Next Wave Awards Winery of the Year: Las Jaras
It all started with a salmon and a boot. Well, not quite, but sort of.
Established in 2015, California’s Las Jaras was founded by winemaker Joel Burt and actor-comedian slash food enthusiast Eric Wareheim, who bonded over their shared love for food and wine when they met at a Malibu beach party a few years prior.
“It’s a very L.A. story. Joel was cooking a salmon and just doing everything I wanted to be doing. He was a grown up, a cook,” Wareheim recounts of their first meeting. “He brought his own wine to the beach. Of course, we forgot a wine key, so he was opening up bottles with his boot on a rock. I just wanted to be around him.”
Burt, who was raised by organic table grape growers in California’s Central Valley, was instilled with a lifelong love for farming at a young age. He spent his early winemaking career working with producers like Alice Bouvot of Domaine l’Octavin and Napa’s Pott Wine, but while working in the Napa Valley, he came to learn that most of the region’s winemakers weren’t actually drinking the bottles they made. And that didn’t sit right with him.
“It was the era when scores were really important, so a lot of winemakers weren’t actually drinking what they made,” Burt explains. “So I had this mental reset and rediscovered what it meant for me to appreciate wine. Part of getting out of that mental space was getting out of the corporate wine hell I put myself through.”
Credit: Shelby Moore
He recalls his lack of interest in the style of California wines that often garner these high scores — think big, overextracted wines with prominent oak influence. So in the early 2000s, he started producing experimental lots in his own garage for creative fulfillment. By the mid-2010s, Burt had left his post at California’s Domaine Chandon to do his own thing full-time, but it’s these experimental wines that were among the first of his that Wareheim sampled.
“One of the first wines of Joel’s I tried was a version of our sparkling wine, and it was just mind-blowing,” Wareheim says. “It was so different from what I was used to. Wine is like a fever once you catch it, and I caught it.”
For Wareheim, his journey into wine looked a little different. Best known for his comedy with long-term partner Tim Heidecker (Tim & Eric) and recurring role on Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None,” he might not have come from a grape-growing family, but he certainly came from a wine-loving one. As he grew older and his passion for food and wine developed, he realized that the latter is an accessible and integral part of so many European cultures in a way that, at the time, just wasn’t reflected stateside.
When the two co-founders’ paths crossed on that Malibu beach, a deep connection formed — one Wareheim describes as exceedingly rare. Their shared passion for not just wine and food, but art, music, and design propelled their friendship further, and made starting a label almost inevitable. But it took years to get there. As Wareheim continued his education and tasted his way through the world’s wine regions, he found himself consulting Burt with a hunger to prove himself a worthy wine partner. One who shouldn’t be underestimated because of his celebrity status and impeccable comedic timing.
Credit: Shelby Moore
“When I befriended Joel, I was just trying everything and sending pictures to him like ‘Look at this. Look at this!’” Wareheim explains. “I was just trying to show off. I wanted to work with him and felt like I had to prove myself because Joel was very advanced. And he guided me. That’s what we really bonded over.”
Through that bonding, the two discovered their shared desire to create a wine that showcases California’s expressive terroir. It’s a philosophy that currently guides every vintage the two co-founders produce — and it’s one that requires a delicate hand.
The first full vintage of Las Jaras rolled out in 2016 with five wines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Old Vines Carignan, Rosé, Petillant, and Sweet Berry Wine, a juicy red blend named after a famous line delivered by Dr. Steve Brule on an episode of “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” in 2008. (In the skit, Dr. Brule, portrayed by John C. Reilly, leads a wine tasting on the local news, drunkenly proclaiming the wine he’s drinking is “sweet berry wine.”)
Initially launched in 2015 as a standalone bottling, Sweet Berry Wine features a drawing of Brule’s character on the label and quickly defined Las Jaras’s winemaking. Rather than focusing on producing wines to fit into their perceived style or taste profile, the new label was made with a low-intervention philosophy in order to let the land speak for itself.
