
Michael Hirby and Schatzi Throckmorton, owners of Relic Wine Cellars in Napa, which makes complex small-batch wines using old-school methods, have a lot to celebrate this year. “It’s our 25th harvest. It’s our 10th year in our winery and it’s our 20th wedding anniversary,” Throckmorton told us when we called the other day to interview them.
As any couple who works together in any industry can attest, it’s difficult to be life partners and work partners. The wine industry is filled with couples who pursue this passion together. Around Valentine’s Day is a good moment to salute people who, unlike most of us, spend time around the dinner table debating issues like how much whole-cluster fermentation to use.
Dottie met Michael, 51, and Schatzi, 47, last year during the Wine Writers Symposium at Meadowood, when they hosted a dinner at their home. On the counter rested about a dozen wines from their Relic line and a few from Archive, their more moderately priced range. They produce about 2,300 cases of 15 different wines mostly sold to people on their mailing list and club members. It turns out that their creation story touches a lot of history that will be familiar to many wine lovers, from Behrens & Hitchcock to Folie a Deux to Brother Timothy – and even Heidi Peterson Barrett and Bo Barrett, who, as it happens, were earlier subjects of our annual Valentine’s Day column.
(Michael Hirby and Schatzi Throckmorton)
Michael was born in Wisconsin and went to Colorado College, where he developed an interest in wine. After graduating with a Philosophy of Music major he invented, he got hired at Primitivo restaurant in Colorado Springs, eventually managing its stellar wine program (2,200 different wines and 45 by the glass). He left after two years to learn about making wine in France, a job that didn’t actually materialize after he’d arrived in France. Without the proper visa and after several months learning from winemakers in France and Spain, Michael returned to the U.S. in 2000 and headed to Napa to work harvest at Behrens Family Winery, which was then Behrens & Hitchcock. He camped outside in Calistoga until someone told him about an apartment for rent, behind a main house. A couple days after moving in, Michael’s landlords invited him to their annual end-of-summer party with their tasting group.
Schatzi, who had arrived in Napa a year earlier, was part of the same tasting group partying that night at Chateau Montelena.
Schatzi, which means “Treasure,” was born in Heidelberg, Germany, while her father was in the service, but, she said, “then they moved back to Iowa when I was just two. And my godparents actually moved back with them. So they spent six months of the year in Iowa and six months of the year in Germany. So I kind of grew up going back and forth. A fun childhood, interesting experience.”
After she graduated in 1999 with a degree in African History at Northwestern, her great uncle, Dr. Thomas Dercum Throckmorton, urged her to take a gap year in Napa before starting graduate study at Cambridge. Dr. Throckmorton was a surgeon, an expert on daffodils, and a noted wine aficionado. He was a founding member of the Iowa Wine Advisory board who co-wrote a book about wine in 1983 called “Drink Thy Wine with a Merry Heart,” a guide to enjoying wine. That book has a forward by Brother Timothy, the famed cellarmaster of Christian Brothers.
“I just wanted to work outside, and I’ve always loved outdoors,” Schatzi told us. “So I drove out here with my mom. I did not know anybody. I had no job. I lived in the Travelodge in Napa for a few weeks, and then slept on someone’s floor for a few weeks.” She eventually got a job at Folie a Deux, where she met the legendary Dick Peterson, who was an owner then. Turns out, his daughter and son-in-law, Heidi Peterson Barrett and Bo Barrett, needed a babysitter for their daughters. “Yeah. And then eventually I got a place to live and met people and never left,” Schatzi said. She was just elected vice chair of the Napa Valley Vintners trade organization, which along with Meadowood also supports the Wine Writers Symposium.
Eventually, Michael joined the tasting group and Schatzi left Folie a Deux for Behrens, starting about two months after Michael. She had a boyfriend then, but not for long. At a Behrens lunch, Schatzi “broke up with her boyfriend and told everyone, and then I drove her back to the office and asked her out immediately. No shame,” Michael said.
“It’s kind of fascinating. We worked together essentially in our roles that we still have. We were the only two employees at Behrens Family Winery working for the two couples. It was Behrens & Hitchcock at the time. And Schatzi was the assistant general manager, and I became the assistant winemaker. And so we, for a year and a half or so, we worked together doing the same roles that we still have in our winery. So we were road-tested,” Michael said.
They began making Relic at Behrens in 2001 with a Pinot Noir. Michael left Behrens in 2002 for Realm winery, a well-regarded boutique operation. In 2005, the year they were married, a fire at a warehouse destroyed Relic’s library wines and half their 2004 vintage. They decided then that it was time to move Relic beyond a side thing and focus on it as their life’s work. In 2009, after the recession caused some people to sell their undeveloped properties, the couple were able to buy land on Soda Canyon Road and started building their dream winery and cave in 2014. Two years after moving in, fires in 2017 inflicted some damage, but they were more fortunate than others.
