Reign of Terroir » Wineries

The Quiet Man, Jason Lett of The Eyrie Vineyards, pt.1

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:49:00 +0000

I was on my way to the noisy world of the Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla, Washington. Two stops were planned along the way: Parducci in Ukiah, Mendocino County, and The Eyrie Vineyards in McMinnville, Oregon. Neither destination would disappoint. Indeed, each in its own way would be a revelation. Let me explain…

Jason Lett would never claim that he possesses a near-encyclopedic winemaking knowledge. It is irrelevant to his mission of crafting some of the finest wines made in the US. What he does know of winemaking has come, I would argue, from two equally important and complementary sources: his father, the legendary David Lett, and Jason’s own explorations, his university training, the experience gained from producing his first label, Black Cap, and that he assumed responsibilities for winery and the viticulture in 2005.

Yet it must be difficult to grow up the son of a legend. How to find your own way? After all, a father has his ways and methods, he holds onto his truths with a firm hand. What the son first learns is how to do things the right way. Much later comes a son’s wisdom to do things his way. This is both homage and the only way forward. If I may be permitted a possibly undeserved familiarity, Jason’s quiet confidence tells me that The Eyrie Vineyards’ second iteration will continue to produce wines not only consistent with its historically exemplary standards, but will excel. And since 2005 Jason has not missed a beat. As he said to me, “Even the clamp on a hose, if not properly tightened, can affect the wine. There are hundreds of things to consider.” What he did not say was that such a refined, intimate winemaking knowledge was his. But, humility aside, it is.

A brief gloss on The Eyrie Vineyards: All of there vines are on their own rootstocks, including David Lett’s original plantings from 1965. It must add something to the taste of the wine. Hard to say. It may be that American rootstocks used for grafting express subtle distinctions in their rooting systems as opposed to varieties growing on their own.

Organic from the beginning, The Eyrie Vineyards are not irrigated, forcing roots deeper. (About this readers may learn more in part 2.) Oak is of particular disinterest. Chardonnay sees around 3% new oak. Jason is looking for only for a little help with color. The rule is that the fruit is never to be outshone by wood. To this end Eyrie continues to use barrels decades old. More, The Eyrie Vineyards is the expression of four properties that range in elevation from 200 to 900 feet, all in the Dundee Hills. Jory soils dominate. They are composed of a lighter red clay and differ in important ways from Willakenzie, a richer soil, heavier clay. Though phylloxera was introduced to the Dundee Hills in the ’80s, it has never been a problem for Eyrie. The thought is that this is because they don’t rototill. Phylloxera seems to need rototilling to expand its range. Native organic flora encouraged at Eyrie includes weeds as they are part of the local ecosystem; yet they are kept in control because of the flourishing region-specific biodiversity growing alongside. Again, all of this will be learned in part 2.

For those traveling near McMinnville, Oregon, take an hour out of your day to visit The Eyrie Vineyards tasting room which may be found at 935 NE 10th Ave. Full details may be found here.

A final note: Special thanks to Ben, a resourceful individual working for Hertz in Medford. In addition to rescuing stranded motorists, he is a home beer brewer. Should his product finally come to market, I’ll be first in line.

In The Winery

Before heading out to the vineyards, Jason shows me his parents’ original barrel room, the greater space in which the tasting room is situated.

Admin What was this building originally?

Jason Lett Some gal showed up one day and told me it was a originally a Hershey’s chocolate plant during the Second World War. This is the first room that my folks occupied, back in 1970. They had plans drawn up for a winery to be built on the hillside overlooking the vineyard. But no bank would loan them any money because they were just a couple of crazy kids. So they found this place. It was vacant at the time. It was a perfect winery. There are two layers of cork in the walls and ceiling. There used to be windows but my dad blocked them up. He wanted to create the dynamics of a cave in here. It is very cool in here. The thermal mass in this building is the wine itself. There are 10,000 gallons of thermal mass in here. That keeps the temperature low. And the concrete floor.

All the barrel cleaning is done in here? And the waste water, how is that treated?

JL Yes, we clean the barrels here. The city of McMinnville invested a lot of money about 10 years ago in a processing plant to handle the stuff and get it back downstream in a good condition.

Did the city build it with the wine industry in mind?

JL No, it was for the capacity of the town. But they over-built it. A lot of the towns around here didn’t have the foresight. It’s a good place to have a winery just from a green perspective. You know, the streets are already here, the water infrastructure is already here; we take the chlorine out of the water with a big charcoal filter; the three-phase comes in on the wire; we don’t have to drop a big infrastructure onto farmland in order to make wine here. The infrastructure is already here. From a green perspective wineries should probably be built in town.

You were asking about barrel cleaning, well, when my folks moved into this room, they came here with 30 new French oak barrels. And here are several of them. We’re still making wine in these original barrels from the 1970 vintage. Anything with the letter ‘S’ and a number lower than 30 is from the original vintage. Dad came up with some very good techniques for keeping barrels in sanitary condition through the years.

What kind of techniques?

JL That’s a trade secret! (laughs) The Pinot Gris is done in unjacketed tanks. We do inoculate with Champagne yeast, good old EC-1118. The great thing about it is that it is very neutral. It doesn’t really impose any of its own flavors. Seems to me that if you’re trying to talk about the vineyard you don’t want to necessarily want to impart flavors from the yeast. The very best case scenario is when you can use the yeast from the vineyard. We’re successfully able to do that with smaller fermentations, but with these big tanks, if they start going sideways, it’s a major investment. I’m a little bit more conservative in my winemaking approach with the Pinot Gris, the Pinot Blanc, than I am with the Pinot Noirs.

And how often do you top off?

JL Right now we’re doing it every two weeks. When summer comes we’ll start doing it every 10 days. I like to stay on top of that. We’ve certainly had longer topping periods in the past. Dad preferred a more oxidative winemaking style. One of the nice things about these older barrels is that they are really tight. They don’t transfer oxygen as much as a new barrel would. Certain vintages, like the 2008, we had to keep in barrel forever! That was a big, structured vintage. It needed a lot longer time to open up. And since we’re topping at a tighter interval, they weren’t getting as much oxygen contact that way; so it just took its time getting that micro-oxygenation through the walls of an old barrel. Most of the cooperage in here is French; we’ve got a little bit of Oregon oak. That’s kind of fun.

What do you get from them?

JL A lot of oak. With Oregon oak you have to use it homeopathically. The flavors are great, but they are so strong. Our cooper who does these, every thing is three-year air dried. He’s also doing a rock salt soak in these. It pulls some of the tannin before he assembles the barrel. And they’re incredibly well-made. Since we’re keeping barrels around for the texture they impart rather than the flavor, the quality of the construction is probably the key point for us. The barrels here… there’s one from 1993, here’s one from 1970; this is a mid-1980s barrel; these guys down here are from the late 1990s… we probably have some of the oldest cooperage in the United States in continual service here. Well, shall we run out to the vineyard?

On The Road To The Vineyard

You know, I was talking to the winemaker at Ridge, Eric Baugher. And he told me that for their Montebello they use a very complex mix of French and American barrels. But the American oak is sourced from a number of very specific forests each of which he claimed imparted different characteristics to the finished wine. What do you think?

JL From a botanical point of view, oaks are probably the most prone to hybridizing of any broad leaf tree in that group. There are 200 recognized species of oak in the United States. Red oak versus White oak is a woodworker’s term. It really doesn’t have anything to do with flavor. They just cross like crazy. You’ll see some funny little shrub oak in Colorado, in the Four Corners, it’s a White oak. The Quercus garryana we have here in Oregon is also a White oak; but they are incredibly different species. I just like to make a wine in barrels made from oaks on the other side of the hill!

