On the rare occasions that it happened, Tabitha used to love being the first person in the winery this early in the morning. It was easy to imagine that this place had a heart and she could only hear it beating when she was alone here, without the noise of machines and employees and customers. Now it was just her and thousands of barrels of wine, living, breathing entities that were aging into their own version of perfection. She had spent many mornings walking the halls, putting her hands on the barrels, certain she could feel them changing underneath her palm.

Today, however, the winery sat silent and cold. She sat at her desk and looked around the office that she still, after all that had happened, had to share with Royal Hamilton. His desk, as always, was empty. No pictures on the wall, no photos or mementos, nothing. Tabitha was neat and organized with her paperwork, but her desk was covered with things that caught her fancy. Her favorite wine and travel books, the edges worn and dog-eared from the thousands of times she had consulted the pages. Pictures of Micah, a giant jar of colorful Sharpie pens, a tiny white moonstone she’d found on the beach in Cambria, a menu from a Cuban sandwich shop in New York City, the empty Prosecco bottle from Giovanni’s winery that she’d shared with her sister. Concert posters on the wall, some of her favorite wine labels tacked to a bulletin board. All of them talismans of moments she cherished.

It was not cold today, but Tabitha pulled her jacket around her and tucked her chin into the collar. Her blood had run cold the moment Royal’s name was announced at the SommFest two days ago, and she hadn’t been warm since.

The office door opened and Royal stood in the doorway. He would have seen her car in the small lot out back; he knew she was here and had prepared himself to see her. But he nonetheless affected a look of surprise.

“I thought you were taking a few days off.”

“I am.” Tabitha did not break her stare from him. Royal opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he took his hand off the door and walked to his desk.

He set a briefcase on his chair and gingerly laid a giant picture frame on his empty desk, then walked out of the office. She heard him at Emil’s desk, rustling through a drawer as if he owned everything. Which, she supposed, he technically did. He came back with a hammer and nail and stared at the empty wall behind for a moment, and then, with two quick movements, pounded the nail into the wall. He picked up the frame and hung it, regarded it for a moment, and then walked out to return the hammer.

Tabitha did not move during any of this, but never took her eyes off him. Royal set his briefcase on his desk and pulled out a stack of papers, without looking at her.

“Did you read the article?” she finally asked. The icy anger had grown in the room; it seemed to have a physical presence. Her words cut through it and reverberated off the stone walls.

He did not answer her immediately, but sorted more papers, took his laptop of out of his briefcase, plugged it in. “Yes,” he finally said, still without looking up.

“Should we discuss it?”

“I don’t see why.” He turned to face her, the planes of his face betraying no emotion.

“Because of the reputation of this winery. Let’s start there.”

“We can’t control what other people say about us.”

“What they say about you.”

His face hardened, and his lips tightened just a fraction.

“About us,” he repeated. “This is our business. Anything that slanders me personally slanders our livelihood and us as business partners. It would behoove you to remember that.”

“Trust me, Royal, our reputation is almost all I think about.”

“Good. Well, that’s that.” He turned back to his desk and clicked open a file on his desktop. “I hope this teaches you a lesson.”

“Me? Why do I need to be taught a lesson?”

He put up a hand as if stopping a child’s tantrum and faced her again. “Tabitha, every industry has people who try to tear down the people on top. I have told you that from the first day we met. It’s simply not possible to reach my—I mean our—level of success and not have detractors. Now you’ve learned the hard way not to air your dirty laundry to the wrong people.”

“You think that this article was published because I was angry that you won?”

“I don’t know the exact chain of events, but yes, that is essentially what I believe. You were awfully chummy with that reporter throughout the SommFest. I assume you are sleeping with him?”

The accusation ripped through her, and Tabitha jumped from her seat. “He’s married!” Royal raised his eyebrows. “Oh, right. I forgot who I’m talking to. A wedding ring would never stop the Marquis of Sleaze. But the rest of us do not live in your world, Royal. Mark wrote an article about me long before the competition. He asked questions about your business practices, and I did what I always do: I defended you. At the SommFest, I had one dinner with him and his wife, you pompous pricknub. For the record, I only agreed to go out with them after he promised me we wouldn’t talk about the wine business at all.”

