Lodi and West Sacramento Wine Visits, May 2022, Part 3a - Baker Family Wines
I’ve posted a portion of Part 3 of a report on a three-day May wine tour with Eric Anderson of Grape-Nutz to visit vintners in Lodi and West Sacramento. The full version of this report is on the Grape-Nutz.com website:
Lodi and West Sacramento Wine Visits, May 2022 – Part 3
Baker Family Wines
Haarmeyer Wine Cellars / Commune Regional Wines / Perch Wine Company
Jeremy Wine Company
Baker Family Wines
Eric and I pulled into a small industrial park in West Sacramento, and found the door for Baker Family Wines, our first visit for the day. This is the winery of former major league baseball star – and current manager – Dusty Baker and his family. I’d met Baker Family winemaker Chik Brenneman when their wines were made on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay – I helped bottle their wines on a few occasions, and even met Dusty there once. The winery moved to West Sacramento in 2019, as the location is more convenient for both Chik and Dusty. I was curious to see their new place, so I got in touch with Chik and was able to arrange a visit. After Eric and I walked into their tasting room – we were visiting before official tasting room hours – we initially had a little difficulty finding Chik, but eventually located him in the adjacent winery office, and he welcomed us in.
Chik has a long background in wine. After receiving a master’s degree in viticulture and enology from UC Davis in 1998, he worked for Amador Foothill Winery and Easton / Terre Rouge in Shenandoah Valley, and later at Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi in Lodi. In 2006 he went to work at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology, heading up their in-house winery – he retired from there in 2019 to focus on the Baker Family wines.
Chik and Dusty met at Woodbridge while Chik was there and Dusty was a consumer brand ambassador for the wine label. Dusty, whose family lived in the Sacramento area when he was a teen, owns property near Granite Bay in Placer County in the Sierra Foothills, and he asked Chik to consult when he was planning to plant a vineyard there. In 2007 “Dusty’s Vineyard” was planted, with just over 120 vines on about 1 acre, all 877 clone Syrah. Chik continued working with Dusty, making wine from his vineyard once it produced its first crop in 2010. Though the small production was initially intended for friends and family, the quality was so good that Dusty became interested in starting a commercial winery with Chik as the winemaker. He was initially hesitant, but eventually they formed a partnership for the wine business, and later brought in Hank Aaron (a longtime friend of Dusty’s) and friends Thomas and Joyce Moorehead. The winery was established in 2012, and the wines were first made at the Treasure Island Wines facility in 2013.
The Baker Family Wines production facility and tasting room opened in late 2019 in West Sacramento. Chik noted that the city was easy to work with as far as securing the necessary approvals. Tastings were initially held in a corner of the main winery space, but they later moved their tasting room into an adjacent space. Baker Family shares the tasting room space with Bike Dog Brewing, a craft brewery that’s located in the same industrial park. Chik told Eric and me that the winery managed to do well while Covid restrictions were in place due to their growing wine club, and that they also became a destination for urban wine tasting in the area, holding outdoor tastings and sales in a parking lot adjacent to winery space.
Chik led us into the production space of the winery – like many other smaller wineries I’ve seen, it’s a little cramped but laid out to be very functional. Chik told us that, other than inoculating fruit with selected yeast strains for fermentation, the winemaking for Baker Family wines is low-intervention. White wines are all fermented in jacketed, temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks for 2-3 weeks, and most are aged in stainless steel for about 3-4 months before bottling. They’re aged on light lees but with no stirring, and they don’t go through malolactic fermentation. Reds are all fermented in small bins and aged entirely in French oak, with mostly older barrels.
Eric Anderson with Baker Family winemaker Chik Brenneman
We all headed back into the tasting room, where Chik had set out some of the winery’s current releases for Eric and me to taste at a table. He started us with the 2019 Sierra Foothills Proprietary White – sourced from Shenandoah Valley, this is 85% Sémillon and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. Chik noted that the 2016-2018 vintages of the Proprietary White were entirely Sémillon, and that it was his wife Polly who urged him to add Sauvignon Blanc for a blend. This one displayed bright citrus fruit, spice, and a touch of fresh herbs, with medium body and a long clean finish. The 2021 Lodi Proprietary White was next, with a blend of 60% Sémillon and 40% Sauvignon Blanc – this showed a more herbal character along with the citrus aromas plus a floral note, with lively texture and finish finish.
