Robert Rex: A chemist turned Sonoma winemaker

I feel like a child who is about to meet her celebrity crush. And not just that. I am about to spent some time with this impressive person in their home. As my friend, photographer Patrice Ward, and I are driving up the long driveway towards the Deerfield Ranch, a beautiful hilltop retreat in Glen Ellen and the birthplace of the Deerfield Ranch Winery, I am getting excited to meet the award-winning Sonoma winemaker and superb chef Robert Rex and his wife PJ.

Robert and PJ welcome me as if I were not a stranger. He puts on his chef’s coat and checkered pants and gets right cooking. I put on my alma mater Citytech’s chef coat and volunteer to be his sous chef. We pull out what the Big Sur woods and ocean gave us – chanterelles, candy caps, mussels, owl limpets and Dungeness crabs. Robert knows right away what’s for dinner and has me chop and dice produce while he’s manning his 4 linear burners. I am smitten by the Wolf custom-made appliance that allows you to cook everything side-by-side instead of having to reach over the mussel pot to get to the pasta pot! 

As he is working on a mushroom appetizer, mussels, homemade mayo and Julia Child’s chocolate soufflé simultaneously, Chef Robert keeps an eye on me and my chopped shallots. ”Nice job, very culinary,” he smiles as he throws them into a pan with butter. Calling my crab cakes even like “hockey pucks” is a compliment for this Czech girl! I ask him where he learned how to cook. He starts by saying:”I have a photographic taste memory.”

From cooking to chemistry

It all started when Robert was about 9 years old and realized he did not like his mother’s cooking. She raised 5 successful children but she was not a good cook. He would often complain about her food, although he did not talk much until he was 5. “My parents thought I was retarded and anemic.” She listened to little Robert for a few days until one day, she pounded her hands on the table and said: “If you don’t like my food, then cook it yourself.” Robert responded, “Ok, but I need a cookbook.” That night, he heard his parents arguing in the bedroom. His father did not want him to have a cookbook because it would make him gay. His mother ended up buying him a Betty Crocker cookbook. It was not great but it did the job. “My friends watched the Mouskateers after school and I watched Julia Child.” 

Robert Rex grew up in Iowa. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 9. His father was a lawyer, farmer and butcher. He led the boys to be self-sufficient and work with their hands. One day, he asked them to build something in the backyard. Robert decided to built a fireplace, complete with barbeque grill and 12 foot chimney, out of hand-laid brick. It is still standing there today. The story goes back to his grandmother Charlotte in Iowa, an Irish redhead raising two children. In 1929, before the stock market crashed, she saw it coming and pulled her money out. She bought the post office, telephone company and every failing business in town. She was a smart woman but she was not a great cook either.

Robert’s father attended law school in Omaha, NE where he met his mother, who was working for Paramount. He wanted to be an attorney so he moved to Los Angeles in 1952. After the Korean War, there was a great migration from Iowa to California. Robert went to high school in Southern California. “I knew all the girls in Home Ec [home economics].” As a teenager, he worked in restaurants as a busboy. When he graduated he got accepted at UC Berkeley to study Chemistry. It is where he met his future wife, P.J. Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, was the culinary place to be, the birthplace of the new American cuisine.

The next morning, Robert makes a Sunday brunch for all of us, omelettes with bacon, asparagus, wine-sautéed onions and Nebrodini mushrooms. Then PJ and I take a walk from the retreat down to the winery, accompanied by their dog Obi Wine Kenobi. She tells me the rest of the story as we make our way to the wine glass-shaped cave, designed by Robert’s brother architect Michael Rex. 

From chemistry to wine making in Sonoma

When Robert and PJ were studying at Berkeley, he would fix her car and only charge her for the parts. As she was thinking how to reciprocate, someone recommended she buys him a wine-making kit. Robert made his first wine with it in 1972 and that very bottle is at their house to this day. He knew that if he wanted to make wine he had to move to the wine country. They both started thinking about moving to Napa at first but they liked Sonoma better. They bought the Deerfield Ranch in 1982 and got married there. They ran it as a bed and breakfast for 16 years. In 2020, they expanded to a larger facility adjacent to the ranch. It took 5 years for it to open for business but the hard work has paid off.

Robert Rex became the Winemaker of the Year 2018 and his wines has been awarded 4 double gold medals from the American Fine Wine Competition that year, adding to the more than 350 awards over the years. One of these gold medal wines is the 2013 DRX Meritage. ‘Meritage’ is a term that Robert Rex and his peers in Sonoma and Napa came up with when thinking of a term that would describe Bordeaux-style wines without infringing on the Bordeaux PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). They created a Meritage Alliance whose members create Bordeaux-style wines under certain conditions. Robert picks the best vintage of each variety and marks the best barrels with an X. That is how DRX came to exist – Deerfield Ranch X barrels, the best of many lots. I got to try the 2007 DRX to finish off our evening! “Winemaking is 60% cooking and 40% chemistry,” Robert says as he explains his blending techniques. “You don’t make soup with one ingredient. Why make wine with one variety?” 

Deerfield Ranch is a green winery that recycles 98% of its waste water on site, and 100% of its solid production waste. Besides growing organic grapes, their wines are Clean Wine®. As stated on every label, all Deerfield wines are low in sulfites and histamines. Sulfites cause allergic reactions and histamines are compounds responsible for red wine headaches. This is where Robert’s chemistry background comes into play. That is how he knows that 63% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Cabernet Franc, 11% Malbec, 8% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot make the perfect DRX Meritage blend.