Matt and Sara Licklider of LIOCO Wines

"We're in the business of making agricultural wines, and I think we need to make a distinction right here between agricultural wine and industrial wine. A lot of these vineyards that have these really amazing histories attributed to them also have people with interesting histories. It's not selling the widgets—it's teasing out the stories about these very authentic places and these interesting people and then being able to share those stories." – Matt Licklider 

Twenty years ago, LIOCO was founded to disrupt the California wine status quo of high-alcohol, oak-heavy bottles, proving instead that California soils could produce wines with the same energy, acidity, and restraint as Europe's classical regions.

This week, Matt and Sara Licklider, the dynamic vintners behind LIOCO, discuss operating as a négociant producer, embracing an elastic model that prioritizes storytelling, regional transparency, and agricultural authenticity. They share behind-the-scenes stories of their legendary growers—from the late Jim McCutchen hand-planting Carignan in the early 1960s to John Balletto carving a full "Field of Dreams" baseball diamond out of his Russian River Valley Chardonnay vineyard.

The conversation also tackles how climate change is forcing the industry to adapt. Matt and Sara discuss why Chardonnay and Pinot Noir may eventually migrate out of traditional regions, prompting LIOCO to explore heat-tolerant Mediterranean varieties and vibrant Albariño from the Sacramento River Delta. Finally, they dive into what "perfection" really means in the cellar, exploring how to balance microbial loads to ensure a wine's typicity always shines through.

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Transcript

Introduction

Matt Licklider 0:03

We're in the business of making agricultural wines, and I think we need to make a distinction right here between agricultural wine and industrial wine. A lot of these vineyards that have these really amazing histories attributed to them also have people with interesting histories. It's not selling the widgets. It's teasing out the stories about these very authentic places and these interesting people and then being able to share those stories.

Harmon Skurnik 0:28

Hey, this is Harmon Skurnik, and welcome to another episode of Skurnik Unfiltered, where we peel back the layers and get behind the scenes of our favorite wines and winemakers and find out what makes them tick. Today I'm here with Jamie Schwartz, who is the USA specialist and ambassador for all things American here at Skurnik. And you recently sat down with Matt and Sara Licklider, who are the proprietors of LIOCO. They are a fantastic couple who we've known for a very long time. And they're based in Healdsburg, they have a nice tasting room there. Matt got his start in the wine business, I believe, as a sales rep for North Berkeley Imports. And he has quite an appreciation as a result of great Burgundy and great wines from France. And I think that informed him in how he created the style of what LIOCO was to become.

Jamie Schwartz 1:25

That's exactly right. Matt and his original partner, Kevin, found themselves wondering why they couldn't find wine grown in California that had the energy and balance and acidity from the wines that they loved from Europe. And that's the impetus for creating LIOCO.

Harmon Skurnik 1:40

And they're very well known for making beautiful Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs, but of late they have dabbled in a number of different varieties like Carignan, but Albariño has been quite a hit recently. They also make Sauvignon Blanc and even now a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Jamie Schwartz 1:58

It's true. They've done small experimental things throughout the history of LIOCO, but we're seeing them really lean into a focus on Mediterranean varieties or other grapes that can thrive in the various different climates that are in California. When you're up in Mendocino, it's all redwood country, but then they're in like the sandy soils of the Sacramento River Delta for this new Albariño. The wine is electric, it's got so much nerve. You know, they spoke with our own Raúl Pérez to get some insight on how to grow that grape.

Harmon Skurnik 2:32

That's interesting.

Jamie Schwartz 2:33

It's really exciting that they're continually evolving. Having just referenced Carignan, a quick footnote here: since we've recorded the episode, Jim McCutchen, the longtime Carignan grower that worked with LIOCO, has recently passed away, and we would like to offer our condolences to his family as well as Matt and Sara.

Harmon Skurnik 2:53

My condolences as well. I'm looking forward to learning more about him and his relationship with LIOCO in the episode. Why don't we sit back and listen to your conversation with Matt and Sara Licklider?

