Profile: Kerry Damskey

Kerry Damskey only has a few minutes to talk because it’s harvest time. From sunrise to sundown, Damskey is on the go running his winemaking consulting business, Terroirs, which spans four continents. From overseeing vineyard purchases and winegrowing practices to consulting with winemakers on how to improve their product, Damskey’s bright, cheerful presence has made him a welcome guest in the cellar or the vineyard. He calls TastingRoom.com another favorite pastime.

Although Damskey intended to be an anthropologist, his dad encouraged the self-described "child of the 60s" to think about a career in wine. A chemical engineer who kept an eclectic wine cellar, Damskey’s father went to the Library of Congress and got his son a book on techniques of winemaking. His interest piqued, Damskey headed to U.C. Davis, where he got a degree in fermentation. Now some 30 years later, he beams when he says he has been named "Chief Wine Officer" for TastingRoom.com.

"It’s the most wonderful title in the world," says Damskey from his car phone, between visits to two of the wineries where he is acting as winemaking consultant. He joined us to chat about his wine career, philosophy and passion for TastingRoom.com.

TR: How did you fall in love with wine?

KD: In the 60s wine was just coming of age, Time magazine was starting to write about California wine. My parents actually had a wine cellar in the ’60s. I was the youngest and as the baby of the family I was left behind so we became very good friends. When my dad said, "Kerry, have you thought about the wine industry?" I had never taken a science class in my life. It was hard but I pursued it and graduated from Davis. I ended up working for a large winery. I think that was a really good thing for me in terms of learning the science and the nuts and bolts. It became my passion.

TR: What is your niche in the winemaking world?

KD: My life as a winemaker has been pretty lucky. I’ve been married 32 years to Daisy. We chose an area where there was a huge opportunity in Southern California and at a very young age I was running a winery in the Temecula area before we came to Sonoma in ’86. I’ve worked as head winemaker for a number of wineries and have always been the number one or two guy, but at each job I became more distanced from winemaking. I was more a corporate manager to the point when I was 45, I was wondering what the heck am I doing? I wasn’t making wine anymore. I quit that whole thing and became an entrepreneur…Now I have 17 clients and have a pretty successful consulting business in Sonoma and a little bit of Napa.

I also work in Washington State, internationally in Bulgaria and China, but my most intriguing gig is in India where we have a winery outside Mumbai.

TR: What are the main influences on your wine making?

KD: I start as a scientist. When you are confident as a scientist it allows you to take risks in the process of making wine that will evolve wines of greater interest because they aren’t textbook wines. An example of that is I pick grapes riper, I use native yeast, and what is in the air and in the barrels is mixed with the yeast. This is not what I learned at Davis. They just shake their heads. They say, "You are a crazy man." But what it does is you make wines that are more interesting.

TR: What is your winemaking philosophy?

KD: I am in the vineyard all the time. Today it was 100 and freaking 4 degrees. You have to be in the vineyard and look at the fruit. Often, typical wine makers look at numbers and don’t make it out to the vineyard. What happens is when you go a lot, five, six, seven times before you pick, you see the evolution of how the fruit is changing. It is very visual, how the fruit looks different, the vine and how it is responding to stress and then it is tasting. You sample it and do the chemistry. It is great exercise -- you are walking and walking.

TR: What drew you to TastingRoom.com?

KD: I think a number of things are totally unique about TastingRoom.com. The first thing is (TastingRoom.com CEO) Tim Bucher is an incredibly visionary guy who starts with that vision gene and he understands farming… He is always thinking, "What if? What if we were to do something different in terms of reinventing the way wine is experienced and sold?"

He came up with the whole concept of "try before you buy." He started thinking what if we created minis. It’s like sample songs, sample views, sample wines that exactly replicated what is in the bottle.

TR: What does creating minis do for wine tasting and wine drinking?

KD:The benefits are to taste wines without having to buy them. You can taste many wines. You don’t have to buy ten bottles, you can have a taste. You can say, "I like this, I don’t like that."

TR: What is the biggest mistake we make as wine lovers?

KD: I think the biggest mistake and it’s totally preventable, is that we as Americans buy on testimonial and reviews. So Wine Spectator, or Wine Enthusiast says, "This wine is good," well I’m going to buy it. Then what if you don’t like it or you don’t feel strong enough about your palate and you are going, well it must be good because of this. I’m not suggesting we circumvent that, but that we look at what others say and that we don’t have to go right to the big bottle. Try the minis first!