Photographer Andy Katz and his son, winemaker Jesse Katz, embrace l'art de vivre through unique expressions of their craft.

by Bridget Williams / Photos courtesy of Aperture Cellars

"It's a keeper!" globetrotting photographer Andy Katz said he'd exclaim when he was confident he'd captured "the shot." During a recent conversation amid the Farrow Ranch vineyard in California's Alexander Valley in Sonoma County, he joked that the phrase also applies to the day his son Jesse was born. Well before Jessee marked his first trip around the sun, he accompanied his father on an assignment in Japan, the first of many adventures, which included a near-death experience with a charging rhino in Africa and quite a bit of time galivanting through some of the world's most famous vineyards. The latter imprinted upon young Jesse a fascination with wine and, more importantly, the soil that imparts "good juice" with its unique characteristics.

Aperture Estate Vineyard / Photo by Andy Katz

Andy Katz / photo from andykatzphotography.com

As an eight-year-old, Andy recalls flipping through a book of black-and-white portraits by Yousuf Karsh and deciding at that moment that he wanted to be a photographer. In the 1960s, an early assignment sent him around the globe without a clear itinerary and per diem that today would barely cover your morning latte. Listening to Andy tell it, the adventure seems both intoxicating and wholly unfathomable in today's hyper-connected world. His skill as a raconteur is as evocative as his photography, an oeuvre encompassing more than 14 coffee table books (a dozen of which are devoted to wine), record albums cover for the likes of the Doobie Brothers and Dan Fogelberg, and features in museums and galleries worldwide. In 2005, he became Sony's First Artisan of Imagery. "Beauty is everywhere; you just have to wait for the right light," said Andy.

Similarly, Jesse recalls being laser-focused on becoming a winemaker, a fascination stretching back to an idyllic childhood sprinting through and occasionally sleeping amid vineyards in Europe and South America. Seeing a vineyard through his father's expertly focused lens and later being offered a taste of wine from the same site gifted him a unique ability to communicate terroir.

Winemaker Jesse Katz / photo by Rachel Weill

After graduating from CSU-Fresno, Jesse worked in the cellar and vineyards at Bodega Noemia in Patagonia, Argentina, whose oldest malbec vines were planted in the 1930s. Their low-tech approach to the craft included destemming grapes by hand and stomping them à la I Love Lucy. Jesse went on to apprentice at Bordeaux's Pétrus and Napa's Screaming Eagle before becoming America's youngest head winemaker at 25 with Lancaster Estate and Roth Winery in Sonoma County, where he was given the opportunity to design a winery from the ground up.

Winemaker Jesse Katz walking between rows of grapevines at Farrow Ranch. / photo by Rachid Dahnoun

Jesse launched Aperture Cellars (aperture-cellars.com) in 2009, initially purchasing top-tier grapes from the hills of Sonoma. In 2012, he also created a cult wine project called Devil Proof, focusing on single-site, dry-farmed malbec and malbec blends. After nearly instant and ongoing acclaim for his releases, in 2016, Jesse decided to build his own winery, selecting Sonoma's top AVA's for what he saw as its potential to be a top cabernet region but in slightly cooler areas for the varietal. An ulcer-inducing bank loan enabled the purchase of a 75-acre vineyard and another 40 acres for the winery complex and estate vineyard (including a block of vines planted in 1912) located 10 minutes outside the charming town of Healdsburg.

Touring the 24,000-square-foot winery complex with Jesse and Hillary Sjolund, Aperture and Devil Proof's Director of Winemaking, I was struck by its lab-like cleanliness and eye-popping array of high-tech tools (one of the most advanced in the United States). Starting with a very advanced de-stemmer, the grapes move on to an optical sorter that captures a whopping 1200 photos-per-second of the grapes while infrared technology identifies fruit that's been sunburned or otherwise damaged and kicks it out so that only the best grapes make the journey to the fermentation tanks via a pump that's so gentle it is the same type used to relocate fish from one pond to another in nurseries. The tricked-out tanks boast automated pump-overs, temperature control, and oxygen injection, all of which can be controlled via laptop or smartphone. In addition to creating wines with finesse and mouthfeel, the big-ticket investment in technology has been offset by reduced staff overhead and significant savings on water usage (ninety-eight percent of the water used by the winery is recycled for use in irrigation and landscaping).

While the technology minimizes human error and increases efficiency, it's still up to the winemaker's expertise to create something special with the raw materials. "It's our purpose to express the uniqueness of each vineyard in the glass," said Hillary. Jesse singled out Aperture's ability to do automatic pump-overs, which has taken their creativity to another level because the frequency (as much as one minute every hour for the first five days) would have been impossible to do manually. "We are textural winemakers," said Jesse, adding that he and Hillary are constant collaborators, tasting daily and making subtle tweaks to get the desired outcomes.

The architecture of Aperture’s production winery is designed to complement the tasting room. / photo by Adam Potts

Over a few days, what I found endearing about Jesse was his quiet confidence and lack of wine snobbery. Speaking to our small group with widely varying wine expertise, he could switch on a dime from drilling down into the minutia of oneo and soil types to using a sports metaphor to help explain Aperture's approach, remarking, "It's no different than training at an optimal level to get each muscle fiber to fire optimally."

