Mark Gudgel is sitting on a bar stool in his wine cellar—an immaculate, narrow room with white-washed brick walls lined with bottle after bottle of wine. The temperature hovers around a chilly, but ideal, temperature of 55°F. We sip some champagne as he proceeds to decant a 2018 bottle of cabernet sauvignon made from grapes grown in Napa Valley’s Spring Mountain district. The label depicts cattle—a brown bovine surrounded by a black herd with “Gudgel Ranch” printed in artfully arching Italics.
It’s his own wine label, with the artwork a reproduction of a photo taken on his family’s Sandhills cattle ranch. And the wine? It’s an exquisitely smooth cabernet with a gorgeous bouquet and a strong finish.
“Nothing really holds up to a marbled Sandhills steak except a Napa cab,” Gudgel said with a grin before executing a more than generous pour.
The man knows how to set the stage for an interview.
The 42-year-old father of two is perhaps an unlikely oenophile—he’s an assistant professor specializing in Holocaust studies at the College of Saint Mary—but wine has long been his labor of love. Literally. “I didn’t know anything about wine for most of my life,” he confessed, “but my wife [Sonja] and I drank it on our first date and most dates after.”
Those dates eventually turned into a wedding in February 2013 followed by a Napa Valley honeymoon. Gudgel had received a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching to study at the University of London Institute of Education (today, the University College of London), and since he and Sonja would be separated for a time, they decided on a quick trip. “We called my friend Paul who owns Executive Travel in Lincoln, and he said, ‘Well, what about wine country?’”
The couple went, and Gudgel’s love affair with wine was uncorked. “I had no idea what I was getting into going out to wine country,” he shared. “I started looking at the labels of the wines. It was an education, but a wonderful one. And to this day, there’s more 2013 in my cellar than anything else.”
After the Napa excursion, Sonja started the blog “ITheeWine.com,” for which Gudgel regularly authored a column. “It was quite popular for a while,” he said. “Publishers started reaching out to me and said, ‘Would you write for us?’ and all of a sudden I was getting paid to write, and for an English major, that’s exciting.”
Before he knew it, Gudgel was a regular contributor to wine publications such as Napa Valley Life Magazine, Edible Marin & Wine Country, Food & Spirits Magazine, Vivino, and American Winery Guide. Over the years, he amassed a loyal readership, and he joked that the success was due to his “rapier wit.” After a sip of wine, though, he confessed, “I’m not sure why so many people thought they’d follow me but for a very long time, I was the top ranked wine reviewer on Vivino.”
While Gudgel eventually gave up reviewing wine, he continued to study wine and began pursuing writing about it in a more scholarly fashion. In 2023, he published his first wine book, “The Rise of Napa Valley Wineries: How the Judgment of Paris Put California Wine on the Map.” The title referred to the seminal blind tasting of American and French wines in Paris in 1976. When wines from California defeated the French ones, wine lovers the world over were shocked, and Napa Valley became a leader in the global wine community.
“It wasn’t a fluke. The French told us it was a fluke. Other people thought it was a fluke. Robert Parker thought it was a fluke,” Gudgel said of the infamous event and the equally famous wine reviewer. “Never mind the fact that these were French judges who were far more familiar with French wines. Never mind that our wines were the ones that had to be shipped over the ocean, right? No, these were world-class wines, and it wasn’t a fluke. We know it wasn’t a fluke, because time and time and time again after that, the results play out the same way.”
Citing winning wines such as Napa Valley’s Sterling sauvignon blanc, Smith-Madrone’s Riesling, and Trefethen’s chardonnay as being among the best “in the whole damn world,” Gudgel continued, “The thing is, these wines win, and then it just keeps happening. At the Great Chardonnay Showdown in Chicago [in 1980], they tasted more than 400 Chardonnays, and four of the top five came out of the United States. Four!”
This passion for individual wines translates to Gudgel’s passion for the industry as a whole. He is just as interested in a wine’s mouth feel and bouquet as he is on how climate change affects grape growing and the regenerative practices that vineyards can employ. He’s also quick to dismiss an overly pretentious approach to evaluating wine. Referring to one revered wine reviewer as “an angry troglodyte,” he discussed how experts were too quick to dismiss 2020 vintages because of California wildfires as an example of the pitfalls of such snobbery.
“I’ve tasted 2011s and 2020s from the most prestigious winemakers in the entire country, and they’re extraordinary,” Gudgel said. “And yet, there are people who won’t touch the whole vintages because of cool temperatures in 2011 and the 2020 fires and the fear of smoke taint, but I’ll tell you, I’ve had all these 2011s and 2020s that are just mind blowing. The thing is, if you trust [vintners] to make your wine the rest of the time, you should be grateful that they’re making it in a difficult event. Both are examples of reviewers getting it wrong.”
Indeed, Gudgel is anything but a wine snob, and he’s as quick to embrace a so-called “2 Buck Chuck,” (a term for inexpensive wine that specifically references Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw) as he is a rare vintage. “When people ask me what’s good wine, I say, ‘Whatever you like to drink—as long as you can afford it. And, you know, if you love Sutter Home white zinfandel, which is the gateway drug to all wines, then drink that, because it’s $5 to $10 a bottle. That’s awesome. If you love something that costs $5 a bottle, knock yourself out. That’s terrific—good news for you!
