A Glass With: Rodrigo Soto and Mai Errazuriz

You each got into wine in different ways. Would you be happy to tell me a bit about how you each got into wine?

Rodrigo Soto: Should I start? When I was a student, I worked as a waiter for many years. At that time, sommeliers weren’t a thing, so the waiter made the wine recommendations. I also studied agronomy and realised that I never pictured myself working in a confined space. I was trying to find a profession that would integrate the outdoors a little bit, so I majored in winemaking and viticulture. Unfortunately, I was not a very good student. To put it kindly, I favoured the social part rather than the academics! At the end of my degree, I had to present a thesis based on some research, and the thesis subject was assigned based on my grades. My grades were very poor, so I got a leftover subject, and that leftover subject was organic farming.

I tried to find a place to do my research. At the time, there were only two hectares of organic vineyards in Chile, and the winemaker was a guy named Alvaro Espinoza [described by Wine Spectator as “arguably one of the country’s best winemakers” ] Álvaro has had a huge impact on Chilean wine. He was a pioneer in bringing organics to Chile, and we really connected, so he gave me the opportunity to do my research and start working with him afterwards. That's where I did my first internship, my first harvest – it’s how it all started.

I really like travelling, so I asked Alvaro if there was any possibility of doing an internship abroad. He picked up the phone in front of me and called Paul Dolan [of Fetzer Vineyards, a pioneer of organic and regenerative viticulture in the US]. Paul immediately answered and said, "Yeah, bring him on." I met Alan York at Fetzer, who was very influential in my career and became a dear friend. Alan was a very important biodynamic consultant. He was starting to reach his career peak, yet he was very kind and very funny as well. We became close, and that's how I started getting interested in biodynamics. Through Fetzer, I also interned at Wither Hills in New Zealand. I worked with a brilliant and generous man called Brent Maris. At the end of that experience, he passed me some car keys and said, “I rented this car for you; I would really like you to get to know my country.” He rented the car for me for a month, and I started meeting incredible people, I still feel very lucky. 

That has been the theme in my career. to be very rich in opportunities and experiences through the nice people that I have met in the wine industry.

Once I returned to Chile, I interviewed for a new project that the Matetic family were starting in San Antonio, which was a completely new appellation at the time. In the interview, I asked if I could present what I had learnt over the last two years, and I prepared a slideshow - a real slideshow with slides! - for them to see what biodynamics can do to a property when you put it all together. They got very excited and decided to do it. They asked who could help us. So, I said, “I know Alan York. I think he's the lead consultant in the world right now, and he may be interested in coming down to Chile to work with us.” And he did. That's how we brought Biodynamics to Chile for the first time. Which was a brilliant moment, and obviously, that gave me a lot of exposure.

I'm very grateful for that opportunity and when the wines were released, they received great accolades and endorsements. The project was very well funded and very different from what Chile was doing at the time. It was a niche project, and that's how I got the chance to meet a person who talked about terroir like nobody else: Pedro Parra. I was Pedro's second client! So, the two of us were just goofing out in soil pits and trying to understand what was going on in the ground. Clearly, nobody knew or had a clue, but there was an intention at least.

But, then suddenly, I got very distracted because I met this lady at a rave on New Year's Eve in 2003…

(L) Rodrigo Soto (R) From left to right: Jacques Lardière (of Louis Jadot), Rodrigo Soto, Alan York, Pedro Parra.

Which leads us nicely to ask: Mai, how did you get into wine, and what led you there?

Mai: Very different. I got into wine as a consumer. I studied business in Valparaiso, Chile, and wine was always a part of what we were drinking. Of course, we were drinking very inexpensive wine, but I certainly enjoyed it. It was always part of the meal. Even if we were on a budget, there was always money allocated to having wine.

I moved to New York and worked for a bank there for six years. With a little bit more budget and access to better wines, I started appreciating wine more as a beverage. But it really wasn't until I met Rodrigo in New York that I realised that it was so much more fascinating than just the beverage itself.

My appreciation for wine drove me to really go deeper and appreciate the people behind the farming and to look at it in a more thoughtful way.

