Initial Thoughts:  I’ve known Greg since the inception of his winery on Red Mountain, in Benton City.  During my very first tasting I fell in love with his wines and immediately signed up to become a member of the Frichette Cru Wine Club!  Needless to say, I’ve never left, and the wines continue to evolve and impress!  Frichette Winery’s focus is aimed at creating very approachable yet elegant Bordeaux style varietal wines and blends, where literally most anything you taste will satisfy your palate.  In particular, Greg’s line of Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots are delicious and the price point of these gems won’t deter you one bit from taking these home.  It’s very challenging to chat with Greg and conduct an interview with him, without mentioning or acknowledging his amazing wife Shae, who is his co-conspirator in the Frichette wine journey…but no worries…I will plan an interview with Shae down the road for sure!  So, let’s get this started.

AWC:  Welcome to Aaron’s Wine Chronicles first ever Winemaker interview!  I have to say Greg, I am really pleased that you accepted my offer to be the very first winemaker that I’ve had the opportunity to interview and to be the first interview to be posted on my web blog.  So this is an informal dialog and I’ve already sent you the questions in advance, so you’ve had a chance to think about some of your responses.  So thank you again for providing me this interview opportunity.

GF:  You’ve been tasting our wine since the very beginning, so you know the whole trajectory of everything that we’ve been doing, and also Aaron, before we get into this and before I tell my story and answer these wine related questions, the interview will be way more compelling if we are drinking wine!

AWC:  Absolutely!  As a matter of fact, we actually are drinking wine….so what did you just pour us?

GF:  So this is a treat for me to have you be the very first to taste this outside of me and Shae.  This is the first Vertical of Quintessence vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, 100% varietal.  So I believe the glass on the left is the 2016 and the glass on the right has the 2017 vintage.  I used very similar barrel programs for each of these wines.

AWC:  Different noses on each one. I’m noticing significantly different aromatics between the 16 and 17.

GF:  So I did something different this time.  This was the first experiment with a different kind of yeast that was like a lot of guys use on Cabs, and I can taste it immediately, and it resulted in a wine that on some levels has similarities to the 16, but also exhibits some unique differences, especially on the nose.

AWC:  Even the flavor profiles are markedly different between the two vintages.  The 17 has a little bit more boldness, more tannic, almost something like maybe tobacco on the nose and maybe some leather.

GF:  I get chalky tannin with the 17 which is interesting because it’s not there in the 2018s.  So this wine can be cellared to age.

AWC:  From my experience, everything you’ve ever made pretty much ages really nicely.  OK…well I don’t want to take up your whole afternoon so we should get this interview started.  It is June 18^th, Tuesday afternoon around 4:15 pm so let’s start with our list of questions…So Greg, what is your story?  How did you get started in winemaking?

GF:  Sure.  Well to sum it up in one sentence, I feel like I’m a product of all of the support that’s available in the state of Washington for learning how to make wine.  Okay, so I’ll tell you the reason why I started making wine and then how I learned how to make wine. So I grew up here locally in Pasco and went to Washington State University and was introduced to Southern California my senior year, when the Cougs went to the Rose Bowl.  That’s when Ryan Leaf took them to the Rose Bowl, and so my buddies and I were introduced to this amazing place called Southern California, and we ended up moving there after we graduated from college.  While living there – I lived down there for 13 to 14 years and didn’t do anything with winemaking.  I had a job as an IT guy for a medical group hooking up computers and servers, and a couple years into it I met my wife (Shae), and over the course of 13 to 14 years we met, got married, and started to talk about having a family.  We decided that we wanted to raise our family near family, and it was either going to be South Carolina where she’s from, or Washington state where I’m from.  Both are great places, and we were considering places like Charleston which is a cool little foodie town, or up here where there’s a lot of agriculture.  So we talked about it.  Shae will say we “argued” about it….I’d like to say we “discussed” it.  And, one night after quite a bit of wine she came to me and said, “we’ve gotta decide and we have to start planning the move – let’s flip a coin.”  She says, “Heads Washington state, tails South Carolina”, and she brought out the coin. She checked it to make sure it was a legit coin, we flipped the coin and it came up heads and she’s like “Aw geez….well, let’s go best out of three!”  I was like…no babe, we can’t tempt fate, cuz that’s her thing you know…fate will decide everything.  So after that sunk in, we slept on it.  We woke up and started discussing that if we were going to move away from Southern California, what could we do to make it an upgrade because we loved living down there so much. We were living in Aliso Viejo which was right by Laguna Beach – a cool little beach town.  People vacation there from all over the world. So we start talking about it and we start realizing that we missed farming.  We both grew up in farming families.  I grew up in Pasco on like a 10 acre little hobby farm with chickens, ducks and llamas and all that, and then my grandparents had a wheat ranch up in the Palouse you know I would go up in the spring and fall and drive tractor up there and then my wife grew up with master gardeners, they grew crops, peanuts, cotton and tobacco.  So we started to consider doing something farming related, and we looked at a variety of different types of farming to pursue up here and we landed in wine because there’s a huge farming piece to it with the vineyard, but there’s also a huge social piece to it with what we have in the tasting room.