Meet Matt and Sara

Jamie Schwartz 3:07

Hey everyone, I'm Jamie Schwartz with two dear friends, Matt and Sara Licklider from LIOCO Wines. I want to turn it over to Matt and Sara to talk us through the early days of LIOCO to where we are now, what you've been doing that is unique and different from the status quo of American wines, because that's what LIOCO has been since day one.

Matt Licklider 3:31

Thanks, Jamie. I like the question and I like the reference to the status quo because LIOCO was essentially founded to disrupt what was, at the time, the status quo of California wine. It was started by a couple of French wine drinkers. This predates my wife Sara joining the team, who also came with a very similar perspective. But at the time, 20 years ago, the status quo in California were big-flavored, high-alcohol, oak-influenced wines, being made largely to appease a couple of critics. And I think my partner at the time, Kevin, and I wondered if it were possible to even make wines from California soils that provided the same kind of sensory experience that our favorite wines from the classical wine-growing regions of Europe did. We wanted to make wines that were bright and fresh, lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, not blown out with oaky flavor. The essence of it was to see if we could make wines that had some evocation of place. At the time, the wines in California were so opulent that the minor notes in the wine, i.e. the terroir expression, if there was one, it was being drowned out by the winemaking artifice. LIOCO was going to take the winemaking out of the equation. We were going to look for interesting vineyard sites and see if we can make these pulled-back, restrained wines from California soils and hope that the wines in doing so were truly singular and they really did resonate with a specific place and a specific vintage. And for the last 20 years, we've been tussling with that. We're still trying to work out some of those problems. But the original question was, Can it be done? And I think what we now know, 20 years into this, not only through the lens of LIOCO, but the myriad producers who are in our camp, the answer is yes, of course we can do it. It doesn't take a genius to look at this very heterogeneous landscape of California to figure out there is some "there" there, so let's just go find the right spots and plant the right varieties and cultivate the right culture of wine growing and then let the winemaking follow behind that. And yes, we will eventually make wines that rival the best wines in the world from this extraordinary place that we call home.

Sara Licklider 5:54

Yeah, especially where we are in Northern California. I didn't move to Northern California until 2013. When you get there and you understand the ecological diversity, the huge nature—it's the Pacific Ocean, it's the massive drops into the Pacific Ocean where there are great white sharks, and then it's huge redwood trees that you've heard about your whole life, and there they are, even bigger than you imagine them. And there's bald eagles, and it's truly wild. It's funny because we have all these maps on our labels, but they're still charting out the area. There are new AVAs happening every year. We just discovered a new AVA, a place we had never even really been. And it's exciting when you realize that there's still so much actual wild land there, a lot of places and people there that don't want to be discovered. In fact, be careful.

Jamie Schwartz 6:55

Yeah. A lot of off-the-grid situations, homesteading. We don't really come across that on the East Coast.

Sara Licklider 7:03

No, some of the growers we work with, they're straight out of central casting. When you get to their property, you have to rewind the clock. There's still a barter system in some places.

Jamie Schwartz 7:15

Talk

Fascinating farmers, Jim McCutchen and John Bolletto

Jamie Schwartz 7:16

more about the farmers you work with. What's that relationship like?

Matt Licklider 7:20

The farmer part, the grower part of what LIOCO is involved with has become, I think, really the soul of the winery because we don't have any of our own vineyards. We rely exclusively on other estates for our raw material. And what we have found over the last 20 years of getting lost all over the wilds of California is that a lot of these vineyards that have these really amazing histories attributed to them also have people with interesting histories. Some of them are very regionally minded. They don't leave their zip code.

Jamie Schwartz 7:58

It's provincial, which is not something we think about in the modern day very often.

Matt Licklider 8:03

Yeah, it's a very foreign concept, especially sitting here in New York. But it's such a privilege to get to know people who we regard as frontiersmen, farmers with these amazing family histories, who are incredible custodians of these wild vineyards. Ultimately, that's become the more satisfying aspect of what we do as a négociant producer. It's not selling the widgets—it's teasing out the stories about these very authentic places and these interesting people, and then being able to share those stories.

Jamie Schwartz 8:37

Do you have a specific anecdote?

Sara Licklider 8:42

Jim McCutchen, McCutchen Ranch behind our 'Sativa' Carignan. He planted the vineyard with his father.

