Zinfandel Powerhouse | Features | News & Features | Wine Spectator 8/13/13 4:02 PM Home > Magazine Archives > June 30, 2013 Issue > Features Zinfandel Powerhouse Larry Turley delivers rich, full-bodied reds that reflect his zest for life James Laube Issue: June 30, 2013 Larry Turley was living in Paris in 2004 when he made a frantic phone call to his winery in Napa Valley. Enjoying an extended holiday in France with his family, Turley was surrounded by the best wines money could buy—Bordeaux, Burgundy and more —but he couldn't find a drop of his beloved Zinfandel. "I'm gonna be here for a year," he told his winemaker, "and I need something to drink." With Zinfandel, it seems, it's all or nothing. Considered the quintessential California wine, Zinfandel is equal parts loved and scorned by wine drinkers, even in the United States. It is indeed a wine with multiple personalities, its character veering wildly over the decades from blush wine to a superripe, Port-style red. For the past 20 years, the strongest hand at the Zinfandel wheel has been Larry Turley's. Turley Wine Cellars, which released its first wines with the 1993 vintage, View the entire table of contents pioneered a plush, richly fruity style of Zinfandel that helped establish the varietal as for the June 30, 2013 issue a world-class contender. Turley's Zins appear on America's best restaurant wine lists, and the waiting time for a spot on his direct mail list rivals that of many cult See Also Cabernet Sauvignon producers. Zinfandel's Renaissance The desire for commercial success motivates Turley as much as it does any Napa Zinfandel Stars producer, but he also has a more personal motive. If the old saying "you are what you eat" is also true about wine, then the man behind Turley Wine Cellars is 6 feet 5 A Challenging Year inches of Zinfandel. He's crazy for the stuff, and the Turley Zinfandels are as distinctive and full of gusto as the man himself. California Zinfandel Alphabetical Listing "Zinfandel is just so drinkable," says Turley, 68, from his home adjacent to his St. Helena, Calif., winery. "I just gravitate toward it. I like how it tastes on the vine and in the barrel, if you get it properly ripe like we do. You can drink it young, and it seems to go with all kinds of food. I have it with fish." Turley Zins show plenty of energy in 2010 and 2011, two challenging vintages in California. The Paso Robles Dusi Vineyard 2011 (95 points on the Wine Spectator 100-point scale, $42) is powerful and focused. The Napa Valley Turley Estate 2011 (94, $38) is rich and full-bodied, yet precise and balanced. The Napa Valley Hayne Vineyard 2010 (91, $75) belongs in the cellar for its backbone of tannins and acidity paired with dense boysenberry, rosemary and licorice flavors. And those are just three of the more than 20 Zinfandels that Turley is now producing. As it begins its third decade, Turley Wine Cellars is entering a new era. Christina Turley, Larry's oldest daughter, recently joined him in the business, and this spring, Ehren Jordan, Turley's winemaker since 1994, left to focus on his own winery, Failla, handing the lead winemaking reins to veteran assistant and vineyard manager Tegan Passalacqua. Stylistically, too, the Zinfandels have evolved in recent vintages, showing more focus and packing less alcohol while retaining the incredible fruit that has made Turley wines so popular with Zin lovers. http://www.winespectator.com/magazine/show/id/48445 Page 1 of 7 Zinfandel Powerhouse | Features | News & Features | Wine Spectator 8/13/13 4:02 PM "[Larry] has a real love for life," says Frog's Leap Winery owner John Williams of his longtime friend and former partner. "And he's one of the great characters of the wine business." If Zinfandel is a wine that goes to extremes, it makes sense that Larry Turley produces it. He's not one to overanalyze his wines—he's more fascinated by farming and machines. He used to ride a motorcycle and was known to drive fast. "Usually with the police chasing him," Williams adds. Though Turley's brown hair and beard are giving over to gray, and his native Georgia still lingers leisurely in his words, Turley remains on the move. He keeps a plane at a nearby airport and flies himself just about everywhere. Maybe his need for speed is a side effect of his former life as an emergency room physician. The career of the average emergency room doctor lasts 11 years, Turley says, and he held the job for 24. "People ask me, ‘Where do they go when they quit?' " Turley says, "and I tell them: ‘Rehab.' There's a huge burnout and substance abuse issue. There's nothing in medical school that prepares you for that kind of intensity." Then again, there's seemingly nothing in Turley's background that prepared him for a life in wine. He was born in Augusta, Ga., in 1945, to parents who did not drink and considered alcohol a sin. "It was demon alcohol," Turley says. But when his sister Mary returned from a trip to France with a bottle of St.