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WINEMAKING Winemaker Interview CHARLIE WAGNER member of the fifth generation of a well-known Napa Valley wine family, Charlie Wagner II always knew he would be a winemaker. Named for his grandfa- ther, the founder of Caymus Vineyards in Rutherford, Calif., the younger Charlie spent summers working in the vineyards and the cellar. When he was 16, his St. Helena High School counselor gave him permission to spend two days out of every three weeks at the family's Mer Soleil Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands of Monterey County. The Wagner family had established Mer Soleil as a white wine project. When Wagner graduated from high school in 1998, he began dividing his time between the family's operations in Rutherford and Monterey County. At first he worked alongside Jon Bolta, winemaker for Conundrum and director of operations for the Wagners' Monterey County winery. In 2004, he took over as A YOUR SUCCESS IS OUR PRIORITY winemaker for Mer Soleil, where he makes a regular Chardonnay, an unoaked version called Silver and, when conditions are right, a late-harvest Viognier called Late. Wines & Vines: How did you get the idea for the ceramic bottle for your Silver Chardonnay? Charlie Wagner: I had a beer from a well-known brewery, and I kept the bottle because I liked it. It was black and ceramic. I can't recall the shape, but it was not the same long neck we use. After look- ing at this thing for over a year, it hit me that this bottle sort of resembled the concrete tanks that we use for our unoaked Silver Chardonnay. I did some research and found out that the bottle was made in Germany by a company called MKM. I contacted their distributor in our region (Phoenix Packaging) and got the ball rolling on making a decision on bottle shape and color in order to do a test run. We chose a stock bottle shape called the "long neck" and then worked for a few months on getting the color right. MKM did offer to develop a custom-shape bottle, but it would have taken months or even years to accomplish all of the strength tests and other developmental testing, so we decided to go with the bottle we chose to streamline the process. We wanted to get the gray color as close to the color of concrete as possible. It was harder to accom- plish than one would think, but I think we got it pretty close. Both MKM and Phoenix Packaging were very helpful with this process and had many color test samples sent back and forth between Ger- many and California before we decided on the custom gray color. W&V: Once you had the bottle, were there any challenges? Wagner: We had a few challenges with the first run of bottles. Our first issue was that the pressure-sensitive labels we were us- ing at the time wouldn't adhere properly to the bottle. This was due to two things: One is that the bottles are somewhat irregular, which I believe is just the nature of the beast when it comes to ceramic; two, the clear coat that is on both the outside and inside of the bottle didn't seem to allow any type of adhesive to stick to it for whatever reason. We had our label producer try many dif- ferent adhesives, and all of them failed the soak test after 20 to 30 minutes, which is problematic when you have a wine that will at some point be placed in an ice bucket. Pacific Ocean Monterey Salinas Mer Soleil Vineyard 52 Wines & Vines MAY 2012 OR Mer Soleil vintner packages unoaked Chardonnay in ceramic bottles By Laurie Daniel CALIFORNIA Mendocino Caymus Vineyards Napa CALIFORNIA San Francisco NV