First, I want to thank Ketan Mody for hosting our group of 4 today at Jasud Estate. This is the second year in a row we have been able to visit Ketan and we finally got to taste some Jasud Estate fruit. I learned about Ketan on this board and have been buying vintages from 13’ onward. Here are my tasting notes from last year for reference (Napa tasting trip. Pride, Spottswoode, Beta-Jasud, Rivers-Marie, Robert Craig, O'Shaughnessy, Neal, Chappellet).
I asked Ketan what happened to the 18’ Vare, which was lost in tank and here are the notes from him:
18’ Vare at the end of fermentation has 1-2 brix to go and someone took the heating pad off the tank and put it on another tank and the tank crashed in temperature ruining the wine. This is why the entire 18’ Vare was lost. Ketan lost $100-$150K worth of wine.
Beta Jasud February visit 2023 with Ketan Mody
19’ Jasud is over sulphuric and won’t be released now. 21’ will come out before the 19’ Jasud gets released. 19’ will age forever. Ketan lost 40% of his vineyard to the Glass fire in 2020, so obviously no 2020 wine from Jasud Estate.
19 Montecillo, first wine tasted- too tight just now. Mountain fruit, tightly coiled; one to lay down and come back to down the road. The fruit contract was extended for 2 years with the purchase from Stewart Cellars. Likely not to be renewed. Retasted later in the tasting, my own notes, buy this wine, forget you own it and open in 12-18 years, high quality wine; clearly mountain fruit.
19’ Lupina, new vineyard for Ketan.
More approachable now. Really like the fruit on it. Great, luscious fruit. Tannins still there, going to age 10-15 years or more.
19’ Maus - not as open and ready for business as the 2018 Maus was a year ago. 2nd taste later in the tasting shows this wine is going to be very pretty. Another one to lay down, but impressive fruit on the palate.
19’ Vare - Per Ketan a finicky site that can take a while to open up. These wines are made as 100% cab and meant to lay down. Truly hard to judge a youthful cab before it’s aged and developed into what it should be. I have bought every vintage of Vare from 13’ up and will also buy 19’. Second pour of Vare later in the tasting, this wine is really vibrant, youthful and will be killer with age.
Jasud estate notes
15 acres planted
The Glass Fire burned all blocks in 2020, as noted 40% of the vines were lost. (edited for clarity)
Jasud Estate is all dry farmed.
Ketan wants 4-5 fruit positions per plant. 1 bottle of wine per plant average.
Micro climates are massive within the vineyard. Ketan is still learning what portions of the vineyard could be bottled as single vineyard. Definitely more to come on this as the vines age and develop.
Ketan re-planted stuff in 21 after the fires.
Ketan doesn’t want to stop making Beta wines, but Jasud is all he ever worked for.
Lupina Vineyard notes - 200 feet from Montecillo vineyard. Right in line with it. 15 year old vines. They are trying to dry farm but not there yet. Only a 2 acre vineyard and shares fruit with one other winery. New site for Ketan.
The 2019s were bottled 3 months ago, so still babies,
Wineries can’t get vineyard insurance due to fires, can get crop insurance but too expensive to buy.
The cost to purchase crop insurance went from around $100K to $1.5M for vineyards in the area.
Ketan says he is sticking with cab, however he has a 1 acre site of river rock cobble at an undisclosed site that he wants to plant with grenache clippings. Stay tuned, nothing is in the ground yet.
There are 5 different cabernet clonal selections on Jasud Estate. There’s almost a 1 month intra vineyard bud break difference on Jasud Estate due to elevation change and vine locations.
Ketan is not sure if there are 1-3 or more micro climates within his vineyard to create single vineyard bottlings. He will definitely do single vineyard or micro-climate bottlings like Diamond Creek once he is better able to establish his own vineyard with more vintages.
Ketan has some sections of the vineyard that are planted as own rooted but he feels there is too much of a risk to plant everything own rooted. He would be happy if he can get 10 vintages out of own rooted vines.
Ketan is planning to apply for a micro winery permit, however it takes 2 years to get.
21’ Jasud is made with I block, A block and every other block in the vineyard. The vineyard blocks are named alphabetically for now but should get renamed as they figure out what to call each site within the vineyard. They will likely reflect his Indian heritage.
21’ Jasud - 100 cases and that’s it. 2 larger barrels of juice. If you’re not on the list, sorry Charlie. Memo to anyone not on the list, get on this list.
Ketan is forecasting $180-$195 for a bottle of Jasud, final pricing isn’t set yet. I could sense that clearly Ketan isn’t comfortable with a final price for Jasud today.
We got to taste the B C D N M 22’ Jasud blocks. Ketan says we are only the second group he has poured 22’ Jasud for.
He is using 700 L Austrian barrels for the wine. Bigger barrels than normal in the area.
Jasud Estate is 100% about the purity of fruit.
22’Jasud was fermented in 3 separate tanks.
Because of the complexity and size of the vineyard, the whole vineyard wasn’t planted at once.
22’ Jasud tasting note, back up the truck. Still young but holy shit the man has something very special on Diamond Mountain.
We got to taste the 22’ A block and the 22’ BCDEMN block which is fucking rocking right now. Still a baby, but the 22’ was actually more open for business than the 21’ Jasud which we felt was shut down today even with the decant from Ketan and a revisit toward the end of the tasting.
Ketan feels he left something on the table with 22’ vintage. He had to pick earlier than he would like due to the heat spike in early September with consecutive 100+ degree days. It got to 120 degrees on Diamond Mountain and he had no choice but to pick the grapes.
Ketan’s philosophy, hands off. He understands the chemistry of his vines. Better know how to drive the fucking car in the vineyard.
Jasud is dry farmed with the exception of a select few blocks that have had troubles getting vines started due to extreme rockiness. He has no pond on the property. The vines are established with water but hand watered. Ketan doesn’t want vines trained to receive water. He says he wants to build a more resilient, dry farmed vine. When the fruit is almost ripe it, drops all the leaves. Nature is designed to do this.
Ketan doesn’t want to show the same wine year to year. We want to show the vintage.
“If you want to plant a vineyard for success, you really should plant for dry farming.”
Ketan says they are the first people to do it in the valley and now others are coming to him to do the same.
“You’re not going to get honesty out of the soil unless you dry farm.”
Ketan doesn’t want to disc in the vineyard, they don’t want water to evaporate
They don’t want to disrupt any of the soil. they want to keep intact as much as possible.The vineyard is all about moisture retention. Ketan picks fruit on PH more than anything else. He samples grapes prior to picking, whole clusters here and there throughout the vineyard.
21’ Jasud revisited - singing. Time and age will do this wine wonders. This is not one to drink young, lay it down and let the wine develop in the bottle. Ketan’s wines are meant for long term aging.
21’ vintage is like Napa 13’ vintage on roids. (my note)
“When everything you’ve worked for for a decade goes up in an hour it takes its toll on you.” Ketan Mody.
Has no investors. This is his baby.
The vineyard was previously a forest and had a cabin here from 1906.
Ketan bought property, had a little help from his dad.
Ketan has a heavy equipment business which helps cover costs.
A permit today is $1M+ and would end up with 1/3 of acreage of what Jasud Estate has.
Clearing the forest and trees took 3 years to get all the roots out. They can’t clear the rocks when they excavated as they would have needed a mining permit to bring rocks off property.
That is a wrap from Jasud Estate. I grouped my winery visit notes together last year in one post and will do a few other wineries grouped together after our trip ends, but felt given the time we spent with Ketan I would like to post this separately. The next release should be out in a couple of weeks, per Ketan.
