Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/663373
{ SOMMjournal.com } 95 It wasn't until a tasting tour through old Riojas from his Madrid uncle's cellar dur- ing a college break that Kemiji understood the culture of wine and decided to make it his own. After years of award-winning service at Ritz-Carlton restaurants at Laguna Niguel and San Francisco, Kemiji cre - ated Miura Vineyards in 1995, becoming the first sommelier to establish a com- mercial winery. Within five years the San Francisco Chronicle named him one of ten "Winemakers to Watch." The Miura project draws on Kemiji's various interests—cultural, historic, philo - sophic and culinary. Anchoring the Pinot Noir–driven portfolio—and, Kemiji admits, the jewel in the crown—is the wine from the Pisoni Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands. "The Santa Lucia style is sexy," says Kemiji; "there's lots of fruit, it's exuber - ant. It's become popular in a short time even though it's a tiny region." Kemiji said the Pisoni fruit, marked by intensity and richness, gives the wines their California Pinot expression. But his personal penchant for the Old World comes through as he strives for a wine that balances "the finesse and elegance of Burgundy with the "great intensity and concentration" of California. "Obviously that's a challenge because our fruit gets riper and riper meaning less acid," he said. "But we're never going to be the biggest Pinot from that vineyard . . . I want it to be from Pisoni but I want it to have restraint." Burgundy was also his model for hon - ing in on single-vineyard approach. "I don't blend sites, because even with its inherent defects, I find the wine from a single site much more interesting," Kemiji says, add - ing, "A blend become representative of a person, not a place. It becomes a style. Fine, if that's your objective, but it's just not what interests me." Kemiji sources fruit from other vine - yards in Anderson Valley, Sonoma and Central Coast (Monterey) for five other Pinots under the Miura label, so named for the famed Spanish fighting bulls. He has collaborated with winemakers (and French star chefs Laurent Manrique, Gerald Hirigoyen and Sylvain Portay) on two other projects: the Antiqv 2 s and Almvs labels, which respectively focus on Syrah, and Cabernet and Chardonnay. Kemiji maybe be a winemaker now, but as a somm's somm he is conscious of making wines for the community from which he came. "With Muria, I want som - meliers to know these are the kinds of wines they are choosing—small vineyards, small producers from sought-after vine- yards that I think are emblematic of the region. These are our versions of Grand Crus in California," he says. André Compeyre, the French-born Beverage Director at Midtown's Loews Regency Hotel (and formerly of Alain Ducasse's Benoit) put Miura on the list from the beginning of his tenure. "What was important was to have wines that are true to type, I like [this] as a great representation of what Pinot Noir can be in California," he says. "There are people behind each wine and the story of Emmanuel running the floor at the Ritz-Carlton and running after the little parcels to put on his wine list: I like that continuity." Of the wine, he says, "It's really quite bal - anced between price and quality. It's been so successful, I don't even try to compete with a Burgundy." —Lana Bortolot PHOTO: DOUG YOUNG Emmanuel Kemiji (right) with André Compeyre, Beverage Director at Loews Regency Hotel in New York City.