Paul Hobbs’ Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon: 1999-2016

BY STEPHEN TANZER | JULY 10, 2019 

One of the greatest pleasures of having been a wine critic over a period of decades has been the chance to follow dozens of winemakers from their tentative early days to international stardom. While I did not meet Paul Hobbs during his initial years in Napa Valley, I tasted with him more than 25 years ago as he was releasing the first wines under his eponymous label. I’ve watched as he has achieved winemaking fame in Argentina, created a major operation in northern California focusing on both high-end, mostly single-vineyard wines and considerably less expensive (and less-oaked) appellation wines, and established himself as a much-in-demand international consultant. Hobbs has been a very busy world traveler.

The vines that go into Paul Hobbs's Beckstoffer To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon

A Constant Search for New Experiences

Paul Hobbs grew up on his family’s farm in upstate New York. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame, then moved to California, where he completed an M.S. degree in Viticulture and Enology at UC/Davis. He had originally planned to go to medical school; his father, meanwhile, had hoped Paul would return to New York to help him develop his own grape-growing operation (Hobbs’s dad had already begun converting orchards to vineyards). Instead, Hobbs chose a third path. He signed on as a lab technician at Robert Mondavi Winery and was quickly promoted to enologist, working for Mondavi and as part of the fledgling Opus One winemaking team through 1984. He then joined Simi as assistant winemaker to Zelma Long at the beginning of 1985 and a year later took over as winemaker (Long eventually became President and CEO of Simi), where he remained for another five years. But under the ownership of LVMH (Moët-Hennessey had purchased Simi in 1981) Hobbs was feeling “tapped out,” as he was devoting more and more of his time to administration rather than to hands-on work in the vineyards and winery.

Hobbs went abroad for more experience, planning to work in Chile. But when he visited Argentina for the first time in 1988, Nicolas Catena made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: essentially, to help him build a wine program suitable for export, mostly to the U.S. market. Hobbs was quickly promoted to head of the Catena wine program, where he remained until 1997—technically as an outside contractor since he was still spending at least half of his time working in California. Along with Bordeaux enologist Michel Rolland, who began to work in Argentina’s Salta region in ’88—and joined in the mid-‘90s by Italian super-consultants Attilio Pagli and Alberto Antonini—Hobbs was one of the first so-called flying winemakers who helped Argentina clean up and adapt their wines for an international market.

Hobbs left Catena after ’97 and established Viña Cobos in Agrelo with partners Luis Barraud and Andrea Marchiori in 1998. (Hobbs subsequently constructed a large, state-of-the-art winery in Perdriel in time to vinify the 2006 harvest and his original partners sold their shares to new partners three years ago). Since then, Hobbs has also had a host of consulting gigs in Argentina, as well as in California, Chile, France, Uruguay, New York, Canada and Armenia. For a couple years in the mid-‘90s, his Paul Hobbs Imports brought Catena’s Alamos Ridge wines (today, these wines are simply called Alamos) to the U.S. market, but he shut the company down after the Catena family decided to send both their high-end Catena Zapata and Alamos wines to the U.S. through another importer. As the Cobos venture grew (annual production is now around 100,000 cases), Hobbs relaunched his import company and today he brings in the Cobos wines as well as wines from his consulting clients in Argentina, Armenia and France.

The colorful Katherine Lindsay Pinot Noir vineyard behind Paul Hobb's winery in Sebastopol

Hobbs Launches His Own Venture in California