Breaking Bread

My interest in natural wine came about as I noticed a shift in our industry toward lower alcohol, food friendly and low intervention wine. When I decided to start Breaking Bread, it was very important to me, artistically, to build something completely different than my first conception, Kokomo . I wanted to be challenged in my craft as a winemaker... and I also wanted to understand fermentation from a different perspective that could possibly play a part in future Kokomo vintages. In searching out vineyards for Breaking Bread, it was imperative to find vines with age and that are dry farmed, because the goal is to have physiological ripeness come at lower sugar levels. With older vines, we can achieve lower alcohol content by picking earlier but still have great complexity. I also know that the focus of this brand had to be Zinfandel. As a California winemaker, I believe that there is no grape more special than Zinfandel. Old heritage Zinfandel vines that have been in the ground for over 100 years are unique to our region and have such a storied past. They embody the historical roots of natural wines. Unfortunately, this varietal has had a poor reputation for being over alcoholic, slightly sweet and a jammy mess of fruit. White Zinfandel did not help our cause. We wanted to give California Zinfandel a new and fresh face. Wine is a natural product in the first place. I think our craft got diluted with the advancement of technology and science. Additives and commercial yeast became commonplace, and people began building wines to certain specifications, at times in complete disregard of terroir or the grapes themselves. As a novice winemaker, I relied on commercial yeast as a security blanket to make sure that the wine went fully through fermentation. I had heard a lot about native yeast but was hesitant to gamble with our fruit because I was not confident that the native yeast would have an alcohol tolerance high enough to get me through fermentation cleanly. When I did finally experiment with native yeast, I was ...Read More