CODY MATHIEU
Saturday Tasting. July 20th, 2-5pm, $10. Wine Works + Côte des Cailloux.
Cody Mathieu makes wine in Potter Valley, about 18 miles north-northeast of Ukiah, in Mendocino County. Riding his motorcycle up and down the north coast during the early days of the pandemic, Cody noticed that this tiny town just a few miles off Route 20 exuded a deeper shade of green, a subtle oasis amidst the arid landscapes of fine-grained sandstone that dominate the region. He had been living in San Francisco with his girlfriend Andi, making the trek up to Sonoma to help his dad at Côte des Cailloux. A small winery was lying empty right on main street. A ranch house sat adjacent, and a grass lawn sloped down to the riparian zone lining a creek that flows year round, providing water to local farmers and a swimming hole for Cody, Andi and their big wolf dog. They made the leap. Potter Valley Wine Works is now almost three years old.
Cody makes about 250 cases per year, but some of that is for private clients, mostly Pinot and rosé for vineyard owners who don’t want to make their own wines. This acts as a form of bartering that gives Cody access to organic fruit at a low cost, which in turn allows him to produce wine at an extremely reasonable price—indeed, I can’t think of anyone else making natural wine in California at these prices. When we visited him in May, Michelle and I stopped at the general store in town to pick up kettle chips, Coors Banquets and a flaming hot Slimjim for Kevin. Nestled alongside Apothic Red and Menage à Trois was Cody’s recent vintage of Sauvignon Blanc, priced at a cool $17.30. When we told him this story later that afternoon, he mused, “It’s been there a while, maybe we should lower the price.”
Cody learned to make wine from his dad, Jacques, who was raised in the Rhône Valley, and has been producing wines at his tiny Sonoma domaine, Côte des Callioux, since 2002. We discovered those wines through Nic Coturri back in 2015, as they were being fermented, aged and bottled at the Coturri facility in Glen Ellen at the time. Production is minuscule, but they are, without question, some of the great natural wines of California: unapologetically rich in a Dionysian sort of way. When Quentin travels to France, he routinely packs a bottle to blind winemakers or some of his Parisian buddies. They are a testament to what California terroir is capable of once all the trends and chemicals and bullshit are stripped away.
Cody still looks to Nic and his dad as guideposts for his own winemaking, but Potter Valley Wine Works has its own identity. Rather than trying to reproduce the big reds and iconic, rich whites of his mentors, Cody is content to be guided by the material conditions of his fruit sources and his winery. At the moment, he works with Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. His winery is small and clean: just a few stainless steel tanks, some neutral barrels and a crazy press he got on a big discount from a winery that was going out of business.
Cody’s focus, for now, is on fresh, fruity wines that are open and generous. As such, they match his personality. When we visited, his sparkling eyes were full of wonder, and his smile was giddy with excitement as he welcomed us to this tiny slice of California. At one point, he and I were digging in the stream looking for skipping stones. I picked up a dark, softly rounded and perfectly weighted cuboid, terrible for skipping but lovely to hold. Cody grabbed it and speculated that it resembled a hunting lance fabricated by the Pomo tribe. In his telling, when this waterway was formed by redirecting a tributary of the Eel River, a large cache of Pomo artifacts was flushed downstream and scattered throughout Potter Valley. I had my doubts—it looked a lot like a nice rock to me—but now I’m not so sure. History has a strange way of persisting into the present.
On Saturday, Cody will pour several new wines from Potter Valley, alongside some older wines from Sonoma and Mendocino. Hope to see you there!
~ Bradford
2022 Wine Works Sauvignon Blanc, Potter Valley
2021 Wine Works Pinot Noir, Potter Valley
2022 Wine Works Cabernet Fanc, Potter Valley
2014 Côte des Cailloux Estate blend, Sonoma Valley
2018 Mathieu Carignan, Mendocino