Scholium Project

Abe Schoener Suisun Valley, Napa Valley, California, USA Abe Schoener makes wine…but not much of it. He works hard and thinks hard to make it good. The Scholium Project, a part of the Tenbrink Winery family, is a small conglomerate of enthusiastic, envelope-pushing producers led by the virtuoso, Abe Schoener. All their hands, their feet and their minds are in the wine. They make wine from vineyards that are distinguished sometimes by being ignored. Their wines often do not resemble other wines, but they are not renegades. These producers are students. Their projects are not always experiments - sometimes they know what they are doing - but they are always acts of emulation, looking up at the work of others they admire. The word “scholium” comes from the Greek ; it shares the same root as “school, scholarship.” It signifies a modest project, not a preeminent one, undertaken for the sake of learning, understanding, like an essay or a study. Their wines reflect a desire to understand and a respect for tradition. They follow methods that are in some ways very old-fashioned, in some ways rather unconventional. The project started when Abe took a sabbatical from St. John’s College, where he was a philosophy professor for nine years. He started an internship at Stag’s Leap wine Cellars and while there, he met John Kongsgaard, a celebrated winemaker of Napa Valley. Abe had no intention of learning to make wine, but was intellectually inspired to become a disciple of Kongsgaard, motivated by the man’s insight, which he compares to Socrates and Merlin. He was first interested in grape growing, harvesting decisions and how the results are transformed in the cellar. Abe made his first wines at Luna Vineyards with John and in 2002 took over the winery. He launched the Scholium Project in 2008 and it is well-established as a cult phenomenon in the world of wine.