In terms of looking at an oak mix, oak is such a limited part of the flavor profile of our wines that I don’t obsess about it too much. We kind of go counter to the trend. If you’re employing more oak in your blend then you’re probably going to more toward a darker toast because those tend to give you the coffee and cocoa tones that integrate better. This is all well and good. But for our style we find that the light toasted barrel is preferable. For one thing, you get less bubbling, and issues inside the barrel, but also in a very moderate new oak program – ours is about 5% – those flavors actually integrate better. In a high concentrations, yes, it’s like licking a plank. But to mix one of those barrels into 25 neutral barrels and all of a sudden you get this beautiful support from the wood without any obvious or overt oak signature.

The valley floor here used to be covered with Quercus garryana, Oregon White oak, before colonization. The Native Americans used to do controlled burns to maintain clearings, but the whole white oak ecosystem was basically a whole complex of plants and creatures that were adapted to the White oak, living in conjunction with it. Now we have isolated pockets of trees on the hillsides. You don’t see it so much on the valley floor; the ecosystem is very different.

The White oak is a massive tree. It has a lot of branches as opposed to the European oak which are grown in rows close together so they don’t branch very much on the bottom. They tend to be very slender and long, and very straight. Ours are almost exactly the opposite. It takes a bit of a different approach to make barrels out of Oregon oak. But Oregon oak is distinctly different from what people call ‘American’ oak, most of which comes from the South Eastern part of the United States, from a warmer climate, longer growing season. The oak tends to have wider rings and have a little bit more of that vanilla, coconut characteristic.
It’s ironic to talk about the oak signature at Eyrie!

Well, coming from California it is increasingly difficult to find lighter-oaked wines. Fortunately I live in Santa Cruz. Our AVA has a quite a number of cool climate sites. Wines tend to be marked by restraint. There is some experimentation. But it is not a particularly wealthy AVA, and holdings tend to be small. New technologies are not immediately embraced owing to their expense.

JL Well, if technology made great wine, then jug wines would taste better than artisanal wines. In fact, the opposite is true. In the end, what determines great wine is not the amount of technology you can throw at it but the amount of personal dedication. And I’m not sure why that reflects in the flavor, but it seems to.

I think that a lot of the larger producers realized a long time ago that they could not win the battle over artisanal quality. So what began to happen, I think, is that it dawned on them to limit, through the use of wine critics and to some degree even the Wine Institute, the general development of consumer wine education, the deepening of the understanding of wine. Larger producers seemed to say “If we can keep the consumer dumb as a post then we’ll have a chance in the marketplace.”

JL (laughs) You’re a subversive, Ken!

Very much so! (laughs) So what has essentially happened is that the California wine industry is to some degree dedicated to the proposition that the consumer remain ignorant. That means they needn’t worry about the use or consequences of technological fixes as such. That many wines approach the character coca cola and the unctuous mouthfeel of cheeseburgers is not really a problem. The consumer is always right, after all.

JL So we’re in the Dundee Hills. There is a big wheat field over there. That is the last big chunk of ungraped land on the hillside. And that’s owned by Old Man McDougall. He must be 150 by now. But he’s holding out. He’s not going to let these fancy grape people plant everywhere! And I actually love that. It really reminds me of the way the hill was when I was growing up. We were a very, very minor part of the farming scheme in Oregon back in those days. Grape growing was not a very big deal. There was a huge and diverse agriculture around us. Lots of cherries, cane berries, prunes, and, except for Old Man McDougall, most of that has been supplanted by grapes.

It looks like McDougall’s property has a southerly aspect as well.

JL He’s got a beautiful piece of land. It’s right next to the Stoller vineyard. I’m sure that Bill [Stoler] just looks over the fence and just drools. Yes, it faces South and rolls East, a great exposure for grapes.

End Of Part One

Part 2 will begin with our arrival at the vineyard.

Admin

The Smartest Man In The Room, Billo Naravane of Rasa Vineyards

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:38:04 +0000

I met Yashodhan (Billo) Naravane (right) at the Three Rivers Winery. He was member of one of many panel discussion organized, in part, by the good offices of the Wine Bloggers Conference spread among wineries throughout the Walla Walla Valley. Though meant to be instructional in character, centering on explaining the basics of the Walla Walla AVA, it became very clear to me that this gentleman was no ordinary panelist. It turned out uttering generalities is not where Billo excels. His is a very disciplined mind, a curious mind, exulting in a profound natural intellectual freedom and flexibility rarely encountered outside of a university setting. He and his equally gifted brother, Pinto (left), founded Rasa Vineyards in 2007. And in just a few short years they have demonstrated an understanding of viticulture and winemaking which repeats in yet another field their considerable academic achievements. But inasmuch as this is an interview with Billo, we may read a fragment of his CV below:

“Billo has worked in various technical and managerial positions in the Computer Industry for over a decade and a half. Billo received his BS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from MIT and his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Billo finished his MS in Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis in June 2008 and is currently running the Viticulture program at Walla Walla Community College.”

But as I was to learn, the CV is by no means complete. As you will read below, Billo is launching new projects that will require significant modification of the thumbnail bio above. Please enjoy my encounter with Billo, without a doubt, the smartest man in the room.

Admin So let’s jump into the middle of things. Tell me about your wines.

Billo Naravane We were interested from the beginning in building a luxury brand. This was when the economy was good. So, we initially poured our wines for MWs, and told them that the price points [for QED and Principia] were $65 and $75. We asked for an honest critique of the wines. We got great feedback, they were said to be beautiful wines, worth the money; but the economy was not the greatest. They suggested pricing it a little bit lower, it might be to our advantage. So we had to go back to our investors, and we decided to price the wine, the QED, at $50. Now, $50 is expensive. We’re not delusional. But that wine I think offers an extremely great value for the money.

We’ve had it in blind tastings with some of the very best wines in the world: Guigal’s La Landonne, La Mouline, Henschke’s Hill of Grace, against Grange, you name it, it’s been blind tasted against it. It really holds its own against the best wines in the world. So, that wine is 94% Syrah, 3% Grenache, and 3% Mourvèdre. It is mostly Les Collines; the Syrah is about 85% from Les Collines Vineyard.

I hear Les Collines being referred to constantly.

BN Les Collines is a great vineyard. It’s a huge property, 300 acres, or so, I think are planted up there. There is a wide degree of variation within the different blocks of the vineyard. It is not an homogenous terroir. Some blocks I really like; there are two we sourced from for the ‘07. One block had this really earthy, mineraly, almost truffle-type character underlying the core of fruit. The fruit is this black berry, black cherry on the Syrah, but has this depth to it. The aromatics are fantastic form that property as well. The finish is sometimes not the greatest. The finish is nice; it’s just not as long as we would like it for a high-end Syrah. So we have to address that via blending.

I’m a big fan of blending in that when done correctly you can achieve an aromatic complexity and a palate complexity, and broaden the finish out, rather than using just one specific wine. Now the trick, however, is that we’re also big fans of terroir, so how do you preserve the Walla Walla sense of terroir in a blended wine. That tricky to do. Blending is highly non-linear. You can put in 2% to 3% of something yet change it by 30%. So you have to be very careful not to obliterate a sense of place, of terroir in blending. But what we’re trying to do, being technically minded, we go through every permutation in the blending process. We do all the samples. Me and my brother then go through all of them, we argue back and forth, and then we decide on the final blend, whatever tastes the best and still preserves that terroir of Walla Walla or of any other region.

In that year, 2007, it was 94% Syrah, 3% of Grenache, Mourvèdre. In 2008 the blend has been different. Our QED will always be a Grenache/Mourvèdre blend, but the percentages will be different based on what the year gave us. 2007 was a very warm year, so we got riper fruit versus 2008, which was a pretty cool year. So, stylistically, our Rasa wines are more along the lines of French wines rather than California. We are huge, huge Francophiles. We love the great Rhone wines, Bordeaux, and Burgundy as well. But we don’t make a Pinot Noir… yet! We amy do so in the future.

