Black Winemaker Dances to his Own Tune – Wine-Searcher

Dan Glover is living the American dream.

He was a songwriter, cranking out tunes for European movies when he fell in love with wine. Now he’s running his own one-man wine business, making only the kind of wines he likes. Even people who dream of a life in wine don’t usually imagine that much freedom.

His L’Objet Noir wines are memorable for their elegance. Originally seduced by Burgundy, Glover takes a number of steps to ensure a smooth mouthfeel, and based on my tasting of his wines, he succeeds.

“My philosophy is I want to make old world wines in California,” Glover said. “Kind of bring that aesthetic to California. People were making these Pinot Noirs that were 14.5, 15 percent alcohol with residual sugar. They were these big bombs and there’s so much nuance that’s lost when you make wine that way.”

He’s not getting rich, making only 600 to 700 cases a year, but it’s enough to live on in Sonoma County. And he literally does all the work himself: “Ten percent of my job is actually being in the winery and vineyards,” Glover said. “That’s the part I love the most. But I do sales. I pack the boxes. I do my own compliance. Everything.”

Glover, no relation to the actor of the same name, studied audio engineering. He worked in recording studios but said his attorney absconded with his songwriting proceeds, so he took a job as a roadie for Paul Anka. He moved with his then-wife to Healdsburg.

“I was always into really good wines but the hard part was affording them at the time,” Glover said. “I figured I’d learn how to make it. I went and got a job at Clos du Bois and haven’t looked back since.”

Glover started at Clos du Bois as a cellar rat intern.

“They taught me how to drive a forklift. How to hook a hose to a pump. I didn’t know anything,” he told Wine-Searcher.

The winery had no other black workers, which would be the situation at each winery where he worked. By his next job, at Armida Winery, he worked his way up to assistant winemaker. That’s quite a leap in a county where even many cellar rats have enology degrees.

“Everybody was very helpful in helping me learn,” Glover said. “I would read textbooks. In bed at night, at lunchtime, I was reading textbooks. I asked a lot of questions. I met a lot of great people that I learned a lot of chemistry from. And learned grapegrowing from too.”

Glover followed the winemakers’ protocols but little by little he began to think about how he might do things differently. He moved to Dutcher Crossing Winery and began making some of his own wine there on the side before jumping out fulltime in 2009. Many winemakers making the small amount of wine that Glover is doing now have to keep their day jobs, and Glover says he does some winemaking consulting, but he has been able to keep the lights on as an independent winemaker and winery owner for a dozen years now.

Skin on skin

Glover’s own winemaking secret, beyond picking earlier than most others in Dry Creek Valley and using only native yeast, is letting the nascent wine sit on the skins after fermentation, sometimes for up to seven or eight days.

“Everybody I knew was just taking them out right after fermentation and pressing them,” Glover said. “A lot of times extended maceration brings out a softer, velvety mouthfeel. I think it brings more depth of flavor. A little more nuance.”

I can testify to this because I tried his wines before interviewing him and for every single one, one of my first notes was about the smooth, elegant, graceful mouthfeel.

© L’Objet Noir
| The wines are aimed at people who are looking for finesse rather than power.

Glover thinks leaving his Sauvignon Blanc on the skins before pressing not only improves the mouthfeel. “It brings out more of that tropical flavors and it helps get away from that cat-pee flavor,” he said.

In 2019, Essence magazine ranked L’Objet wines third in a list of the “Seven Most Sought-After Black-Owned Wines in the World.” (Props to Anderson Valley’s Theopolis Vineyards, which ranked first.)

“That article, I got people who ordered wine from me, and I got two people signed up for the wine club,” Glover said. “The wine club is so important for somebody like me.”

Though his main wine is Pinot Noir, he didn’t make any in 2020 because of fires in Sonoma County. He hopes to make two vineyard-designate Pinots this year, but he doesn’t have any grape contracts.

“Buying grapes, it’s all word of mouth,” he said.

Glover also buys Zinfandel from the Comstocks that he blends with Petite Sirah and Merlot to make a red blend. He needs the heavier grapes because he picks the Zinfandel early enough that it’s lighter in body, the way Zinfandel used to be 30 years ago.

“Adding the Petite Sirah and Merlot gives it a little deeper flavor,” he said. “The Zinfandel gives it the high notes; the Petite Sirah and the Merlot balance out with low notes and mouthfeel.”

I asked if Glover had experienced racism in the wine industry.

“Disadvantages, I think, are subtle,” Glover said. “Nothing overt like ‘you can’t work here because you’re black’. But I would imagine that in some instances, if somebody’s going to choose two wines without trying them, they might go towards the white person, thinking that this person’s got to have more experience. I think that happens. It’s an unconscious bias. Nothing overt has ever happened.