Abe Schoener’s work with Scholium Project is some of the most creative I’ve seen in wine.

To be very honest, wines like ‘Prince in his Caves’ and ‘Gardens of Babylon’ made me rethink what American wine could possibly be. As delicious as they were provocative – playing with oxygen, maceration and élevage – he seemingly followed no rules.

So, when he geared his operation down to start a new project in LA, I was curious about when-and-what his next steps would look like. After several years of waiting, his new lineup from some of our country’s most ancient vines are arriving to NYC.

We're proud to have been a partner in helping launch his new work in New York, with an evening of lively discussion and delicious tasting - exploring back vintages of Scholium Project, and the freshest release of his new wines (from pre-prohibition vines!). More background on Abe below.

  

A California Legend, Full Stop

For the last two decades, Abe Schoener and his Scholium Project have been synonymous with New California – and, some of the most fascinating (often, experimental) bottles to come out of this movement.

He was originally a philosophy professor, a career which still shows through his avant-garde, “what if” approach to winemaking. A professional sabbatical spent making wine in Napa (Stag’s Leap in the John Kongsgaard days, no less) quickly turned into his life’s work, and he founded the Scholium Project.

Through this micro-negociant project, he’s made wine from historic sites in northern and central California (Napa, Sonoma, Lodi). All guided by natural winemaking principles, and the idea that the vineyard site is far more important to a wine than its varietal or greater appellation.

As Chris mentioned above, there’s experimentation with maceration, oxygen exposure, and élevage. Abe favors longer aging prior to bottling – particularly eschewing sulfur and top-ups – to bring the wine into protective equilibrium before release.

It’s been a moment since we’ve seen Scholium Project here in NY. If Abe is not already hugely familiar to you, his name might ring a bell from last year’s interview with Raj Parr. And, their revolutionary Scythian Wine Co., which was born from Abe’s mission to make wine from tremendously old vines in Cucamonga Valley just outside of LA.

Now with a new-ish (born in 2020) facility on the edge of the city, his Los Angeles River Wine Company represents the larger work in the area, and a fuller planting of his feet in southern California. Which brings us to his latest: the rebirth of Scholium Project. With the 2024 harvest, he’s bringing back some familiar names (The Prince in his Caves!) – we couldn’t be more excited to taste them.