Best of luck with a Pinot!

BN We were introduced to a gentleman who owns a small block of Pinot Noir, so we may try it out, not this year but next. Pinot is not something I’ve worked with yet. I’m really kind of anxious to try it.

That reminds me. Rasa is the rough Indian equivalent of the word terroir. Could you explain the distinctions between the two concepts, if any?

BN So the actual root of the word Rasa, it’s from Sanscrit, technically, though it can be used in a couple of different contexts, in one context it means essence. For us that is essence of soil and variety. And almost in a slang parlance, it can mean juice. So we have this essence and juice concept that is the closest word we’ve found that is also relatively easy to remember. Some of the related Indian words can get quite long and complex, hard to remember. We were looking for a word that tied together wine and our heritage. My uncle is the one who thought of it. He speaks Sanskrit. He’s not a wine aficionado, but after explaining what we were doing, about terroir and why it was so important to us, he thought up the word. We fell in love with it. It’s a great name! (laughs)

We’re originally from India; me and my brother were born in India. Our parents moved to New Jersey when I was turning 6, my brother was 8. We just wanted to have a tie-back to our heritage and still have something that was easy to remember, and with a wine connotation.

You mentioned that you initially tasted widely throughout the Walla Walla AVA. And we know the AVA is still in the process of being defined, the proper terroir for which grape, and so on. So, what are the relative merits and demerits of having a Washington State designation as opposed to having a Walla Walla AVA designation? In a conversation with Sean Boyd of Rôtie he said that the AVA designation, though not irrelevant, will not necessarily result in the best wines. He is willing to sacrifice, especially for so young an AVA, a specific designation in favor of an overall quality.

BN I tend to agree with Sean. In our 2007 QED we did source the Grenache and Mourvèdre from Minick Vineyard over in Prosser. We also had a little Lewis Vineyard Syrah in there, which is also from Prosser, over in Yakima. Now, Grenache and Mourvèdre are not best for our area. Let me put it this way: I haven’t tasted great Grenache and Mourvèdre grown here in Walla Walla. Now, this is all price point dependent. I’m talking about a $50 and up price point wine. You can definitely grow good enough quality Grenache and Mourvèdre here for a $20 bottle. I’m not questioning that. But for a quality that you want to deliver at that higher price point, we’ve just not found that yet in Walla Walla. So we have to look elsewhere. And we found this great cooler climate site. We would much rather get this cooler climate fruit. We like the acidity to be preserved naturally, and to get that balanced flavor development, rather difficult at a super warm site. The cooler sites tend to give wines that are much more elegant and refined.

We don’t want to be making wines that are 16% alcohol. There’s nothing wrong with those types of wines; they’re just not stylistically what were going after. I still do enjoy the occasional Australian Shiraz, but I tend to prefer Rhone style for Syrah.

We are after making the best wine possible. While we want to remain as true as possible to terroir, we want to make the best wine possible. For the QED, since we could not get the Grenache and Mourvèdre of a sufficiently high quality, we needed to go outside the AVA. We don’t see that as being contradictory. And if you taste the QED, that is a Walla Walla wine; 91% of the fruit is from here. It is in the blending process that you have to be very judicious to maintain the sense of terroir. One of our blends during the trial phase, when we were going through all the possible blends for the QED, it was roughly 5% Grenache, 7% Mourvèdre, and the balance Syrah. That did not taste like a Walla Walla AVA wine. We did not go with that blend even though it was pretty tasty because it did not taste like it came from the AVA.

You seem to have been blessed with an extraordinary palate. I was reading one of your blog entries about a tasting party you attended some time ago. Could you say something about your tasting history?

BN I’ve been extremely fortunate. When I lived in Austin I had a bunch of very eclectic wine collector friends that I had met throughout the years. It was a wine group we started called the S.O.B.s, the Sons of Bacchus. That name was quite fitting for the group in many respects! They were from many different backgrounds. And some had been collecting for many, many years, 30-40 years. They had these amazing wine cellars. We got to be such good friends that when invited over they would pull these unbelievable bottles of wine: an ‘82 Mouton, ‘61 Lafite, these crazy wines I had the privilege to taste. My brother had a similar experience in New Jersey. We really have tasted, just through really good friends, some of the best wines that have ever been made. One time I got to taste a 1900 Chateau Margaux, and the ‘47 Cheval Blanc, all these wines that are considered to be the best wines ever made. That is one the the biggest strengths that Pinto and I bring to the winemaking process. We are able to recognize, or at least have a perspective, of the best wines ever made. We bring that to our blending and winemaking processes.

It is kind of startling to me how many wine people I’ve met here in Washington, many of them winemakers, who have never tasted a first growth! They probably couldn’t tell you who the first growths are. It’s kind of shocking to me. I would wonder that if you don’t have it in your head what great wine is, then how do you know when you’ve made one?

That’s a very interesting question, and it bears upon the question of wine education, certainly of the average drinker, to the degree there is such a thing. There is a problem within marketing, I would argue, that through a series of commercial feedback loops, they work to maintain a certain level of knowledge, or, alternatively, of ignorance, amongst the wine-drinking public. It is very difficult to know how to challenge that, how to convince people there are depths to wine that can essentially change your life. How would you go about educating people to continue looking and searching for wines of revelation rather than listen to marketers, who have an interest, after all, in limiting that same revelation?

BN Boy, that’s a really good question. I don’t have a good answer. At some point everyone needs to have a friend, or somebody who is into wine, to expose you to an Aha! moment where you taste a great wine that is compelling and kind of leaves you speechless. It is that experience that everybody needs to have. That’s when they realize that there is something to this wine thing. My moment was when I was just starting out in wine. When I lived in California I used to go up to Napa a lot back in 1990 and ‘91. Back then you could go tasting all day in Napa for free. It was great for people just out of college, who had no money and could drink for free. But after doing this, me and my brother started to recognizing the differences between Pinot Noir and Cabernet. Wow, there must be something to this wine thing! It may not be all bullshit!

And then I had an experience in ‘91. I was at a store called Beltramos. I lived only 3 miles from there at the time. I believe it was the ‘86 d’Yquem that was just being released. And they were pouring it in their wine bar. At that time I did not know d’Yquem from anything. There were 3 other Sauternes they were pouring. They cost $3 for a taste of them. The d’Yquem was an additional $10 to taste. At that time I thought, Wow!, I couldn’t afford that. But there was an obviously wealthy woman there. She tried the wines, took a sip out of each one, and left. I asked the guy behind the counter if the d’Yquem was really worth $10 for just a taste? He said it was one of the best wines made in the world, “You should try it.” He let me take over the wines the lady left. The d’Yquem was my Aha! wine. It floored me. I had never ever smelled or tasted such an amazing array of things. It was indescribable. I could not find the words… My perspective on wine changed immediately. I began reading books on wine, going to Napa, not to just get loaded, but to actually meet with winemakers and learn about wine. The passion just went crazy after that. Then we became serious collectors. That was our downfall! (laughs)

To get people jazzed about wine they need to taste something that blows them away, and that they can’t quite put into words. For a friend of mine, it was the ‘90 Lafite. For another it was a Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet. It’s fun to hear people tell you what wine did it for them!

Now, you are also a teacher at the local community college. How did you assume the teaching position, and in the local colleges, how long have viticulture and enology programs been offered?

BN That’s a good question. I’ve always enjoyed teaching. When I was at MIT and Stanford, and U.T. Austin, I had the opportunity to teach mathematics classes here and there. I’ve taught Calculus and Differential Equations, Probability Theory, even a Pascal Programming class, and it was always a lot of fun. And when I moved here to Walla Walla in 2008, I was tasting wine at an event over at Dunam Cellars, and I started talking to a gentleman who, after a half an hour, began asking where I went to school and what was my background. He suddenly asked, “Can you teach viticulture?” “Sure!” When I was at Davis I took all the classes in both viticulture and winemaking. So it happened that the previous instructor had unexpectedly passed recently. So again I began teaching in January of 2009. I took over the viticulture position.