AWD:  So, were you a big fan of wine and was Shae a big fan of wine before you got into making wines?

GF:  We were, but we were like novices you know, like our special occasion bottle of wine would have been like Seven Deadly Zins or Two Buck Chuck, and then once we decided to do that we started going to the wine regions in Southern California like Temecula and San Luis Obispo, and we were like “wow…this is great!”  And that’s when it really shored up in our minds that yeah…we can do this.  And so we initially thought that we would have a big vineyard, so we contacted property folks up here and there weren’t any vineyards for sale or anything like that. So we said, well, let’s start making the wine and then the vineyard will come later and that’s kinda how we made the decision to move up here.  We’ll start making wine while were still down there and then we’ll make the transition with me moving up here and we’ll open up the tasting room right here.

AWC:  So that’s a perfect segue into the next question which is…so you’ve now established how you got into the wine industry and the fact that you’re back up here in Washington…back to your home where your roots are, so once you were up here and you started making the wine, who had the most influence on your winemaking, or your wine expertise?

GF:  Yup…so for me, we made the decision to get the foundational education, so I went back to Washington State University went to their enology certificate program which is an amazing program because they give you all the fundamentals and it’s a blend of online learning as well as these boot camps we you actually get to do everything that your learning the theory about.  So I completed that, and at the end of that class I knew how wine was made but then you realize that there’s a thousand different winemaking styles, and so we looked for a mentor to provide guidance for me, to hold my hand if you will, and we interviewed six different consulting winemakers in the area here, and there was one of them – Charlie Hoppes. He was the only one who said, “you know what, bring me what you like…let’s do a tasting together, and let me see if I can help you make the style of wine that you want to be able to share with people.”  So Shae and I gathered up like 6 or 7 bottles of wine and we took it over to Charlie’s winery, met with him and opened up the first two, he tasted them and said – I got it.  Your style is softer tannin Bordeaux wines.  So Charlie said I have some buddies who grow the right style of grapes for your type of winemaking that you want to do, and get these barrels, and then I’ll show you how to do it. It turned out that our first five vintages were made at his facility which is really a type of custom credit facility and he works with all different types of customers at any level which means he can make wine for folks or he’ll mentor you.  And that was our trajectory of them telling us exactly what to do and then just gradually taking the training wheels off.

AWC:  So Charlie actually pointed you in the direction of where to source your grapes for what you wanted, and actually how to age your grapes in the types of cooperage that you needed, and then also he helped mentor you in the whole process of the winemaking itself as well.  So it was a three-pronged approach really…that’s awesome.

