Richard (Dick) Sherwin 92, passed away last Saturday of natural causes in Maine where he lived his final years.
Some of you older Berserkers may have met Dick Sherwin back in the '70’s/'80’s. He had an interesting story, and was the steward of one of California’s most important “grand cru” vineyards for many years before finally selling to Ridge in 1989.
This article is well worth your time:
This somewhat recent video by Paul Draper celebrating 50 years of Ridge Lytton Springs pays tribute to Dick as well:
Here is a picture of my daughter Madeleine (Richard Sherwin was her grandfather!)
One cannot bring up Dick Sherwin w/o a mention of Dee Sindt & WineWorld magazine for whom I wrote occasional. Dick was the $$ & Publisher for WW and the glamorous Dee Sindt was the Editor.
I drank a lot of Lytton Springs Winery’s Zin back in the day, and just loved the stuff. It struck me as a bit more “rustic” than what Ridge was doing with the grapes those years, and it didn’t cost as much as the Ridge bottling. I was finding the stuff down in Colorado wine shops, I believe. But on one of my work trips I was up in Buffalo WY (small town, northern part of Wyoming) staying overnight at a friend/colleague’s place and first night he decided we’d grill some steaks. He wasn’t a wine drinker, but his wife at the time (she recently had moved out, pending a divorce) liked wine and friends of theirs would gift wine to them. Anywho, Blair asked what I wanted to drink with dinner and told me they had a small selection of wines. I looked and to my great surprise there was a bottle of Lytton Springs Winery Zin there, with a handful of years under its belt. I ended up decanting it into a glass pitcher and enjoying the hell out of it that evening. Loved it.
I had a winemaker friend who made a visit w/ Dick down at his LA warehouse to taste some LS wines & his wines for review in WW. While Dick was retrieving his LS wines, Dave wandered about the warehouse and came across pallets and pallets of porn magazines. Dave speculated that Dee, who was quite a looker, was one of his porn queens & rewarded with being named as editor of WW. She didn’t write much in the way of wine articles in WW, only editorial content. I was never particularly impressed by her wine knowledge, but quite taken by her glamorous looks. And she by mine!!
The Sherwin LS label, started in '74, was one of the ugliest labels around. After Ridge bought the property, Draper continued to make a LS-labeled Zin for some 4-5 yrs because there were fans out there for that rustic, bit bretty, style of Zin. But eventually he dropped that ugly label and put all the grapes into the Ridge bottling.
I believe that Dick designed the label himself on a pretty rudimentary computer, so he did his best. He was a do-it-your-selfer if there ever was one. Thanks for sharing your memories!
By the way, Dick named the vineyard “Valley Vista” Vineyard because that’s the name of the street he lived on in North Hollywood (porn capital of the USA )
One of the most surprisingly delicious wines I have stumbled across was a case of Lytton Springs 1987 Mendocino Cabernet. It was shockingly good last time I had it (2024). I would love to know if anyone knows the fruit sourcing.
Jeff, this excerpt is from the “Gang of Pour” article that I posted at the top of the thread:
“Actually, before I sold Lytton, I bought this place. Actually, before Paul even approached me about buying Lytton, I had bought this place. I just knew it was really good real estate, and it was.”
“When Paul approached me, and we had already made one or two vintages from this vineyard (Mendocino Hill) - we had made some Cab - and the Cab was really showing well. So I thought: 'I can have my cake and eat it, too. I can sell this place (Lytton Springs), and I already own this place (Mendocino Hill) so I have a place to go. I can start a little winery up here and this time be well financed to do it.”
"So - it was a pretty good offer, and we decided to sell and move up north (to Hopland). That turned out to be a pretty good decision on our part.
The bad decision was starting another winery. " (laughter)
Mendocino Hill was on Eastside Road, about three miles north from Fetzer and about nine miles south of the Buhdist Temple in Talmadge. That’s probably where the grapes were coming from. I worked there for a short while in 1999.
Some of these wines age bizarrely well as Zinfandel goes. They can be really fun to open with people who appreciate well aged wines from non-famous name sources.
Sorry to hear of it’s founder’s passing. I have one bottle left and will raise a glass in his honor when it’s opened.
This is sad news as I loved the Zins and had the pleasure of meeting Dick and his wife a couple of times. The Zins were indeed on the rustic side but mentioned above often aged well. A 1990 (yes under the Ridge team) drank ~2005 was great. The couple of Cabs I had were too big for me but can see that they might age well.
Our long running Palo Alto blind tasting group did a Ridge Lytton Spring vertical maybe 15 years ago. Afterward, an attendee I’d never seen before opened a pre-commercial Lytton Springs shiner. It was really good. After a bit, the guy next to me noticed something in his glass. I looked at mine and there was a grape skin. Someone across from us noticed two in her glass. So, of course I said “there’s four skins in the wine!” Sadly, no one was amused.
Before the tasting we heard about how bohemian the place was, with big parties with lots of porn stars.
The story with that shiner was the guy had stopped by when the place was about to go commercial. They couldn’t have unbonded wine on the property, so were in the process of burying it. So, the guy asked if he could have some and was allowed to take some bottles.
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