That having been said, I just resigned a couple of weeks ago. I did enjoy the teaching aspect of it quite a bit. Community College is an interesting place. You have students from very wide backgrounds. Teaching in places like Stanford, everybody has a similar background. They have a similar intellectual capacity. At a community college you have students that are super bright to those who I could not quite figure out why they were there. It was a little bit frustrating at times. But I had more frustration with the management there, rather than the students.

I took the tack that I would teach roughly 50% of the viticulture material that we did at Davis. I figured that was a reasonable target. But on no less than 5 separate occasions, the director of the program came in said that I had to dumb down the material. The last time I was approached was in April. I then knew this was not the right place for me to teach. I had tried to make some adjustments. But when eventually I was teaching only 25% of the material they should be learning, I really considered it less than a viticulture class then a viticulture-like class. I didn’t feel good about teaching it. I think the management there is a bit misguided. With the rising competition from other programs at other schools, it makes no sense to take ours out of contention.

At Washington State University (WSU) they recently hired a great, great director, Dr. Henick-Kling. He’s very well known in viticultural and enology circles. He’s going to raise that program up to probably compete with UC Davis at some point. I talked with him, and I was thinking of doing my PhD there. He gave me a run down of his vision where WSU is going to go. If he executes, it’s going to be a great program. It will produce 40 to 50 undergraduates a year, and 10 or so Master students a year. And you’ve got other programs cropping up in Yakima and South Seattle; and then we have Walla Walla Community College that wants to diminish the quality of their program. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a bit short-sighted.

That is unfortunate. They may well be in the process of becoming an irrelevant institution just when the region needs qualified people the most. I hope the transition is not too jarring, but about pesticides, I’ve noticed that a number of vineyards in the valley, even some near Cayuse, a biodynamic property, are fringed or surrounded by apple orchards and other crops that require a substantial use of pesticides. I was told that Japan, for example, demands perfect apples. Many tons come from the Walla Walla Valley. Now, for someone who aspires to something like an organic status for their vineyard, what are the tensions, if any, between fruit farmers and grape growers? I asked this question of the winemaker at Buty. He said that although the fruit trees bordering his property are heavily spray, he just doesn’t pay attention to its impact on his vineyard! So, what is going on?

BN I can’t imagine how there couldn’t be conflict because of the proximity of these orchard sites to vineyards. They really are often on top of one another. As best as could have been done, they have put restrictions on the application and the timing of the sprays. They are not allowed to spray if the winds are more than 3 or 4 miles an hour to contain the drift, for example. Now, on the local basis you can’t tell a specific orchard owner that they can’t spray something that is legal for them to apply. There is this whole question of legality versus sustainability, organic and biodynamic. So just because you can spray something, doesn’t mean you should. And if you are going to spray something, then you’ll probably want to do it in the least invasive manner as possible. So overall there is a great deal of friendship and trust between the growers that they are not going to do something that is going to damage their neighbor’s crop. People here are very cognizant and willing to work together, which is great.

That being said, if you have a biodynamic site and your neighbor does not, how do prevent somethings from coming over? Some drift is inevitable. In fact, the biggest case is probably 2,4-D. This is something a lot of the wheat farmers like to use to contain weeds. However, 2,4-D is extremely toxic to vines. I mean, just a small amount of 2,4-D drift coming onto your vines causes serious damage; you will essentially see the arrest of the photosynthetic capability of the vine once just a little bit of 2,4-D gets drifted onto it. With this we have been seeing a little bit of contention between people using 2,4-D versus people who don’t want it used because it is affecting their grapevines. Some of these things need to be sorted out. But the spirit is generally one of cooperation.

And could you discuss the difficult issue of the local migrant labor force? What is the local mentality?

BN Hmm. Ask 10 people you’ll get 10 different opinions. In general, while I would prefer people to be properly documented – when we came over, we’re immigrants, we had to go through the whole process, the Green Card, the Passport – I would appreciate everybody to do that and respect the laws of the country. But we realize that there are some kinds of labor Americans don’t want to do. The laborers here during harvest are great people. They want to work. They are very industrious. They work hard and get the job done effectively. It needs to be addressed at the Federal level. I’m kind of for giving amnesty for the people who are already here, and getting them appropriately documented. This might curtail future people from coming in. But all the workers I’ve met here have all been tremendously great people.

I must congratulate you and your brother on your extraordinary success. You’ve gone from 0 to 60 in nothing flat. You’re one of the brightest individuals I’ve ever met. Maybe you should become the president of the community college! What are your plans for the future? What are you academic plans, if any?

BN I still do have aspirations to complete my PhD. I have worked in Theoretical Mathematics, kind of at the cusp of Electrical Engineering, so I toy with the idea of going back to mathematics or possibly doing something in Plant Physiology or Viticulture. Right now my focus is to get Rasa to be successful. I think we are headed on the right trajectory. Our wines are improving. We’re just beginning to get positive praise from the critics. We’re having the major critics coming through right now. Jay Miller was here just a couple of weeks ago. Tanzer is coming soon. I can see success on the horizon. Once that is done, I think I’ll pursue my PhD.

An extraordinary pleasure, Billo. Thank you.

BN Thank you, Ken.

Admin

From Tasting Room To Winery With Sean Boyd of Rotie Cellars

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:40:47 +0000

Anonymity. It is one of the great difficulties facing the young winemaker. How to break through the wall of advertorial noise, the clamor, protectively surrounding established labels? The quality is there. The dedication, the labor. But absent good fortune or dumb luck, the new kid on the block faces a long slog toward much deserved recognition. And this is as it should be within the marketing ecosystem. Indeed, during my recent participation in the Wine Bloggers Conference there was not an ‘official’ word spoken of a number of very good small producers, Sapolil Cellars, Stephenson Cellars, Kerloo and, of course, Rôtie. To be mentioned in the ‘official’ literature costs money the little guy does not always have. So it falls to independently-minded bloggers, caring only for wines of quality and of story, to pound the pavement to find them.

And Sean Boyd of Rôtie Cellars has very good karma, if I may put it that way. For so great is the reservoir of good will and reputation for quality he has built up within the Walla Walla wine community that his efforts are on the minds of the locals. It is for this reason tha when researching an entirely different story, I stumbled into Vintage Cellars and met the exquisite Megan Bosworth working there. She told me there was someone I should meet, a certain winemaker I should know about. Come back at 5 o’clock. I did, and met Rôtie’s lovely marketing whiz Nicole Rivinius, also an employee of Vintage Cellars, and Sean Boyd himself. The results may be read here.

Ms. Rivinius worked the next day to diligently arrange a tasting at Rôtie’s freshly minted tasting room. I dragged several important wine writers along, including Hoke Harden, Remy Charest and Joe Roberts. Hoke Harden over at Elixir Vitae has written a very entertaining and informative piece on our experience there.

What follows is an account of the balance of my time with Mr. Boyd. I should mention that I was asked not to reveal certain vineyards from which Mr. Boyd sources some of his fruit. I have honored that request.

In The Tasting Room

Admin I like this. It’s a nice space. Simple.

Sean Boyd This is Nicole’s sanctuary. She sells the stuff; I just make it. Let’s get you some bottles. You have to promise me that you go to Saffron, the best restaurant here in town. Well, that’s the line-up. The VDP, the vin de pays, which means country wine, has some of my most expensive fruit. But it just wouldn’t blend into the Northern. I make about 70 barrels a year, and I sell off about 30. I pick the best barrels that I possible can for the wine club. So nobody really gets this. Let me find you a box…

These are for me? Are you shittin’ me?