GF:  and it was even more than that, it was who to use for bottling, who to use for graphic design it was all parts of the puzzle.  That was just a perfect mentoring relationship to help somebody like me who had some baseline knowledge be able to make a very specific style of wine that we wanted to be able to share with people and get it bottled.   The last vintage we created at his facility was the 2015, and then throughout this process  he helped me lay out the production facility for our site, which is why we say this is kind of like a Playschool version of what he has in Richland.  It’s all the same equipment, but on a smaller scale for creating wine in smaller quantities, so I can continue what I’ve learned there – here.

AWC:  So now you have fully transitioned into being the sole Winemaker, which means you are now making all the decisions and you’re doing all the winemaking here on site, and you’ve transitioned away from Charlie’s processes and facilities?

GF:  Yeah, so it’s been since the 2016 vintage, 16, 17, and 18, have all been out here and you know he’s around if I have questions, I have that lifeline which is great!  The people in the Washington wine industry are really helpful and are super close – it takes you off guard in the beginning how helpful everybody is.  You’d think it would be highly competitive, but it’s not.  The competition isn’t Washington wine, it’s outside of the state and everybody gets that.  After living this life for the past 8 to 9 years or so, trying to do this off by yourself somewhere would be impossible.  After realizing the amount of support that we received from a winemaking standpoint and from the community of wineries here in an area working together to build the brand of Washington wines – it’s great!

AWC:  So what has surprised you the most about being a Winemaker?

GF:  My first reaction when I first got into this and learned about it, I thought of this romantic vein where it’s all about tasting wine all day and it’s this easy-peezy thing.  It was more work than I ever could’ve imagined it being.  Now I’ve realized that there’s a very small percentage of winemaking where I’m actually tasting and blending the wine, instead, perhaps 95% of winemaking is moving stuff and cleaning stuff.  From a winemaking standpoint I have the same process I use the same yeast, the same nutrient schedule in the fermentation process, and I get the same grape that is Cabernet Sauvignon, clone eight from one vineyard, and another one just down the road.  And what surprises me is how different those two wines can taste.  Along those same lines, it is surprising how much different two wines can taste from the same vineyard, but successive vintages – like the ones that we just tasted here.  I did everything pretty much the same, maybe a little tweaking in the barrel program, but for the most part it’s all the same stuff and how much impact the vintage and the site vineyard makes, really surprised me, and it’s also one of the coolest things about winemaking.

AWC:  So here you’re still establishing yourself in the winemaking industry because it’s still relatively new to you…it’s not like you’ve been doing this for 40 years. So what goals right now do you have that you’re looking forward to achieving in winemaking as we sit here right now?

GF:  Really dialing in the matching of grape varietals with barrel cooperages, and the varietal of wood that’s in those barrels.  The barrel involves half the recipe right?  I mean, wine is made from grapes and barrels, and the amount of influence that the barrel has on the final product is incredible, and it’s not so much the flavor that you get (maybe a little bit of tobacco or something) it’s understanding how the barrels affect the mouthfeel, the tension on the palate and so on.  It’s incredible.  If I put a vineyard specific lot in three different barrels – you were here – when I had a Quintessence Cab that was in French oak from one cooperage and then another cooperage, and you get different attributes from each one of those barrels. So that’s what I’m really focused on this year is matching the barrels with the right vineyard and grape varietals.

AWC:  What do you find to be the hardest part of winemaking?

GF:  The most challenging is the “panic”!  Or alternately, having patience!  Because wine changes so much through the aging process and I will taste something right at the end of the initial fermentation, or when we pick in September, and get it all the way through first and secondary fermentation and then in January I’ll taste it, and that’s kind of like the first time; and there’s something there maybe a really chalky tannin, something like that.  You freak out and then you wait, and you let it do its thing and it kind of has a way of working itself out.  That’s been the great thing about having the support system around me is people talking me off the ledge from doing crazy things with wine, just let it sit, don’t touch it. Patience.  Patience has been the biggest thing.