Matt Licklider 8:50

Hand-planted it. Yes.

Sara Licklider 8:52

Hand-planted the vineyard in the 1960s.

Matt Licklider 8:54

Early 1960s, yeah.

Sara Licklider 8:56

Yeah, he's been farming it himself ever since. Every year we're worried about his health and is Jim going to be okay, because he has children who are not going to assume the farm. Jim is still out every year leafing the bins.

Matt Licklider 9:11

We call him indefatigable. If you look that word up in the dictionary, there's a picture of Jim McCutchen.

Sara Licklider 9:16

Yeah. A couple years ago, he was trampled by a cow and broke his leg and his arm, and we were just beside ourselves because I was like, Oh my God, is this it?

Matt Licklider 9:28

Is he going to make it, yeah.

Sara Licklider 9:31

He was back the next year. Didn't miss a beat. And then his wife told me about when he broke his leg and his arm, I was like, "Did you take take him to the hospital?" She says, "Well, no, he came back to the house and he told me he wanted a sandwich. He was hungry." So she said, "I made him the sandwich and he ate the sandwich. And then I said, 'I think we need to go to the hospital.'"

Matt Licklider 9:52

Characters, right? Characters we probably wouldn't sit next to at the bar here in Lower Manhattan. You would never meet people like the McCutchens. They also invited us to their house once, and on the wall, they had a framed land deed for their property that was signed by Ulysses Grant.

Jamie Schwartz 10:07

Oh my gosh.

Matt Licklider 10:08

The story behind that was Jim's grandfather was some kind of senior officer in the Union Army. And after the war, a lot of the officers were given big tracts of land out west, and that's how that ranch began. We're drinking our 2023 Sonoma County Chardonnay here, and this comes from some non-contiguous ranches, all owned by one family. The family name is Balletto. He's actually been in The New York Times recently a couple times. John Balletto is his name. And his family history is, they were zucchini farmers in the Russian River Valley right up until the first major drought happened in the 1990s. They quickly realized that zucchinis required an enormous amount of water to bring them to market, and the drought gave them pause about the future of growing zucchinis. They thought, Well, what could we grow here that didn't need a lot of water? And so in went the vitis vinifera and out went the zucchinis. It's been such a pleasure to work with John because he's just a real community leader. He takes incredible care of what is a full-time labor crew. They live there, they work there. He found out that a lot of his workers were really into baseball, and on their day off, they would go to the park and organize these pickup baseball games. So he had the idea, why don't we build a baseball diamond on the property? It's a field of dreams situation. They carved out of the Chardonnay vineyard a full baseball diamond and it turns into a baseball park every weekend.

Jamie Schwartz 11:38

No way.

Matt Licklider 11:39

Yes.

Jamie Schwartz 11:40

That's amazing.

Matt Licklider 11:41

It's fun, and that story is not totally unique. Every one of our wines comes with a story like that. And that has become our measuring stick. We might like a vineyard, but if there's not some story behind the vineyard that really grabs us, we may or may not move forward with it. Quality is of primary importance when we're talking about sourcing a new vineyard, but if it's a boring story or we don't really jive with the people, we may not move on that. How do we continue to make distinctions between what's in the bottle here and a ready-to-drink canned beverage at the grocery store that's made by a corporation versus this, which comes from John Balletto's ranch, a guy who takes care of his people, a guy who's a community leader, a guy who's a great father and has helped a lot of other young winemakers around him. It's different. So yeah, the the people and the places and the stories are all really intertwined into what LIOCO does.

Pivoting to climate-ready varietals

Jamie Schwartz 12:39

We're enjoying a glass of Sonoma Chardonnay right now. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir is a big part of the production, but you also just referenced McCutchen Ranch. That's Carignan. My first introduction to LIOCO was actually the 'Indica' Red based on Carignan as well. Walk us through where LIOCO is right now as far as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Carignan, other. There's a lot of other, I think. Fill us in, tell us the latest.

