Sip it, sip it good: Devo rocker turns to winemaking
Gerald Casale has some big plans for his winery in Napa, Calif.
Legendary Devo rocker and winemaker Gerald Casale graciously welcomed me to his home in Napa, Calif., for a glass of wine.
Casale, who loves to cook, was busy making chopped salads and grilled jumbo shrimp in the kitchen a few weeks ago when I arrived. This is a side of the musician that most fans don’t get to see.
“You have to have a little food,” he insisted while pouring me a glass of The 50 by 50, his lovely rosé of pinot noir.
We chatted about his upcoming four-concert tour with Devo and the progress on his Napa winery.
A food revolution was going on in Los Angeles and San Francisco about the same time the band became successful.
“In L.A., the ‘Mad Men’ era was gone and they were turning more to farm to table,” he said, crediting chefs Wolfgang Puck, Jeremiah Tower, Michael McCarthy and Bruce Marder for starting the movement. These chefs introduced Casale to California wines at a time when they weren’t respected around the world.
“They were friends with guys like (Mike) Grgich and (Robert) Mondavi, and suddenly they were turning me on to those wines. Suddenly, I understood.”
His taste in wine elevated with the band’s success as he became
enamored with many high-end wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, Brunello and Burgundy while touring the globe.
“It wasn’t until a French promoter started opening some legendary DRC’s one long, gluttonous night in Paris in 1990, that the pinot noir light bulb went on,” he said.
Casale’s income couldn’t keep up with his exquisite taste in wine, so he decided to give the more affordable California pinot noirs a closer look.
“I had a bottle of 1989 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir with breast of duck. I was off and
running and have never stopped,” he said.
Casale, an architectural enthusiast, got “the uncontrollable urge” to “take timeout for fun” and start making his own wine. In 2008, he partnered with a famous Los Angeles restoration architect to purchase a beautiful 24-acre hillside property on Monticello Road, next door to Kenzo, one of Napa Valley’s elite wineries.
“He asked in return for him being the investor that I call the wine The 50 by 50,” Casale said.
He released his first pinot noir in 2012 from grapes sourced from growers in Carneros, California’s Petaluma Gap.
The plan was to re-create an architectural masterpiece, called 50 by 50, designed by 20th century Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe more than 70 years ago. It would be a 50- by 50-foot glass structure with a 365-degree view of the estate.
“That was going to be a tasting room and an area attraction for anyone interested in architecture,” Casale said of the stillincomplete structure that has been stuck in a holding pattern for several years. Permits, building inspectors and wildfires have prevented Casale from whipping his winery project into shape.
“Right now, we’re in the middle of a two-year impasse,” Casale said, explaining that building inspectors aren’t happy with the pitch of the roof.
California wine country has also been hampered by wildfires.
“There’s been so goddamn many of them,” said Casale, when talking about the 2017 fire that scorched the still-unplanted land, and melted wiring in the unfinished structure.
The concrete, steel and stillcrated 1-inch glass panels were miraculously unaffected by the heat of the flames. If that wasn’t enough, the entire 2020 harvest for The 50 by 50 pinot noir was ruined by smoke from last season’s wildfires, which occurred three days before his planned harvest.
“We will have a 2020 rosé of pinot noir,” he added, since those grapes were picked a few days before the fires.
At 73, Casale is in a “race of doom” of sorts to see his project completed. His dream is to plant Bordeaux grape varietals on 7 acres of the property to produce an estate wine called Parliament 50/50. The wine would be similar in fashion to Chateau Calon-Segur, one of his favourite French Bordeaux wines.
“I just hope I live long enough to see it completed,” he said as we drove away from the property.