AWC:  So let’s change gears a little bit. Let’s talk about some of the nuances of wine drinking. We talked about how you got into winemaking and some of the things that you really are focusing on. But when you start actually evaluating a wine we have a few questions for you.  So does the wineglass design and shape really matter for you? You’re a wine expert. I imagine that often you’re really trying to isolate certain attributes of wine as you’re crafting them and if so, if the glass design and shape really make an impact, what is the best glass in your experience to really enjoy a big, bold Red Mountain red the way it was intended to be enjoyed?

GF:  The glass makes SOOO much difference.  It’s incredible.  And you can evaluate this by comparing wines in your kitchen with a regular coffee cup versus a standard Riedel glass that you find in a tasting room, and you’ll experience a big difference.  One time we hosted an event here when Riedel came out and they did the whole dog and pony show, which I thought was going to be like a carnival trick – I was so skeptical and they came out and brought their Bordeaux wine glass demonstration program out here.  We poured Merlot’s and Cab’s in two different, unique types of glasses and they had what they call the “Joker glass” which is kind of like a standard glass you’d drink out of at your home, and then they had Riedel specific glasses for those varietals, and it was an incredible difference.  It was like the wine flavors were amplified, you could taste the fruit profile and you might taste some caramel from the French oak – all from the Riedel glasses and you get nothing from the other glass, so it’s a huge difference.  The one thing that I have really gotten used to is the Riedel restaurant winery glass that they only sell to restaurants and wineries because it’s universal for all Bordeaux’s, it would be a nightmare to have a glass for every varietal!  There’s a very specific type of glass right here that I can get the data/specs for you to look at if you’re interested.

AWC:  Oh I’m definitely interested!  So what is your favorite food pairing with your favorite red wine? Let’s just isolate the wines here on Red Mountain – big red wines. Whether it’s one of yours or one that you’ve tasted that’s really one of your favorites out here, what would be your ideal favorite food pairing with that wine?

GF:  This is an easy one for me, because it was the most dramatic change from both the food and the wine.  So it really could be any one of the Petite Verdot’s because I make them all from Scooteney Flats, but in this particular case it was the 2016 Petite Verdot with like the stinkiest bleu cheese. They call this Stilton bleu cheese and it is just nasty by itself, but paired with the Petite Verdot, which is super intense and very minerally, you put those two together and it turned into blueberry pie.  It was incredible.  That was my favorite.  But then of course Cabs with anything off the grill – anything – is fantastic too.

AWC:  So what are your thoughts on breathing wine?  Do you prefer aerating nozzles or do you like to decant with a little bit longer delay time, or do you feel that it’s just fine cracking the bottle open and sharing it right when you’re ready to drink it?

GF:  Decanting 100%.  What we’re tasting right here with the 17 Quintessence when we first got up here and poured a glass, I was getting something on the nose there, but it has  dissipated and now the fruit has come up on it. I think, if you’re going to enjoy any Red Mountain wine, you should go get a decanter and if you can decant that for at least 30 minutes it’s going to be a completely different wine than when you first open it up.  The wine has been all cramped up in the bottle for so long, you’re really looking to let it relax, make contact with some air and slowly open up.

AWC:  So how does the winemaker generally determine that optimal range for when a wine is supposed to reach its peak? Now I know that it’s not going to be like a three day window while it hits its peak, and then after that it’s not drinkable.  It’s going to be a range of time, so you might say you crafted a wine with the intention of it reaching its peak maturity around 10 to 12 years. There’s a two or three year window of time where you can drink the wine and experience the optimal attributes for that wine, as intended by the winemaker.  How does a winemaker establish that target aging range?

GF:  That’s a great question Aaron.  I don’t know…because what I’m doing here is a process that we go through to make these super intense Red Mountain wines and I don’t know how long they’re going to age.  I know my neighbors at Kiona have stuff over there that’s 40 years old and it tastes great!  The only thing that we’ve been able to do here at our place is we have a wine library out back and we have one of those Coravin wine samplers and we have a specific bottle set up for each one of our vintages where we periodically check the drinkability of the wines, and everything is holding up great!,

AWC:  Part of it involves the tannic structure right?  I know that’s part of it, but there are  a lot of other parameters that likely play a role, and I don’t know what those parameters are.  I’m interested because you will go to a winery and you’ll ask the winemaker – Hey, you know, how long can I store this in my cellar before I need to really start considering opening it up?  A lot of times you’ll get a wide range of different answers from people, depending even with wines that are very similar.  It’s always kind of baffled me as to how that range is established.

