Food feeds passion for two young wine gurus

One of the cool things about my job is getting to meet, and chat up, a lot of winemakers. This year, perhaps the two most enjoyable such encounters have been with a new breed:

Sommeliers-turned-winemakers.

Lioco's Kevin O'Connor was a longtime sommelier at Wolfgang Puck's signature restaurant Spago before co-founding Lioco. Brian Duncan actually has kept his day job running Chicago's wonderful wine bar Bin 36 while making wines that bear the same name.

Now it's hardly surprising that both of them have set out to make food-friendly wines, with more acidity and less oak than has been the norm in California.

"Oak is a spice," said Duncan, who partners with Dan Sachs and winemaker Adam LaZarre of Cycles Gladiator. "I think chardonnay should wear oak like a peek-a-boo negligee, not a suit of armor."

But their restaurant backgrounds provided another important direction: There is no way to make great wine without great grapes. Sourcing is (almost) everything.

"Basically you start out with good ingredients and don't screw 'em up," said Duncan, who calls the Bin 36 winemaking process "another interpretation of raw materials. The instinct I have for cooking is helpful in winemaking. I think of myself more as a wine chef than a winemaker."

That they do, largely by letting the fruit shine.

There are nice jolts of acidity playing with the soft tannins and ripe fruit in Bin 36's merlot and cabernet sauvignon (both $16), making them much more versatile at the dinner table than most of their California brethren. Duncan said he wants his wines to be "more like a layer cake than a cookie," and he achieves that in his cab by using grapes from three far-flung regions and adding syrah and petite sirah.

Lioco's Indica red blend ($23) is similarly layered, spicy and clean, with cherry and cocoa flavors, an unusual combination. Lioco also produces pinot noirs and chardonnays from some of California's foremost vineyards (Heitz, Klindt, Demuth) in the $45-$55 range.

From the outset, O'Connor and Licklider followed their "great grapes are grown, not made" credo by seeking out sites with tough soils where the vines struggle (though not as much as in Minnesota) and then either eschewing or treading lightly with oak.

"Everything begins in the vineyard," said O'Connor. And for these food-focused fledgling winemakers, the happy results end up on a dinner table.