As chairperson of the Napa Valley Vintners’ Environmental Stewardship committee, she’s looking to the future.
As chairperson of Napa Valley Vintners’ Environmental Stewardship Committee, Sarah Vandendriessche leads a group of winery owners, executives, and production team managers who meet every two months to grapple with the sea changes in farming practices that are washing over Napa Valley and the relevance of those changes to today’s eco-conscious marketplace. “The committee acts as a beacon of improving practices for the organization,” she says. “And by continuously growing our knowledge base and seeking outside perspectives, we’re better able to guide our stewardship efforts within the industry.”
Her efforts in guiding theenvironmental stewardship committee naturally inform Vandendriessche’s role as winemaker at Elizabeth Spencer Winery, one that she stepped into in 2010. As is the case for many winemakers, her career journey began with a stint in hospitality, when she was working in the restaurant industry in New Orleans. But it was the sound advice from the restaurant’s owners to experience an internship with Abe Schoener’s Scholium Project that would parlay her interest in wine to knowledge. The upside to being displaced by Hurricane Katrina and unable to return home in 2005, was that she landed under the protective wing of John and Maggie Kongsgaard.
“This is the source of stylistic integrity without homogeneity, largely because there are no herbicides to suppress the markers of the fruit or the vintage,” surmises Vandendriessche.
Vandendriessche cites Nigel Kinsman, who hired her to work with Jan Krupp at Stagecoach Vineyard, and Abe Schoener of Scholium Project as her tutors and mentors. She went on to work at Robert Sinskey Vineyards and at White Rock Vineyards, where she met her husband, winemaker Christopher Vandendriessche.
Vandendriessche’s role at Elizabeth Spencer extends well beyond winemaking: She oversees all aspects of production, from vineyard management to bottling. Tracing her interest in environmental stewardship and viticulture to the fact that she majored in biology at North Carolina State University, she has since gained expertise in showcasing California’s most sought-after terroirs, from the sprawling aforementioned Stagecoach Vineyard on Atlas Peak in Napa Valley to working with Robbie Meyer for sites in Russian River Valley.
Elizabeth Spencer was founded in 1998 by Spencer Graham with his wife, Elizabeth Pressler, who opened a tasting room in a picturesque former post office in Rutherford in 2006. When the Boisset Collection purchased the winery in 2021, founder Jean-Charles Boisset described the iconic building, built in 1872, as “a gem of Napa’s history that we intend to continue as its steward.” Boisset now owns commercial property in all of Napa Valley’s major towns: Napa, Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena, and Calistoga.
Today, Elizabeth Spencer’s wide-ranging portfolio is sourced from vineyards in Napa Valley as well as Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake counties to include a parade of appellated bottlings sold both on-and off premise and directly to consumers. “We buy from a handful of premier grape growers with whom we work from vintage to vintage,” Vandendriessche says. “It’s a challenge to be relevant in the wholesale market, and the goal is always to overdeliver. When it comes to the consumer, it’s about styles that appeal to them and prices that are accessible.” That she achieves with an organic Mendocino Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that is sold only in distribution and export and retails for about $30.
At last count, Sarah crafts wines from 14 different appellations, employing 11 grape varieties in both monovarietal wines and blends. Among them are a stalwart lineup of precisely balanced Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc and a clutch of less common white varieties that are compelling: a layered Rutherford Sémillon, an alluring Napa Valley Riesling, and a North Coast Roussanne that shines with honeyed notes of acacia and ginger. The Meyer lemon trees that flourish around the Rutherford tasting room even inspired her to create Elizabeth Spencer’s signature aromatized wine based on Grenache brandy, Meyer lemon, and ginger.
When asked what differentiates her many wines, Vandendriessche doesn’t skip a beat in citing a move toward cleaner farming that elicits more typicity from the fruit, which then gives a better snapshot of a time and place. “This is the source of stylistic integrity without homogeneity, largely because there are no herbicides to suppress the markers of the fruit or the vintage,” she surmises. “Our winemaking philosophy adheres to a classical tradition: The model for all our wines is intensity without excess weight, purity, persistence, and length.”
Throughout her career, Vandendriessche has had the privilege of collaborating with such extraordinarily talented individuals including the aforementioned fifth-generation Napan John Kongsgaard, who “gave me a seat at the table” while he was consulting winemaker for the custom-crush wines being made at White Rock, and Abe Schoener, who had made his first vintage under Kongsgaard at Luna Vineyards. Today she collaborates with Heidi Peterson Barrett, who joined Elizabeth Spencer as consulting winemaker in 2022. Vandendriessche’s star-studded winemaking journey recalls the metaphor popularized by English scientist Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”