GF:  For my particular style, the way I learned to make wine, I make it drinkable now.  I’ll  let this age on the ride home!

AWC:  But I will say – with your wines – I’ve got 2011’s in my cellar and I’m still drinking them periodically and they haven’t peaked yet. They still have some room to age…I mean, these are eight years in the bottle and so all I’m saying is whatever you’re doing, the recipe that you’re using, you’re making wines that both are approachable right out of the gate, but they’re also capable of being aged to continue to evolve for a number of years.  Now, how many years those are, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out by experiment!

GF:  As a side note, I’ll tell you something that I’m geeked out about and excited about. So for Red Mountain wines you generally can age these for a while right?  So, what I do from a bottling standpoint is I use 20-year bottles.  They are the heaviest Bordeaux bottle you can buy.  It helps to reduce light and also helps reduce temperature changes.

AWC:  So when bottling your wines, do you prefer corks or screw-on caps?

GF:  For me, the cork is the coolest part cuz it’s the one thing that’s in contact with the wine and so from the 2015 vintage on I used this guy out of a company from Napa, called Portocork.  They have a robot system that scans every single cork that they crank out and it’s certified TCA free.  I don’t know how they do it, but they have a process that works so good – because before the 2015 vintage I would say roughly 1% of our wines would be corked – you know, contaminated by the cork.  Since I started using their corks I haven’t had a single bottle with cork taint in the tasting room, nor has anybody brought wine back due to cork taint.  So, screw tops provide a superior closure right?  I mean they are sterile, they fit every bottle every time, and they are super convenient.  But I tell you there is something about pulling the cork out of the bottle that people love – mainly my wife!

AWC:  Part of it is just tradition I suppose, but also doesn’t the cork serve a purpose to kind of accumulate some of the sediment and particulates as they settle in the neck of the bottle?  From my experience, I’ve pulled many corks where you can see a layer of sediment on the wetted surface of the cork.  So cork it is?

GF:  Right.  And there has to be some sort of micro oxygenation going on through the cork as well that probably assists in the aging process.

AWC:  So what in your view makes Frichette Winery so special?

GF:  We make wines that we like!  You know, everybody will come in here and ask what makes your wines so unique – but this is just what Shae and I love to drink when we do enjoy wine.  And then also, we really enjoy the people part of it.  That’s kinda how we got into this, is the experience that we can create.  Because we always enjoyed going out to wineries, and we did, we always wanted to learn something or teach somebody something.  We were going to wineries in Southern California and up here when we’d visit and we really liked that part of the experiences visiting with people who come from all over the world to taste wines made by us!  It’s crazy to be able to share something like that with people.

AWC:  And you’ve only been in the business for a handful of years, yet think about what happens 20 years down the line right?  You and Shae will be on the cover of Time Magazine!  Let’s talk a little bit about cooperage.  You mentioned it a couple of times in some of our earlier discussions.  Do you have a favorite cooperage or a favorite type of barrel or source from a certain place in France or wherever you purchase your barrels?  Do you prefer American-made a French-made barrels?

GF:  Ooooh this is intellectual property right here!  It’s mainly all French oak.  All French oak all the time.  Because what I’ve noticed in the difference between American oak and French oak is the French oak gives so much structure and flavor to the wine.  It’ll change the mouthfeel, whereas American oak puts amazing baking spice flavors on it, but it’s just like seasoning, whereas the French oak will change the wine.  My favorite cooperage that I’ve had – I think it’s a really good match for our style is Ana Sélection out of France where the oak is sourced from the.  What I’m learning is that the Cooperages in France that manage or control or have some access to forested areas on a consistent basis – those are the cooperages to hitch your wagon to.  Because otherwise they are just sourcing wood from all over the place and who knows what the next lot of barrels will be.

