Frank on the drums!

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It is a partnership, of sorts. First, you fall in love with some big, and usually expensive, red wines from Napa Valley. Then you realize how difficult it is to acquire even a bottle or two. Then enter Frank Gigliotti, who, in previous lives, has been the president of the B.C. Lions football team, and the promotion and marketing manager for a major record label, and is now proprietor of North Vancouver’s California Cult Classics (CCC).

It is a full-fledged winemaking facility, complete with oak barrels from France worth $1,400, and some of the rarest, most expensive wine grapes in the world. And so, a partnership of sorts: Gigliotti’s facility is essentially a U-Vin that requires a minimum two-step hands-on winemaking commitment from each customer. But the name “California Cult Classics”, really does not do Gigliotti and the operation justice. The fruit is sourced by Frank personally from three or four top vineyard sites in Napa. “You can’t just walk in and offer to buy these grapes,” Gigliotti says. “I literally had to beg at first for some fruit, which I could then make into wine, and show these growers what I was doing. It takes personal relationships, no question.”

The names of the vineyards may not mean anything to those outside a certain small loop of wine cognoscenti, but the grapes in question come from, for example, Andy Beckstoffer’s vineyards, as do CCC’s Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 6. Others are from Dr. Jan Krupp’s Stagecoach Vineyard, from which several Napa heavyweight labels also take grapes. In fact, there has been a carousel of investors and wine agencies wanting Gigliotti to take the step into commercial winemaking. “I’ve fully resisted that, so far,” he says. “We are just having too much fun with California Cult Classics. It’s kind of a little family we have here.”

But the business venture and its proponents have some excellent reasons for trying to convince Gigliotti. The Vancouver American Wine Society’s past president and cellar master (and CCC customer) Doug Russell recently held a blind comparison of CCC’s premier cabernet. Russell proclaimed the event the best cabernet comparison in the 30-year history of the Vancouver American Wine Society. The wines poured were Silver Oak, Spring Mountain, Flora Springs, Beaulieu Georges de Latour Private Reserve, Duckhorn, Chateau Montelena, Betz, Feather, PlumpJack, Caymus Special Selection, and CCC’s Stagecoach 2008 Cabernet. Frank’s wine finished a very close second to the legendary Caymus.

The fruit is picked and de-stemmed in Napa. It is then trucked to North Vancouver, where Gigliotti and his tiny team prepare the fruit and begin making wine. Each customer comes in to do their own part in the process, right up to and including the bottling. All is done at the facility.

There are a lot of happy faces as people come in and out, checking barrels, asking about the progress of a certain lot of wine, looking at label options. Most days, the happiest face is Gigliotti’s, since clearly he loves what he does. “I could talk all day about these wines,” he says. Then he laughs, and says, “In fact, I often do, come to think of it.”

There is not just cabernet sauvignon: some chardonnay, zinfandel, merlot, meritage, syrah and even petite sirah are part of the overall program, and just a little bit of pinot noir. But if there is a house style here, it is deep, intense, rich wines with plenty of structure and aging potential. Great with the right food, but perhaps best enjoyed on their own, as part of a small gathering and some decent conversation. And every so often, that conversation will roll around to the remarkable fact that wines of this calibre, and provenance are made right here in Greater Vancouver.

https://montecristomagazine.com/magazine/winter-2010/frank-gigliotti-and-california-cult-classics

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California Cult Classics – world-class wines in North Vancouver

We don’t get over to the North Shore as much as we’d like to, so luckily for us, local North Shorer, Les Jickling, is our newest contributor to GLV. Here he weighs in on one of his favourite subjects, wine, with a profile on California Cult Classics. – GLV

We may not have the climate, the soil or the intense sunlight needed to grow grapes to produce award-winning wines in North Vancouver, but we do have a world-class winemaker. That winemaker is Frank Gigliotti. Gigliotti, who founded California Cult Classics in 2005, operates from a facility located in the Hamilton district of North Vancouver. From here, he turns out some of the best wines north of Napa. In partnership with his clients, and operating as a licensed U-Vin, this enterprising entrepreneur has found a way to make world-class wines using the very best grapes grown in the Napa Valley.

“Our ‘no compromise’ motto is why we source the finest grapes from Napa Valley,” explains Gigliotti, “Beckstoffer and stagecoach vineyards produce grapes that are generally found in the finest wines made in America. We start with the finest and incorporate the finest winemaking materials.”

