When winemaker Chris Carpenter walks into a room you notice.
His Anthony Bourdain-meets-Donavon Frankenreiter aesthetic (google the American musician and surfer – you’ll see what I mean) emanates a thoughtful kind of confidence.
Chris looks as if he’d be just as comfortable on a stage in a dive bar or chasing surf breaks as he is in wineries across the globe.
As a music fanatic, sometimes surfer and sailor, he often is.
“I play trombone, but I play it horribly,” he says.
“I make good wine though. It’s still not as cool as sitting on stage with a horn or guitar or whatever, but it gets close.”
Chris talks in a deep rumble with an accent carved in his birth town of Milton, a suburb of Boston, and formative years in Chicago.
He is a deep thinker and speaks his mind.
When he starts a sentence with, “To be frank,” you know a hard-hitting doozy is coming.
Fortunately, he’s got the nous to back it up.
Now based in California’s Napa Valley, Chris works for Jackson Family Wines, one of the largest family-owned wine groups in the world. Of more than 50 brands under the Jackson umbrella, Chris is chief winemaker for Cardinale, Lokoya, La Jota and Mt Brave.
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