David Hopkins

The result is a new Central Coast Syrah in the award-winning tradition of prior Bridlewood vintages: gold medals, best-in-class, editor’s choice, “smart buy.”  With 25 years of winemaking experience in California’, he knows what it takes to make great wine.

“My first five years of winemaking, I learned what not to do,” Hopkins says. “But I also learned basic lessons, like how important it is to keep a winery clean, and how important mentoring is in development of your winemaking techniques. I’ve always been lucky to have great mentors.”

“When I worked at a small winery in the Russian River, I learned how to make wine in small batches, how to keep track of all the different flavors, a lot of artesian techniques like barrel fermentation, things you do in a micro-environment.”

“At another winery I learned how to make wine using fruit from five or six different appellations. That was my graduate course in blending. I even spent a year in Oregon, where I learned that California is a better place to make wine that will age well.”

“Along the way I learned that great wine begins in the vineyard and that the Central Coast is hands-down the best place to grow Syrah.”

Hopkins is the perfect personality to pursue the elusive character of the Syrah grape. Made famous by the winemakers of the Rhone River Valley, what all great Syrah has in common is depth, complexity, and a kind of generosity – lots of color, lots of flavor, lots of body. 

Hopkins makes this kind of wine at Bridlewood, using an Old World sensibility made relevant in a modern context, like the Spanish Colonial design of the winery itself. 

He’ll take you right into the vineyard and tell you what he wants when he tastes grapes to call the harvest every year. He lives in his taste buds. He says he likes to go into the vineyards every week with the winegrowers to taste grapes and “pose questions.” The questions are answered in the wine. “I travel around the Central Coast all the time,” Hopkins says. “You have to stay in touch with the vineyards to stay in touch with the flavors.”

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