“Our guiding principle is to capture the spirit of old California in terroir and expression, and we do that by working naturally,” Burt explains. “We want to make wines that are fresh, clean, delicious and have a sense of place.”
Burt and Wareheim might work “naturally” or with minimal intervention, but don’t call Las Jaras a natural wine brand. In Burt’s view, the term “natural” has lost some of its original meaning and has evolved into its own category — a funky and awkward-tasting one at that.
“We don’t want to take things that are fresh and delicious, mineral and clean, and make them funky and awkward on the palate,” he says of Las Jaras’s philosophy. “That’s not what natural means to us.”
Credit: Shelby Moore
Ahead of each vintage, Burt and Wareheim sit down to discuss what kinds of wine they want to make that year, and what style each should be produced in. From there, they source grapes from growers across California and Oregon, most of whom they have been working with for seven-plus years. At the top of the list when considering growing partners is organic viticulture. For example, the Gary Venturi Vineyard in Mendocino — where Las Jaras sources Carignan, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, and more — is dry-farmed and entirely organic. It’s a similar situation for Spear Vineyard, their source of Chardonnay and Cabernet, which is certified organic by non-profit California Certified Organic Farmers. For the more old-school growers Las Jaras collaborates with, associate winemaker and grower relations manager Randal Feldman helps them make the organic change.
“If you’re working naturally, you really need to have the vineyard styled in,” Burt explains. “I think the most satisfying thing about this project has been these commitments for these growers to change. The change is just as much for us wine and food people as it is for the environment.”
At the end of the winemaking process when the two are satisfied with the resulting wines, it’s Wareheim who leads much of the creative direction. The design of Las Jaras’s labels are distinctive, colorful, and playful, like the hypnotic design of its Trousseau Gris and the evocative portrait gracing Big Beautiful Buff. Many of the brand’s labels were done by Wareheim’s friends, with each imbuing the brand with the same sense of fun as his comedy, without detracting from the robust winemaking going on behind the scenes.
In the decade since its launch, Las Jaras has introduced several bottlings outside of those original core five that remain beloved by trade and consumer alike. The 2017 vintage was the first to introduce Glou Glou, a 13 percent ABV red blend that stands in stark contrast to Napa’s boozy, 15 percent or more bottlings. The next year Superbloom, a co-ferment of native red and white Rhône varieties, made its debut. The two wines, along with the OG Sweet Berry Wine, rank among the winery’s top-selling bottles to this day.
The brand has a wine for all palates, be it the aforementioned playful, “vibe wines” or the higher-end fine wines like “La Belle Promenade” Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley and “Cuvée Esmé Anne” Chenin Blanc. Las Jaras even packages some of its wines in cans, a lineup extension called WAVES that’s especially handy when you forget your wine key before heading to the beach.
Credit: Shelby Moore
Initially introduced in 2020 with the release of 2019 Waves White Wine — made with a blend of French Colombard and Chenin Blanc — WAVES was repackaged as its own brand identity within Las Jaras in 2023. Currently available in Red (co-fermented Zinfandel juice and Merlot skins), White (Chenin Blanc and Albariño), and Rosé (Zinfandel, Carignan, Barbera, and Viognier), each can of WAVES is made with the same guiding principles as Las Jaras’s bottled wines.
“We found that cans are actually really suited to the way we make wine,” Burt explains. “The main issue with canned wines is sulfur. If you use a lot of it, it’s going to smell like rotten eggs, but we don’t use a lot of sulfur, so we’re in the clear there.”
It’s these fun, casual releases coming in tandem with elevated, fine wine that have won over consumers nationwide, as evidenced by the growing following of the Las Jaras Wine Club, which delivers wine to subscribers four times a year. And with a decade under their belt, Burt and Wareheim are really just getting started.
“There’s a maturity that comes with a 10th vintage. It takes time to establish yourself in a place that’s not Burgundy or Bordeaux, where people have been making wine forever,” Wareheim says. “This is still the new frontier, and it’s a challenge for sure, but I think we’ve managed to figure it out.”
The article Next Wave Awards Winery of the Year: Las Jaras appeared first on VinePair.