Wolfgang Weber walks into the room with a causal confidence underpinned with a mischievous eye peering from a smiling face tilted down, ever so slightly. Then comes the laugh. That effortless laugh that makes you feel like you’re the center of attention and he doesn’t care. It’s genuine and fun, but quite disarming, and weirdly addicting. It’s no secret the man’s got an energy and depth that elevates a situation. He’s a writer, a sailor, probably a poet and a visual artist of some renown under a pseudonym, but for this particular exercise we will focus mostly on his winemaking.His label En Cavale is a flirtatious expression of sustainable winemaking with a dedication to affordability and minimal intervention. If Wolfgang was the groundbreaking author of the En Cavale screenplay, Chad Hinds of Iruai Wine would be the genius director that brought the characters and drama to life. Yes, this capricious label is a duet of substantial proportions!

(Enter Chad Hinds stage left to an audible gasp from the audience) When he’s not crafting the now legendary Iruai in his signature methode sauvage, Chad grants his Midas-like touch to En Cavale. He is perhaps the only person whom Wolfgang trusts to disseminate his soul and essence into wine. 

RW: En Cavale, what does that mean, does it have to do with horses or something? 

WW:  Well um, kind of yeah…more or less literally it means to flee on horse back, but it’s an idiom or an idiomatic expression, so a better expression in English would be like, ‘on the lamb.”

So, as an example you would say like, “Bonnie and Clyde sont en cavale…”

RW: Oh yeah! I know that song!

WW: (nods sympathetically) exactly, yeah. I vaguely heard the phrase a bit before, and a French friend of mine, we were driving up to see the eclipse, the big solar eclipse in 2017 or 18 whenever that was, when the path of totality was through Oregon. I hadn’t really settled on a name yet, and I was listening to this French band called Juniore and they have a song named En Cavale. 

RW: Oh, oh, I thought you were going to say that Serge Gainsborough song Bonnie and Clyde because of the…

WW: No, but that’s a great song too. Ummm, yes, that’s a fantastic song. But this is more of a contemporary song. Juniore is a…they’re very good, it’s like ‘junior’ with an ‘e’ at the end of it. 

Us: Hm. So how does Chad come into this whole story? 

WW: Well, we’re partners in the project so we started it together in 2017, and we make all the wines at his winery up in Etna at this point. When we started it was Richmond. When Chad built out a winery in Etna and the pandemic hit it made more sense to move production there. 

It was like, ‘sweet! I’m taking the camper van and going up to Etna!’ You know? It’s a little harder to do now. The way things have evolved he’s way more day-to-day production stuff and I’ll go up for big things or when he’s completely swamped. 

RW: So how did the relationship start? Did you just know Chad from when you were writing…

WW: Uhhhh…(looking up as if to visually inspect the recesses of his memory), did I know Chad, no I met him when he worked at Revel for a long time, he was a wine Rep…like we were basically colleagues. 

When did we first meet? We first met before 2010, maybe 2008/08 when he was working with Kevin Kelley at Salinia Wine company. At the time Kevin was a very early natural wine pioneer in California, I think that was about when I first met Chad. I was sniffing around to get back into production around then. I had done a harvest at an OG boutique winery up in Napa called Green and Red, that had been around for a while, and I missed doing that. They were Zinfandel and Sauvignon blanc specialist, and I really missed that. 

Over the years I’d help out at like Broc and other kind of local stuff as those things started popping up in the east bay, and Harrington to a certain degree in San Francisco as well. I would say in the early 2010s I was itching to get back into that a bit. It seemed like there was space. I explored getting something going with a couple different folks and at a certain point I tasted something Chad made. It was called Methode Sauvage at the time. 

He was making wines on Treasure Island, there’s a little winery there, and I think I was tasting with him and I was like, “these are great, would you want to do something together?” and that’s kind of sort of how it came about.

I thought that was something that wasn’t being…I don’t want to say, “wasn’t being done right” but the examples that were being done in California were less than exciting. But in France in the Loire Valley there were examples of Sauvignon Blanc that I found really thrilling, that not only had a mineral element, but texture and depth and aromatic richness and were pretty compelling and interesting wines. I was pretty sure that something similar in spirit could be accomplished in California. So that was the initial idea for En Cavale. 

