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Interview with John Jordan of Jordan Winery

  • Blanca Valbuena
  • July 19, 2012

Interview with John Jordan of Jordan WineryPeople who love wine usually know the Jordan name. This is not merely a feat of advertising and marketing. The Jordan family has been making quality wines in Sonoma for the past 40 years. The winery was recently put in the hands of John Jordan, who is doing an amazing job at taking the winery to the next level. I had the pleasure of chatting with John last week about the winery’s 40th anniversary, the family, and to get a look at what’s in store.

Blanca Valbuena: Hi everyone. It’s Blanca with FriendsEAT and I have the pleasure of talking to John Jordan of Jordan Winery from Sonoma. This is something very special for me. I’m a huge fan of the wines. John, thank you for meeting with me today.

John: It’s my pleasure. It’s a beautiful day here in the wine country.

Blanca: Fabulous. So I know that mostly everyone in the United States knows about Jordan; but for that one, little, tiny percentage that doesn’t, why don’t you tell me a little bit about the winery, your family, how they got into it.

John: OK. Well, my parents founded Jordan in 1972. In fact, they signed the deed for the land on the very day I was born which was May 25th. I know that date. So this year we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of Jordan Winery with me personally on my 40th birthday.

My parents, you see, fell in love with food actually before they fell in love with wine. My parents were young people without a lot of resources, traveling in France in the 50s and early 60s and were introduced to the great French traditions of hospitality, obviously the culinary arts and of course wine. But their initial exposure was to great food. Being from the Midwest, there was a lot of great food in the Midwest and as we understand it today, the 50s and 60s.

So my parents really fell in love with France and all of those great traditions of Europe. Now, why this is important is because the fact that my parents fell in love with food first really defined Jordan’s house style. So many wines in California, so many cabs in particular are so big, big alcohol, 15, 16 percent alcohol or sometimes more, very extracted, very big. I mean you could almost stick a fork in it and the fork will either stand up or dissolve but then they go on the producer

My parents wanted to go a different route and that is the traditional ” to pursue the traditional Bordeaux way of doing things, which is an emphasis on balance, lower alcohol. Almost a feminine quality of the chard to the Cabernet which makes it very food-friendly, which makes it a happy participant in the pleasures of the table and not an overly destructive one that seeks to dominate everything.

Cabernet should not necessarily ” the best Cabernets are not the ones that are the biggest in a 50-wine lineup. They’re the ones that make the restaurant chef look like a home cook, look good and then truly enhance all of the other pleasures of the table and not seek to overpower, because of my parents love of food which defined our cabernet house style as well as our chardonnay house style.

Our chardonnay is very different from one would expect from California. It is not big and over-oaked. It’s not a big butterball. It is more of the tradition of Mersault with a lot of flinty characteristics, bright acids and almost a citrusy quality too with very low malolactic fermentation. Very, very different from what one would traditionally associate with a California chardonnay. Again those brighter acids really play well with a lot of proteins.

I personally love it with tuna fish, with a really good hamachi but a broad range of food. It’s my parents’ love of food that really defined Jordan’s house style and that’s a big part of who we are today. We take a lot of pride in our hospitality, of our great culinary operation and we advice people to come and sample little tastes and enjoy our wine in context which is how wine really should be drunk.

Blanca: Right. It should always be a combination of food and wine together. I agree. So now, I know that you were in law for quite a while. So how is it that you decided to go from a very stable, very secure industry like the law? I mean what did your parents do to kind of lure you over into the family business?

John: Well, they asked me to take over the winery before purchasing in 2007. I did enjoy my time as a lawyer but I think as in so many areas of life, there’s a season for all things and my legal experience certainly helps in business but I was ready to hang that up and do something more ” a little more positive and people-oriented. And so it was an easy ask on their part. I had some success doing that and I still have my software company in partnership in a law firm.

So I should keep my fingers in it a little bit but my real passion is people I work with, our wines, telling that story as well as some of the other business projects that I have.

Blanca: I know something that people always ask you. I mean you guys only do chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. You guys don’t do sauvignon blanc, nothing else. What is the decision to go with only two varietals?

John: Well, because I think that no business can do more than a couple of things really, really well. I challenge you to name so many businesses that are really good at eight different things. I was a naval officer for a long period of time and the word that still rings in my ears of that phrase is mission clarity and I want to make sure that Jordan continues to focus on three things ” cabernet, chardonnay and hospitality and not necessarily in that order.

Organizations that try to do eight or nine different specialized things, I don’t think they end up doing all of them particularly well. I’m a perfectionist and meticulous by nature and I want to make sure that our organization is focused like a laser on doing ” on making cabernets that are in that in that Bordeaux food-friendly tradition and chardonnay in that food-friendly Mersault tradition and to tell that story and that’s ” to do that well year in, year out, I think that’s sufficiently challenging.

Blanca: Cool. I was also wondering between when your dad was running the company and now that you’re running the company. What do you think are the biggest differences in styles with management between the two of you?

John: Well, my dad never actually ran Jordan day to day. He was never here everyday. I brought in my own staff, my own crew. I mean there are few people like our winemaker and our director of facilities that are holdovers from the old days but I brought in my own way of doing things.

