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8 CapitalPress.com September 11, 2015 Napa winemaker grew up in California vineyards For the Capital Press NAPA, Calif. — At an early age winemaker Mark Williams discovered a profound respect for those who work in the vineyards. “My father is a viticulture professor at University of Cali- fornia-Davis and I can remem- ber working in his research block of Thompson Seedless grapes as a high school student,” he said. “It was hot, dirty, and physically demanding, and I only saw the manual labor as- pect of viticulture.” It wasn’t until he started studying enology in college that he learned to appreciate the ad- age, “Wine is made in the vine- yard,” he said. Before coming to William Hill Estate, Williams gained experience as an enologist working in the Eden Valley in Australia and the Edna Valley in California’s Central Coast. On the 140-acre estate in the Napa Valley’s Silverado Bench, Cabernet is most widely planted variety and comprises 82 per- cent of the planted acres. Char- donnay, which he crafts from fruit grown throughout the Napa Valley, is the most popular wine in the tasting room. In addition to pests, the 4-year drought looms large as a challenge. “The drought has had an impact on our entire state, from a lack of snowfall in the Sierra and devastating wildfires to wa- ter rationing in people’s homes,” he said. “On the vineyard side, the warm, dry spring has made for a very early harvest.” Williams said the most re- warding part of his job is experi- encing the wines as they evolve over time — there are few prod- ucts in the world that mature quite like wine. It all begins in the vineyard, tasting the grapes as they transi- tion through the growing season, later determining the amount of Courtesy of William Hill Estate Mark Williams, winemaker at William Hill Estate in Napa, Calif., thinks consumer wine tastes have changed for the better in the past five years. extraction appropriate during fermentation, selecting the oak for aging, then tasting the wine with family and friends long af- ter it has bottled. “I especially like to make in- V15-7/#5 By JULIA HOLLISTER V15-1/#4 tense, age-worthy reds that are complex and well-structured, as well as whites that are ex- pressive and vibrant,” he said. “Generally, I enjoy wines from all over the world and over the years have spent a small fortune fine-tuning my palate trying new and different producers. The public’s tastes in wine continues to change, he said. “Consumers’ tastes have changed over the past five years; I know mine have evolved,” he said. “What we’re seeing is that millen- nials (people born between 1978 and 1998) are willing to try new things and aren’t as afraid of wines as other generations have been.” “Mark is a tremendous wine- maker and his passion for the wines he crafts is unparalleled,” Scott Kozel, vice president of coastal winemaking for E&J Gallo, said. “But I think it is Mark’s intuition that sets him apart from so many of the oth- er winemakers I have worked with. Mark is able to taste a wine, make an assessment of where it sits today and postulate which one of the possible next steps might best benefit a given wine.”