Matt Licklider 13:08

We make 26 different SKUs now. I think the question is, Why? Why make so many SKUs at such a small scale? Every accountant would tell you do the exact opposite. Make a few SKUs at bigger scale, and then you get some economy there. The reason is because we're still wine geeks and we're still really interested in all the wines, all the flavors, and we happen to work in a place that affords us maximum flexibility in terms of what we do. For example, if we were winemakers in the Loire Valley, we would be limited to a very small number of grape varieties. But working in California, especially as a négociant producer, we can basically do anything we want. And I think part of what's exciting about California wine right now is the fact that winemakers everywhere have the courage to plant whatever grape varieties they're passionate about. You can get anything from Assyrtiko to Falanghina to Lagrein, Schiava, Gamay Noir, all the fighting varieties, of course. The portfolio of wines from LIOCO has grown alongside our own curiosities about what's possible, and what we're also drinking at home. I think I shared that with you before. If LIOCO's going to bottle it, Sara and I have to have been drinking that wine at home. Our newest wine is right now some Albariño from out in Clarksburg in the Sacramento River Delta, another incredible family history, multi-generational Italian family that were growing walnuts and pears and put in some vitis vinifera. And for whatever reason, the father, a patriarch of the family, had the foresight to plant these very vigorous, acid-retaining, heat-tolerant white grapes. I don't know how he had such foresight so long ago, but he did. So why would LIOCO all of a sudden pivot from a Chardonnay-Pinot Noir house to making Albariño? It's not because we're chasing the trend. It's because this summer we probably crushed three boxes of Albamar Albariño at home.

Sara Licklider 15:14

Well, because we can't afford Burgundy.

Jamie Schwartz 15:16

Ha! There is that.

Sara Licklider 15:18

Also, we're not pivoting, we're just adding. We're a Burgundian house, first and foremost, for sure. But we have a lot of fun with the "other" category.

Jamie Schwartz 15:26

I think that's the most perfectly American or California thing. We don't have centuries of wine tradition, but we also don't have centuries of wine law, so we're not necessarily hamstrung by said tradition either. It allows for this wild west, this exploration, like you said earlier, frontiersmen. I think it's awesome to be able to do both, and do it well. That's not an easy thing to accomplish, but...

Matt Licklider 15:55

Especially now with climate change driving the conversation. It's not just about satisfying curiosities about what's possible in California—it's about what is truly going to be sustainable. Our commitment to Chardonnay in our region in the Russian River Valley, we probably will see a time, as vintners, where it becomes too warm to make our kind of Chardonnay in our home region. I think we're going to see a lot of Pinot Noir following suit. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir is going to leave the Russian River Valley.

Sara Licklider 16:24

And I will shed tears on that day.

Matt Licklider 16:26

It's going to be a sad day. But it also will open the door to new opportunities. Maybe 30, 40 years out from now, they will find, Oh my God, who knew that the Russian River Valley was Grand Cru quality for Cabernet Sauvignon?

Jamie Schwartz 16:41

Would that be what you would move over to? Because that's my automatic follow-up question. Where would you go?

Matt Licklider 16:48

I think Cabernet already is, in a very small scale, being done successfully in the Russian River Valley. But, I think what's more interesting are the Mediterranean varieties, Assyrtiko, Falanghina, all the Italian white varieties, basically. Maybe some of the Greek ones, maybe some of the Spanish ones, but we have to look to Europe, a similar latitude, similar microclimate and soils. The physiology of the vine itself is also really important, and we're learning this by working out in the Lost Slough vineyard in Clarksburg. One of the reasons I think they planted these extremely vigorous high-acid white grapes is because they're vigorous and they produce these enormous canopies, which act like a shade-bearing canopy. And then the cluster drops underneath the canopy and is protected from the worst aspects of the sun. In Napa, a very famous grower, Mark Neal, mostly known for organically farmed Cabernet Sauvignon on Howell Mountain, has now planted Fiano, Vermentino, and Falanghina, alongside Cabernet. He told me about it at a trade show. This is pretty interesting. He is pergola-training the white grapes up high and planting low bush vines underneath. The Cabernet is now shaded from the pergola-trained white grapes. It's also very high-density plantings, which pencil for the farmer, because we also have to figure out how do we create more economy of scale for the grower so that the fruit prices come down? If he can get 10 tons to the acre off these very high-density upstairs-downstairs plantings, that starts to trickle down.