We followed these two blends with a couple of 100% Sauvignon Blancs. The 2021 Capay Valley Sauvignon Blanc is from a new vineyard source for the winery, in the hills to the northwest of Sacramento. With citrus, fresh herbs, spice, and a leesy note, it had medium-light weight on the palate and a crisp finish. The 2021 California Sauvignon Blanc was sourced mostly from Capay Valley fruit plus some from Lodi, and aged both in barrel and stainless steel. Chik described this wine as being in a “Fumé Blanc” style. This featured bright stone fruit and citrus aromas along with a waxy note and a touch of vanilla, with more body and richer finish than the previous wine. We tasted one more white wine, the 2020 Yolo County Albariño. Chik told us that this is from a Portuguese clone of the variety that he had planted in 2009 at the 3.5-acre vineyard at UC Davis. Displaying floral aromas along with stone fruit and tropical fruit, spice, and a saline quality, this had medium weight with fine acidity on the palate and finish.
We moved on to a couple of Pinot Noir wines, starting with the 2021 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir Rosé – the fruit was sourced from Paraiso Vineyard. Made by whole-cluster press and fermented cold, this had strawberry, rhubarb, and floral notes, medium-light body with a lively mouthfeel and finish. Chik noted that they’re also using some of the fruit from this vineyard for sparkling wine. Next was the 2020 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, sourced from Campana Ranch near Windsor, with Pommard, 115, and 667 clones – this was the second vintage of Pinot from this vineyard for Baker Family. It had upfront aromas of black cherry and spice, with savory herbal and tea leaf notes and undertones of vanilla, good structure and a long, lively finish with fine tannins. Chik told us that the different clones for the 2020 wine were blended upfront and aged together, but that he kept them separate in 2021 for blending later. He also made a separate blend of the 2020 Pinot Noir for the Corti Brothers label, called “Moorehead Reserve”.
Baker Family winemaker Chik Brenneman
We finished our tasting at Baker Family Wines with two bigger reds. The fruit for the 2018 Sierra Foothills Zinfandel was sourced from organically-farmed Cedarville Vineyard in Fair Play – Chik mentioned that they’d started getting Zin fruit from there in 2016. This displayed bright red fruit, lots of spice and notes of black pepper and earth, with a medium-full mouthfeel and a long finish with moderate tannins. Our final wine was the 2017 Russian River Valley “Walkoff Red” – a blend of 53% Zinfandel and 47% Syrah from the Chalk Hill region, the wine featured ripe darker berry fruit, spice, earth, and mocha, with a mouthfilling texture and fine tannins on the finish.
Chik told us that the winery’s current annual production is around 1,200 cases, with about 85-90% of that sold direct-to-consumer through the tasting room and wine club. They sell some through distribution, to Corti Brothers market and a few others, and make some wine – like the Pinot Noir mentioned above – for the Corti Brothers label. Their largest-production wine is the Proprietary Red blend, with the next-largest being the Sierra Foothills Zinfandel. Another Baker Family bottling is their “Hammerin’ Hank” Cabernet Sauvignon, named for baseball great and winery partner Hank Aaron. And what about the Syrah from Dusty’s Vineyard? There’s very little of this special wine to go around – typically only two barrels are made each year. I have to mention the clever and distinctive design of the Baker Family wine labels, depicting the bright red seam of a baseball – Dusty’s daughter Natosha created the design.
Eric and I really enjoyed visiting with Chik at Baker Family Wines. He has an amiable and easy-going personality and it was a pleasure talking with him. Working with a number of grape varieties from very different growing regions, Chik has done a very nice job with all of them. The wines all displayed great balance – not too lean, not too big, not too oaky or tannic, and all very tasty. My favorites of the wines we tried included the 2021 Lodi Proprietary White, 2020 Yolo County Albariño, 2020 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, and 2018 Sierra Foothills Zinfandel. The Baker Family wines are well worth checking out, and if you’re in the Sacramento area and looking for something a little different to do, a visit to their tasting room would be a fine choice.