So I was sniffing around for Sauvignon Blanc and that was kind of the initial idea and the first wine we did was a 2017 Sauvignon Blanc. When we made the wine the winery was in Richmond, which is Contra Costa County, it was kind of exciting to make a Contra Costa grown and produced wine…that’s no longer that case because it’s made up in Etna, but that was kind of fun. 

Us: That must have been important for Contra Costa wine making right?

WW: Maybe? I don’t know if there was much of that in 2017. This is before the Erggelet Brothers were bottling their stuff. They were definitely out there a bit, involved with the Del Barba vineyard at the time I think, but I don’t think they had released their own wine. But um, it was unintentional that it worked out that way, I just thought it was a cool coincidence. 

You know, Richmond itself has a long history of wine production that had been largely abandoned. I think the largest winemaking facility in North America was in Richmond. 

Us: What?

WW: Yeah, right on the bay, the ruins of it are still there. Basically they’d produce wine and get it down into concentrate and pop it on trains and it would go to the East Coast to you know, Italian families making table wine in their garages and stuff. 

Us: Oh, that sounds amazing. 

WW: Yeah, it’s an old thing, but up until the 60s that building was there. Kind of interesting. You know like the original, the Mondavi Brothers got their start basically selling grapes in Lodi to be made into concentrate, and those wines were probably all made at that place in Richmond. 

Anyway, that’s all a digression.

Both Chad and I appreciate the long and interesting history of California wine. And you know, even though the spirit of Sauvignon Blanc is from around Touraine and parts of the western Loire valley are kind of what kickstarted the project in a way, obviously, the long history of California wine is as much, if not more of an influencing factor of what En Cavale is…or tries to be. So…that wasn’t so much of a digression. 

Us: Do you remember the moment when you and Chad were like, OK we’re going to do this together, or was it just a gradual kind of thing that happened over a long period of time? 

WW: We tossed the idea around a bit and I was casually asking various friends if they knew of any Sauvignon Blanc that was available. Once I got hooked up with a grower I was like, hey Chad…there’s some fruit available!

Us: And it was a vineyard in Knightson? 

WW: Yes, once the fruit came into place that launched things off. It was mid spring 2017. Basically had a handshake agreement with the grower. Ended up picking early August in 2017.

Us: How do you translate that Loire valley character to something you picked in Knightson, California? How does that process work? 

WW: Well, we were picking it early, a little early for the area. You can lose your acidity really fast out there. So we wanted to preserve that since we weren’t adding acid…you know, committed to making natural wine, so we weren’t adding things back to it. 

So you need to be mindful of where your acidity is going to clock out, you don’t want the pH to get too high in the grape. So yes we were looking at sugar levels before picking, we were looking at the ph. We intentionally picked early to enable that high acidity. That was the first step. Over the years we kinda figured things out where we’re able to get a very textural expression of Sauvignon Blanc.

The grapes themselves in this particular site have pretty fun aromatics, they always lean a little tropical in the way they smell which I think is exciting. You know…puts you on that sailboat. 

So, we’re getting tropical aromatic expression and a sense of brightness and some texture and that’s where you’re getting that California/Loire melding of spirit with that wine. 

Over the years we’ve added…I really wanted to make Zinfindel at some point, you know that’s that Green and Red background for me, so Zinfandel crept into the picture in 2018 I think. So then we were like, cool 2 wines. It’s grown gradually from there. There’s no outside investment. We redirect the project into itself. 

At this point it’s 6 wines. Mostly from the delta. Then we got Sangiovese from Fox Hill vineyard, Vermentino we started making in 2019 and that’s come from a couple different places over the years. 

Then we added a white and a red wine, both called ‘Who Goes There?’ That started as a white white that was kind of a skin contact situation. So, it’s our little monster. Then the red because in 2022 we had access to some red fruit and it seemed like a good idea to pair it. 

That’s the lineup.

Us: How did you start in the wine industry?

WW: Listen, I gotta go and you probably have somewhere you gotta be…

Us: Not really…

WW: What you got there? Looks like it needs to be refrigerated…

Us: I eat a container of chicken salad for lunch everyday.

WW: That’s adorable. I don’t want to be the cause of a foodborne illness, you should get that either eaten or in your fridge. Anyway, let’s just say I got my start because I was a fan of Chaucer and ended up on a vineyard in Italy needing some cash.

Us: That sounds like an amazing story.

WW: And it is, but it is for another time. 

I hope to catch up with Wolfgang Weber to hear the Chaucer/Italy story. If and when I do, I will report back here. Farewell…until we meet again.