HEALDSBURG, Ca. — Papapietro Perry is an inspiring story, even if the everyman aspect of the tale doesn’t quite hold.
Papapietro is Ben. He’s the winemaker. Perry is Bruce, whose wife Renae provides the sales and marketing expertise. Together Papapietro and Perry are the Papapietro Perry winery, which specializes in Russian River Valley Pinot Noir and Zinfandel, although the winery itself is located in the Dry Creek Valley.
Ben and Bruce, the storyline goes, were just two regular guys working in the circulation department at the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, which at one time published both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner simultaneously.
Ben made a little wine in his garage, which he sold to family and friends. He had no formal education in winemaking, but learned most of what he knows helping Bert Williams — one half of the Williams Selyem juggernaut and also a colleague at the newspapers — make garage wines in the 1970s.
Ben and Bruce later worked as grunts helping the upstart Williams Selyem winery during harvests as the famed Pinot Noir producer got off the ground.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, over one of their frequent steak dinners where the red Burgundy and Pinot Noir flowed, Bruce convinced Ben to partner up in a commercial winery venture.
Thus was Papapietro Perry born.
“I had a great basement to do wine in,” Ben remembers. “And I thought I could make wine that was as good as anything we were buying. The really hard part was finding the right fruit. No one would sell us grapes.
“So Bert would buy grapes for Williams Selyem and always set aside some for us. Eventually, in about 1990, new plantings started coming in and the supply loosened up. But it wasn’t easy in the beginning.”
Ben and Bruce and Papapietro Perry soon outgrew the garage and turned to a custom-crush facility in Windsor until they found their current location a few miles outside of Healdsburg in the Dry Creek Valley.
I first discovered this small gem of a winery while attending a tasting event here in Sonoma County about five years ago. I was impressed at the time by the balance and suaveness of Ben’s wines. He has resisted the trend toward heavier, riper Pinots and is to be applauded for sticking to his guns.
“I think we figured out we must be doing something right the first time all of our wines got ratings of 90 points or higher in the Wine Spectator,” said Renae.
I told Ben I thoroughly appreciated his “Burgundian” style, but I stood corrected. He calls it a Russian River style.
“I’ve always liked the earthiness and minerality of Russian River Pinots,” said Ben. “We’ve also kind of benchmarked our style. We don’t want the wood to be too invasive. We want the fruit to stick out, the vineyard to stick out. We use the same (type) barrel, the same yeast. You do that and you eliminate a lot of variables and you can be consistent in your style vintage after vintage.”
I tasted three different Pinots from the 2005 vintage — the Russian River ($42), the Leras Family Vineyard ($48) and the Pommard Clone ($68). These are exceptional hand-crafted Pinots, but a bit difficult to find except in fine restaurants or through the winery wine club.
But here’s the rub. The bit about two ordinary guys starting in their garage and working hard and eventually carving a niche for themselves in the world of fine wine?
There is absolutely nothing “ordinary” about Papapietro and Perry, Ben and Bruce, or the trail of success blazed by these two garagistas.
Try this one: two extraordinary visionaries making extraordinary wines in an extraordinary corner of the wine world. There, I think that just about says it all!
Photo: Renae Perry and Ben Papapietro
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