This article was a portion of the show that aired on July 20, 2024. It summarized an excellent article by Laura Burgess, a writer based in California’s Sierra Foothills. I have mentioned the Wente clone before, when I covered California Chardonnay, but decided it was time to cover it in detail and this article did just that.
Despite its lower yields, or perhaps because of them, the Wente clone’s fruit-laden concentration has made it the dominant Chardonnay clone. And as is usually the case, key individuals championed the clone and assisted in its propagation.
Wente Chardonnay is in Napa vineyards owned by Stony Hill and Robert Mondavi and Russian River Valley sites like Dutton Ranch, plus plant nurseries and research institutions like UC Davis. They are known officially as Wente selections and cover much of the 90,000 acres of Chardonnay as of 2021.
In 1968 it was still just a blip on the agricultural radar. While stationed in a naval port near San Francisco in the early 60s I was trying some of these wines, but not sure what I was tasting and not realizing that the Wente craze had just begun. And it was shaped by two men in Livermore, a fascinating AVA in the lower San Francisco Bay that benefitted from the bay’s coastal influence. Charles Wetmore and Ernest Wente are two names I’ve known as long as I’ve drunk California Chardonnay.
What’s a clone?
In viticulture, a clone is a grape variety cultivar selected for specific traits. Usually, clones are propagated at research institutions and developed for positive attributes like high yields, disease resistance, or drought tolerance. To clone a grapevine, growers or scientists take a cutting from a living vine, known as budwood, and plant or graft it to an existing or separately acquired root. In the process, they create a new, genetically identical grapevine with the same valuable traits as its parent.
In the past grapevines were propagated via the massal selection method. A grower expanded his vineyards using budwood from his most successful vines. This resulted in thousands of clones, each well-adapted to the local environment. That changed in the modern era, with growers opting for certified virus-free grapevine clones from nurseries, with preferred genetic traits and without viruses and disease that were often transmitted via massal selection. In other words done scientifically in a controlled environment.
“Clonal selection is primarily driven by production concerns because the wine grape business is a volume business,” explains Dr. Sahap Kurtural, a viticulture specialist at UC Davis. “Most clones are trialed and then selected mainly for yields, and then based on disease tolerance. For most farmers, if you can grow an abundant crop easily, it’s a win.” Except for when you want to grow a quality grape, which means lower yields.
The Origins of the Wente Clone
In the 1850s, Livermore’s proximity to San Francisco made it perfect for viticulture. Oriented east-west, the valley is unique in northern California for its ability to funnel cool Pacific breezes directly inland. Most of Livermore Valley’s vineyards lie far enough from the coast to experience warm days, but with the ocean’s moderating influence, creating an ideal Mediterranean climate. And Livermore was also home to Charles Wetmore and Ernest Wente.
Throughout the 1880s, Wetmore was heavily involved with California’s growing wine industry. He also traveled to France to bring cuttings of noble varieties back to California. From Meursault, he returned to Livermore with Chardonnay budwood and distributed it to local vineyards, including Livermore’s Theodore Gier Vineyard.
At the same time, C.H. Wente was establishing Wente Vineyards. Though Wente declined Wetmore’s offer of Chardonnay cuttings his son Ernest with a passion for Chardonnay, convinced his father to plant four acres using budwood from Wetmore’s Meursault cuttings and added vines from Montpellier, France, to his experimental block in 1912. Meursault, it must be mentioned in one of the great white Burgundy wines.
According to the Wente family, these two sources, which mutated over time as Ernest propagated the vines, now, form the genetic basis for over 75 percent of California Chardonnay and that’s huge.
The Evolution of the Wente Selections
Ernest set the stage for California Chardonnays defined by their plentitude of ripe fruit flavors, thanks to his obsession with vines that produced intensely concentrated, abundantly fruity berries. Ernest’s selections were then replicated for flavor characteristics rather than yields.
“Ernest could have picked the vines that had the biggest clusters or the highest yield, but that wouldn’t have been the highest quality,” says Niki Wente, the current director of vineyards at Wente Vineyards and Ernest’s great-great-granddaughter. “So he really focused on what mattered to him, and that was the quality and flavor of the finished wines.”
Chardonnay grew steadily in popularity in the 1920s, but then that old devil Prohibition destroyed the majority of California’s Chardonnay plantings, because the thin-skinned grapes couldn’t withstand shipping to home winemakers across the country. This also happened with California’s principal red grape; Zinfandel. The grape was subject to rot when transported long distances and was replaced with Alicante Bouschet for the home market.
Fortunately, Wente Vineyards was authorized to produce sacramental and medicinal wine throughout Prohibition, so Ernest continued cultivating his Chardonnay vines. Wente Vineyards was only one of two commercially viable Chardonnay vineyards by the close of Prohibition in 1933. This led to the first varietally labeled Chardonnay in American history in 1936.
However a number of wineries did produce juice for the home market, such as Beaulieu Vineyards and Beringer Brothers, which permitted them to stay in business. Mondavi carefully instructed home fermenters how to avoid the results turning into wine, which insured they would do the opposite.
Early on it was known as Pinot Chardonnay, which makes sense since Chardonnay is a cross of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc. I recall drinking wine labeled Pinot Chardonnay in the early 60s. These were most likely Almaden or Mondavi as well as Wente, which became an early favorite winery of mine.
The flavor and winemaking potential of Wente selections—known for small bunches, high concentration, and ripe tropical and citrus fruit flavors—soon had the attention of UC Davis and local grape growers, who used Wente budwood in new plantings and experiments.
In the 1960s, viticulturist used budwood from Wente and others who had propagated it like Louis M. Martini, Stony Hill, and Hanzell. This formed the basis for almost all of the Chardonnay clones available in California nurseries. Then came the 1976 Judgment of Paris and Chateau Montelena’s Chardonnay winning top awards. This happened just as wine sales were climbing faster than spirits and demand followed by rapid planting of Chardonnay soon made it California’s most planted grape variety in the 1990s.
“The clone is important because it’s going to give some flavors and concentration,” Dutton says. “Wente is what we see a lot of high-end and ultra-premium wineries looking for, and even mid-range wineries because these clones have a concentration that comes through in the wines.”
This eventually led to the Californian Chardonnay style: Bold, full-flavored, and fruit-driven. The intensely concentrated juice was better suited to oak in most California Chardonnay. The use of oak and MLF varied but today’s full-bodied, ripe, “California-style” Chardonnays could be called “Wente-style.”
“The Wente selection really steered us in a direction toward fruit-forward wines in California,” says Niki Wente. “A lot of the clones on the market today actually can be traced all the way back to Wente.”
The term ‘Wente clone’ is pervasive because many growers obtained budwood either directly or indirectly from the Wente vineyard in Livermore.
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