Duff Bevill
speaker
37 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Duff Bevill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I guess so. I came to Sonoma County, uh, uh, in 1973. So it'll be a 52 plus years. Well, it'd be 52 years in March of 2025. So, uh, been a long time. I moved here to, to work for a guy who was, there was a great wine, great boom going on in California in the early 1970s. And I was part of that. And, uh, five, five years later, I started my own company. I've had it ever since. So, uh,
And the interesting part of this whole circle of life is the guy who I came here to work for, his son, his only son, is a partner of mine now. It's sort of a handoff process now from the guy who got me involved full-time in agriculture. His son has been my partner for quite a few years, and he's taken over the company for us. We farm about 1,500 acres of wine grapes in Sonoma County.
We have 150 employees, something like that. Holy smokes. The reason I sent you those two wines, I always look for some kind of little story that might add a little interest to it. In Sonoma County, and I'll make this brief, there's Sonoma County is a recognized wine grape appellation. And within Sonoma County, I think there's 18 Appalachians. Now I should have checked that.
I kind of lost track at 13. And we manage vineyards throughout Sonoma County, but my wife and I also own some vineyards too. And the two wines you're sampling there are from two vineyards that we own. One is in the Russian River Valley, and the other is Dry Creek Valley. Dry Creek Valley, that's this one. Both of them are Sauvignon Blanc, and that Sauvignon Blanc is the same clone
So these two are the same clone of Sauvignon Blanc, and the vineyards are roughly the same age of the Sauvignon Blanc from the Russian River, that Nori. We planted that in 1999. So it's 20, what's that, 25 years old. And then the Keegan property, which is the other one, the Dry Creek Valley, that one's almost 30 years old.
And so what's fun about this, I hope, is you get to see same variety Sauvignon Blanc, two different Appalachians. The vineyards are about 15 miles apart. The Russian River Valley is a much cooler region than the Dry Creek Valley and two different winemakers. So the two the winemaking style Sauvignon Blanc, a common denominator of Sauvignon Blanc is citrus flavors, fresh cut grass.
It's been described as smelling like fresh cut alfalfa. And the two styles that are typically made of Sauvignon Blanc is they pick them a little less ripe, still ripe, but a little less ripe. And that emphasizes brighter acidities, a little more citrus qualities. Like have you ever taken a any kind of a citrus and rub the skin. Rubbing it.
What you're doing is releasing all those aromas from the oils. And so you do that to a lemon, it smells like a lemon. You do that to an orange, smells like an orange. And if you do the grapefruit, smells like grapefruit. Sauvignon Blancs, when they're freshly fermented, smells like you've stuck your head in a big bucket of grapefruit rinds. Not the bitterness, but that fresh grapefruit.
That's what Sauvignon Blanc does when it's very early in the fermentation, finishing the fermentation process. The other style of Sauvignon Blanc, they pick it a little bit riper, and so it stays on the vine, you know, usually 10 days to maybe 14 days longer than that other style. So it gets a little bit riper, and it starts moving from those citrus qualities that I just described.
That becomes more reduced, and it becomes starting to have more like tropical fruits. So mango, I don't know how much you guys get mango back in your supermarkets back there. Yeah, right. I've heard descriptions like lychee nuts. I don't even know what a lychee nuts tastes like, but lychee nut is one of those descriptors, but usually just riper fruit flavors.
And those guys and those styles, they tend to ferment them and keep them a little bit longer or keep them in oak barrels. And so it adds complexity. So the more ripe, they want to have more complexity. Less ripe, different kind of complexity. So both of those wines are made in a similar style. They're both about 13, almost 14% alcohol. Or I think one of them probably says 14% alcohol.
And the other one's 13.9 or something. 13.9, yeah. Both made in the same style, same philosophy. But the vineyards are 15 miles apart. So they're going to be different. And I'm hoping you guys can see the difference between the two.
You guys in the Midwest can probably see 15 miles in any direction over here.
Yeah. So over here, you're lucky to see more than about a mile in any direction over here. So, So in your operation, how far apart from one end to the other are you? Well, let's see. On the north end of Sonoma County is a little town called Cloverdale, and we're up close to that town.
Sonoma County is a million acres, and it probably takes you 45 minutes to drive from the northern end on Highway 101 to the southern end, assuming no traffic. Well, we break our operations up into four districts. So we have four managers. Okay.
And just because of the amount of acreage or amount of distance you'd have to cover to get them, even though they're pretty small vendors, they range from six acres to 75 acres in size, but they're scattered all over the county. And Russian River flows right through it. And there's only a half dozen bridges on the Russian River. So if you're farming
You have two vendors across the river from each other. It might take you 45 minutes to get to each one of them because you've got to drive around on a bridge to go over the river. So we break it up into districts. Most of us, most of the guys in the vendor management business here, that's how you operate.
You break it up into regions, assign supervisors to those areas, and they have their own equipment operators and their own form, and their own personnel. So there you go.
Do each one have – I don't even know about this.
Do you see a little cap like a segment on top of that cork on either end of it? Or does it look like one solid piece? It looks like one solid piece. It looks like tofu.
Showing 1–20 of 37 · page 1 of 2
Next →