B.R. Cohn - The Man, The Music, and the Wine
Sitting and talking with Bruce Cohn, you cannot help but admire the man. He has raised a beautiful family of five children, managed a rock and roll band for the past 40 years, the Doobie Brothers, while creating and growing a very successful wine and olive oil company. He looks younger than you can imagine and fondly recalls the tales of the winery, some of the trials and tribulations he faced would make a normal man cry, not Bruce, he shrugs most of them off with a good chuckle, there are a lot of stories in his vault.
From 1974 to 1984, a former dairy farmer, Bruce Cohn grew grapes on the land where B.R.Cohn winery sits today, selling them to Ravenswood, Sebastiani, Kenwood – all winning medals with his Olive Hill Cabernet. So he decided to use his fruit to wine his own medals. When it came time to label the wine, Bruce would not fit on the label and B.R. Cohn was born (the R stands for Richard).
For the debut wines, he hired a fledgling winemaker from Gundlach Bundschu, it was Helen Turley, and it was her first winemaking job. The first vintage of Olive Hill Cab, the 84 vintage, was released in 1989 and opened with a 94 Point rating. She also went on to make 85, 86 and 87 vintages.
Merry Edwards came in the 90's. Current winemaker Tom Montgomery has been at the helm for about eight years.
With picholine olive trees that were planted in 1870, lining the 90 acre estate vineyards, it leaves little doubt why it is called Olive Hill Estate. The vineyards were pieced together into contiguous rectangle shape surrounding the winery. Planted to almost all Cabernet, with all five Bordeaux varietals and some Zinfandel also planted.
Hot springs in the vineyards, and good air movement help BR Cohn remain one of the estates to consistently elude frost damage in any given season. They jokingly call it the banana belt, and is the envy of many other wineries in Sonoma Valley who are challenged by the frost, each vintage.
The main wine the winery produces is under the “Silver Label” moniker. The first ever Silver Label cabernet was actually the result of a winemaker mistake in the 1992 vintage. There was an interim winemaker (unnamed and who has long departed) who after putting barrels into tank prior to bottling, forgot to turn the chiller on over a 106F weekend…most of the wine was cooked. Bruce called his friend, Dick Arrowood, to help him out. He put the wines through a reverse osmosis to get the VA (volatile acidity) down, but it was no longer the same Olive Hill Cab, however the wine was still very drinkable indeed. Because Olive Hill Cab has a gold label, and silver label was born.
Back then, before Silver Label, the winery was a 4,000 case producer, and now Silver Label Cabernet Sauvignon and Silver Label Chardonnay have grown to become 60%-70% of the wineries total volume. Of course they still make Olive Hill Cabernet each vintage also. Today, Silver Label is not the result of any mistakes but the result of careful planning to achieve a great wine has really helped BR Cohn become much more visible the past decade to the general consumer.
