A Feathery Touch In Amador County

By: Mike Dunne

Sacramento native Adam Saake is a member in good standing of a seemingly shrinking community of California winemakers – people so smitten with the wine trade that they join it in hopes of making a statement and a living solely by their vision and grit.

They don’t come to the business via success in some industry unrelated to agriculture. They don’t buy their barrels with inherited wealth. Mention a hedge fund and they think pruning shears.

Saake simply loves to find grapes growing in unusual and under-appreciated terrain and then transform them into wines of startling transparency, moxie and value.

His brand is Perch Wine Co., a name inspired by a friend aware of Saake’s interest in bird watching. That interest carries over to the birds of his labels, which he draws.

So what’s this mountain lion doing on the label of one of his newer releases? Credit terroir. The drawing is in tribute to a mountain lion that hangs about the vineyard where he got the grapes for the luminous and lilting Perch 2022 Amador County Barbera ($28).

This is Saake’s first Barbera, but by the wine’s assurance, focus and drive you would think he has been making Barbera in Amador County for the past two decades, a stretch during which the variety has become as respected if not yet as extensively cultivated as the Zinfandel on which the county’s reputation for fine wine is based.

The stylistic spectrum for Amador County Barbera ranges from dark, ripe and weighty to bright, fresh and lean. Saake’s Barbera lands solidly on the bright, fresh and lean reaches of the spectrum. It is brilliantly colored, forthright in berry and cherry aroma, animated with sweet, juicy, layered and refreshing fruit, and vibrant with the variety’s signature acidity.

Mountain lion debuts on the label for the Perch 2022 Amador County Barbera.

Saake’s winemaking hand is gentle, letting native yeasts do their thing during fermentation, fining and filtering only when he deems it necessary, favoring neutral puncheons over new oak barrels. His wines weigh in with modest alcohol levels by today’s standards, generally 13.5 percent, as is the Barbera.

Just as Saake’s Barbera respects the traditionally wiry and focused Italian way with the variety, the Perch 2022 Amador County Syrah ($28) embraces the cheeky French and Australian way with the grape. While light in color and restrained in alcohol (13.8 percent), Saake’s Syrah fully respects and embraces all the muscle, juiciness, spiciness and complexity that the grape can yield. It packs rich yet refreshing dark fruit flavor, a seam of bacon, a suggestion of smoke, and just prudent tannin.

All that layering and elaboration commonly is associated with cooler California climates in which Syrah is cultivated, but Saake somehow seized it in hot Amador County, though the fruit was grown at 2900 feet, marginally cooler than the lower elevations where most of the county’s vineyards are planted. He took advantage of whole-cluster fermentation with the wine, helping account for its vivid flavors and genial delivery.

Saake also currently is releasing two Amador County Zinfandels, both from Fox Creek Vineyard in Shenandoah Valley, known as Massoni Ranch until Jim and Sue Fox bought it in 1985. The plot is home to some of the older Zinfandel vines in the area.

From vines between 30 and 40 years old, Saake picked grapes for the Perch 2022 Amador County Zinfandel ($28), a dry and lean take that makes a beeline straight to the grape’s clean floral aroma and fresh berry flavors, with an insinuation of forest duff that gives the wine welcome complication.

From vines around a century old, Saake gathered fruit for the Perch 2022 Amador County Old Vine Zinfandel ($30), a slightly deeper take, its fruit darker and its structure possessed of a bit more iron, yet its tannins are more in the background than up front. The Old Vine possesses the symmetry, spunk and grip for squirreling away in the corner of the home cellar reserved for more elegant examples of any style of wine. Saake sees the Old Vine as an homage to the oldest vines of Fox Creek, which are to be removed following the current harvest.

Saake makes his wines at Lodi Crush, a custom-crush winery in Lodi, where he also is starting to draw fruit, including Cinsault and Riesling, both now sold out. For more about Saake’s Lodi wines, visit Randy Caparoso’s Lodi Winegrape Commission blog.

Aside from earning a viticultural certificate at Folsom Lake College, Saake is a largely self-taught winemaker, though well-traveled, having taken advantage of winemaking internships in New Zealand, Chile and California, specifically the Central Coast and the Sierra Foothills. His on-the-job training included stints at Skinner Vineyards & Winery in El Dorado County and Turley Wine Co. in Amador County. He currently is in the midst of his fourth vintage, from which he expects to make a total 500 cases.

He sells his wine largely through his website, though the wine shops Corti Brothers and Beyond Napa in Sacramento and Amador 360 in Plymouth and the Sacramento restaurants Majka Pizzeria & Bakery, Magpie Café and Mother stock at least some of his releases.