Downtown Napa has undergone an undeniable transformation in recent years.
One driver of this change has been a steady proliferation of tasting rooms and small urban wineries. No Love Lost Wine Co. is one of those new arrivals. The brand has grown a loyal following since opening its tasting room a year ago this September, but its first vintage was back in 2019. The small tasting room and well-appointed parklet are on Clinton Street — a newly bustling part of town referred to as the NOFI district, as in north of First Street. No Love Lost attracts crowds and a younger demographic by offering a broad range of “accessible and esoteric natural” wines.
The founder of No Love Lost, Jay Nunez, is the ultimate multitasker and scrappy entrepreneur; he is the brand’s creator, winemaker, tasting room manager and self-proclaimed “wine nerd.” (For fun, he and his girlfriend, a wine educator, do blind tastings.)
He takes a Steve Jobs approach to his wardrobe. “I always wear a black V-neck T-shirt and black jeans and Adidas cross trainers — that way, I do not have to think about it, and I can focus on the business,” he said. Nunez sports a bushy black beard, which could be a fashion choice to fit in with young hipsters, but it is more likely another time-saving device. Despite “never sleeping,” he is jovial and always on stage for visitors in the tasting room.
Nunez, 36, is a relative newcomer to Napa. He does not come from a long line of winemakers or farmers. His parents are Cuban (“by way of Spain,” he is quick to point out). Childhood was in Orlando, Florida, with occasional visits to Spain to see family. Nunez said, “The place I grew up was devoid of good food or drink options.” He credited nearby Walt Disney World for exposing him to many foreign visitors. As a child, Nunez had always loved playing music and creating, so he pursued a degree in music. He recalled that he was working in music production by his early 20s, “but as
I became an adult, that world got old.”
His epiphany came on a transatlantic flight to visit a cousin in Barcelona.
“I watched ‘Bottle Shock’ for the first time on the plane — and I became obsessed with learning about wine,” he recalled. A 2008 film based on the 1976 “Judgment of Paris” wine tasting, “Bottle Shock” showcases the Napa Valley through a comedic lens with actors Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Chris Pine at the forefront.
Nunez recounted a story of his cousin wanting to take him clubbing. The cousin didn’t understand why Nunez only wanted to spend his time learning about Spanish wine in village taverns.
“That’s for old people,” his cousin told him. Nunez had caught the wine bug. Within a few years of that life-changing trip, he made the pilgrimage to Napa, couch-surfing for a few weeks until he secured various jobs, bartending and working in restaurants and wineries to support his wine education. Winemaker Richard Graeser became a friend and influential mentor. After a meeting with Napa Valley College instructor Paul Gospodarczyk, he enrolled in the school’s Winery Technology Program.
“Changing careers is difficult, but Paul left an impression on me; he empowered me to believe in myself,” said Nunez. Here, he struck up a friendship with Blaze Williams, the teaching assistant at the time for the program’s five-acre vineyard. Last September, Williams joined Nunez at No Love Lost as director of content and vineyards. The two-person team produces 3,000 cases a year.
Nunez explained that No Love Lost is part of a wave of new downtown wineries, like Rebel, Benevolent Neglect, and Gamling & McDuck, creating “a counterculture under a sea of giants.”
He said, “We are trying to buck a trend that we see as prevalent in the big wineries.” He added, “We are all fighting for change.”
Nunez recalls his early days in Napa, feeling “uncultured, uneducated and ignorant,” and sensed an undercurrent of condescension. “The elitist mentality is one of Napa’s biggest flaws right now,” he said. Nunez puts a high value on “fostering inclusivity.”
According to the No Love Lost website, its mission is “to produce ethically grown and packaged wines, all at a price point that is as approachable as our wines are.” A tasting costs $25, but locals know they can get a glass of wine off the secret menu for $7, and the most expensive bottle is $75 ($60 with the locals’ club discount). “That’s what inspires me to go into places like the (Sacramento-San Joaquin) Delta and Lake County to bring things (fruit) in that we can price in that range,” he explained.
Even the logo on the tasting room’s awning and the wine label stands out as a differentiator — a line drawing of a serpent intertwined with a thunderbolt, creating the bold outline of a heart.
“I scribbled out the idea on one of my car trips from Lodi — Prince had a symbol, and I wanted a symbol for our movement,” said Nunez. “The lightning bolt could represent the sky, with no ceilings or limitations besides the ones we place on ourselves. The serpent can be misrepresented and perceived as negative — similar to the grapes we use and the AVAs we focus on — but it’s an animal so grounded. It spends the entirety of its life connected to the earth.”
Nunez generally prefers to make his wines from single vineyards and a single varietal. The most popular wines within the No Love Lost portfolio of 15 natural wines are an unfiltered Sauvignon Blanc and the Chillable Reds. The Chillable Reds have garnered a buzz and are drawing curious visitors who have heard about this unique wine through word of mouth or social media. Using carbonic maceration, “the grape is left whole to allow the transfer of sugar from the inside out,” Nunez explained. “The Counoise is a perfect summer wine.” He noted that Counoise is a grape rarely grown or found in Napa wines, yet it is one of only nine grape varietals allowed in the red blend of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He theorized that the popularity of this chillable red is “a testament to a consumer looking for something between a rosé and a Cabernet Sauvignon.” The website proclaims, “Carbonic Counoise is our adult Kool-Aid good times sipper!” No Love Lost quickly sells out of all 275 cases.
In addition to these sold-out bottles, a chilled orange wine, in only its second vintage, is likewise popular and made with another atypical grape, Picpoul. The popularity took him by surprise. Nunez shared that he wasn’t originally planning to make an orange wine; “it was trendy, and I don’t want to follow trends,” he said. However, the grapes fell into his lap in 2022.
In one of many side tangents during the interview (that sadly won’t fit in this article), Nunez told the story of a grape grower he befriended in Lodi on his grape-sourcing trips. “I became friendly with an old farmer on the same road as some of our suppliers. Well, maybe he isn’t old, but anyone over my parents’ age is old to me,” he joked. His farmer friend offered him some Picpoul, which Jay used for a small production of orange wine. All 75 cases sold out quickly, and now in its second year, it is a part of the regular lineup.
Nunez understands that though he might be a fan of the esoteric, not everyone is, so he also makes Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
“People look at us as a modern producer, but we’re just reverting to ancestral techniques, things that were done before the implementation of technology,” said Nunez. He claimed that by returning to these methods, he goes against the current trends employed by some larger wineries, which use expensive technology and over-manipulate the wine. “We minimize inputs from grape to glass,” he said.
Nunez’s creative side is also present on the labels. Each varietal has a distinct label and a story behind it, often depicting a female heroine in the Japanese anime style. Nunez draws inspiration from literature or philosophy or his own creative writing. The drawing on the Counoise label features a woman looking through barbed wire at her chrysanthemum garden. It is a reference to “The Chrysanthemums,” a short story by John Steinbeck. The story left an impression on him, and he draws a parallel between the grape, Counoise, and the heroine in the story as underdogs or “on the fringe.”
One can infer that Nunez also identifies with the woman, an outsider looking in. However, one wonders what happens to this underdog’s raison d’être when he starts to be recognized and lauded. Time will tell.
No Love Lost Wine Co. is located at 960 Clinton St. in downtown Napa. For more information, visit nolovelost.wine.
