The chardonnays were gorgeous, textured, distinctive and stony; the pinot noirs, savory and spicy, complex and structured.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not unusual on the West Sonoma Coast to find a vigneron who excels with both these varieties. But in this case, those were just the beginning of the fascinating array of wines.<\/p>\n
Matt Taylor also makes stunning cabernet sauvignons and merlots from the Napa Valley. He makes rich, deep sauvignon blancs that taste like no others from California, and he\u2019s making superb wines with chenin blanc and gamay, grapes that have often made good wines in California, but seldom great, and pineau d\u2019Aunis, a grape that is virtually unknown there.<\/p>\n
In an earlier era, big California producers routinely grew many different varieties, often blending them together or marketing the wines under proprietary names. But in today\u2019s far more specialized world, where growers tend to concentrate their efforts on small sets of grapes that are matched to specific vineyard conditions, excelling with such a variety of grapes in such different terroirs is exceedingly rare.<\/p>\n
Mr. Taylor has worked for other people, overseeing farming and making wine. But a decade ago, he started to make small amounts of wine released under his own label, Matt Taylor Wines<\/a>. They were so exquisite that people began to pay attention.<\/p>\n I know I did. The more I learned, and the more of his wines I drank, the more impressed I was with their sincerity and distinctiveness. This was especially true with his pinot noirs and chardonnays.<\/p>\n Then I learned that he\u2019s no longer making either wine. Mr. Taylor had lost access to the source of his grapes, the Komorebi Vineyard near Occidental on the West Sonoma Coast, a plot that he had planned, planted and farmed. The lease agreement he had signed had become a financial challenge. With a wife and three children, he decided to let it go.<\/p>\n Carlton McCoy Jr., a master sommelier and chief executive of Lawrence Wine Estates<\/a>, which owns several historic Napa Valley properties, loved the Komorebi wines. The fact that Mr. Taylor wasn\u2019t making them anymore, he said, was \u201ca tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in 2019, Mr. McCoy tasted the 2016 Komorebi pinot noir, Mr. Taylor\u2019s first vintage, and said he found it \u201cuniquely compelling.\u201d Not long afterward, he hired Mr. Taylor to make the wines at one of the Lawrence properties, Ink Grade on Howell Mountain, and eventually at a second, Haynes Vineyard in Coombsville.<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted to put on a pedestal the classical cabernet style of Napa and see it revered as much as the bigger styles,\u201d Mr. McCoy said. He learned that Mr. Taylor had worked early on at Domaine Dujac<\/a>, a superb estate in Morey-St.-Denis in Burgundy, and at Araujo<\/a> in Napa Valley, a leading producer of big, polished cabernets.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t really see people with that range of experience, they\u2019re usually in one camp or the other,\u201d Mr. McCoy said. \u201cHis taste and DNA were in classic wines. He was exactly what I was looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n I first heard about Mr. Taylor a few years ago, but not until 2024 was I able to track down a bottle of his wine, a 2017 Komorebi chardonnay with an unusual, hand-painted label.<\/p>\n The wine was striking, so different from the prevailing style of lean, precise chardonnays<\/a> that had emerged from Burgundy and captured chardonnay producers worldwide. This was more generous, richly textured and complex, precise and saline, yet not at all heavy or buttery. It was utterly distinctive, a wine that spoke of its coastal California origin and of its producer.<\/p>\n Jeremy Seysses, whose family owns Dujac, has known Mr. Taylor since he interned there in 2004, and has worked with him at Trailside Vineyards, a Lawrence project that pairs the two as winemakers. He called the Komorebi chardonnays \u201cumami driven and textural.\u201d<\/p>\n The more I found out about Mr. Taylor, the more fascinated I became. He farmed biodynamically and regeneratively, and without irrigation. He made his chardonnays without sulfur dioxide, the stabilizer and antioxidant that is almost universally used except in the more extreme natural wines. He worked oxidatively, exposing the wines to oxygen when young rather than protecting them, as many winemakers do, and he ages the wines for prolonged periods before releasing them to the market.<\/p>\n His farming is instinctive and based on observation and discernment rather than recipes and prescriptions.<\/p>\n \u201cMatt feels a sense of awe when walking in a vineyard, which I believe is a prerequisite for doing great wine work,\u201d said Steve Matthiasson of Matthiasson Wines<\/a>, who worked with Mr. Taylor at Araujo nearly 20 years ago. <\/p>\n