I got very lucky that through Rodrigo, I was able to meet all these lovely people. It's the people and all the hard work behind the scenes, the farmer who was in the vineyard or the winemaker who sold it to me. So, I realised I wanted to change my career and get into wine, but on the marketing side. I liked the story angle, but I did not know anything about production. So, I started in marketing, and I was very lucky I had opportunities to work with some great producers.

What was the catalyst that made you decide to work together?

Rodrigo: We’ve thought about this project for a long time. We met in 2003 and were married in late 2005. I got to a point in my job where I felt like my knowledge was becoming the limiting factor for the project. So, I needed to keep educating myself, and I wanted to see more things.

Alan York was such an important person in my life. During Alan's last visit, I was looking at some projects in the north of Chile, and we discussed some opportunities. He said, "Rodrigo, I will follow you wherever you want to go, but what about you coming to the US?" I had never thought about that. The US was where I did my internships, but I never thought that I could have a serious job opportunity. 

In 2006, Mai and I moved to California. We started learning about the culture and the wine industry here, and we realised that it was very common for people to have a little side project. We loved that idea and started talking about it, but that wasn’t the right time. We came back to Chile for a period in 2012, but in 2018 I got another opportunity to come back to the US.  

We thought that maybe this was the time to finally do our little project. Being in the US makes it so much more feasible because the relationship with growers is very different. You don't need to own the land, which is very intense in terms of capital and stuff like that. So, we thought, let's do it. Shortly after we arrived in the US, we started the process and tried to see if we could find something that we connected with, and if something clicked, maybe that could be a project.

Mai: We found our concept in Moon Mountain AVA, and it felt very special to us: mountain wines, sticking to two varieties. California's environment is full of entrepreneurship, while, at the time, Chile's was driven by big corporations. You do have some people who can do it, but in Sonoma, it just felt more welcoming to be able to go about and do something without having to start from scratch. The system is set up for you, so that was nice.

Rodrigo: Through the trips that I have done with Pedro and the conversations that we have; I noticed a trend toward rediscovering places. There's a tendency to go to the new and to be what I call the engineer. In ecology, there's a term that I really like; you have the engineered solutions, and you have the natural solutions.

In California, vineyards tend to be very engineered because infrastructure is important. They like doing things well. The materials are excellent. Everything needs to be super laser-straight, and the old seems to be looked down on a little bit.

When we started looking for properties, consistently, these vineyards in the mountains were being ignored. They were on a dry farm, and that was considered a handicap. They were old, which was considered another handicap because they had a few missing vines here and there. And, of course, it follows the topographic curves, so it's not even. 

I thought – that’s brilliant! That's exactly what we want. Those imperfections will probably translate into complexity in the wines.

 I think that's a benefit of having a lens that is not local because you can see things from a different perspective.

What makes Sonoma such a special area of California?

Rodrigo: The mountain, for us, is important. I say that with a lot of meaning, that's our background. That's where we come from, and that has been at our backs all day in Chile; the mountains have always been there.

I have also learned, working with Pedro, the importance of working in places that have a rock component, it makes wines interesting. Through biodynamics, I have learned that the reason why it's interesting is that those wines normally have a special energy. And that energy, I think, makes mountain wines way more interesting than those from the valley floor.

But we also like the laid-back energy of Sonoma. It has a coolness itself that we enjoy as people as well. People are connected to the place, and they love the place. And I think that is something that resonates with us.

 Mai: The only thing that I would add is that I think we were also very lucky to find these older sites within Sonoma. We were able to find these little pockets of older, dry-farmed vines with higher elevation in the Moon Mountain AVA. So, we just fell in love with these places.

Rodrigo: I think that in the New World in general, the industry is young. So sometimes, the wrong pressures get in the way when trying to get the return on investment of your real estate. That mindset doesn't allow you to have an older vineyard because it won’t produce as much as it should for the value of that land. Elements like that put the wrong decision-making process in place. Sonoma has a little more tolerance for that. 

I think that the beauty is in finding these gems and if we can polish them, we can find something interesting there.

