Gilles Nicault on Long Shadows, Nine Hats, and the One Voice of Washington Wine

It's now been like 23 years in the making, so that's incredible, and it's really a very, it's been incredible for me, you know, like as a French winemaker. I started here when I was 30 years old, Allen Shoup took me under his wing, and to be the director of winemaking, to get to establish seven co-wines with some of our most amazing partner winemakers from around the world. Truly amazing.

Allen Shoup was a really close friend with Robert Mondavi, and at that time, Allen was the president and CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle, and he saw Bob Mondavi doing that partnership between the Rothschild and Mondavi, the Opus One. It was bringing like old world, new world, together in a very powerful collaboration, and Allen loved that idea. So slowly but surely, he started thinking, you know, Washington State really is a place where there's so much different type of terroir, very, very diverse, you know, a lot of different type of graves or whatnot, and it's like a perfect place for such collaboration. Once he retired from St. Michelle he decided to explore deeper into making this type of collaborations which would be seven different wines labeled under one umbrella called Long Shadows Vintners. One of them being Randy Dunn for Cabernet Sauvignon, know, Dunn Vineyards, Napa Valley, and then one of them John Duval from Australia, you know, for like 28 years, he had been at Penfolds, Penfolds Grange and whatnot, and then we had Giovanni Folonari for like a super Tuscan-style wine and Armin Diel for the Riesling. With Michel Rolland, we developed a Merlot together.

Oui. Yes. Agustin Huneeus, who is from Chile, but in the Napa Valley, he had developed Franciscan and Quintessa Winery. Allen went to him, I said, I want to develop like a red blend, kind of similar to Quintessa, but in Washington State. But Agustin Huneeus said, oh, but I'm not a partner, I'm not a winemaker per se. So I'll give half of my partnership to Philippe Melka which became Pirouette. We had like seven partnerships like this that were just incredible.

Yes, for me as a young French winemaker, getting to work hand-in-hand with all these winemakers was just incredible.

It’s a little bit like in Bordeaux, like all these first growth, they all have like a second label to make, be able to make the first growth, like top-notch, always consistent and dedicated to quality, to reflect on the terroir. Nine Hats is that. It’s our second label where the lots that didn't quite make it into Long Shadows, you know, the press wine or whatever, didn't quite make to the cut, then it goes to the second label. Nine Hats allows us to put our best foot forward to some young vineyards. It allows me to do some winemaking trials, you know, and when it doesn't quite work the way I thought it was going to be, it goes to nine hats. But the truth of the matter is, for Nine Hats, it's a wine that wants to be in the like 75, 80 bucks retail, and it's like $20 or $25 retail.

And a great pedigree. Especially for the price point. You cannot always expect the consistency on the, maybe on the aromatic profile or so, but what you can expect is for the price is going to be a killer wine. So, nine hats, yeah, it's like what's left over on the table once we make all these seven wines.

Yeah, that's a great question too, because we have a very special terroir. A big part of it is being, I think, so north, you know, and that's kind of a loss of identity for us sometimes, you know. I've been making wine in Washington State since 1994, more than 30 years. I did four years of viticulture and winemaking at school, and then I took a one-year internship in Yakima in the Columbia Valley, eastern Washington. And I am still here! Of course, when I first arrived in Seattle, I was scared because of the rain. I took the Greyhound bus to go to the wine region, and on the way there I was like, no vineyards here. But as we drove further, you go through the mountains, and it's like old trees and big mountains. I saw Mount Rainier right there and it is as high as Mont Blanc, you know, it's like my reference compared to Europe, you know. And then once all of a sudden, it's all desert.

Exactly. It's a big rain shadow. Around the Tri-Cities, the center of where the vineyards are planted, we only have like, let's say, eight inches of rain a year. It’s so crazy. And most of it in winter, a lot of the time in summer, you have no rain. And it's just sagebrush and rattlesnake, basically.

Yeah. And so, where we are lucky, is that it is dry. People always think that we have a lot of water, which we do, but from the Rockies not the sky. And all the water draining from Canada and everything. And we have the Columbia River.

Oui. Yes. It’s really warm day during the day, and then at night, it gets pretty cool. If you want to make high-quality, intense, concentrated wine, then we just, you know, go low-yield and just put less water because it's low-yield. There are people that want to produce a little bit more approachable wine, then we can put a little bit more water and let more the grapes hang. It was all shaped, like, by volcanoes, so it's very volcanic, fractured basalt. And 15,000 years ago, we had also these huge Missoula floods that really kind of ripped a lot of topsoil in places and created these kind of natural benches. And it's just with fractured basalt and, like, five inches of soil on top and so forth. like... so, so, Some Cabernet Sauvignon also, that's just been beautiful.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And within that rain shadow, within the terroir, then, you know, then there's places where there is a lot more fractured basalt because of the flood or places where the flood then drop more, like, mud is deeper soil. And then you have, because of the river, you have a lot of different aspects as well, too. So that's why we can do, Cabernet Sauvignon to Syrah to Chardonnay. We can do them all really well.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the camaraderie, basically, yeah, that's really true. Especially coming from France. In France you don’t usually see kind of that, like, collaboration or camaraderie, It’s so nice and fresh to see it in Washington State. I think maybe it's because we're a little bit younger industry, we are now 50 years. When I arrived in 1994, there were like 75 wineries, and now, we have more than a thousand wineries in Washington State. We need everybody to do great, you know, and we want our neighbors to be successful. It’s Washington State against the rest of the world.

Yes. If my neighbor doesn't make amazing wine, it's not going to help anyone, you know, so I want everybody in Washington State to make the best wine possible. So that's a big part of it, I think, to where we really need to work as a team. We're all more like friends.

They’re going to experience an exciting wine industry. They're going to see that people here are more down to earth. They’re going to have intimate time with the winemakers. When you come to Washington State, or especially Long Shadows, we will take great care of you. You’re going to know exactly what happens to the wine and the history and also what Washington State is really about. So many people think Washington State is Oregon and it couldn’t be further from the truth. We love Pinot Noir but that is not us. There is this misconception about us. Oregon makes amazing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but they cannot really grow Cabernet Sauvignon. I think people don't realize that we have a terroir here that can really create amazing Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and Syrah, all these beautiful, intense wines. Each time people make the effort to come and visit us, we love it because we have something amazing to offer.

Merci beaucoup. Avec plaisir, madame.

Oui, j'espère, j'espère. Au revoir, madame.