Jamie Schwartz 18:26

Or in New York City—upstairs-downstairs is key to the equation.

Sara Licklider 18:31

I think that is the key. As we keep moving into the future, it's going to be a constant pivot. I mean, every aspect of the wine business is a pivot right now, except for the dirt. It's still the dirt, thank God. That's the only constant.

Jamie Schwartz 18:45

It's rooted to the ground.

Sara Licklider 18:47

I think it's going to be constantly changing the way you were thinking. South facing? No, north facing. Upstairs? No, downstairs. Whatever it was, you have to be open to the change. It's going to be a very interesting time to be part of and to watch and to lead.

Matt Licklider 19:04

And California will be leading the charge in that region.

Sara Licklider 19:07

Absolutely.

Jamie Schwartz 19:07

Totally.

Matt Licklider 19:08

It's important, and it's going to be a fun ride.

Sara Licklider 19:12

Well, hopefully. There could be some bumps

The flexibility of the négociant model

Sara Licklider 19:16

in the road.

Matt Licklider 19:16

Well, we're fortunate we can pick up and move. We can move out of where we're currently buying grapes and move north and west closer to the ocean, if we need to, because it's gotten too warm. There's a certain elasticity to our winery model that estates do not have. And we like that. We really see that as a strength. People often ask us, "When are you guys going to buy your own vineyard?" And I think there were some years, maybe 10, 12, 13 years into it, where we were like, "You know, yeah, we're still working on that. We're trying to figure out where and the economics of it." I think at this point we're perfectly content not to do that.

Sara Licklider 19:49

Yeah, I think it's easy to romanticize that, like, oh, the estate and the vineyard dog, and all the things. But what we've realized is just how dynamic our current négociant project is and how happy we are with it. It's super rewarding. We get to work with so many different places, so many different people, so many different varietals. It's pretty exciting.

Matt Licklider 20:14

There's this other part of it now, being 20 years old, where in the early years we used to spend so much of our time trying to chase down new vineyard sources. And there was a time where the best sources were very competitive. Everybody was going after the same stuff. The fruit market has changed and softened quite a bit, but I think also being 20 years old, having a reputation for taking care of fruit, paying our bills, being storytellers, getting the wines placed in prestige locations—now that stuff's starting to come back upstream at us, and it's very hard to say no. This year, someone offered us what I think of as Grand Cru quality Chardonnay grapes from Occidental, which is like the holy grail, very impenetrable to LIOCO up until this year. We've long wanted to make wine from Occidental. It's very hard to find a willing grower.

Sara Licklider 21:12

Meanwhile, we need Chardonnay grapes right now like we need a hole in the head.

Matt Licklider 21:16

Ha! Right, exactly. We do not need another Chardonnay vineyard. We took one look at this vineyard, the gate to the kingdom opened. We walked through it and we signed a contract literally with our boots in the soil of that vineyard. We were so mesmerized by what we saw out there.

Sara Licklider 21:30

And there were two horses on property, so I was like, "I'm in."

Matt Licklider 21:34

Horses were roaming, the trees were swaying, there were eagles in the sky, and we weren't on mushrooms! I mean, this was really happening in real life. Those kinds of opportunities are now starting to avail themselves to us in a way that encourages us to take a risk. And risk for us will be to buy two tons of that fruit. We're not talking about making wine at big scale. That's another nice thing: the way we're set up, we can make very small lots of a bunch of different things, and nobody gets hurt. It's not too risky for us to do so. So, coming to a theater near you, Zephyr Farms Chardonnay from Occidental.

Jamie Schwartz 22:14

I know that vineyard as a vineyard designate from John Raytek, from Ceritas, which, there's history there for you. Quick shout-out for John, but also a quick shout out for your current winemaker, Drew.

Sara Licklider 22:28

Absolutely. Drew's been crushing it.

Matt Licklider 22:31

Yeah, we've been really fortunate. Before we zero in on that, LIOCO has always been a very collaborative project. Kevin and I originally, and Sara and I today, none of us have any winemaking or wine-growing pedigree. Like you guys, we were humble servants in the hospitality world who fell in love with wine and committed ourselves to learning more about how to become producers of it. Sara and I never call ourselves winemakers. I would say we're vintners. We always relied on the collaborations with a winemaker, with an enologist, with a viticulturalist, and all the other people that have contributed to LIOCO over the years, be them designers and webmasters, salespeople, all the things.