They added the Archive line in 2010. “Archive really sort of depends year to year, although for the last 10 years, we’ve always made a rosé. It’s sort of our home for misfit children that we still love, a place for experimentation and that sort of thing so that we can keep the Relic line up a little more solid and consistent,” Michael said. “But there are really about 12 kinds of major Relic wines that we make every year, from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast to working with Napa old vines Cabernet Sauvignon and Rhône varieties.”
Relic sources grapes from grapegrowers with whom Michael works closely, including some with iconic vineyards. While Michael is the winemaker for Relic and a handful of other boutique wineries like Collateral Wines, D.R. Stephens Estate and Husic Family Vineyards, Schatzi is general manager for Relic and for Behrens. One of the wines that Dottie remembers most from her dinner was the Archive 2022 Carignane, the last bottling, since the new owners of the vineyard pulled those grapes out. Michael’s old-school methods include native yeast and often whole-cluster fermentations and no additions of water or acid.
(Mike and Schatzi talk to Steve Frediani, whose family has grown and sold grapes to Relic and other wineries for generations.)
Although they are joint owners of Relic and Archive, their roles are very different. Michael said: “Schatzi and I have a really good way of bouncing ideas off one another. One of her many incredible talents is just being extremely diligent and organized and focused. And so it helps me sometimes because I’m a bit of a dreamer and a creative soul, and most creative endeavors sound really interesting to me, but sometimes I’ll want to do a hundred percent whole cluster of Pinot Noir and Schatzi will say, do we really need to do 100 per cent whole cluster? And so while I’m the winemaker, Schatzi has to be proud of the wines, too. The products that we make are collaborative products in that she also is involved stylistically in shaping them well and I’m responsible for getting them there.
“And then we also both do some sales and marketing. Neither of us are really naturals at that. Neither of us grew up in families that were involved in business in any way. My mom was a registered nurse, my dad is a PhD from the University of Chicago who was an administrator at a liberal arts university. And so we got into business because we were creative, we loved wine, we were really passionate about wine, and then eventually we looked at each other and thought like, well, who’s going to sell this stuff?
“It’s a common problem, I think, really,” Michael said. “So we both have kind of grown into doing different PR and marketing and sales kind of roles, and it really depends on whose contact it is and what type of events are happening. Schatzi’s done some really greater, larger sort of PR trips, some of your roles with the World’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit. Pouring Relic at events like that, where I tend to do more sort of direct-to-consumer events, like in-home events and winemaker dinners.”
He added: “We never wanted to have a business where the wine would be shipped off to Costcos around the world, and we would never get to meet our customers. One of the great joys that we sort of discovered through learning how to sell wine is that we were able to form so many incredible relationships with people that have become incredibly close friends. And those people often invite us into their homes and want to introduce us to their friends, fellow wine lovers. People send us pictures almost any night of the week or weekends with the note, ‘we opened this.’ It’s great to have that personal relationship.”
What types of challenges do they have working together?
Schatzi said, “Oh, I think that every couple who works together has this problem. We’re hardly unique, but it’s hard to shut the work off, especially when it’s wine. We’ve been drinking wine together now for 25 years and we know each other’s likes and dislikes and palates but it’s almost impossible to come home and be home, especially when my office is here, and not just constantly talk about work. And so we have a hard time having those limits of like, OK, this is time off.”
When we asked Schatzi what Michael’s best qualities were, she said, “He is so amazing at bringing joy and artistry to our everyday lives. I’m like a nose to grindstone, orderly person, and sometimes I really forget to stop and smell the roses. And Mike always makes me stop and pay attention and just get more out of life.”
Think about that for a minute: “Mike always makes me stop and pay attention and just get more out of life.” Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone who is fortunate to have a partner who can transform their life like that.
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher conceived and wrote The Wall Street Journal's wine column, "Tastings," from 1998 to 2010. Dorothy and John have been tasting and studying wine since 1973. In 2020, the University of California at Davis added their papers to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection in its library, which also includes the work of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Dottie has had a distinguished career in journalism as a reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer at The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and at The Journal. John was Page One Editor of The Journal, City Editor of The Miami Herald and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. They are well-known from their books and many television appearances, especially on Martha Stewart's show, and as the creators of the annual, international "Open That Bottle Night" celebration of wine and friendship. The first bottle they shared was André Cold Duck. They have two daughters.