Today, we bring you a conversation with the charismatic John Bargetto.
He is president and director of winemaking at Bargetto Winery, the oldest continuously operating winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Top of mind was finding out how their 96-point Mount Eden Clone Pinot Noir – the most critically acclaimed wine in our Pinot Collection – packs so much feeling into one bottle.
He also tells us about crossing paths with some of the most influential figures in California Pinot Noir; his quirky yet wise approach to education; and his newly launched boutique label.
Bargetto's annual production is a solid 30,000 cases, but they only produced seven barrels of the 2023 Mount Eden Pinot.
John earned his winemaking degree at UC Davis, and an MBA at the University of Notre Dame. His brother Martin now serves as marketing director, and sister Loretta handles finance. Their winemaker is Keegan Mayo, who spent nine years at Testarossa before starting at Bargetto in 2017 as assistant winemaker.
The winery and tasting room comprise a cluster of cozy buildings that feel like they grew naturally into the landscape. This is a blessed tetrad of a location: at the base of the mountains, lovely views of Soquel Creek, minutes from downtown Santa Cruz, and three miles from the beach.
* * *
Let’s start at the beginning, since Bargetto has a strong family history. A few generations back, two Bargetto brothers came to the U.S. from Italy, and they brought winemaking knowledge with them?
Up in the hills above Torino – the capital city of Piemonte – there are the towns of Asti and Alba and Castelnuovo Don Bosco, where my people come from. My father always made this statement, and I thought it was an exaggeration until I went to Italy and researched it: Our family were winemakers for 300 years in the same area. Dolcetto was grown in their town for hundreds of years – you know, the Italians are very traditional – so it’s likely they were involved with that grape.
People sometimes ask me, “Did they bring vine cuttings with them when they came?” No! They were hungry. They were poor. They were peasants, and, dare I say, of minimum education. In Italy, there was always political instability. The Gold Rush was in the Italian mind – and a few decades later, they started to hear about the wine boom. So they had one thing in mind: to get to California. In 1891, Giuseppe, the father, brings eldest son Phillip with him, who was 17. They get on a ship out of France. They have some kind of a letter of appointment to go work at the leading, largest winery in California at the time, Casa Delmas. They needed Italian workers who knew about wine. The younger son, John, came a few years later.
Nice to know you’re needed.
Yes. And in California, we have this beautiful Mediterranean climate. In Northern Italy, they have “grandida.” Around September, as the cold air starts to settle down from the Dolemiti, they can get hail the size of golf balls, sometimes bigger, and it would strip fruit off the vine. Still does sometimes. Imagine, you work a whole year, you’re 30 days away from picking, and you’ve got the damn hailstorm.
So California felt really full of potential for them. Phillip and John ultimately started their own winery in Soquel Creek in 1933. Then, fast forwarding a bit, John’s son Lawrence – your dad – introduced modern technology, and also brought Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and even mead into the lineup?
Yes, and as we were starting our Pinot Noir program, we were fortunate to be advised by André Tchelistcheff.
A true legend! Many would say the father of California wine. How did that come about?
I became the young winemaker here, fresh out of Davis, and I said what the hell – I was so brazen – I called up André on the phone. I had known him from a distance when I was working [at Jordan Winery in Sonoma County] – and asked if he would consult with me. I knew he liked working with young winemakers.
I want to come back to that, but first I have to say: Your 2023 Mount Eden Clone Pinot is phenomenal – it has so much substance and atmosphere. I kept smelling it like a perfume. Wine Enthusiast called it “suave in texture and easygoing in enjoyment” and “explosive in an elegant way.” It left me wondering how you got so much feeling into the bottle.
We have four different clones of Pinot – Pommard, a Dijon, the Martini… and our most exquisite is that Mount Eden. Paul Masson, the winemaker from Burgundy, brought it to the region – so we can thank the Frenchman.
In the late 1800s, Masson carried over cuttings – rumored to be either from his friend Louis Latour or the revered Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – and planted them in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His protégé, Martin Ray, expanded the site into what is today Mount Eden Vineyards.
We decided to grow it in our vineyard because, of course, I fell in love with it when I tasted it. Surprisingly, it really hasn’t moved out of Santa Cruz that much.
All the more reason for our collectors to snap up the last of our bottles. Your Regan Vineyard has a long, cold growing season?
Yes, so all those delicate flavors can develop.
Where does the vineyard’s name come from?
That’s my mother. Thirty-five years ago, we named the vineyard after Mom, who was a San Francisco classy woman: Beverly Una Regan Bargetto.
There was something humid-tasting about that wine, in a wonderful way, which made me think of a coastal forest when spring turns to summer.
There’s something in the Mount Eden. It isn’t just straight fruit. It’s not just mushroom and pomegranate. There’s something more complex there. It’s full, it’s rich, it isn’t insipid, it’s not thin. There’s a texturalness to it. And, a deep color for a Pinot. So all these things come together, all the senses.
Going back to starting your Pinot program… did Tchelistcheff have any significant influence on the Bargetto style?
He said to me, you have to understand something about Pinot. The enjoyment is different from other wines. So much of it is in the aroma. Don’t just look at it, drink it, and taste it. Smell it!
That’s part of Pinot’s interest and mystique. I like the word “intrigue.”