SB Yes. You got to taste the wines to see if you like them. You’ve got to open these f*ckers up, shake them up, because they’re ’08s. Open them up in the morning. They’ll hang very well. They’re very tight.
Our white is a Roussanne and Viognier, a 50/50 blend. The ’09s will be 50% Viognier, 30% Roussanne, and 20% Marsanne. Marsanne is my new favorite grape. The ‘08 was a little heavy handed with the Roussanne, I think. I was really trying to dial in the first year by playing with Roussanne. I learned a lot. It’s a very heavy, viscous grape. I stopped it from going through secondary fermentation, so it’s as crisp as they come. It’s definitely elegant, but its got a weighty back-end. You only really realize how much acid it has when you have it with food because it really clears the palate. But you still think of it as having gone through secondary. So adding Marsanne really helped in ‘09. Sommeliers love it, but they’re definitely in the minority. We definitely have a good following with the white, but not everybody is there. Some say, “Ooh! That’s a little different. But there is no oak and no butter!?”

The Southern is 70% Grenache, 15% Mourvédre, 15% Syrah, all from Horse Heaven Hills. That is the one that does well with awards. The Northern, co-fermented Syrah and Viognier, comes from 4 different vineyards. Definitely give these babies some air. Please. Please, please.

These will be much appreciated. I have a bit of a European palate. Living in California can be difficult… And I’m not crazy about grotesque amounts of oak. You know the story…

SB Hopefully you don’t mind grotesque amounts of fruit! Are you going to drink wine tonight?

I’ve got some writing to do. Yes.

SB Here’s one from the last four cases of ‘07 [55% Grenache, 35% Syrah, 10% Mourvédre]. These cases came back from California battered and bruised from the transit. I have no clue what happened to them. So try that tonight.

Thank you, Sean. It’s extraordinarily generous of you.

SB Hey, you’ve got to buy off the Press, even if you get shitty stories off of it. That’s just the way the world works. (laughs)

Well, in my case, what I typically do is just turn on the mic. I then will transcribe verbatim, along with my questions and narrative ornaments, of course. This is an extreme case, but I recently interviewed Tim Thornhill of Parducci. I had to get completely the hell out of the way for that one. But I like minimal intervention, a more documentary approach.

SB That’s how we sell wine. I had a guy selling wine for me in Seattle. I asked him, “Jesus! How are you selling all this wine?” He used to say, “Well, what I do is ask for a wine list and a menu when I first sit down. I open up the wines. I act like I’m looking at both menu and wine list. I let them all talk; they all like talking. And all I do is nod once and a while; and they buy.” I thought that was ingenious! Everybody likes to hear themselves talk, especially in this industry. There are so many egos and heads out there.

In The Winery

Sean Boyd This is my playground. Here in this winery we’ve got Wines of Substance, which it Waters’ second label. They split some with Gramercy. I think Gramercy has 10% ownership in Substance; Waters has 90%. Waters does about 3,000 cases; Substance is probably about 10,000 or 12,000 cases. And Gramercy makes their wine independently here. They are probably pushing 5-6,000 cases.

It’s kind of a crush pad facility?

SB Well, it’s definitely Waters’ facility. It’s so capital intensive to build a winery. So us little gutter dogs like to come in, and for a reduced salary I make Rôtie Cellars here. It works well. I wasn’t born with $1,000,000 in the bank, or $5,000,000, which is probably be what it would take to get a nice facility.

So basically, the fruit comes in half-ton bins. Then you go into either 3/4 or 1/2 ton fermenters. We love stainless steel. These are the best ones, these round, hot tub tanks. We had these designed so that we could control the fermentation temperature. If it gets too hot the yeast eats itself up. That death phase just kicks right in. Then you struggle through your fermentation. But if you can keep it at 75-78 degrees, then it is a nice, cool fermentation. It finishes a lot smoother. I really like having control. As the fruit is nearing dry, it’s nice to be able to also plug them in and heat them up. The worst thing you can do to wine is leave a little sugar in there for microbial growth. If I could have a winery loaded with these, it would be a no-brainer.

By how much does the temperature vary in the Fall, I mean after harvest?

SB September is still pretty warm; but in October it is down to, well, here we get this diurnal shift, so it’s down to 45 degrees in the night, which is fine for barrels. Anything under 58 degrees is pretty good. We do almost all the fermentation indoors. We like to try and keep our VAs low. The coolness helps that. We do a lot of whole cluster fermentations, so those require some pump-overs, though we prefer to punch down. It’s fun to be able to have lots of small fermentations because you can really play around with what yeasts you’re using; you can try different lots, some with stem, some without.

The blending program here is based on the idea that you don’t just go off of the vineyard and how prestigious it is, or how much you loved the last year, or how fantastic it was when you picked it. It’s more along the lines of tasting everything every month. So if I have 7 different vineyards of Syrah, I’ll blind taste them with people whose palates I really respect. I don’t want to know what they are. I want to know what I like the most, not what vineyard I want to have in a bottle. Then it’s fun. You can figure out what you like. Some vineyards really surprise you. Doing it blind helps.

Some of the wines we’ll try today will include Grenache. I’ve just blended 2 blocks in their 13th and 14th leaf off of Horse Heaven Hills, from nice south-facing slopes, one is 28 brix, one is 24 brix. I’ve blended those because they had interesting phenols going on. Then there are 8 barrels of another Grenache, the vineyards of which is even further down the river. It’s turned out to be some of my best Grenache; 24 and 1/2 brix. It was picked in early November, really rare, because usually we have a freeze that come into Washington State by then; but this site is so hot, and as we talked about yesterday, it’s the kick-ass area for Rhones, for Grenaches and Mourvédres. It enjoys a super-long cycle, very temperate. It’s magical for those varietals (sic). You just have to find all the crazy people that started growing them 15 years ago! They are the fun ones. Shall we taste?

Yes, of course. One quick technical question. How many punchdowns a day?

SB Three. It depends. Your fermentation tells you what’s going on. If you’re smelling H2S you have to make Nitrogen additions. A punchdown can tell you a lot. If it was Pinot Noir, we’d go much lighter on it. We’d probably cover it. We’d let that heat and moisture just kind of work itself out. But with Grenache and Syrah you’re given a lot of leeway. It’s hard to beat them up too much. It’s just keeping the cap wet. Let’s taste through.

You have distributors locally. What about back East, or California, for that matter?

SB In California the market is just dead. We sold out of our ’07s. And California still had 21 cases. But everybody seemed to want deals and deals and deals because the market is so saturated down there. So we pulled it. We’ll sell it here. I don’t want to make deals that will cheapen my brand. Seattle is my major market. There are not too many in Portland yet. Of the distribution, about 20% of production goes straight to Seattle. Most of the rest goes out of the tasting room. It’s a double-edged sword. You want to sell it as close to retail as possible, but it is really important to service the accounts in Seattle so that you are seen. So that costs a certain percentage of the portfolio.

As we taste through the barrels, Sean explains his love of Grenache, especially when dominant in Châteauneuf-du-Papes. He rhapsodizes over Cornas, another passion we share. Some of the barrels are full of violets and roses, odors of an English garden spilling out. The Grenache in other barrels is lighter, leaner, almost Pinot in character. Still other barrels, whether of Syrah or Grenache, are bowls of fat blueberries, and marked by the occasional reductive character, mushroom and forest floor. Selection after barrel selection is of a very distinctive character. I begin to understand what Sean means by the winery being his playground. The blending opportunities are extraordinary. It is almost like the range of admixtures one might find in a perfumery. Sean’s talent is clearly in finding diverse vineyards from both within and without the AVA, and from varied elevations, that conform to his disciplined understanding of Rhone varietal correctness. And vineyard site variety is key. After all, for a Syrah pH that pushes 4 on the Walla Walla Valley floor, but that possesses a mid-palate he wants to preserve, Sean’s trick is not to add water or to acidulate (as one might with an estate designation), but to blend the softer expressions with, say, 24 degree brix juice with very high acidity from another locale. We were not able to taste the Mourvédre or Cinsault. It was being held at another facility.

