation we spoke about. It's one of the wines everybody loves to hate.

That always makes me laugh, because if you put the wine in a blind tasting, it always blows people's minds, even other winemakers'.

But when you go overseas, because we don't export a lot of wine, they don't have this preconceived notion of what Rombauer is. When they try it, they love it, because it's just good wine. It's really, really simple. Just make good wine.

Seeing someone try a Rombauer wine for the first time and the smile it puts on their face is the best feeling in the world as a winemaker. Wow, you just made that person's day, literally through a glass of wine. That's a pretty amazing ability, I think.

Jim Duane:

That's incredible. I kind of miss that a little bit, because I'm so stuck in the cellar at Seavey.

Richie Allen:

Because it's just you, right?

Jim Duane:

Yeah.

Richie Allen:

But you guys have a cellar door, right?

Jim Duane:

Yeah, there are a lot of people. It's a beautiful place.

Richie Allen:

I know where it is. It's stunning.

Jim Duane:

People come and kind of fall in love with the place, but I hardly go out at all.

Richie Allen:

You need to get out more.

Jim Duane:

Yeah. Well, for a while I had young kids, so I didn't want to travel at all. But now my kids are a little bit older, and I'm open to it. I travel with the podcast now.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. I have one daughter, and she's 13 now. Early on, when she was really young and it was just my wife at home...

Jim Duane:

Yeah, that's tough.

Richie Allen:

That was hard, and honestly, I did not enjoy it. I'd do whatever I could. I would take a red-eye out and a red-eye back Friday night, just to be there when my family woke up Saturday morning. It's a little easier now, I won't lie.

Jim Duane:

Yeah, right.

Richie Allen:

But it's good fun.

Jim Duane:

I'm going to wrap this up. Is there anything else you're interested in talking about before we finish?

Richie Allen:

No. We can do this again next time and talk about some other wines.

Jim Duane:

All right. I ask this of everyone: what did your childhood smell like?

Richie Allen:

Okay. When I was really young, we were a few hours west of Sydney, up in the Blue Mountains. So a lot of eucalyptus and a lot of fires. Surprise, surprise, being Australia.

My earliest memories are of bushfires, eucalyptus, stinging nettle, and playing in the dirt. Australia has a very particular smell, especially after a summer storm, because it's hot and eucalyptus has a very particular aroma.

That smell before the rain, when it's about to rain, and that smell after the rain, once the sun comes back out, is very unique to Australia.

Jim Duane:

I would love to smell that. I did not know that one.

Richie Allen:

Well, you know that smell right before it rains.

Jim Duane:

Sure.

Richie Allen:

The humidity changes, and the hair on the back of your neck stands up.

Jim Duane:

It's like an electricity in the air.

Richie Allen:

Yeah. In Australia, especially southeastern Australia, the weather comes in these 10 to 14 day cycles. The temperature builds over two weeks, and then a cool change comes through, blowing up from the Antarctic.

You can always tell when the cool change is coming. That smell before the rain and after the rain is a very distinct smell, the smell of water, which is ironic.

Jim Duane:

All right, Richie, this has been great. Thank you.

Richie Allen:

Absolute pleasure.