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Andrew Quady — 50 Years of Sweet Success
By Laura Ness
It’s been a heady and exciting voyage for Quady Winery, the first American winery to tack into port with a sweet Zinfandel-based take on the famous Portuguese staple in 1975. Back then, says Andrew Quady, who graduated from UC Davis in 1973 with a master’s degree in food science and a specialty in wine, “There was a lot of excitement around Napa Valley. Wine writers were focused on Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley and French Bordeaux.”
Quady was living with his wife, Laurel, in Lodi at the time, and often traveled to Sacramento to visit the Corti Brothers luxury wine shops to stock his cellar. He’d met Darrel Corti as a guest lecturer at Davis. Corti was particularly fond of Portuguese Port and urged Quady to try his hand at it, saying that he could sell it through his network of shops.
“Darrel was interested in a Zinfandel vineyard in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, which was old (planted in the 1940s), dry farmed and planted on its own roots,” says Quady. “The appellation was Amador County, which was becoming famous for intense Zinfandel wines.” He harvested those grapes from 1975 until 1979, when he switched to Portuguese varieties.
When the first Quady Zinfandel Port came to market, California drinkers took notice. It was something they could readily enjoy. There were few other real California competitors, says Quady. Both Ficklin, in Madera, started in 1946, and J.W. Morris, which began in 1975, made sweet wines in what Quady calls the “Vintage Port” style, meaning they needed to be bottle-aged for 20 years or more before drinking. The J.W. Morris brand was sold in 1983. In 1988, Quady began referring to his port-style wines as Starboard, in deference to the Portuguese.
Expanding the catalog
While their lush red port-style wines from Amador grew in popularity, Quady and Laurel had been talking about making a white dessert wine. In 1980, the farm advisor for Madera County found a small 10-acre vineyard of Orange Muscat near the Central Valley town of Reedly. It was part of a larger vineyard that was purchased by a Madera County raisin grower. Quady says he intensified the floral and orange aromatics with time on the skins and added structure with barrel aging.
The initial rendition of Essensia was bottled in the spring of 1981 with a beautiful label created by artist Ardison Phillips. “We had no idea how this wine might be received,” admits Quady. “Within a few years, we were making and selling several thousand cases of Essensia per year. We grafted a vineyard of Chenin Blanc over to Orange Muscat to handle the demand.”
The Quadys added yet another gem to their lineup when the owner of a Black Muscat vineyard in Manteca contacted them looking to sell his grapes. He had planted the vines at the behest of the Jesuit Novitiate Monastery in Santa Clara, which was then shutting down its winemaking operation and no longer needed the grapes. From this fruit, in 1983, Elysium was born. (Testarossa Winery, which took over the Novitiate facility in 1999, still has some bottles of that Black Muscat.)
Quady says that Essensia and Elysium are still on the list at The Ritz in the U.K., and at one point, 375’s of Essensia were in all the self-service refrigerators in the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York. By 2005, says Quady, there was a list of 1,600 accounts in New York City. “Accounts were buying our Electra, Red Electra, Essensia and Elysium, and Vya Vermouth.”
The name Electra came about during a family dinner table discussion involving Laurel, Andrew and their children, Herb and Allie, both of whom are an integral part of the business. It was sparked by the “electric tingle” from the spritz in the Moscato-based wine. Quady credits his son Herb, who had been studying Greek mythology, with the suggestion of Electra, which debuted in 1990. Today, the red version of Electra is the family’s most popular, with Electra Black, Quady’s newest release, already making headway in the market. He says the dark red, semisweet Moscato called Electra Black, which debuted in 2024, is about half the sweetness of Red Electra.
Trying new styles
Venturing into vermouth came courtesy of a good friend who owned several restaurants in the San Francisco area, including in the financial district. Says Quady, “His bar would fill with bankers and lawyers ordering cocktails, especially vodka martinis. They would tell the bartender to leave out the vermouth.” Looking to make better martinis, the owner thought having a better vermouth might help. “Fortunately,” says Quady,” I had notes from a lecture by Maynard Amerine, head of the Enology and Viticulture department at UC Davis, which had details about vermouth-making, along with handouts and an out-of-print book Amerine wrote, which had more information, including recipes. After two years of work, I had produced a sweet and an extra dry vermouth.” Released in 1999, Vya Vermouth was the first premium handcrafted, American-made vermouth.
Quady says that, in making vermouth, the grapes used are not especially important: it’s the aromatic plants used to infuse the wine (typically a dry neutral white) that count. “Trebbiano is typical in Italy,” says Quady. “We like Thompson Seedless for our two dry white vermouths, and use Orange Muscat for our sweet vermouth.”
Quady’s sherry, made from Palomino Fino grapes in the Amontillado style, became part of the lineup courtesy of Gena Nonini, the owner of a very old biodynamically farmed Palomino vineyard in the San Joaquin Valley. “I had a good idea how Sherry was made [based on] lectures I attended at UC Davis and decided to start buying Nonini’s grapes and making some Sherry wine,” says Quady. While sales have been slow, Quady buys grapes every couple of years, keeping a solera of Sherry slumbering in the cellar.
Looking back with gratitude
Quady says today’s biggest sellers in terms of case volume are Quady Red Electra and Salt of the Earth Moscato Rubino, with the latter being the company’s top seller. The fastest growing are Quady Electra Black, Salt of the Earth Rubino Black, and Salt of the Earth Moscato Rosito. The U.K. and Netherlands are top European markets for Quady wines.
Asked what is the most satisfying part of having created a business that has survived for 50 years, Quady says, “The most satisfying part by far is getting to work with our great team of employees, some of which have been with us for 40 years or so.”
Nothing is sweeter than the taste of shared success.
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Laura Ness
Laura Ness is an avid wine journalist, storyteller and wine columnist (Edible:Monterey, Los Gatos Magazine, San Jose Mercury News), and a long-time contributor to Wine Industry Network. Known as “HerVineNess,” she judges wine competitions throughout California and has a corkscrew in every purse. However, she wishes that all wineries would adopt screwcaps!