“And he followed that dinner with a slanderous story that reeks of petty jealousy from losing competitors and a spurned ex-wife.”

She took a deep breath and pulled her jacket around her again. “Is it true?” Her words came out barely above a whisper.

Royal took one step, closing the gap between them to a few inches, and stared down at her, his eyes knife-sharp.

“Everything that hurts me will hurt you. You are half responsible for every single business decision that happens in these walls, so any suggestion of impropriety on my part reflects on your credibility. If you want to continue in this business—and I believe you do, despite your humiliating loss at SommFest—you will stand up for this winery and for our practices. Reputations are very, very hard to build, Tabitha. Once they are lost, they are virtually impossible to regain.”

He turned and left the office, and Tabitha stood breathless, hollow inside. She tried to regain her balance for several minutes before turning to see what he had hung on the back wall.

It did not surprise her, of course. He had the SommFest medal framed in clear glass, the wide blue strap forming a triangle, the giant gold medal pointing just over where his head would be when he sat at his desk.

What Kind of Winemaker is International Sommelier of the Year Royal Hamilton?

Op-ed by Mark McClintock

It is perhaps, too much to ask of the wine world to suggest that we reconsider the reputation of Paso Robles’ El Zopilote del Mar. Too much to ask because we’ve already crowned them the kings of the burgeoning Central Coast appellation. Too much to ask because they wowed us right out of the gate with their stunning takes on new California blends. I still dream about their first attempt at Pinot Noir, which somehow managed a lush depth of flavor while maintaining the easy drinkability the grape is known for. It remains, to this day, one of the best examples of the wine I have ever tried.

And it’s too much to ask because of the reputation of one Royal Hamilton, proclaimed to be the best winemaker in the United States, if not the world.

But there is where we, as a community, need to stop and reset our understanding of what makes someone “the best winemaker.” It is notable that Hamilton was considered the best long before he’d earned any verifiable accolades. The title, in fact, seems to come from his press kits, and it seems to have stuck.

Hamilton sells wine, and lots of it. And he won awards. Hamilton never bothered with local contests or county fairs. He was savvy enough, and had the contacts, to launch himself straight into the international scene. And fair play to him for doing so. More than any other vintner in the region, he has launched the lesser-known Pismo Basin region to national prominence, bypassing his northern county competitors in the process. Hamilton embraced the lush California style early in his career and has never paused in his relentless aim to create world-class wines in a small-town setting. He blazed through the more common sweet-fruit California reds and dove into the world of Left Bank Bordeaux, heavy on the Cab Franc and light on the humility. It was a bold, unique move at the time, and he solidified his reputation as a tastemaker with a unique ability to understand the land around him and the future of wine.

Given all of this, pausing to point out facts almost feels like pettiness.

Almost. Because the facts always assert themselves.

We can’t expect mere mortals, even those of us gifted with sharp palates, to be able to discern between vintages in a single bottle. That is the kind of specificity reserved for high-level sommeliers. Which, lest we forget, Hamilton is. As is his former wife, co-owner Tabitha Lawson, a fellow somm who joined him at El Zop when they married in 2011. [Editor’s note: Since divorcing Hamilton last year, Lawson remains co-owner of the winery, and there is no official word on her future involvement with the company.] Regardless: this is not a winery run by wealthy dilettantes who don’t know any better. Hamilton had enough credibility in the sommelier world that his taste buds were well established before he stepped on his first grape.

Rumors about the provenance of his bottles have floated for years. Tasters repeatedly question the origin of his grapes. He claimed his 2015 Pinot Noir blend to be only 25% Syrah, allowable under California law but mathematically impossible given the number of grapes grown on estate vineyards that year. It was, nonetheless, a decent wine. Did Hamilton mislabel the grapes from a lesser vineyard?