Today, Aperture's vineyard holdings encompass over 200 acres in six distinct vineyards. Jesse first visited one of these, Farrow Ranch, a decade before purchasing it as he was invited to dinner there by a family friend. Accessed at the end of a narrow dirt road, the Farrow home sat at the bottom of a bowl-like valley where the open trellis system of vines gave way to dense forest.

Walking the site, Jesse recognized a block of dry-farmed malbec thriving in volcanic soil. The site is the source of Devil Proof's Farrow Ranch Malbec; Jesse's malbec, now grown on three distinct sites, has garnered the lion's share of his 19 100-point scores from five different wine critics. I am by no means an oenophile, but even as an amateur, my first sip of Devil Proof was eye-popping for its nuanced layers of aromas, flavors, and mouthfeel.

The Devil Proof moniker and the unique black-and-white image on the label derive from a father-and-son trip to Cuba, where Andy captured the now iconic photograph of a Cuban woman languidly smoking a cigar. Jesse recounts being told by the locals, "'If you live well and drink well, the devil can't get ya.' Like, you're devil-proof." Only around 1,000 cases of Devil Proof are made in the years the crop is deemed worthy, and the bottles are quickly snapped up by those who sign up for an allocation notice at devilproofvineyards.com. Sold in sets of three, the presentation case is designed to mimic a cigar box Jesse had as a child and used to store his prized collection of coins picked up around the world.

"Jesse can recall the contours of a vineyard like a parent knows their child's face," said Andy. At Farrow Ranch alone, Jesse has dug 86 soil pits to create a detailed soil map that helps guide decision-making. Working with his mentor and consulting viticulturist Phil Freese, Jesse utilizes technology in the vineyards, employing NDVI imagery analysis to measure plant vigor and biomass vine by vine and taking appropriate actions to strengthen crops, ward off diseases, or determine watering and fertilization schedules.

Winemaker Jesse Katz with his team in the Aperture tasting room enjoying the fruits of their labor. / photo by Aubrie Pick

While I can appreciate a good vintage, I love the why behind a wine even more, and Aperture is Jesse's heartwarming homage to his father and their enduring bond. The centerpiece of the guest experience is an architecturally stunning tasting room designed by architect Juancarlos Fernandez with a central ceiling feature designed to look like the aperture of a camera lens. Inside the tasting room, the walls are adorned with Andy's large format photos. The winery frequently holds immersive sensory experiences with local chefs that transcend the act of sipping by celebrating the delicious bounty of Sonoma County.

Rockpile Ridge Vineyards. / photo by Rachid Dahnoun

Jesse is a consulting winemaker for a handful of hand-picked clients, including the Montage Healdsburg (montage.com/Healdsburg), a luxury resort that opened in January 2021. Before they broke ground on a single guest room on the 258-acre property, Katz "cherry-picked" 15.5 acres to plant vineyards bearing malbec, merlot, petite verdot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc grapes that are used to create private label releases. Many of the 130 guest bungalows at the Montage Healdsburg, an event space, and a yoga lawn are integrated into areas of super-high-density vine plantings. These vines are carefully tended to by hand as heavy machinery would disrupt the resort's bucolic atmosphere. "From the outset, we were aligned in our desire to do nothing but the best, and the ownership listened to all of my crazy ideas," Jesse recounted.

Aperture’s tasting room as dusk. / photo by Rachid Dahnoun

Aperture’s architecturally stunning tasting room was designed by architect Juancarlos Fernandez along with a central ceiling designed to look like the aperture of a camera lens. / photo by Aubrie Pick

Aperture tasting room / photo by Aubrie Pick

Many of the 130 guest bungalows at the Montage Healdsburg, an event space, and a yoga lawn, are integrated into areas of super-high-density wine plantings laid out by Jesse Katz. / photo by Christian Horan Photography

In 2024, the Montage Healdsburg launched Surveyor, their private estate-bottled wine. The inaugural release, available exclusively to guests and residents of Montage Healdsburg (montageresidenceshealdsburg.com), consists of a 2021 cabernet sauvignon and a 2021 sauvignon blanc, both harvested from Montage Healdsburg's estate vineyard and bottled at Aperture. If you want to fully immerse yourself in Sonoma's wine culture during harvest, book a facial or body scrub at the Montage's 11,500-square-foot spa and try to resist the temptation to taste tantalizingly aromatic products made from grape skins and seeds.

One can draw parallels between photography and winemaking: a dedication to the craft, a pursuit of excellence, tempered hubris and obsession, and heaps of patience. Both Andy and Jesse lean into technology as a tool to augment their skills rather than as a crutch to mask shortcomings. Jesse said that his dad doesn't own Photoshop in the same way he hasn't acidified, fined, or filtered any of his red wines. Continuing that train of thought, Andy quickly jumps in, adding, "You can't do anything good by taking shortcuts" and "You can't rely on your last success for lasting happiness." However, as a proud father, he also emphatically proclaims that Jesse can make good wine in his sleep. And, after spending a few days with both Andy and Jesse, I'm reminded that healthy roots are essential to more than just winemaking.

Rooted