SB The first year I didn’t have enough contracts. But now I am able to pick and choose which vineyards and barrels I use. People ask why didn’t I try to extract more. That’s ridiculous. Grenache is mean to be a lighter color, leaner. Of some lots, I don’t tell too many people where I get it. I just say ‘down the river from Horse Heaven.” Can you leave the specific vineyard out?

Of course.

I take one last picture of Mr. Boyd, one among his favorite barrels. I then take my leave, smarter, pleased to have played a roll, however small, in the celebration of this guy. He has good friends in Ms. Bosworth and Ms. Nivinius. He owes them a beer, or two.

Admin

Sean Boyd of Rotie Cellars, Walla Walla

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:16:56 +0000

One of the great advantages of arriving in Walla Walla earlier than the commencement of the Wine Bloggers Conference is the people you meet outside the official program. Always one to stray, I have been very fortunate to happen upon an excellent young winemaker, Sean Boyd, owner of Rôtie Cellars. He makes some of the finest Rhone expressions in Washington State that I have had the pleasure to taste. EVER. He sells out quickly. His wines are sought after by sommeliers in Seattle, and they are very popular here. But he’s a small producer. And should he grow it will only be if he is certain that his fundamental winemaking philosophy remains firm. A glimpse of his approach, his ethos:

“The whole point of Rotie Cellars is to make traditional Rhone Blends with Washington State fruit. So what do traditional Rhone blends mean to me? To start with, they mean lower alcohol, less ripe, less wood, balanced, finesse driven, mouth coating wines.”

But as I can personally attest, this is no mere marketing b.s. He believes what he says. And spend a few minutes with the man and it becomes crystal clear that he’s having the time of his life life making wine. The funny thing is is that he would be the first to shy away from the hype, to just laugh off the praise. As he says, “I’m just the janitor.” He believes all the quality his wines will ever have is achieved in the vineyard. Site location is of paramount importance, especially in the wide open spaces of the Walla Walla AVA and beyond.

The assembled bloggers for this weekend’s conference are fortunate that Côtie Cellars has just opened a tasting room that will be open tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. Sparsely decorated, with only lonely orchids blooming, you simply must make time to drop in while there are still wines of his to taste. It is located a couple of blocks from the Marcus Whitman, at 31 E. Main Street, Suite 216.

Though it is not my custom or style, I will make an exception and provide tasting notes on another occasion. For now enjoy a little time with the gentleman.

Admin So you like Rhone varieties?

Sean Boyd Yeah. Naming my winery Rôtie Cellars is a little cheeky, but I just wanted to focus on making what I love to drink. I thought it was a fad ten years ago, but it was always one of those constants. You know, when you start drinking wine, for me, it was Zins. I started with Zins out of Paso Robles. I started there. Then you realize your love for other wines. You’ve filled up your cellar and one day realize you can’t drink anything out of your cellar because you think they’re all disgusting. You’ve moved onto Pinots. Then you move on as your wine education develops. Then you move back to what you’ve always loved; for me, Rhones.

Now, Cote Rôtie’s have higher acids, firm tannins, need aging…

SB For me it’s lower alcohol, less manipulation, finding sites that grow the vines very well. Walla Walla is a horrible place to grow Grenache. It’s a horrible place to grow Mourvèdre. Super long cycles, even longer than Cab. When you think about where Grenache and Mourvèdre come from, you think hot sites. Walla Walla is a much cooler site than a lot of the places around Washington. Now, I don’t want to put wines out that just say ‘Walla Walla’ on them to sell bottles. It’s more about finding the best spots to grow the grapes. With Grenache and Mourvèdre, the best spots are along the Columbia River. Super high winds, south-facing slopes, so I found Horse Heaven Hills and north of the Hood River where you have the gorge… you have these constant winds. You don’t get hit by winter frosts.

Grenache is a very temperamental grape. It comes from hot climates. It does not like cold weather. So during the winters around Walla Walla the vine starts deteriorating at around 7 degrees F. Syrah, Cab, Merlot, they start deteriorating between -3 and -12 F. And so if you have a 24 to 36 hour period of sub-zero, which we do every three or four years here in the valley, people are having to cut it all back. And they’re wondering why it’s not waking up in the spring. The reason is that it just doesn’t like cold weather. But if you have that constant flow from the wind, when the temperature stays in the teens at sites nearer this gigantic river, the Columbia rolling through, it helps keep the ambient temperature down, plus you’ve got this wind flow. So for me, that whole area is going to be fantastic for Grenache.

That for me is the highlight of Washington State, those Rhone varietals. I’m picking stuff that’s 24-25 brix, letting it hang until early November; it comes off with fantastic acidity. Because of the long cycle, you get those fantastic ripe-picked characteristics, where it’s phenolically ripe yet it is lower alcohol. So, finding spots that grow grapes well is the battle. If you’re more focussed on estate vineyards, where you’re predicated on Riesling to Cab in the same 40 acre parcel, on the same plot of land, that makes no sense to me. You’re going to have different ripening times all throughout it. Right now we have this incredible reservoir, especially with the crash of the economy, people are dropping out of vineyards left and right. So you’re able to find these incredible contracts, five acres for five years with an option for another five years. I’ll pay the going rate, no problem, with a 5% escalation clause, of course. Let’s see if we can manage it a little bit better. I want to chop it back to 2 1/2 tons per acre. Let’s just see where it goes from there. This after they’ve been producing 4 1/2 to 5 tons an acre because people are just looking for ordinary table wine. My idea is to concentrate the fruit, make some really fresh, high acidity wine by selective green cropping inside and outside of the canopy. Then it starts getting exciting.

So you source along the Columbia Gorge?

SB Yes. All throughout the Gorge. That’s Grenache and Mouvèdre. Now, the advantage of Walla Walla is the Syrah. Walla Walla is Syrah. It’s too cool, the cycle’s just not long enough; some years it’s fantastic, but for me it’s not long enough for Cab. It’s fantastic for Merlot; it’s a little earlier cycle than Syrah. But for Syrah it is just perfect here. It grows really well in the valley. Just beautiful, silky smooth tannins, plenty of color, just the way I like it. You can get reductive down on the rocks to super bright up on the loess… it’s a great spot for Syrah.
And I like to bring in a little bit of edge with lots of stem fermentation.

So you include stems? I love that. It’s considered heresy in certain parts of California.

SB Absolutely I use stems. A lot of it has to do with the sorting machines. The just chop away at the stems. You’re getting all these fractures, the little cuts, when chopped up by the de-stemmer. And if you don’t have a secondary sorting table, vibrating or what not, and you have guys picking out absolutely every little bit of green out of there, you’re not necessarily going to want that. You’re going to have greenness coming into your wine. At least if you do it with whole cluster, you’re getting away from all those little cuts that are happening when you’re sending it through a de-stemmer. It’s $150,000, $200,000 to get proper de-stemming equipment and sorters. It would be nice to have that kind of equipment to decide. If your stems are super, super green then maybe we need not to use them. It will bring in too much pyrazine.
Cab, you can’t really get away with putting lots of stems in. But with Syrah you don’t get those pyrazine issues, as you do with Bordeaux varietals. They would be super green: asparagus, green bean, pickles… but with Syrah using the stems really gives you that spice, that edge, it gives you that stinky funk that makes things interesting; so that it’s not just a bowl of fresh fruit.

I imagine you use a bladder press.

