Friday, October 6
Vintage Berkeley - Vine Street
5:30 - 7:30
$15 ($5/club members)
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Partners in love and winemaking, Katie Rouse and Corrine Rich are the dynamic duo behind one of our absolute fave new-ish wine projects out of Sonoma, Birdhorse Wines. This couple have their sights set on deepening diversity in the world of California winemaking. How? They work strictly with alternative varieties (aka not Pinot or Chard), they source from underappreciated regions (think Suisun Valley) and they themselves represent a new wave of winemakers (think not white dudes).
On top of their dedication to diversity, these two have proven themselves to be serious winemakers, bottling one killer vintage after the next for the past four years. Uninterested in producing gluggable reds and unworried about falling squarely in the “natural wine” camp, Katie and Corrine are making serious, structured single varietal wines that beg contemplation. As Esther Mobley puts it, “...the Birdhorse wines are sneakily complex, and not remotely glou glou”.
The pair still hold their day jobs, with Katie working as the assistant winemaker at Bedrock Wine Co. and Corrine in the same role at Scribe, but they find time to devote to their Birdhorse bottlings each harvest season. Speaking of which, they won’t be able to attend as they are knee deep in harvest but we’ll be joined by the lovely Julie Karp from Skurnik Wines pouring!
PS: If you have five minutes to spare, do yourself a favor and listen to this clip that unpacks the origins of the Birdhorse name. Based on a simple and hilarious personality test that places every human into three simple buckets: bird, horse and muffin. Can you guess who’s the horse and who’s the bird?