AWC:  So what new winemakers in Washington State are you most excited about and why?

This is the question I was struggling with Aaron.  I might need to get back to you on this one.  You know….I really like Seth and Audrey over there at Kitzke, and I like what Kyle and Cassie are doing down at Longship Cellars – I love their wines.  There are so many different styles.

AWC:  So what’s your favorite wine region worldwide, other than Red Mountain right here in your back yard?

GF:  This is easy man.  So Paso Robles.  It’s the Zins of Paso Robles.  That’s what got me into wines.  I love it!

AWC:  So what is the best wine you’ve ever tasted? And what’s the most interesting wine you’ve ever tasted?

GF:  So I have such a house pallet to Red Mountain.  Like just off the first reaction here,  one that was incredible was the – I want to say it was the Fidelitas Block One or the Fidelitas Estate Cab.  I think it was the Block One.  Shae and I, we found Red Mountain because of Fidelitas Wines.  And then….anything Col Solare does, I love.

AWC:  What is the oldest bottle of wine and the most cherished bottle of wine you have in your cellar?

GF:  Let me check my cellar tracker app.  I will say, when I was very early into wine, I was living in Southern California, and just kinda getting into wine.  My boss who owned a franchising business, he gave me a bottle of wine for my 35th birthday.  It was this 1975 vintage – which was the year I was born – and that blew my mind.  My entire life, I’ve been going about doing my thing and this bottle of wine has been sitting there the whole time and I tasted it and it was awful!  It was the worst!  OK, so the oldest in my cellar is a wine from that same guy (Todd Anderson) a 2000 French Bordeaux blend.

AWC:  So what’s the biggest myth about drinking wine?

GF:  I think people are sometimes intimidated by it.  Don’t be intimidated by wine tasting.  You know, you don’t have to taste blackberry or blueberry or chocolate or leather….just get out there and taste and find what you like.  It just comes down to what you like – I mean – thumbs up or thumbs down.  There’s no right or wrong.  You love what you love and what’s right for your palate.

AWC:  Okay….what would people be surprised to know about you that people don’t typically get to hear about you?

GF:  So I went to CBC for a few years.  I’m proud of that.  That was a great decision.  So while I was doing that I really got into jet skiing.  I was like on this racing team, and my buddies and I would go out jet ski racing.  We were going to go on a Jet Ski racing tour!  And when I went to tell my folks this, instead of going to Washington State University, which was the trajectory of how I ended up moving to Southern California, meeting Shae, moving back up to Washington, starting a family and open up a winery – I almost went on this jet ski racing tour and not go to college….and my family had an intervention!  They told me no way are you’re going on a jet ski racing tour, you’re going to Pullman!  Sign the application we’re sending it in right now!  And that would’ve changed a few things.

AWC:  If you weren’t making wine for a living, what would you be doing?

GF:  I would be an IT guy cuz that’s what I was doing down in Southern California.

AWC:  So what are you most looking forward to with this next vintage?

GF:  Oak Fermenters!  We just ordered them.  I’m getting two roller 500 liter fermenters and from all the wines that I’ve tasted from Columbia Crest to Fidelitas wines that have been fermented in oak, they’re more velvety, the mouthfeel is incredible, and they are just softer, and that’s what I love.  And so now that’ll be probably the biggest change this year coming up.  Instead of doing it in the food grain, ½ ton fermenters, I’ll be doing the Quintessence and Shaw 32 Cab in the oak Fermenters, which I’ll be excited to taste the difference.  I’d like you to try it….I’ll have you back out to try it!

AWC:  That would be great!  Well I have to say this has been a really outstanding interview.  I appreciate you carving out the time to sit with me and elucidate us on your knowledge of wine and where you came from and why you’re doing it.  It’s been really a great time being able to sit with you and talk with you about this. Thank you for taking the time and that’s the last question I have, so I appreciate it!  Cheers!