Donkey & Goat ‘The Gadabout’ White 2020
Location: United States, California
Winemaker: Jared and Tracey Brandt
Grapes: Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Vermentino, Chardonnay
Winemaking: The wines are fermented in different vessels, blended and bottled unfined unfiltered, and with little addition of sulfur.
From the Importer Jenny & François: ‘Gadabout’ means a habitual pleasure seeker. A person who travels often, or to many different places, especially for pleasure. This wine will always be white, delicious, and very well priced. Chardonnay-based blend with varying proportions of different Rhone-Valley white grapes like eg. Picpoul, Marsanne, etc.—a blend of different vineyards and appellations that the winery works with
Zippy and fresh, this is an ode to stone fruits and citrus of all kinds. As Mediterranean as California can get!
Having turned their backs on working in the technology sector at the start of the new millennium, Jared and Tracey took the plunge and followed their strong desire to dedicate themselves to making wine. Instead of learning the secrets of winemaking at home, they decided to make a pilgrimage to France, where they spent their sabbatical year interning under the legendary Rhone Valley vigneron Eric Texier. Eric’s reputation for his strong opinions in all matters wine appealed strongly to them and despite some challenging moments (including some heavy flooding over several days), they learned what they needed by following the grape from vine to table.
Their French adventure also brought the winery its name: recalling how one of Eric’s neighbors in France had trained a donkey to help keep unwanted vegetation at bay, Jared had been intrigued to know why he also had a goat. It was explained that goats, due to their calm temperament, help placate other animals. Similar to this synergy, Tracey was the calming “goat” to Jared’s stubborn “donkey”.
They returned back home in 2003 and started to work on founding a winery of their own. With Donkey and Goat being established as an urban winery in Berkeley in 2004, they quickly came to the fore of the natural wine movement in California. Keen to continue with the Rhone varieties that also thrive in the warm California climate, they carefully select growers working with as little environmental impact as possible, such as Filigreen Farm in Anderson Valley who use no copper sulfate in the vineyard. “If it can’t be ingested it doesn’t go into the wine,” states Jared, firmly.
Another thing they’re extremely careful of is the picking date since keeping acidity can be quite a challenge in the hot California climate: “We believe the only way to call a pick date is by examining the plant and its fruit in the vineyard, tasting the berries, evaluating the skins and seeds, and ultimately going with our gut,” Jared explains. And they also use the old trick of picking twice – first for acidity, the second time a bit later for aromatic richness, as passed on by Monsieur Texier.
The wines are obviously born with nothing but their native yeasts, a practice that they believe to bring on a superior flavor profile. This is also why they “add nothing at the vat after crush save the occasional minuscule dose of SO2 if we have a rainy year where rot is an issue. No enzymes to enhance color and extraction, no tannin, no commercial yeast, no nutrients to feed the super yeast.”
All these convictions sound less unusual nowadays with natural wine firmly in position, but holding them more than a decade ago wasn’t so commonplace then. This fact actually gave birth to the Donkey & Goat manifesto, arising out of Tracey’s fierce email to a wine buyer, back in 2009: “We make our wines for the table, not the cocktail glass…”, Tracey starts the impassioned midnight rant (you can read it in total on their website, it does a great job explaining their approach) ending on “I do hope if nothing else I’ve managed to convey we are hugely passionate about what we are doing and why we are doing it.” One hundred percent, we’d say. And if you’re still not sure, try tasting their aromatic skin-contact Ramato Pinot Gris or chuggable New Glou, next time you’re looking for a new side to California, that should do it…