Sara Licklider 23:17

Yeah. I mean, what other business starts with geology, then we go to viticulture and farming, then we go to science and enology, then we go to packaging and marketing, then we go to sales, then we go to hospitality and then layer in education through the entire thing.

Jamie Schwartz 23:39

And art.

Sara Licklider 23:40

Yeah, and art. You'll spend your whole life never being an expert at maybe even one of those things. In the wine business, you're trying to know enough about all of them, so you always have to bring other people into the fold. We rely on our palates and, now, a lot of knowledge and experience. But yes, it's always been a collaboration in all of those different compartments.

Matt Licklider 24:05

And we've worked with some amazingly talented people over the years, winemakers, especially, as you alluded to, John Raytek, who was our winemaker for five or six years, and we hired Drew in 2017?

Sara Licklider 24:19

Sorry, I'm pouring my husband some more wine because he drank it all.

Matt Licklider 24:22

2023. There you go. 2023 is very crushable. 12.5% alcohol, fully ripened Chardonnay, picked in mid-October. That is what we aspire to every year. But Mother Nature oftentimes has other plans for us.

Sara Licklider 24:35

Yeah,

Agricultural vs. Industrial wine

Sara Licklider 24:36

getting into the vintages is an interesting question because there are wineries that try to make the same wine every year. This is the style, this is what we're doing, this is the formula. It's fairly dogmatic. And sure, there's something to be said for consistency. But I think back to everything we've been talking about. We are working with Mother Nature. We're not in charge. She is.

Matt Licklider 24:59

We're in the business of making agricultural wines, and I think we need to make a distinction right here between agricultural wine and industrial wine. Industrial wine tastes the same every year because they're using the mechanisms of industry to achieve that goal. Agricultural wine, just like strawberries and tomatoes, are different every harvest. The fact that our wines may taste different year to year is not something we are retreating from or trying to mitigate or talk around. We lean into that. You ride a little bit with the chaos. This is part of the wild adventure making wine in California, which you've heard me say, I think it's the most dynamic, most extreme wine-growing region in the world right now. Every year is going to be different. 2023 was perfect. 2024 was also very good, but very different than 2023. And 2025 was like something no one's ever seen before. And the 10 vintages behind that also had their own very distinctive personality. I think that is on-brand for California wine.

Jamie Schwartz 25:58

You did give 2023 the perfect vintage score, so I have to ask, what does perfection mean to LIOCO?

Sara Licklider 26:06

Wines are like human beings, right? No one's perfect, and they're living and they're breathing, and they're subjective. And then it's your body chemistry. How are you interacting with a wine? Is it perfect for you that day?

Jamie Schwartz 26:21

I think about that all the time. If I've had my best glass of wine, are the other people drinking this bottle also having that same feeling, like this is the best bottle of wine I've ever had?

Sara Licklider 26:30

Probably not. It's your pheromones and all the things. It's all coming together. But I don't know that, for LIOCO, perfection is necessarily a goal. I think what we're really trying to do is give a true window into the place, a true expression of the vineyard, a true expression of the varietal without too much intervention. I know that's a buzzword, but I think when we do that, the wine is balanced. I do think balance is what even brings that word out.

Jamie Schwartz 27:07

It's the North Star.

Sara Licklider 27:08

It is, because if the phenolics and the acid and the pH and the alcohol—if everything's aligned and nothing is sticking out, because when something's sticking out in a wine, that takes over the conversation, that takes over the palate. "Oh, it's kind of okay... There's no fruit," or whatever it is.

Jamie Schwartz 27:28

The negative does show.

Sara Licklider 27:29

The negative becomes the conversation versus: "This hits. This is hitting so hard. I want another glass, and can we get another bottle? And I want to get a case for home." You're chasing it. And you're chasing it because of all the things we've talked about—what's happening in your body or whatever—but you're also chasing it because it's in balance. And I think when you've shepherded it into the bottle and then into the glass in a way where the vineyard and the varietal are shining through and it is in balance, then you've done your job.

