Visit the Qupé tasting room in Los Olivos and you’ll find a familial feast—a multitude of wines made by three different members of the Lindquist family: venerable vintner Bob Lindquist’s Qupe wines, his wife Louisa Sawyer Lindquist’s Verdad wines, and Bob’s son Ethan Lindquist’s wine label, appropriately named Ethan. Bob’s daughter Paige Lindquist runs the tasting room and wine club for all three brands.
We all recently sat down together over lunch at the patriarch’s wine production facility east of Santa Maria in the famed Bien Nacido Vineyard. The conversation weaved among winemakers and was riddled with laughter.
This year, Bob celebrates the 30th anniversary of Qupé Wines, (pronounced kyoo-paý) which is the Chumash Indian word for California poppy. The flower adorns his wine bottle labels.
Named one of the world’s 50 most influential winemakers by Wine and Spirits Magazine, Bob was the first producer of Syrah in Santa Barbara County in 1982, and the county’s first producer of Viognier in 1989. He was the first in California to make Marsanne, back in 1987.
Today Bob produces 35,000 cases of Rhone-style wines and Chardonnay. Two-thirds of Qupé’s production is Syrah. His wines will be sold in all 50 states by the end of the year, and he exports internationally to half a dozen other markets.
The forward-thinker is revered for being ahead of his time, but one could call Bob’s start in the wine biz a little “kinky.” In 1979, Bob was hired to manage a retail wine shop in Los Olivos, but nine months later, his boss gave him his marching orders.
“He fired me on a Monday morning, for going to a Kinks concert that I had prearranged, and that
afternoon his father, who was the owner of Zaca Mesa [Winery], called me and hired me,” Bob recalled.
That’s how Bob got his first hands-on winemaking experience in Santa Barbara County.
“So I always attribute becoming a winemaker to The Kinks, at least in part,” he said.
Bob’s son Ethan’s eventual profession took a backseat to his passion for many years: winter sports.
“I moved up to Tahoe to go snowboarding, and it turned into seven years, and then I got serious and moved off the hill,” he said.
Ethan went to college, interned at a winery in Sonoma County, and then founded his own boutique winery called Ethan Wines—focusing, like his father, on Rhone varietals Syrah and Grenache, but unlike his father, also making Sangiovese. He now makes Ethan Wines at Tres Hermanas Winery on Foxen Canyon Road in Santa Maria.
Ethan inherited his dad’s love of wine at a young age: “I enjoyed running around the vineyard and the winery, and I was always interested in tasting wine as well. I always wanted to smell and taste it. I watched my dad swirl it and the way he tasted it; I’d always wanted to kind of imitate him.
“I’ve consulted with my dad all the way through,” Ethan said, but he explained he still wanted to cut his own path. “The only thing I didn’t take his advice on was Sangiovese, which now is ironically my most popular wine.”
The room burst into laughter at that comment. Father doesn’t always know best?
In 2001, Ethan came across some really good Sangiovese fruit and called Bob for fatherly advice.
“Dad said, ‘Oh, don’t do it. You’re never going to be able to sell it. It’s really difficult to make and grow,’” Ethan said. “And I wanted to do something that he hadn’t made.”
He remembers Bob saying, “Well, I’ve never made it.”
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“So of course I hung up the phone and contracted the fruit,” Ethan said, prompting the family belly laugh again.
“It sells out almost immediately,” Paige said.
“I love that wine,” Louisa added.
In addition to making his own wine, Ethan recently started doing road sales for Qupé, selling his dad’s wines all over the country.
“There’s so many brands out there and distributers, and wine buyers are mobbed daily by reps, and it’s definitely challenging,” Ethan said. “But it’s something I enjoy doing. Obviously, I’m familiar with the wines. So, who better to be out there than a family member?”
What about Paige? When will Bob’s daughter start making wine like dear old dad?
“I’m probably not,” she admitted. “But if I do, I want to make bubbly. The last time I said that when Dad was there, he said, ‘Don’t do that!’ But that’s my dream. I want to do something different. There’s not enough good bubbly in California.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Bob insisted.
Ethan explained: “It’s hard to fetch high dollar for California bubbly.”
“It is,” Bob agreed. “It’s one of those categories that’s really underappreciated. There are actually some really good bubbly.”
Louisa added, “It’s very expensive to produce.”
Louisa Sawyer Lindquist got her start in the wine business on the East Coast, in a Long Island vineyard in the winter of 1983.
“It quickly took the romance out when I was pruning grapevines for eight hours a day in February, in New York,” she said. “Cold, surrounded by water—it was freezing. … It was a good taste of reality that the business is not all glamour.”
But not too long after that, glamour himself walked in the door.
While working in a wine shop, Louisa was told by the shop’s owner that his friend, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was going to drop by the store to taste wine.
“So I picked out a Qupé Reserve Chardonnay,” Louisa recalled amid more laughter. “And we all drank it, and I met John Kennedy [Jr.] and his girlfriend. Yeah, he didn’t have trouble attracting girls.”
Everyone chuckled.
Louisa enjoyed Bob’s wine in the ’80s, long before meeting him, and, as fate would have it, marrying him in 1997.
Louisa’s passion is Spanish grape varietal wines. More than a decade ago, when she started her own label, Verdad Wines, she thought making Spanish wines would be only natural with all the Spanish history in California. Verdad is the only California winery devoted solely to Spanish varietals. Louisa makes Tempranillo, a silky red wine; a rosé; and Albariño, a subtle aromatic white wine.
“Bob certainly helped with Verdad,” Louisa said. “We made the wine together the first few vintages. And then I’ve slowly took over, and now I’m making all of it.”
The couple teamed up on another wine brand, Sawyer-Lindquist Pinot Noir, grown in their Edna Valley vineyard. The current release is selling in their tasting room.
Louisa explained the benefits of being a winemaking family, other than always having plenty of world-class wine on hand: “It’s a dynamic thing. We’re all changing. We’re all growing together, separately. We all have ideas. It’s nice that we can talk about things and there’s common ground, and we do give each other ideas. … And it’s nice. It’s a good group conversation.”
The Qupé tasting room is open daily for conversation, and of course, wine tasting, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 2963 Grand Ave. in Los Olivos. Check out qupe.com for more information.
Sun wine and food writer Wendy Thies Sell wouldn’t mind always having plenty of world-class wine on hand. You can contact her at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2012.