“You know, there are a lot of wines that I love that cost between $250 and $400 a bottle, and I don’t ever drink them because I don’t have that kind of money,” he continued. “And if I did, I probably wouldn’t spend it on those. So you know, it really matters what you like, and no one should ever be ashamed that they’re drinking white zinfandel. And if someone turns their nose up, it’s their problem.”
Gudgel brings that quintessentially Nebraskan attitude to his role as the board president for vinNEBRASKA, a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 to celebrate premier wines and nationally recognized winemakers. It also raises funds for local organizations, such as the Stephen Center, which partners with the community, families, and individuals to overcome homelessness, addiction, and mental health challenges. The nonprofit also offers scholarships to people studying for their wine credentials and helps to pay for exam fees. He first became involved with vinNEBRASKA in 2017 as a board member and assumed the leadership role in 2020.
Christa Pichler serves on vinNEBRASKA’s board with Gudgel. She’s known him since high school, when both of them were 4-H camp counselors together. She said she can’t imagine a better person to serve as the organization’s board president. “Mark’s understanding of wine, the wine industry, and wine makers is huge,” she said. “He has the contacts, and he knows how to recruit.”
In early April, Gudgel oversaw vinNEBRASKA’s annual two-day fundraising event, which included a winemakers’ reception featuring 26 wineries and a gourmet dinner on the first night and a wine tasting, dinner, and live and silent auctions the next. Both evenings took place at the Omaha Marriott Downtown and attracted close to 1,000 oenophiles. Combined, the two events raised a record-breaking $482,000 and more than $1.3 million over vinNEBRASKA’s three-year partnership with the Stephen Center. The organization begins a new three-year partnership with Completely KIDS starting in 2025. In early April, the organization also hosted the inaugural Women of Wine Symposium on the College of Saint Mary’s campus, and it is partnering with the Court of Master Sommeliers, which sets the global standard for beverage service within the hospitality industry, for the second year in a row.
Pichler credits these successes with Gudgel’s work ethic and vision. “Mark is very big-picture focused, and he’s always thinking about how to expand and how to offer scholarships and benefit our charity partner,” she observed. “This is the first year we offered Women of Wine. He’s just so passionate about it.”
For the time being, Gudgel is happy to continue serving as vinNEBRASKA’s board president and promoting the organization and its causes. He’s also writing his second wine book on the Napa Valley’s Oakville AVA, heralded for its meticulously crafted cabernet sauvignons. The tentative title is “The Oakville Chronicles,” and by the time the project is complete, Gudgel will have conducted hundreds of interviews with Oakville residents.
Gudgel turns his attention back to his Gudgel Ranch cabernet sauvignon. “I am not a winemaker. I have a great deal of respect for winemakers, but it’s a very natural thing for someone who appreciates art to wonder if they can make it themselves and to want to be involved in it more thoroughly,” he averred before going on to explain his collaboration with Tom Meadowcraft of Meadowcraft Wines, who helped craft this bottle, and Jean Hoefliger, the Swiss-born director and the founding winemaker at Alpha Omega and currently at AXR Napa Valley. “He’s nicknamed ‘The Swiss Machine’ because he cranks out 100-point wines like a machine,” Gudgel chuckled.
His own wine, Gudgel explained, contains 95% Spring Mountain cabernet sauvignon and 5% Stags Leap petit verdot. “Petit, of course, means what you think it means, right? You’ve got these tiny, concentrated berries that are really punchy, fruity, and tannic, and so they add a structure to this otherwise very beautiful mountain fruit,” he explained before going on to describe the iron rich soil, marine deposits, and sun exposure that all go into creating the grapes in Gudgel Ranch, which he added, will be available in limited supply at select stores like Vino Mas and Corkscrew Wine & Cheese by Christmas. It will also be included on wine menus at V. Mertz, among other venerable local restaurants.
In the meantime, Gudgel plans to continue learning and educating himself about wine. He doesn’t consider himself an expert, dismissing his expertise with a typical Nebraskan humility, “I’m just a guy,” he said with a grin. “I’m not averse to hard work—I’m from the Sandhills.”
Columbia Crest Grand Estate (Washington; $10 or less)
Penfold’s Koonunga Hills Shiraz-Cabernet (Australia; $10 or less)
Chateau Souverain (California; $15)
Phebus Reserva (Patagonia, Argentina; $17)
Barnard Griffin Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia Valley, Washington; $18)
Ravines Maximilien (Finger Lakes, New York; $29)
Truchard Cabernet (Los Carneros, California; $45)
Yarden (Golan Heights, Israel; $45)
Chateau Meyney (Saint Estephe, Bordeaux; $55)
Smith-Madrone (Spring Mountain, California; $65)
J. Moss (Napa, California; $69)
Chateau Musar (Bekaa Valley, Lebanon; $75)
Volker Eisele (Chiles Valley District, California; $75)
Ambassador Plenipotentiary (Red Mountain, Washington; $80)
Spottswoode Lyndenhurst (St. Helena, California; $90)
Paradigm, Oakville (California; $120)
Chateau D’Issan (Margaux, Bordeaux; $125)
Chateau Pontet-Canet (Pauillac, Bordeaux; $150)
Tierra Roja (Oakville, California; $250)
Remhootge “Soaring Eagle” Cabernet-Shiraz (South Africa; $18)
Ridge Monte Bello (Santa Cruz Mountains; $275)
MacDonald (Oakville, California; allocated)
For more information, visit vinnebraska.com and markgudgel.com.
This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
