Back & forth with Twin Brook's Jobe

One thing I’d like to do more of as this blog evolves is actually get out to the winery and sit and have a conversation. I did that at Twin Brook in Gap, Pa., a few weeks ago, and winemaker Tim Jobe and his wife Melissa were gracious hosts. I’d prefer to place these as podcasts, but I’m being told by too many people that they prefer to read the transcript rather than click and just listen. Part of the conversation was previously posted; this is the remainder of the discussion that essentially followed the subject of East Coast wines and how little most people know about them.

Tim: “We’re having to educate people on wines along the East.Coast, and I think it’s the same all the way from Virginia to New York, how every far they are doing it. You can’t just say, ‘this is great wine, buy it,’ because they’re not going to, because people just know a few words. They know Merlot. They know Chardonnay. And they know a few others. And if it doesn’t come from Europe or California, then they’re not going to try it. And if they come into our tasting room; as John said one time, the people came into one of our tasting rooms, and when the lady found out that it was all Pennsylvania wines, he said that she reacted as if she had walked into a porn shop unknowingly. She grabbed the kid and said, ‘Oh my god, let’s get out of here.’”

Question: So you’re still teaching a lot of folks who stop in about Eastern wines?

Tim: “Certainly. There is a stigma associated with Pennsylvania, well not only Pennsylvania but Eastern wines, that we have to try to educate the public. And the real shame of it is that everybody is buying what they know.. they know Merlot .. they know Syrah now because of Australia. And that’s what they’re buying.”

Melissa: “And Niagara. They like sweet.”

Tim: “That’s great, and it’s the only place you can get the Niagara and Concord.”

Melissa: “And they know them.”

Tim: “They know them and they buy them. That’s our highest-selling wines . . . [the wines that are sweet].”

Q: Is that fondness for sweet wine particular to the East Coast?

Tim: “I would say the majority come in for the sweet wines. The real jewel about our area is that there’s more diversity here. There’s so many different types of grapes being grown. So many different flavors in the wines that that’s our saving grace is that we get people in they can taste 14 different wines. They’re going to find something they like. It’s not like we have one Chard, one Cab and a Merlot. And I think you can probably do OK at that. But the Eastern United States is not like that yet. It’s not like California. It’s just not like California. But that’s what we’re trying to do is get them in the mindset that, yes, you can go into any Eastern winery and find a good Chard, a good Cab, a good Merlot, but you also might find some other things you like: the Chambourcin, the Vignoles is absolutely gorgeous. I like it better than Viognier, and you can only find it in the Northeast pretty much.”

Q: What do people want to know when they stop by?

Tim: “Occasionally we do get people in who want to know what they can eat with this certain type of wine.”

Melissa: “We get two types. Those that know wines who come in to taste to see if they can find some kind of jewel.”

Tim: “And those people are pleasantly surprised.”

Melissa: “And then you have others who walk in who have never been to a winery before, who really don’t know what they want, who really don’t know what we have”

Q: But they do know what they like and don’t like?

Tim: “That’s the real key there is that you buy what you like, and I think that’s one of the greatest things about the tasting room and having people in here that talk to you about wines and find out what you like and what you don’t like.

Tim: “If it was up to me, I would produce three wines, three or four wines, instead of 14. But we have such a diversity of grapes here -- when they first planted the place they didn’t really know what they wanted to plant, and so they planted a little bit of everything [30 acres planted, 12 different varieties]. That’s pretty normal for Eastern wineries, but you know in California you have those wineries that just grow Chard, Cab, Merlot, or they grow Cab Sauvignon, Cab Franc, Merlot so they can make a meritage. They’re very specialized. In the East you don’t have that very much, and I think one of the reasons is that no one has really figured out what is the specialty of the East. What is the specialty of the east yet? No one really knows. We’re trying to define that now.”

Q: Is it Chambourcin?

Tim: “Well, Chambourcin, yes, I would think so. I would think that’s definitely one of the ones . . .”

Q: It seems most if not all the regional wineries have a good Chambourcin and a good Vidal Blanc.

Tim: “But you see, those are both hybrids, and that’s a stigma. You can’t . . . nobody else in the world knows what that is except for people who come into the Northeast. So it’s kind of hard to say, yes, we specialize in Chambourcin when nobody knows what it is. In fact, that’s the reason when this one was named, the Consiglieri, nobody knew what Chambourcin was. That was back in 1985, nobody knew. And that’s why they name it Consiglieri, because nobody knew what Chambourcin was. A lot of the names we have on our private wines, like Traminette; the Clocktower White we make is made from Traminette, but we don’t call it Traminette because when we planted it . . . it was called NY65.533.13. So nobody knew what that was and so you had to call it something, and then when they did eventually name it, by that time you had a clientele for Clocktower Whites and you gotta go back to that. Same way with Vignoles. It was a Ravat 51 for many years. And the only person I know of that still calls it that is Bully Hill [Vineyards in Hammondsport, N.Y.]. One of the girls that works for me actually, she goes to New York a lot and she’s like, talking about how she likes the wines and everything. And I said something one day about the Ravat 51 and she’s like, ahhh, that’s a wine myth. And, I said, well, it Vignoles. They named it . . . eventually. So I think that the East Coast is still so young that we don’t have a, I guess, a signature. There’s really no signature wines. We can produce Chards just as good as anybody else, in my opinion. Especially on the good years, when it hasn’t been raining.”

Q: Is it a goal here to shoot for new blends every year, just to diversify more?

Tim: “At Twin Brook, we’re kind of maxed out on what we can do. And one thing we don’t do is, we don’t throw the Cab Sauv, Cab Franc and the Merlot into a meritage. I don’t believe in that. I have a few customers come in and a whole lot of winemakers that say, ‘It’s great to see that you’re still producing a Cab Franc instead of throwing it in.a meritage. And I like that. I like keeping them all separate. I could be doing that, and that would cut down on my winemaking a lot just to make a blend from those. But it’s just something that I like. I like having the different wines and, if you go to [France] or there’s actually a couple of places in California still doing Cab Franc, that you can still get good Cab Franc. I think that’s great, you know. And nobody knows what that is. Everybody comes in and say, ‘Cab Franc?’ Well, it’s the father of Cabernet Sauvignon, but nobody knows what it is.”

Tim: “I do try to tailor what I make to what will sell. We all have to do that. That’s why I have six or seven wines that are sweet, but also, I have my own opinions about like the Cab Franc and the meritage. I like to keep mine separate.”

Q: How much of what you make is an expression of why you’re in the business?

Tim: “You have to do a little bit of that, but the majority of it has to be what is going to sell.”