Using a combination of old-world techniques, patience and cutting-edge technology, no expense is spared. Even the oak barrels are only used once before they are sold, recycled and replaced with 100% new barrels. The result is a selection of varietals that rival the best award-winning California wines.

Visiting his partner growers in the Napa Valley, Gigliotti personally selects the best grapes, has them picked at 3am at their absolute peak and transported by refrigerator truck directly to his facility. From the moment the grapes arrive he painstakingly applies his craft. Large stainless tanks where the grapes are crushed and fermented use a “pump-over” method that is expensive but reduces sediment. The wines are then aged in new oak barrels because Frank believes the first aging is always the best. A great deal of patience follows, waiting for exactly the right time to bottle which is normally twenty-four months later but can sometimes be as long as twenty-eight. Relying on his own palate, rather than an instrument, Gigliotti tests the tap until exactly the right moment when the wines are ready for bottling.

Bottling of the wines is perhaps the most impressive and essential element in California Cult Classics process. Relying on a piece of advanced technology specially ordered and manufactured in Italy his process injects Nitrogen through the wines to preserve them without using any sulphites. While fine red wines often use sulphites, they tend to impair flavour and cause those notorious red wine hangovers.

“Winemakers use sulphites because they are cheap and do the job,” says Gigliotti, “We use Nitrogen to preserve the wines indefinitely.”

Business is booming for the best kept secret on the North Shore. In the last year, a time when COVID-19 has driven triple-digit growth in online wines sales, California Cult Classics has experienced dramatic growth and a continued mission to achieve the perfect bottle.

“Perfection is not an accident; we work very hard to make wines that can compete with the finest in the world. I come to work every day knowing that I haven’t yet made my finest wine.”

https://goodlifevancouver.com/california-cult-classics-north-vancouver/

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Fuelled by passion… & wine

To suggest that Frank Gigliotti is a man of many talents is simply an understatement.

His life resonates more as a testament to the hallowed practice of pursuing one’s passions in life—whatever they may be and wherever they may lead.

Frank’s early days saw him as a member of the ‘60s/’70sera Vancouver rock group Five Man Cargo—something that checked off the first on a list of many passions. It was also one that eventually saw him rub shoulders with the giants of the music world.

“I started off as a professional musician when I got out of high school and like so many of us, February 9, 1964 changed my life,” he says, upon reflection. “It was the day The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, making their North American debut.”

After toiling as a musician for the next seven years or so, the lack of financial opportunity took him elsewhere.

“I realized it was tough to make a good living in Vancouver, so I decided to try and get into the record business—without a whole lot of experience, but a seriously good attitude.”

He was eventually hired as promotions and marketing manager at Columbia Records.

Pivoting from music, Frank later served as president of the BC Lions. This was during the football team’s heyday in the ‘90s with star quarterback Doug Flutie and the team’s rather colourful owner, Murray Pezim.

However, his 15 years at Columbia Records/CBS Music saw him befriend the major hit-makers of the day, including Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel, Eddie Money and Aerosmith, to name a few.

And it was some of those top-selling Columbia recording artists that would play a hand in leading Frank toward his current path as founder and winemaker of Cavallo Wines.

“My dad made wine but it was horrible stuff and I thought that all wine tasted like that,” he says.

But working with Neil Diamond, he soon discovered that there is such a thing as fine wine.

“I had no money and I had no patience, but I’ve always raised the bar pretty high in my life and I wanted to create something.”

“We had just finished a gig at the Pacific Coliseum and were at Trader Vic’s at the Bayshore Inn having dinner, and Neil started ordering these wines. So I drank them along with him and thought, ‘Wow—this stuff is amazing.’ I had never had wines like that.”

“I had no money and I had no patience, but I’ve always raised the bar pretty high in my life and I wanted to create something.”

Billy Joel came into town about four months later, Frank recalls, and he started ordering Cabernets from California, made by all the old-school winemakers, and then Julio Iglesias—who used to carry cases of wines with him when he toured— introduced him to Spanish wines. Frank was hooked and decided this was his future road to travel. But “to want” and “to do” are not mutually exclusive, and there exists an axiom that in order to make wine, one needs money and patience.