There's also an opportunity to work collectively with the other producers in the area. When you become part of a new appellation like Moon Mountain AVA [established in 2013], if everybody's in the same mindset, you can do interesting things. And there's a lot of desire to bring Moon Mountain, as an appellation, to an interesting place. I think that we can contribute and collectively work with other producers so that we can achieve that.

In other areas that have been more developed, there are fewer ways we can contribute. Sometimes, when the script is written, there are only very few additions that you can make, but where it's not, there's so much room for creativity as well. It’s important to keep it loose because the best is still to come.

I think this is a good segue into talking about your two vineyards because they're both really special.

Rodrigo: Both properties were planted in the early 1970s, and the vineyards follow the topographic curves. They have been dry-farmed since day one. And I think that is the most fascinating thing.

I've been working with biodynamics all my career, and I consider myself very, very lucky because of that. However, I have not worked with dry-farmed vineyards very much. Only once before, with a vineyard in the Apalta Valley in Chile. The wines were phenomenal, but I never understood exactly why. Now that I'm working with dry-farmed vineyards, especially with Chardonnay, there's a salinity in this wine that I’ve not tasted before in California. The level of graphite that you taste in the Cabernet Sauvignon is also amplified. 

I realised there must be something special about the way the plants adapt to the site, which develops the flavours of the mountain.

One of the things that I always discussed with Alan was the power of irrigation, and it's a double-edged sword. We have always been criticised by the old world for utilising irrigation, and they’re right. It's a very powerful tool, but what it does is delay the growing cycle, shifting the metabolism of the vines into something else. So, you're losing part of the essence of the place because of your farming techniques. I am not trying to be a fundamentalist, but I am trying to really get back to the basics of farming.

When you get into that, you realise that it doesn't get more real than having a dry farmed vineyard in terms of the flavours of the place because you cannot alter them. Because you have fewer tools to work with through the season, you need to have the right pruning. That’s another conversation that I've been blown away by over the last five years, particularly working with Marco Simonit. Marco is for pruning what Pedro Parra is for soil mapping and I will say that both those elements are equally important biodynamic farming tools.

I remember I was inside a pit many years ago, and it was very silty terroir. Pedro grabbed the roots in his hands and said, “Rodrigo, you’ve got to feel and think like a vine. How would you feel if you were in this silty terroir?” And I said, “I would feel very thirsty, Pedro.” He said, “Exactly. These plants are very thirsty, and that's why you have hard tannins.” It's brilliant. It makes so much sense.

I will always remember when Marco took me aside one day after working with him on vineyard pruning for a while, and he said, “Look at your workers now, Rodrigo. They're not workers anymore. They're sculptors.” And they were. 

You could see the language and the connection between the hands of a person and the vine, and it was like seeing them dancing. It's a very powerful connection when you get to that point, and not everybody can see this, but when you get to that point, you're starting to get in sync with the place.

Today, everybody wants to be regenerative because it is obvious that's the direction that the planet needs to go. But it is one thing to talk about it, and another thing to be able to play the music and dance with it.

Since you don’t currently own vineyards, how have you applied your understanding of pruning and site to the vineyards you work with at Far Mountain?

Rodrigo: We do have an influence. This is part of the challenge. I have worked with growers before, and there is a cultural aspect that needs to be bridged. It takes time, but we're going in the right direction. With some growers, you're going to have more affinity, and they're going identify more with what we're proposing. With others, it takes a little bit longer. But I think that it's undeniable. 

The world needs to go in a certain direction. And when you can demonstrate the beauty of it with the result, the beauty of the wine, it's undeniable that it is the right farming technique.

Biodynamics create a personal connection between the farmer and his property. That's the essence of it because the energy component of biodynamics comes from the owner of the place within their property. You're trying to create that energy and the relationship with a grower is different. I recognise that. So, in that sense, that's where we need to really stay close to them so that we can facilitate the knowledge and the understanding so that we can get as close as we can to the full philosophy of it.

We are also looking at other properties. We're preparing a couple of vineyard designates from iconic vineyards. However, it is important that we work with vineyard managers and farmers who are very much in sync with what we're talking about.

Are they already working biodynamically, or would it be a conversion?