My task was to preserve my parents’ original vision and our house style of the wine but to adapt it to the 21st century. I mean when my parents started Jordan Winery, there were 300 wineries in California. Now there’s over 3600. Not to mention overseas competition. And technology made it possible to elevate our game qualitatively from a product quality point of view as well as doing a better job of telling our story and telling the story that is Jordan and communicating our values to the wine-drinking public.

So it’s bringing ” taking the winery out of 1982 and 1983 into 2012 I think is one of ” it was certainly my biggest challenge and I’ve really enjoyed bringing that on but it’s also product quality as well as communication.

Blanca: You mentioned technology and I know you’re referring more to vineyard management and winemaking. But I wanted to ask you because you guys are very prolific with social media and I wanted to ask you how social media has affected the winery in terms of transparency and getting together with your suppliers and consumers.

John: Well, the most important person in any business and the most important people to us are the people that drink Jordan Wine. They’re more important than the wholesalers. They’re more important than anybody and social media has allowed us to build a rapport and communicate and interact directly with the wine-drinking public.

Twenty years ago, that wasn’t possible or even ten years ago. You had to filter off the mainstream media or you had that people come here in the winery. We still have people come here in the winery and we still have friends in the mainstream media but social media allowed us to talk directly to our customers, hear what they think. And in a couple of cases, get some ideas for our visitor programs here at the winery and to talk to them directly and to again ” a brand is nothing more than promises made and promises kept and the relationship between a company and its customer, and it has brought us closer to the people that are most important in the world for us.

Blanca: I’ve also heard that you’re doing a really big push towards sustainability in the vineyard. So can you tell me a little bit more about what you’re doing?

John: Well, we see ourselves as stewards of the earth and most of the land on here, here at the winery, is actually still wild habitat. It’s not even planted. We recently installed our solar farm and it went live about ten days ago and it will ” our electricity goes from about $15,000 a month to about $74 a month. We actually will be producing more electricity than we need.

In fact, within the last ten days, they even keep track of those things. There’s like 300 ” equivalent to planting 300 trees. It’s part of who we are. It’s part of our values. I grew up on the property. I love it. I fish on it. I leave it as seldom as possible and so it really kind of consists of my parents’ values and the tradition which I have €¦

Blanca: So I went to your 40th anniversary party in New York City.

John: I remember.

Blanca: Which was ridiculous. I would say it’s one of the best wine parties I’ve been to and I noticed you brought out a couple of nice, little, HUGE bottles of older vintages that were just outstanding. If someone wants them, where do they get them? You guys are so hard to find in stores.

John: Well, we have a number of stores that are good to us. They’re in New York. For instance Sherry-Lehmann has always been very good to us and we appreciate our relationship with them and they’re generally pretty good about carrying a broad range of Jordan products. We also sell ” there are however vintages in format that are only really available here at the winery and the nice thing about getting them from the winery ” and we can ship directly to New York in your case ” is that those bottles never left our care. They were never fried in a warehouse. You don’t have to worry about where they were or what damage might have been done with them.

So it’s www.JordanWinery.com and take it from there and there’s some particularly special bottles of wine there.

Blanca: Cool. Are you guys selling online at all through the winery or just €¦

John: Yes.

Blanca: OK, excellent.

John: Yes, we do sell online. We do have a rewards program where people can accumulate points by purchasing things at the winery that you can redeem for things that aren’t for sale, that are just interesting experiences here at the winery that has proven rather popular.

Blanca: So now, you mentioned the winery and hospitality. If somebody wants to come visit you, what do they need to do?

John: If somebody wants to come visit us, we have tours and tastings by appointment everyday. Jordan is not and will never be a belly-up to the wine bar kind of Sonoma-Napa-Disneyland experience. Advance reservations are required. It’s $20 with tasting and $30 for the tour but you do have to book in advance because we are limited to 12 visitors per tour and tasting each day and there’s one of each. But we will never be the big belly-up to the bar.

For us, where the people come to the winery and buy wine isn’t as important to us as is the fact that they come and have a great time and give us an opportunity to really shine when they move on to visit another winery.

Blanca: So my last question I think for you would be California. When you go to California, you barely find Chilean wines or German wines. I mean California is very loyal to its vineyards. You don’t get the same thing in New York. I think in New York, we’re even kind of snobby towards New York wines. Why do you think that is so and where do you see New York’s wine industry going? I mean I know you’re in California but €¦

John: Honestly, I don’t see it going anywhere.

Blanca: Yeah.

John: I really don’t. I mean it’s ” of course I’m biased. I’m sure they will be outraged on the internet when this gets out but it really isn’t going anywhere.

Blanca: Yeah. I have to get myself out of it and start tasting some just so I can make an educated decision. But I look forward to visiting you very soon. I’m going to have to book my visit and make my schedule and I’m really looking forward to tasting some more of your wines.

John: Likewise and we look forward to having you out here in California.

Blanca: And actually, you guys are on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle and what is your Facebook?

John: Our Facebook is just Jordan Vineyard and Winery at Facebook.

Blanca: Perfect. Thanks so much. Thanks for your time.

John: Thank you, Blanca. Have a good weekend.

Blanca:  You too. Bye-bye.

John: Bye.

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