Erik Miller didn’t name his winery Kokomo after The Beach Boys’ 1988 song. He gets that question a lot. Rather, he took the title from his hometown, Kokomo, Ind.
You’ll find plenty of people from the Midwest living in Sonoma County and making wine. I’m from Indiana, too, and I felt the connection immediately when I first came to Sonoma. There’s something about the unpretentious lifestyle, the ruralness and agricultural landscape that made me feel at home.
So, how did a boy from Kokomo, with little connection to wine in his youth, go on to make consistently impressive reds and whites in Dry Creek Valley? It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you the short version …
The clouds over Dry Creek Valley are smudges of white on blue. October’s late summer is winding down and fall is in the leaves and the air. Miller is steering a cranky UTV to the top of Timber Crest Farms for a view of the valley below. We’re high on the eastern bench and the landscape is bright with yellows and reds as the vines begin shutting down for the winter.
Miller points out a section of vines in the Timber Crest Vineyard earmarked for his Winemaker's Reserve Zinfandel. I rated both the 2022 and 2023 vintages 93 points on our 100-point scale.
Zinfandel is perhaps Kokomo’s strong suit, but Miller, winemaker Jerahmy Parsons and the team make more than a dozen varietals, including Chardonnay from the Russian River Chardonnay, Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Alexander Valley.
Kokomo’s winery is also at Timber Crest, which in the 1970s through the 1990s was known for its dried fruit, particularly tomatoes. Owners Ruth and Ronald Waltenspiel started the ranch in 1957 and sold the dried fruit company in 2003. They now farm 120 acres of grape vines.
Today, wineries and other food purveyors have taken over the small village of warehouses. You’ll find tasting rooms of small wineries such as Papapietro Perry, Peterson and Optima on site. But Kokomo has the largest footprint.
Today, Kokomo represents about 12,000 cases annually with Miller’s second label, Breaking Bread, accounting for an additional 3,000 cases.
“I didn’t come here for the wines. I was a Deadhead who just came here with a friend for spring break,” Miller says of his days studying business at Purdue. Sonoma County captured his imagination immediately, and in 1999 he moved there with his fiancée at the time. He took a desk job as a financial planner, wearing a suit and tie every day, and soon realized it wasn’t the life he wanted.
On a whim in 2002, Miller took a job as a harvest intern at the now-defunct Belvedere Winery in Healdsburg. By the end of harvest, he knew he wanted to be a winemaker. Two years later, he was working for Rick Hutchinson at Amphora Winery when one of Hutchinson’s growers had 6 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon they couldn’t sell. Miller helped Hutchinson vinify the fruit. That 2004 Cabernet became Kokomo’s debut release.
By luck, an old friend back home was a distributor and the wine sold out quickly. “All of that first vintage was sold in Indiana,” Miller says. For the 2005 vintage, Miller rented a small building at Timber Crest and made Cabernet, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Pinot Noir; the Kokomo Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast Winemaker's Reserve Peters Vineyard 2005 earned 91 points.
Over the years, Kokomo slowly expanded. In 2008, Miller was joined by partner Randy Peters, a fourth-generation farmer with vineyards in Sonoma Coast and Dry Creek and Russian River valleys. Two of the vineyards they farm are just across Dry Creek Road from Timber Crest. Peters owns the 15-acre Pauline’s Vineyard, and Miller and his wife, Kimia, who is the winery’s business manager, own the 16-acre Mizany Vineyard.
While Miller doesn’t have a winemaking or viticulture degree, he took extension courses from UC Davis and reached out to others for advice, including winemakers Russell Bevan, Jeff Gaffner and Jeff Cohn.
In 2016, Parsons joined Kokomo as the day-to-day winemaker, and Miller believes the wines have only gotten better and more consistent. Meanwhile, Miller was looking for a new challenge, having been inspired by the natural wine movement that focuses on lower-alcohol levels, atypical grape varieties, extended skin contact for whites and methode ancestrale sparkling wine.
To wit, his second label, Breaking Bread, which launched with the 2018 vintage. Among Breaking Bread's recent releases are a sparkling wine made from Zinfandel, as well as an orange wine called Marmalade and made from a blend of Muscat Blanc, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
“I wanted Kokomo to stay classic, but we have to find ways to reach young people with wine,” Miller says. “I wanted to stay relevant in the market, and this is one way I can do it.”
Visit and Taste at Kokomo Winery
Kokomo Winery
4791 Dry Creek Road, Healdsburg, CA 95448
Tastings daily
Telephone: (707) 433-0205
Website: kokomowines.com
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