Matt Licklider 28:08

And you just said something now, like, this is a question, Paul Grieco would have just heard that and said, "Okay, Sara, what if a wine is perfectly in balance but it fails to deliver on its regionality? Is it still perfect?" Because I've had wines that are balanced that I'm still bored of. Because, yes, it's balanced, nothing's sticking out, but it just is rather innocuous. It's not delivering me to its place of origin. So for me, if it doesn't take me on a journey somewhere, I'm bored. I don't want to keep drinking it. I don't care how balanced it is.

Sara Licklider 28:43

And usually complexity has something to do with that. If it's one-dimensional, you're bored. Also, does it go with food? Very, very important for me. Is it accentuating the food? And is it clean? I have to go there too, because if there's a microbial load in the wine—again, back to something sticking out—is it just a tiny bit of volatile acidity and it's making it interesting? Fantastic. Are you like, "This is totally microbial"? Then no, the vineyard and the varietal—the typicity—is not coming through.

Jamie Schwartz 29:13

Matt, you talked about agricultural versus industrial wines. And to me, the microbial aspect and the agricultural aspect are both still what are probably in the realm of what people think natural wine is. And that's the thing that is appealing to me about natural wine: the farming and the sense of place and all of these very important things. The negative in the wine world, to me, is the industrial. And that's what I think we all are trying to get to right now, whether you're more classically-minded or more natty, we're all in the same boat here, right? We are attempting to, I think, make wines of place, share wines of place, tell stories—that's what I want to champion. I think you all do that very well, and I think the balance of those things is the key.

Matt Licklider 29:59

Sara said microbial load, referencing it as if it were a negative concept, and I think we would both say, if you notice it, then yeah. There's a microbial load in this wine. It's just not so dominating the profile of the wine that that's what's sticking out. I think microbial load out of balance is no different than reduction out of balance, whole cluster fermentation on Pinot Noir out of balance, oak, lees stirring—myriad ways that something can stick out and dominate a wine. Volatile acidity—I mean, I've had noble Barolo and Barbaresco from very important producers where for me, the VA was a little too elevated in such a way that I was having to work around the VA to get to where I wanted to go with the wine. The wine's out of balance. I don't care whose name it says on the label. And we'll play by the same rules. There's room for all of that in wine. The VA, Brettanomyces, and Lactobacillus and things like that in small quantities, it's like the perfumery, and it complicates it in a very appealing way. It's the same thing with wine—as long as things are in balance, as long as the expression of the vineyard, the place, the vintage are out in front of all that other stuff, the right microbial load in an otherwise clean wine takes it to the next level.

Sara Licklider 31:24

For the most part, you want to make sure that transparency, typicity is shining through. If the wine's perfect for me, it's because I'm chasing it. All the stars have aligned, and it's in balance, and it feels good.

Matt Licklider 31:40

Like Albamar Albariño, for example. We chased it so hard California went out of stock. We couldn't find it anywhere in California, so we started making our own. It's kind of the same thing here. We can't really afford to drink a lot of the wines from Chablis and Burgundy that we used to enjoy, so we started to make some of our own. I'm sort of half joking. We don't often get high on our own supply, but I told you, Jamie, we've been drinking a lot of 2023 Sonoma County Chardonnay.

Sara Licklider 32:03

It's good. It slaps. Yeah, it really does.

Jamie Schwartz 32:08

This was so awesome to spend a day with you two and hear about the last 20 years at LIOCO. I think we covered maybe 20 years ahead of time, too. 2045 vintage, we're going to run this back, and I can't wait to hear what's happened. Thank you both for being here. Thank you for being great stewards and friends.

Sara Licklider 32:28

Thank you.

Matt Licklider 32:29

Thanks, Jamie.

Harmon Skurnik 32:33

Skurnik Unfiltered is recorded at Skurnick Wines & Spirits headquarters in the Flatiron District of New York City. If you found the conversation interesting, please consider liking, subscribing, and leaving a review. You can stay up to date on our show and upcoming events by following @skurnikwines on Instagram and visiting our website at skurnik.com