What the Heck Is A Solera Wine? Left Bend Wines Creates a Sherry-inspired Mashup Red Wine Blend
Wine made like Sherry that's not Sherry
If you live in California you’re probably aware of the infamous San Andreas earthquake fault. The fault line runs north to south, and intersects many places, including the Santa Cruz Mountains wine region in Northern California. This is also where you find Silicon Valley.
Turns out the San Andreas fault takes a left bend within the Santa Cruz Mountains. That feature inspired the name for Left Bend, a boutique winery created by Gary Robinson and Richard Hanke. Left Bend’s boldest wine is Mashup, a non-vintage red blend. What makes Mashup special is that Gary and Richard employ a centuries-old technique used to make Spanish Sherry, called a solera. What the heck is a solera? How did this unique wine happen? Mary Orlin chatted with Gary about the story behind the label.
MO: How did Left Bend Wines come about?
GR: In 2010 I started Left Bend. I had a small backyard vineyard in Los Gatos with 300 vines. I planted Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon so that I could do a little bit of each and then do a blend of the two because it's a popular blend, especially in Australia. I got help from Bill Brousseau, the winemaker at Testarossa Vineyards. He was instrumental in me getting going, and I made the wine in my garage. My focus over time switched to winemaking.
MO: What inspired the name Left Bend?
GR: I'm a geologist and I was looking at maps to come up with a name. Then I read a Wikipedia article about the Santa Cruz Mountains being formed by a left bend in the San Andreas Fault. That very slight leftward bend as it comes up from Los Angeles in the faultline makes the two plates move over time. They crash into each other a little bit because it's not a straight fault. It's a bit of a kerfuffle as the two plates crash into each other and that force lifts the mountains out. So it is a key feature of the fault that helped form the Santa Cruz Mountains.
MO: You met Richard through biking. You are both avid bikers. How then did Richard become involved with Left Bend?
GR: I was part of a bicycling club where I was a ride leader. Richard was trained to do the ride across America. It’s a long ride, so he joined our club and did a lot of riding with us to train for that. We spent a lot of time on bikes together and talking. He was recently retired and was really getting into wine, and he fell in love with the Santa Cruz Mountains and the little vineyards that are cut into the mountain sides, which is a different type of environment than a lot of the big valleys where wines grow. Richard started helping me at Left Bend in 2011 and shortly aftee we became partners.
MO: Tell me about the inspiration for Mashup.
GR: I started making Mashup right away. I didn’t make one the first year because you need a few vintages to get a solera going. So I set aside two or three of my first six barrels for the solera and kept adding barrels each vintage year after that.
Before I started making wine I was a geologist. When I decided I wanted to make wine I wanted to focus on the Santa Cruz Mountains because Richard and I were cycling all those remote backroads through the rugged, remote Santa Cruz Mountains and really learned the area. We knew which vineyards we wanted to purchase fruit from. We started with Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. And while we like tannins, people like smooth wine. So I thought we should ages those wines for a longer time. That’s when I started learning about the solera system and thought we should try it.
I decided this would be something unique and different that nobody really is doing. I started reserving barrels right right away for this project. People thought I was crazy because you know, four or five years before we release our first wine is a long time.
Note: Solera is a traditional method used to make Sherry and certain styles of Port. For Left Bend, each “Version” builds upon the last, by adding another vintage, building upon past vintages. They call it “fractional blending,” a process where some wine from the solera each year is taken from the barrels for bottling. Then the solera barrels are topped off with wine from the new vintage. Over time there is a smaller amount of the very oldest vintages, with newer vintages making up a bigger percentage of the blend. Left Bend’s Mashup V7 has wine going back to 2010, the year Left Bend was founded.
MO: Why call this wine Mashup?
GR: Richard and I love music. Mashup is a term for different songs mashed together. It's also a term for taking different pieces of code and putting it together. Because of where we are in Silicon Valley, Mashup made sense from that perspective as well. Our wine is a mashup of years and a mashup of different grapes.
MO: What makes the cut to put aside for the solera for you?
GR: The wine needs to have some tannins in it to have good aging potential. I also want to add some fruitiness each year to keep it fresh.
MO: When did you release your first version of Mashup?
So your first mash up version? One was you started putting aside barrels in 2010. And so was it 2014 Because it was four vintages from what I read.
GR: We released V1 Mashup in 2015. It was made up of four vintages, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
MO: So now you're on your seventh Solara and there are 10 vintages. You sent me Version 7 and Version 6 to compare. So let’s taste, starting with V6.
GR: That definitely has structure and chewiness on the tannins. It's going to age really well.
MO: There’s lots of red and black fruit here and a bright acidity. It’s savory with anise and black pepper. To me this is a more velvety wine.
Okay, on to Mashup Version 7.
GR: We just released this in October 2023.
MO: V7 is more fruit forward in the nose, with more intense black fruits. V6 had some red fruit but V7 is all black fruit, along with violet, lavender and bluebell floral notes. I also get some herbs like sage and thyme, black pepper, anise and cinnamon and a graphite stone-like minerality.
GR: V7 has a little higher oakiness to it but I think the oak is nicely integrated.
MO: I really like these wines! I didn't know what to expect. The blends are really interesting, and the versions are very different, in terms of the fruitiness, the savoriness, the spice and the herbal notes. Now I want to go out and get some barbecue.
MO: Looks like you have a playlist for each version on Spotify. Who chooses the songs and the playlist?
GR: I chose them all, just to express the Mashup wine brand being unique and different. I tend more towards indie rock but this is a mix of songs I listen to. There's one song I just love right now called Cattails by Big Thief. She's an amazing songwriter.
MO: How can people get their hands on Mashup?
GR: We created a Mashup wine club. The wine is sold in three-packs ($225 or $75 per bottle). Club commitment is a minimum one three-bottle shipment. There’s also other perks.
MO: Are you working on Version 8?
GR: I need to bottle Version 8 in the next couple. of months. I have all the barrels here and have tasted them several times this year, Now I need to start making up some blends. One of the most fun parts of the whole project is to create the blends and then choose between them and taste how the final wine comes together.
For more on Mashup, visit MashupWine.com, where you can join the club and download the playlist from Spotify, Pandora or Tidal.