Sabrine Rodems, Scratch Wines
Sabrine Rodems worked in the film and theater industry until she decided she needed a broader creative stage to showcase her talents: winemaking. After graduating from UC Davis with a Master of Science in Viticulture and Enology and working as a Winemaker at Wrath Wines, she founded her own label, Scratch Wine.
Scratch makes wine that not only you want to drink, but Sabine wants to drink, too. “You want to be able to say, yeah, I love my wine so much, I drink them every night at home.”
Cheers to that!
I sat down with Sabrine over a glass of Scratch bubbly at her tasting room to talk about her journey as a winemaker here on the Central Coast.
Tell me about your approach to winemaking and wine drinking.
I often ask myself when I’m tasting some other people’s wines, do you drink this at home? Be honest with yourself about what you like. What are you actually spending your money on, is what I want to know.
Wines need to be delicious and they need to be yummy. They can also be interesting, but if you get so esoteric that nobody wants to drink it, you’re screwed. [As a Winemaker] you want to be able to say, I love my wine so much, I drink them every night at home. I’m not here to make wine nobody wants to drink.
Today we’re having my Brut Rose and the Blanc de Blancs. They are bright and high acid. I don’t like sparkling wine when it gets yeasty. I don’t like it when it tastes oxidized to me. I want to drink it because it’s hot out and these wines are refreshing. I think sparkling wines shouldn’t be that serious or too refined. Maybe it’s because I am a Californian and that’s what makes me a Californian. This Brut Rose is a 2020, it was in tirage for like 18 to 20 months. I think that’s perfect for me.
Tell me more about your winemaking style.
Winemakers talk about balance, balance, balance. And then some of them make the most unbalanced wines.
I don’t like sweets and I don’t like super rich food, my level of going over that rich edge comes really fast. So that’s why I think my wines are more balanced. Because I teeter over the cliff pretty fast.
I always tell people to taste my chardonnays, because I don’t really like chardonnay. As a result, I make chardonnay for my style. It’s going to have fat; it’s got to have acid. The wine is buttery with a little bit of oak, but it’s super clean on the finish.
Every time I have that wine – and it’s not my go-to because I’m a bright, high-acid wine drinker – but every time I drink that at events or dinners, or winemaker dinners, I’m always like, damn, this is good. I’m shocked by my own wine. I like that it’s so balanced.
What is your favorite wine you’ve made?
That’s hard. The one wine that I push all the time, and it’s because I love Grenache, it’s my single varietal Grenache. I think it’s so versatile. I think you can have it with steak and I think you gonna have it with fish. And I think it’s spicy and then I think it also has a lot of fruitiness to it. So it really lends itself to such a wide array. I think it’s super food friendly and I wish people made more single vineyard Grenache or single varietal Grenache.
Do you have advice for wine drinkers looking to try new wines?
I always tell people, don’t look at the pricing and judge. Just drink it. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. I’m not here to tell you what you like or don’t like or what’s good and what’s not good.
There’s a winemaker who came and talked to us. I think it was the winemaker from Navarro. And he said, give me a $100 bottle of wine on the day my dad dies and it’s gonna be the worst bottle of wine I ever had. Give me a $10 bottle of wine on the day I get married to be the best bottle of wine I ever had. Emotion and your circumstance, that all feeds into how everything feels around us, whether it’s what we’re eating or drinking.
We’re here at your Carmel Valley Tasting room. Tell me about your inspiration behind it.
Not to be negative about other people’s designs, but we’ve all seen the wagon wheels and the upright barrels. That’s kind of what we do around here. I wanted a place that I would want to go to if I was on vacation. A little bit of an oasis.
It’s sort of a modern Moroccan concept. Even when we were building it, people would walk in. They’d be like, “Oh my God, it’s so inviting.” That’s the biggest compliment you can give me.
I’m a firm believer that, beyond food and shelter and the necessities of life, we should all have art in our house.
A lot of the artwork is mine. I don’t have a lot of wall space in my house, so I had artwork stuffed in folios or sitting in the corner. This gave me space to put some of my art out and to buy more art. The piece behind me is actually by my cousin, he’s a painter in Berlin.
Since we’re talking about artwork, tell me about the art on your labels.
That’s all Eddie Colla. He’s an artist out of Oakland, California. He’s done a lot of art and art residencies around the world. Thailand and China and Europe. He mostly does commissioned public street art now. I think he’s sort of a nomad right now.
You found him by chance, is that right?
This was years ago. Fifteen? I ran into a guy on a BART train who had one of his shirts. It was an Asian looking girl on a bike. It looked like she was in front of a Hong Kong skyline. She had a green surgical mask and green gloves.
I said, “Hey dude, I like your shirt” <laughing>.
And he says, “Oh, he is an artist out of Oakland.”
I’m sure he said what his name was, but I didn’t catch it and I couldn’t read the signature tag. So I literally Googled ‘Asian girl on bike artist Oakland’ and his website popped up. And I reached out to him.
Do you commission the artwork for your labels?
The label for my Cabernet Sauvignon is commissioned. As for the rest, Eddie sends me a selection of what he has.I think the only other label that I commissioned from him was the Molotov Cocktail Girl on the Riesling label.
I said I want a girl throwing a molotov cocktail. I want a tough girl. I’ve been the tough girl my whole life. I’ve been in male dominated jobs. I was a stagehand, now I’m a winemaker. I wanted my label to represent that woman, that girl who’s just, sort of flipping at the bird.
What’s next for Scratch?
We have the new brand called C47, which is my blended wines.
There’s a Marsanne Roussanne, a Grenache Syrah blend, and then a Cab Franc Merlot blend.
People wanted me to name the new brand after myself, but I’m not a fan of that.C47 is a clothes pin, that’s what we call them in the film business. Everybody always had their or C47s on their tool belt. We use them to clip anything together. Like anything, I used to put my hair up with one, occasionally.I love the idea that there are multiple things being held together. There’s different varietals in there. And that’s sort of my ultra-premium line.
What advice do you have for aspiring winemakers?
You’re going to pick your style based on who you work for. So if you don’t want to have an influence over styling, if it doesn’t matter to you, go work for somebody big. You’re not going to influence an existing brand style really that much as a young winemaker.
If you’re going to work for someone small, then you have more influence.
But don’t expect, unless you have your own brand, to be able to impress somebody’s brand style, it’s just not going to happen. That’s like asking to impress Coca-Cola’s brand style. Their brand already exists if they’ve been in the business long enough. That’s not what you’re there for. You’re there to help them make sound quality wine in the brand that they already have.
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Thank you, Sabrine, for sharing your winemaking journey with me. To buy Sabrine’s wines, visit her tasting room in Carmel Valley, or buy directly online from www.scratchwines.com.
Looking to meet other Monterey County Winemakers? Read my interview with Miguel Lepe of Lepe Cellars.