-Emilion in the 1960s, his mother allowed the family to have a taste. "I was probably a sophomore in high school, and it conjured up all these things like knights in armor," he says. After high school, Turley briefly studied aerospace engineering before "going into the desert to study philosophy" at St. John's College in New Mexico. Finally, he decided to be a physician; he earned his medical degree from the University of New Mexico in 1973. While in med school, Turley became interested in food when he was given a Julia Child cookbook by Mary and his other sister, Helen Turley, who went on to be one of California's most influential winemakers. His first recipe was "mustard-crusted leg of lamb," which he made in the dorm kitchen. "It wasn't long before the entire dorm was in the room," Turley recalls. Burgundy was the suggested wine pairing for the dish, but Turley couldn't find any, so he settled for Gallo Hearty Burgundy. "I drank about half the bottle while I was cooking," he says. "I was always interested in wine after that." After graduation, Turley jumped on his motorcycle and hauled out to San Francisco, where he interned at St. Mary's Hospital near Haight-Ashbury. The "summer of love" had long passed, and the neighborhood had taken a dark turn. Turley learned on his feet. The following year, 1974, he took his first job in an emergency room, at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Sonoma County, and within a few months bought a dilapidated 5-acre farm in Napa Valley just north of St. Helena, which remains the home ranch today. "The day I bought it, I had worked all night and I came home on my motorcycle and there's a tent in my front yard," Turley remembers. "I was a little cranky so I drove through the tent. The occupant was somewhat startled, and I said, ‘What are you doing?' and, to his credit, he said, ‘Well I'm about to have a drink of wine.' And he pulled a bottle from beneath his pillow." The man in the tent was John Williams. "Actually," Williams recalls, laughing, "Larry knew I was coming but had forgotten all about it." Williams had become friends with Helen Turley at Cornell University, and she had introduced the two men. Williams was on spring break and had taken a Greyhound bus all the way out from upstate New York. That summer, Williams moved into the farmhouse with Turley and entered the winemaking program at nearby University of California, Davis. "Larry was always taking in strays. It was kind of my home away from home," Williams says. "There were some monumental parties." By the summer of 1980, Turley and Williams attempted their first homemade wine together. Turley was in charge of finding the grapes, and Williams says he was expecting to make a few gallons. Turley instead showed up with 3 tons of Zinfandel from a vineyard at Spottswoode Winery. "Larry," Williams says, "doesn't do anything small." In the end, Williams says they were forced to convert a neighbor's old hot tub into a fermentor. But it worked, and the wine was good enough to drink. In http://www.winespectator.com/magazine/show/id/48445 Page 2 of 7 Zinfandel Powerhouse | Features | News & Features | Wine Spectator 8/13/13 4:02 PM 1981, Williams said it was time to start their own winery. "I [replied], ‘Sure, OK, I'm only working 100 hours a week. I've got the time,' " Turley recalls. Nonetheless, the pair made the first wines of their Frog's Leap label that year, using the facilities at Spring Mountain Winery, where Williams was the winemaker. Three years later, Frog's Leap was so successful that they moved the winemaking to Turley's home ranch. Turley's tenure as a doctor came in handy. "He seemed the responsible one for the lenders," Williams says. "He had a steady income." Turley's job demanded most of his attention, but he thrived on it. Williams recalls the stories from the ER and how miserable Turley was when he lost a patient. It was about that time Turley gave up his motorcycle. "I rode all over Europe, the United States, Mexico," he says, "but it took some of the thrill out of it when other emergency room physicians called them ‘donor cycles.' " That was in 1984, when the demands of Turley's job were joined by a major event in his personal life.