As a BC resident, Frank wanted to be unique and create something that would transcend what is readily available in the province.

“I gravitated toward the Napa Valley in California. In competitions, they always seemed to pit French Bordeaux against American Cabernets, and the Americans seem to win.

“That’s the style I wanted to make and as much as I love BC—and I’m a fiercely proud Canadian—I don’t think the climate here is conducive to making the style of wines that I want to make.”

It’s a point that deserves clarification as Frank has nothing but praise for this province and its well-awarded wineries

“We’re not saying we’re better than that what’s in BC, we’re just offering an alternative. For those people who love great California wines, but don’t want to have to pay the price for great California wines, we’ve created that style in BC, using exclusively Napa Valley grapes.”

Cavallo Wines opened its doors in Langley in 2014 and it’s been drawing rave reviews ever since. In fact, plans are well underway to open a downtown Vancouver location—located at Thurlow and Pender within a matter of months—and this despite the unforeseen ramifications of a global pandemic. Clearly it has not deterred wine drinkers.

“My research has shown that liquor sales through retail locations are up 61 per cent and online sales are up 445 per cent over this time last year.”

And what is Frank’s mantra for success?

“Answer to no one,” he states emphatically. “I’ve always lived my life in a way that I’m going to do what I want to do and never going to answer to anybody. I’m going to chart my own path and, good or bad, I’ll make the decisions that I need to make.

“There’s an old saying that if you want to make a small fortune, you’ve got to start with a big one. And that’s true for some, but it didn’t deter me from what I wanted to do. I wake up every morning and drive to work telling myself that I haven’t made my best wine yet. And when I do say that, it’s time to cash it in.”

'WORDS JOE LEARY - PHOTOGRAPHY LIA CROWE'

https://issuu.com/vancouverboulevard/docs/2020_10van_blvd_lr/s/11109721

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A North Vancouver vintner with an obsession for quality is turning out wines in his upscale U-Vin that are starting to rival Napa Valley's best and most costly offerings. 

The wines of Frank Gigliotti have long had a loyal following among the 400 customers of his winemaking enterprise, California Cult Classics, but now they are beginning to garner wider praise. 

Located in the commercial district south of Marine Drive, California Cult Classics is sandwiched between a mattress warehouse and a diner. From the outside there is no indication that an operation turning out wines that equal Napa Valley's fame. It's not until a visitor passes through the reception, and a lounge complete with cappuccino machine, and into the barrel room that the scale of the operation begins to dawn. There, 300 barrels, all 200 litres each and made from French or American oak, are stacked in rows reaching up to the ceiling. The adjacent room, separated from the barrel room by heavy plastic curtains that keep heat out, is where the wine is made. It's filled with giant stainless steel fermenters. 

Gigliotti's pinot noir has been described by famed Napa Valley vineyard owner Andy Beckstoffer as the biggest pinot ever to come off his land. And in a blind comparison last October, sponsored by Vancouver's American Wine Society, one of Gigliotti's wines was poured alongside Napa Valley icons like Silver Oak and Chateau Montelena. His wine, a cabernet sauvignon from Napa's Stagecoach vineyard, came a close second, bested only by a $125 bottle of Caymus Special Selection. 

"It was at one of our big events last year. We tried to have some of the big names and vintages that were available at that time," said Doug Russell, cellar master at the Vancouver American Wine Society. 

Russell, who is also a customer of the California Cult Classic U-Vin, selected the wines and thought it would be interesting to include Gigliotti's 2006 Stagecoach Vineyard, a renowned Napa vineyard located on the eastern mountain slopes of the valley. 

"All of our palates are different, so people look for different things in different wines. It certainly had a freshness to it," Russell said of the North Vancouver wine. "To a certain extent, I expected it to show well, I would be truthful in saying I didn't expect it to do that well." 

It's no accident that Gigliotti is making California wine with a broad appeal from his North Vancouver operation. It's the outcome of a long wine obsession that began in the 1970s when, as the marketing manager for Columbia Records, he was introduced to fine wine at a dinner with Julio Iglesias, who carried his own mini-wine collection with him when he was on the road. 

Gigliotti's wines are massive, with concentrated dark fruit flavours and smooth tannins. 

The wines lack the finesse of Bordeaux, but that's not a model Gigliotti is attempting to follow. He is unabashed about his love affair with full-bodied California wines. 