SB Yes, it’s a bladder press. We take all the free run out and mark them. Then with pressing we go up to about a bar, and we stay there after six or seven cycles. Some of the press juice is the best out of Syrah. We don’t do extended macerations. Most of the fermentations are done in 15 to 16 days. I’m not worried about color or extraction, and so some of the press stuff really gets nice tannin in there. I don’t like to rack. You leave the lees in there. Of course, you don’t want 4 inches of lees! But a good 1 or 2 is fine. Keep it sustained at the bottom of the barrel, keep it really topped, and as long as you’re not adding oxygen and that it goes through secondary, you’re fine. Then you become a janitor! This is really what winemakers are, glorified janitors. How you can get an ego about being a glorified janitor I’ll never know. Everything important is about getting it off the vine. You know what? I ike to be a janitor!

How did you get your wine into the right hands? I mean, there are dozens and dozens of new wineries yet there is a lot of buzz about Côtie Cellars. How did you break through?

SB I think it’s that I really enjoy what I am doing. On the marketing end, I hire the right people. Actually, it’s cool. I have two people. They came to me. What more perfect situation can you have than people coming to you? But it’s simply that good wine will sell. People say Syrah is a bad word right now. Syrah doesn’t sell. Blah, blah, blah. If you chase fads you’re going to get burned. You got to do what you love.

I started with Grenache. I got a contract suddenly. Somebody had just backed out of half a block and I had three hours to decide. There were a lot of people lined up to buy the fruit. But I had to take all of it. So I said I’d call my wife. I hung up the phone and literally hit redial. I knew my wife wasn’t going to like this! She was going to think it was a really bad idea. So I bought every last drop of it! Sign me up for the three acres. That’s what started it off. I knew it was a great site. When you know you’re getting this fantastic 14th leaf fruit of Grenache that people would fight over if they knew it was for sale, you can’t say no.

I just don’t want to mess it up, the wine. And there’s a lot of messing up here: like too much oak, like tartaric acid, like water… And then you get into the big boys and it just goes exponential from there. You start talking about RO, taking alcohol out, all those things that fool you. Super ripe and tons of acid, yet low alcohol… what the fuck is going on? Again, it’s about finding the right sites. Right now I have about 24 tons of Grenache under contract. I only use maybe twelve. I sell the fruit off for the same price I pay for it because I don’t want to piss off the growers. But I know that as were moving forward and things change, I want to have access to all the older vine Grenache so I can really work with it. Syrah is now very plentiful. So I don’t really worry about it. It’s easy and it’s fun to work with.

How important is the appellation designation, Walla Walla?

SB The winery is in Walla Walla. But for me it’s Washington State. I could care less if it’s Walla Walla. There are some incredible wines and vines being grown in Washington State, and Oregon. I could care less if it’s Walla Walla AVA. I think that’s doing a wine a disservice. I think it’s cool to do single vineyard Syrahs out of here, but to predicated yourself in Walla Walla just for the label, just because we’re getting in the magazines, is just ridiculous. If you’re fruit is a Cab you’ve gotta be in Horse Heaven Hills, you gotta’ be in Red Mountain, you know, super hot, really fun, floral, beautiful sites; it’s definitely not Walla Walla, for me. If you move into Merlot and Syrah, and some fantastic whites coming out of here, then it’s Walla Walla. For me the AVA does not matter. It’s the vineyard.

So Walla Walla is still working out its identity.

SB Absolutely. If you look at the vines I would say that half are between 7 and 14 years of age in the valley. There are some that are 35, like Windrow and Seven Hills East. The majority is young, with tons and tons of new plantings on the way. In France 35 years is still considered juvenile. We’re definitely trying to get our bearings, dial it in. It didn’t help that we had a huge frost in ‘04. But you can’t worry about it. You have to think of doing what’s best for the vines; not what’s going to burn into my profits. Right now we’re looking long-term. The only way you can be long-term in the wine industry is by putting out a quality product. If you don’t, then you might as well go do something else.

Tell me something of the water rights issues here. I’ve heard a lot about the ‘use it or lose it’ model.

SB Yes. If you don’t use it then you lose it after five years.

So it has to average out to whatever inches you’re initially allocated, or, if you’ve gone from fruit trees to grapes, for example, whatever has been grandfathered in.

SB Correct. A lot of people donate it back. If you put in a drip irrigation system you’re never going to need that type of water you need for growing trees, like the old apple and cherry farmers who would do overhead irrigation. I bought a small piece, ripped out all the trees, and we were going to irrigation. The government was going to give us money because of the water savings. That meant we had to donate water back to the river, but yet we got money back for that. They were very excited about it. They paid for all the main lines, the pipe, there were discounts on the pump, all these fantastic things where you’re getting, even as a first time farmer, 75% of the cost of your drip system, materials and installation. That’s fantastic. You’re helping the water table by using less. You have to use drip irrigation. Hopefully you find spots that can grow grapes without using it. But you can’t really do that in the juvenile stage of a vine’s life. You have to be very careful.

If I had endless amounts of money I would say that for the first 6 years not to take a crop off of a vine. Just get it up, grow some wood, give it what it wants but not take anything from it. And then roll into it. But economics being what they are, the 4th year you can start to make rosé out of it. Hopefully you’re in a spot where you’ve thought far enough ahead that you’re, down the line, not necessarily needing to water. Hopefully they’re big enough, the vines are strong enough. If they’re tree trunks after a few years, then you know damn well that it’s a fantastic place to grow that varietal. The can withstand a hell of a lot more if their 5 and 6 inches in diameter than they can when they’re one inch in diameter.

On a personal note, how does your wife feel about your new calling?

SB She’s from New Jersey. So, every time we come onto the other side of the mountain she says to me, “What the hell are we doing over here?” But then we get to Walla Walla and it’s ok. She’s also a school psyche. We’ve got the prison, and one step beneath that we’ve got the wineries and the service industries. It’s a small community and there are issues in it you don’t find in Seattle where they sweep in under the rug and move to south Tacoma. But here it’s a small community. You get all walks of life.

So a lot of the fruit here is hand-picked.

SB Absolutely. Talk about work. They guys who pick the fruit are unbelievable. It’s amazing when you walk out there and try and do a bin or two yourself. It’s really impressive. I won’t even pretend that I could do that work. We’re janitors. Those guys are laborers. They get paid pretty well, which is good; but it’s only seasonal. We’ve definitely seen the crunch with all the immigration bull shit. People want to work. And they’re willing to do it. You need to give them a shot. It’s how America was founded. The tough move up. Hard work is supposed to count for something.

Great guy, great wines. He left for France today, I believe. A pity the blogging folks could not meet him. But his wines may be found around town, especially in the tasting room. Again, I strongly recommend his work.

Admin

Domaine Du Prince, AOC Cahors, Terroir And Quality

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:03:11 +0000

Domaine du Prince is located in the south of the commune of Saint-Vincent-Rive-d’Olt. A few kilometers from the Lot River, just 15 minutes by car west of Cahors, all of its vineyards are situated atop a plateau; and as with all regional plateaux above the Lot, they share what are generally agreed to be the finest soils of AOC Cahors. Though the geochemistry is complex, a plateau’s high clay and calcareous, limestone soil blend helps maintain pH balance and improves water retention, so stabilizing a vine’s nutrient requirements, especially important in the warmer clime of these higher elevations. The wines from plateau vineyards tend to have higher acidity and, with proper canopy management, sugar and phenolic ripeness more often coincide with each harvest. The Malbec grape grown here will promise lower yields, richer aromas and firmer tannins. And should Merlot, an authorized blending grape, also be grown it, too, will share in this promise.

While in Cahors I was consistently told that the plateau terroir not only offers the greatest growing and slow ripening advantages, but that the finished wines are ‘classical’ expressions of the AOC. Though less than a third of all wine production comes from diverse plateaux vineyards, most sold under private labels, and though negociants typically buy from vineyards planted in alluvial soils, I cannot be certain that in a blind tasting I could always pick a wine from the plateau. But one wine that for me did emerge as a benchmark for what is meant by ‘classical’ is the beautiful wine Lou Prince from the Domaine du Prince.

