Kobayashi’s Wines Are Snapped Up Within Hours of Release. Here’s Why.

By day, Travis Allen is a nurse anesthetist, living with his wife Mario, and their children in Seattle, Washington. By harvest, he is one of the most innovative winemakers in Washington and Oregon.

Allen wasn’t into wine when he first met Mario at San Diego State University. He was a teetotalling surfer who preferred orange slices to orange wines. When he and Mario moved to San Francisco, he visited Napa Valley to try wine for the first time. A switch flipped when he heard a tasting room employee describe a wine as smelling like blueberries and black tea. “I could totally get that. Since that moment in 2001, I’ve read something about wine every single day,” says Allen.

Image Courtesy of Cara Almberg

The Allens moved to Seattle in 2007 when Travis was hired by the Seattle Children’s Hospital. He had no interest in making wine, but his “directed learning” program of attending wine tastings and asking lots of questions was in full swing. In 2012 Allen listened intently as a Spanish winemaker described unfamiliar techniques at a Hospice du Rhône seminar in California. Allen decided that someone in Washington State should be doing interesting things and he would be that guy. Allen says, “Our first mission was to make things different.”

Kobayashi debuted in 2014 with 25 cases of Cabernet Franc. The Allens now make 1,000 cases annually at Force Majeure in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, with their core wines selling for $65 and $85. Kobayashi devotees snap the wines up within hours of their release.

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After tasting the 2021 Skin Contact Marsanne, I can see why. The wine spent 41 days on skins in stainless steel before being transferred to a sandstone jarre. Forget traditional descriptors. This wine feels like Miles Davis interpreting a Rothko painting with his horn. It is the best skin contact I’ve had in ages.

The WeatherEye Vineyard Viognier is another work of Allen’s art. It illustrates his unabashed “you never know until you ask” philosophy.

When Allen decided to make Viognier in 2018, he cold-emailed Condrieu master Yves Gangloff to see if he would consult on the wine. Allen’s early messages met with crickets, but he didn’t give up. Gangloff eventually agreed to help Allen make Viognier in 2019. “I absorbed as much information from him that year as I could and he continues to guide me on the Viognier path,” Allen said.

Image Courtesy of Cara Almberg

Another example of Allen’s stick-to-it-iveness involves his quest to become the first American winery to use Mizunara oak barrels, which lend “an incense and wood aroma, but not vanilla or typical oak,” according to Allen. The combination “has reminded me of being in a temple in Japan,” he says. But his requests were shot down by the Japanese cooper, Ariake Sangyo. Eventually, Mario stepped in to write a letter in Japanese to plead their case. It worked.

The barrel set the Allens back $8,000. The cooper also insisted that, for quality control purposes, the 450-liter barrel had to be filled with water and airfreighted across the Pacific Ocean—on Allen’s dime.

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Allen uses Mizunara oak to produce extraordinary Cabernet Franc wines with elegant structure, dark fruit, dusty sandalwood perfume and a sense of history. Allen says, “It tastes like Cabernet Franc. It couldn’t be anything else.” Even at $225 a bottle, the demand for this wine far exceeds supply.

Allen shipped a once-filled Mizunara oak barrel to Il Carnasciale in Tuscany, where this November Allen will help make their one-of-a-kind Il Caberlot (a Tuscan hybrid of Cabernet and Merlot) wine to age in the Japanese oak. The wines will be sold here in the United States in a few years. You are unlikely to find a more star-crossed bouillabaisse of cultural influences anywhere on the wine shelf.

This article originally appeared in the April 2024 of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!

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