André was sort of like a prince coming to visit you. He came from aristocratic Moscow. He had fought in the civil war against the Bolsheviks. When he would arrive here with his wife, Dorothy, there was a formality. He would very gently kiss my mother’s hand. And then we would go in the house and spend an hour just talking about life and wine. Then we’d go to the lab. But there was no rushing. It was a European experience. We would taste through the white wines, and then we’d go for a two-hour lunch with my mother, and then we’d come back and taste the red wines.
And he would point out little things. The type of yeast to use, the type of barrels. He taught me to use science as a foundation, but keep it in the background.
Yes, I’ve heard that he liked to warn people against being overly analytical, both in making and drinking wine. “Have the soul of a poet and the mind of a scientist.”
Here’s a little story. He sent me down to see Dick Graff, the founder of Chalone, and taste some of his wines and learn from him, too. Dick says, you gotta realize, André is a very conservative winemaker. He will probably tell you not to age on lees. I said, okay, I’m gonna take half of a wine and leave it on the lees after fermentation. And the other half, I’ll do it traditionally. Eight or so months later, it’s time to taste the wine. André was coming for a visit. And you can guess where this is going. I put two glasses of wine on the lab bench. I said, I’d like you to taste them and tell me which one you prefer.
He moves slowly. He’s like an 85 year old man. He very carefully smells and tastes each one. And then he says, “I prefer the one on the left. It’s more interesting. It’s richer.” I said, “This is the wine you advised against. I aged it on the lees.” I’m not the first person in Western civilization to do it, but it wasn’t that common for Pinot Noir in the mid ’80s. He got that little smile on his face, and he looked up to me, ’cause I’m 6’2, and he’s barely five feet. He puts his hand up and says [playfull], “Ah, John, today you defeat me.”
I said, “Between you and me, we have 50 years of winemaking experience. You have 49, and I have one.”
I love that he didn’t try to backpedal or get out of it.
He was too mature and secure.
You earned a minor in European history while getting your enology degree at UC Davis. How cool and unusual.
The flat, hot valley felt like the edge of civilization, compared to the Santa Cruz area. I said, I’m going to study hard science, but I want to do more. I was the laughingstock of my classmates. “Johnny, where are you going?” “Oh, I’m off to my European history class. We’re studying Nietzsche.” Now, I tell my three kids that if you want to be a person of the world, you’ve got to know history. Otherwise, all this stuff is just like water flowing down the creek, out to the ocean. When you travel, and start paying attention, you start capturing it and putting the puzzle together.
How Italian do you feel?
That’s a good question. I grew up in an Italianate colony here. There’s a winery – the centerpiece – and our grandparents’ house is on the property. My cousins’ house with ten cousins is 150 yards away. Our house is over here. We’ve got an aunt’s house over there. We grew up kind of speaking Italian. Our uncle was the one who spoke it best. He was the one who spoke Piedmontese [not a dialect, but an additional language in northwest Italy]. He was the one who sang. He’s the one who made us proud to be Italians. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was not cool to be Italian. Everyone made fun of Italians. And now it’s kind of hip and cool, right?
Most of us studied Italian in high school. I studied a little bit at Davis, and at Notre Dame. I took some philosophy classes there, too. I’ve traveled to Italy, I speak Italian conversationally. We share recipes with customers. We got big noses, you know? I communicate with my Italian cousins on WhatsApp probably once a week. But I don’t forget about the Irish side of my mother, and I’m proud to go visit the O’Regans in Kinsale. [Both the Irish and Italians] have a strong Catholic faith. And I’ll add one more little thing: In my observation in traveling the country, there are all sorts of Italian-Irish unions in marriage. In 99% of my experience, it’s an Italian man, or Italian-American man, with an Irish woman.
We want our collectors to try your Pinot first, because it’s such a standout. But please tell us about the La Vita blend, which they can taste if they visit the winery.
We work with three Northern Italian varietals to honor our Italian tradition: Nebbiolo, which you know from Barolo; Dolcetto; and Refosco, which is deeply inked – it’s spicy and interesting. This year is the 25th anniversary of our La Vita release party, the first Sunday in June. It’s my favorite event of the whole year.
Reach out to customerservice@bargetto.com to inquire about attending.
Where does the art for La Vita come from? The bottles are exciting.
Some of it’s classical – Caravaggio, Michelangelo – and we have to get the right to reproduce it. Sometimes, it comes from a library in New York City called Bridgeman Art. In more recent years, I challenge our employees and family to go out and find some artwork to submit. And then we track down the artists. The new one is a group out of Nashville, Tennessee.
One of my favorite pieces of art was done a couple years ago by a surrealistic painter, quite famous, who flew here from Mexico City to be here for the release. He came to Regan Vineyards and decided to paint it in his creative surrealistic style. And it’s just totally different than anything else I’ve ever seen of Regan. Yesterday, I printed a huge production of it, and got it framed. It’s going into our new tasting room at Regan Vineyards, which will be opened about a year from now.
Say more about that.
I have a little baby brand called Regan. When you translate Nebbiolo into English, it’s something like The Great Fog. We do something very non-traditional, which I love: We call it a Power Piemonte – we blend 16% cabernet in with the Nebbiolo grown on our vineyard. Someday, I’m going to get Gerri some of that. In the meantime, members are invited to come visit us. We are open 7 days a week, by appointment: https://reganwinery.com/
We look forward to it!
***
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.