"Every wine we make is big. We make no apologies for it," Gigliotti said in an interview. "We pick ultra-ripe, not over-ripe, fruit. But we take it right to the max. When the fruit gets like that is shows so much more complexity. It shows a lot of dark flavours." 

Gigliotti began making wine 24 years ago as an amateur. He founded California Cult Classics in 2005, The operation is everything you would expect a winemaking facility to be: fermenters, oak barrels, the sweet smell of grape must floating out of the wine room. 

California Cult Classics operates under the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch's U-Vin regulations. However, in contrast to most U-Vins, which are small operations where 30-day or 90-day wines are made in glass carboys, Gigliotti has a $1 million investment in a bladder press, 13 temperature-controlled stainless steel fermenters, French and American oak barrels, a bottling machine that injects nitrogen into each bottle to ensure no contact with oxygen, and most importantly, grapes from Napa Valley's top and most sought-after vineyards. He buys up to 70 tonnes a year of cabernet, chardonnay, merlot, and other varietals. He makes 2,500 cases of wine a year. 

Customers do not come to save money on alcohol purchases, he said. The average price per bottle is $30 to $35. The smallest amount customers can sign up for is three cases — one eighth of a barrel — and they have to put their money down before the grapes arrive. 

"I knew when I started, I would have to have professional, commercial-grade equipment to make wines in this style. I'd have to recreate a Napa Valley winemaking facility in Vancouver if I wanted to make wines of that quality," he said. 

His biggest coupe to date is talking Beckstoffer, whose top vineyards routinely produce wines rated in the 95-100 point range by the likes of Robert Parker Jr. and The Wine Spectator, into signing a grape contract. 

For an unknown winemaker from North Vancouver, it was a stretch for Gigliotti to expect to get his hands on some of the world's best grapes. But, Gigliotti said, when he did get to meet Beckstoffer in 2006, it turned out that the two men had much to talk about: a passion for producing the best and a business model that's based on family. Beckstoffer has family members in the business. Gigliotti had brought with him his 18-year-old son Paolo, who was the assistant winemaker at that time. 

"When I walked in there and told him what he wanted, he kind of laughed at me because there's a lineup about a mile long of people wanting to get his grapes. It's not about writing a cheque. It's not that easy because there's only so much of the phenomenal grapes that they have down there." 

Beckstoffer agreed to sell him some pinot noir from a vineyard he owns in Carneros, south of Napa. When Gigliotti returned a year later with wine from the vineyard, Beckstoffer was impressed. He then decided to offer Gigliotti some of what Beckstoffer is most famous for and what the North Vancouver winemaker had been making annual pilgrimages to Napa to get: a particular cabernet sauvignon grape called clone 6. 

He bought 20 tonnes of clone 6 grapes from Beckstoffer's George III vineyard, located in Rutherford and planted in the 1930s. It was at one time the source of grapes for Napa's famous pioneer cabernet, Beaulieu Vineyards Georges de Latour Private Reserve. The clone 6 vines were old and produced tiny berries that looked more like currants than grapes. But they produce wine of unparalleled concentration. 

Getting the grapes to Vancouver in pristine condition is a challenge Gigliotti overcomes by having the grapes picked at 3 a.m. in the morning, when the vineyard is cool. He pays $7,000 a tonne for the grapes and about another $1,500 a tonne getting them to the facility versus the average Napa Valley cabernet price of $4,000 a tonne, so these berries get special attention. They are packed in 500-kilogram food-grade tubs, loaded aboard a waiting refrigerated transport trailer and hauled to Vancouver under a constant temperature of 34 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Twenty-four hours after being picked they are at the facility, where they are de-stemmed but not crushed and put into fermentation tanks where they soak for one week at 47 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature too low to allow natural fermentation. That brings out the colours and flavours but avoids extracting harsh tannin, Gigliotti claims. When he does allow the grapes to warm and begin fermenting, they don't get above 55 degrees Fahrenheit, extremely cool for making wine. 

He said his winemaking protocols complement the concentrated flavours of the Napa Valley fruit. 

But it's the quality of the grapes, not the winemaking, that counts in the end, he said. 

"I would argue our fruit is about the best you are ever going to get." 

ghamilton@vancouversun.com 

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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