Rodrigo: One of them is working biodynamically, which is called the Nannery. Another one I'm going to be working with very closely is Montecillo. Montecillo is a historic property in the Moon Mountain District. The third property that we're working with is called Monte Rosso, which is one of the other very well-known properties in the region. 

How does the topography of the two properties you currently work with differ, and how does this affect the wines?

Rodrigo: Bald Mountain is at the peak of the Mayacamas, a mountain range that separates Napa from Sonoma. The mountains create a bowl of very volcanic terroir, and there's a tremendous amount of basalt. These are the kinds of things that caught my attention. I'm still trying to fully understand the terroir, but I think that we're getting close in terms of the importance of the fracture and the size of the boulders and the rocks. That’s what allows the roots to go deep, but also, that's where the roots are working with the rock to create the soil.

That's a beautiful understanding, and it comes from biodynamics. There's always this conversation about the soil maker being the root system that is taking the minerals, decomposing the rocks, and creating the clay. And you can really see it in action in places like that.

These vineyards are in the middle of nowhere, at the top of the mountain, and being dry-farmed only proves that if you have good roots that can go deep, the vines don’t only survive, they thrive. I think that the Chardonnay shows this in terms of the salinity and the way that it preserves its acidity. We love talking about acidity in the New World, that's where you can really create an impact. We have plenty of sunshine, so ripeness is not a problem, but it’s how you preserve the freshness that’s key.

Alta Vista is a section of the mountain where the basalt is in a very advanced stage of decomposition. So, there are a lot of fractures in the rock. That's why we call the wine “Fission” because it's so evident. You can see it everywhere. I mean, you scratch the rocks with your finger, and they break apart. It's that interaction that can give you very dry tannins if you neglect your fermentations and over-extract, but it also gives you the graphite that is so important for the wines. That’s the signature of the mountain; that iodine, that graphite, all those elements that you can taste in the wines, and they're very distinct, which gives you that verticality in the wines that make them very attractive, which is almost the opposite of what you get in the valley floor. There is more opulence and plush, but there's no tension.

Really, the beauty of these wines is the tension that is generated by the rock. That’s what I call energy. The energy that you feel in the wines, because you can feel where they came from.

What winemaking decisions do you make to translate that to the final wine?

Rodrigo: Early in my career, I thought that it was very important to learn as many winemaking techniques as I could. But the older I get, I realise that the less you do, the better.

I believe in low intervention, not only because I realised that the most interesting aspect of winemaking is to respect the fruit. There's another layer in the conversation, which is the ageing process. I think it's very important to be very careful with that and to redefine the proper ageing for this location and this fruit in particular. In terms of the winemaking process through the fermentations, the less, the better. You don't want to under-extract, and I feel that these varieties need a little bit of extraction to show the verticality and the place. But, at the same time, you can’t overdo it. I believe that SO2 is important in discrete amounts to preserve the integrity of the wine during the winemaking process and the ageing. But apart from that, it's minimal intervention. I don’t think you need to add anything, just keep it as natural as it can be.

Mai: One thing that has also helped us is, being very focused as we're just working with just two varieties, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, from two specific sites. So, I think focus has been helpful to show that you don’t have to do too many things. We can do a couple of things and do it really well and to a very detailed level.

Where do you see the project going? Do you have visions of Far Mountain becoming something bigger?

Mai: We started very small and through the years, we've grown bit by bit. But I think we like the idea of staying manageable. What I personally find fascinating is expanding into other vineyard designates. I think with that, we can really showcase a broader perspective of the mountain. Not just these two expressions but Moon Mountain AVA on a broader scale.

Rodrigo: Moon Mountain AVA is a small appellation, and we want to be specialists in that appellation. There is a tendency to have diversity in your portfolio, to have one wine from Moon Mountain and another from Sonoma Mountain and the other one from Sonoma Valley, and I think that our desire is to be really focused on Moon Mountain and not only grow with the appellation but be one of the specialists.

We don't have the ambition of creating something very big. We want to create at a human scale. At the same time, the better that we can get, I think it will continue adding value to what we're doing rather than using scale and get the wines to be as deep as we can in terms of experience and profile and understanding this region, which has a lot of diversity as small as it is. When you start peeling the layers of complexity from the mountain, you find a lot of differences.

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