And then there is the question of the alcohol. Misrepresenting a higher alcohol content is nothing new; it’s a global trend that consumers are supporting without even realizing it. California drinkers, in particular, have come to expect opulent, big-bodied wines, but don’t exactly like to hear about the higher alcohol levels that naturally come with the style. Hamilton is finely attuned to this phenomenon; his wines repeatedly clock in well over the reported alcohol content, some taking him well over the mislabeled range and into the criminal range. Anything over 14% alcohol content would lead to higher taxation on his wines, which Hamilton almost certainly knows. He appears to want the taste profile but not the added expense, an odd prospect for a winemaker with worldwide ambition. But achieving those high levels of alcohol is virtually impossible with the grapes he chooses and the time he claims to ferment unless he’s adding sugar. The process, known as capitalization, is illegal in the United States, though allowed in France. (You’re bound to impress someone with that knowledge at your next dinner party. I don’t know who, but someone will be impressed.)

Perhaps most mysterious of all are the second-label El-Z wines, the lower-priced bottles that aren’t muscular enough to carry the full name of the winery on their labels. (Instead of being labeled El Zopilote del Mar, the full “The Thief of the Sea” title, as are the superstar wines, the El-Z line is just—what? The Thi?) These wines have fun, frivolous labels with links to all social media (naturally), and fruity, playful flavors. They are not serious wines, nor are they meant to be taken seriously. Fine. Nearly every winery in the world has a lower-price entry into their line; there is nothing wrong with that marketing attempt. Hamilton has every right to earn a living.

The second-tier wines are simple blends from inexpensive vineyards around California, marketed to younger, inexperienced drinkers who wouldn’t know a vintage if it slapped them right in their trendy stemless glasses. They sell well at grocery stores and are a staple of every episode of The Bachelor. If Royal Hamilton doesn’t mind screaming women throwing glasses of his plonk into each other’s faces, why should we?

But some of his high-end vintages—the ones for which he wins awards, the ones for which he charges upwards of $200 per bottle—have flavor profiles remarkably similar to those found in the hipster nonsense El-Z bottles. Hamilton refused to comment on this article. When I interviewed his former wife, I asked specifically about the 2015 Mourvedre and noting that it had a flavor profile that was remarkably similar to the GSM blend they had released the previous year. She was unable to account for the similarities, claiming that she also noticed them, but that Royal had sourced the grapes from the estate vineyard listed on the bottle. “He likes a consistent flavor profile,” she explained. “So, he would take it as a compliment to hear you say that his low-end wine has a similar taste to the upscale wine. That is exactly what we are going for. We want to cultivate the next generation of wine drinkers early, with an easy way to drink an important wine.”

What Tabitha Lawson thought Royal Hamilton would see as a compliment is what some of the more uptight members of the wine community would call “label swapping.” Suffice to say that label swapping is frowned upon both within the insular community of wine snobs and the general wine-buying public.

For reasons known only to himself, Hamilton entered SommFest, competing against his ex-wife and virtually every other prominent sommelier on the planet for the title of International Sommelier of the Year. It was a puzzling move. Hamilton already had most of the highest distinctions as a sommelier before he became a winemaker, so his need for this additional accolade was a strange one at this stage in his career. One wants to believe that Hamilton is the outlier, the hot young upstart who can dominate the world of sommeliers and winemaking and make a fortune doing it. His many fans want to believe that about him, and I want to believe that about him. But it is the opinion of this columnist that rumors don’t follow winemakers who follow the rules, or sommeliers who win according to talent instead of a payoff. His methods are nebulous and untraceable; his reputation is just to the left of center enough to be concerning.

Will it affect the general wine-buying public? Probably not. Most of them don’t read this magazine or care all that much about specificity in labeling. But as we continue this investigation into his methods and practices, it will be fascinating to see what the revelations reveal about his aspirations and the numerous awards that surround him.

In person, he plays his cards close to the vest. He is a man who scans the room for bigger names while he is talking to you. He does not reveal much in person. He is slick and good looking on the surface but seems to lack any real substance. None of these traits are in and of themselves a crime. Wine is about image, and he cuts an excellent one. That leaves us to judge him by his work, and to assume that the kind of winemaker Royal Hamilton is reflects the kind of man he is.