First a bit about the family. Genealogy traces the Jouves name back to the 16th century, though a reader of old French could take it back much further. Domaine du Prince takes its name from an ancestor who while in Paris brought some wine to the King of France (another version has it the Tsar of Russia). Because he drew near the King this ancestor was nicknamed by his village the ‘Prince’. Even on official documents, on tax papers of the era, for example, the name reads Prince Jouves. The Jouves’ family has been in the wine business for generations, though they also grew cereals, vegetables and raised diverse farm livestock. It was only about 40 to 50 years ago that the vineyards of the Domaine began to be the main product; they still have cattle, sheep, and grow some cereals, but only for family use. Other farms in the area have also shifted solely to commercial wine production. This is not too surprising given that the soils are not suited for many agricultural products other than the vine, and that water for irrigation is scarce. It is to the fecund plains and valleys nearer the river that historically many farmers turned.

Domaine du Prince produces a number of different wines on their 27 hectares of which just 2 are used for Lou Prince. This chosen vineyard, roughly 38 years old, yields around 2,400 bottles, yes, bottles per year. Recent notice of this wine has led to the sober prediction that demand will far outstrip supply in the very near future. They already sell more than they produce, having to market increasingly scarce holdings of older vintages. Owners and winemakers Hélène and husband Didier Jouves, along with his brother Bruno, have limited land available to expand production that will reliably guarantee the same high quality. A small select block on the same terroir in the immediate area has been planted recently. These young vines should be productive in three to four years.

A wine producer working a single vineyard, Hélène explains to me, knows his land, knows individual vines by heart, when to harvest and, therefore, strongly senses what will be the quality of the finished wine. Drainage, cluster sensitivity to rain, disease pressures, weather patterns, all are part of the knowledge gained by experience. The continuity of historical memory becomes of decisive importance. And that is why the hectares of vineyard 30 yards away will not produce the same quality. The winemaker knows he will fool no one, he knows he will not be true to himself should he dilute the specific qualities of one vineyard with the grapes of another.

The Lou Prince vineyard yields about 30 to 35 hectoliters per hectare (roughly 730 to 950 gallons) from a maximum of 4 tons of grapes, all manually harvested. The clay soils are very deep here with among the deepest rooted vines on the property. The Lou Prince vines will suffer less during the hot summer months without rain owing to the clay’s superior retention and parsimonious release of water.
Then Didier gets at the heart of the matter with the observation that very few producers in AOC Cahors really know their own terroirs. They may have some on their property, but they don’t know how to identify or use them. The recent push by the local wine authorities for higher quality has everything to do with educating winegrowers on how to properly think their land. The Malbec Days celebration itself serves to bring into focus the importance of terroir. Hélène forcefully adds,

Hélèle Jouves “His father’s generation was just doing wine. They were not doing quality wine. They were planting vines anywhere and wherever there was room. That’s how the previous generations did things. Now the young generation is learning how to use the terroir, how to work the vineyards, in order to have good wine, even though they have been raised like the old ones. It is hard for the young to make the older generation understand what it is we are doing in the vineyard. When we are doing green harvesting, for the older generation it’s like we are throwing away wine. His father [Didier's] was sick when he saw him doing it! He didn’t even want to see the vineyards. He’d say ‘It’s impossible! How can they do that!’ Now? He’s happy to sell the Lou Prince. He knows. He can tell the difference. But most of the winemakers in the Cahors area are not at that point yet. They’re still thinking that the more wine there is, the better it is.”

And of the use of chemicals in their vineyards, Domaine du Prince pursues la lutte raisonnée approach. They grow in a windy, dry place so they don’t really need to use much. Near the river, anyplace where humidity and fog are issues, they would have to think differently. But not here. They do use sulphur, and bit of copper (cuivre) but only to save the crop. This, too, is a change from the older generation when chemicals of all stripes and strengths were used whether the vines needed it or not. They wanted to be sure and used chemicals all the time, including lots of copper. Now, if it is not needed, it is not used.

From the vineyard we drove to the winery built by the Jouves family, in recent years expanded in response to their growth. Though Lou Prince may be made in miniscule quantities, the winery as a whole produces 100,000 bottles from their combined acreage. Of these, 60,000 to 70,000 bottles are sold per year out of the winery itself. Quite good for a winery which, as Hélèle says, is in the middle of nowhere. She adds that locals know of Domaine du Prince’s reputation for high quality at competitive prices. But it is all word of mouth. They do not advertise. Their interest in the export market is to help sell the balance, some 30%. Should that prove successful, they have the capacity to produce 150,000 bottles. The extra 50,000 are virtual bottles, so to say, in that they currently sell the wine in bulk to negociants. They would prefer to put it under their own label. Should the export market show interest they most certainly will move in that direction.

Hélène Jouves “Many producers would prefer to put their wine under their own label rather than sell in bulk. Not long ago selling wine in bulk was still profitable. The price was good. Little work was required. They didn’t have to pay for the bottles. It was easy and easy to sell. You wouldn’t make a lot of money, but you could get a price for what it was worth. But now, the price is so low that you no longer earn money selling in bulk. So everybody tries to give more value to these wines by selling in bottle. Also the temptation is to overcrop which drives the prices down further. To increase the quality is the key to higher prices. But when selling in bulk it doesn’t matter the quality. The price is exactly the same for good and bad wines. One doesn’t help the other.”

I should add that their Lou Prince is what is known in the region as a Charte de Qualité wine about which I shall have more to say in a later post. Suffice to say it is a new, rigorous certification program that seeks to find the finest wines from the finest terroirs in AOC Cahors. The idea is to forcefully promote to winemakers the very real relation between quality and terroir. Each year rarely more than half the wines submitted, from the beginning a small number, meet its strict tasting protocols. Indeed, so daunting are the program’s standards that many producers decline to attempt it. Many, however, do make the attempt, thereby raising the international profile of the AOC as a whole.

In any event, Domaine du Prince offers a wide variety of wines, from a ‘bag in a box’, to the Charte de Qualité Lou Prince, and everything in between. And all but the ‘bag in a box’ are under cork. Lafite corks in the case of Lou Prince. (Cork closures are near universal in the AOC Cahors.) Though they have never had a tainted bottle of Lou Prince, TCA occasionally finds its way into other bottlings. More disturbing is the anti-cork attitude of some importers, Chinese and American principally. Some insist on screwcaps as a condition for doing business.
Back in the tasting/bottling room every effort is on display. A customer finishes his purchase. Off in one corner is a pallet of Lou Prince destined for New York. Outside I hear chickens. I am given a taste of the spectacular 2005 Lou Prince. Beautiful. Then a bottle. My spirits soar.

I met the youngest of their three children, a young boy already fascinated by the vineyard. Despite the sad fact of AOC Cahors vineyards being sold because the children refuse the patrimony, thankfully another generation of Domaine du Prince winegrowers is assured.

Admin

The Terroirs of Domaine Le Bout Du Lieu, Cahors AOC

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:42:34 +0000

In the interests of economy here may be found a kind of hybrid narrative, a compilation of a series of voices, principally that of the young winemaker Lucien Dimani, the son of Arnaldo, and my editorial contribution. Direct quotes will, however, be properly attributed. The point of this exercise is to faithfully present the Domaine Le Bout du Lieu’s precise understanding of their terroirs within the broader Cahors AOC. As underlined in a previous post, the Cahors AOC is kaleidoscopic, an assemblage of shifting elements only informed, not defined, by the proximity to the profoundly ox-bowed Lot river, vineyard orientation and canopy management, elevation, soil type, northern or southern exposure, blending percentages – if done- of Malbec (70% minimum in any case), of Merlot and Tannat, the blind luck of microclimate variations during the growing season, the skill of the vigneron and, it must be said, politics. What adds to the complexity is that all these elements are intertwined in such a way as to render nearly impossible durable regional harvest predictions or even the success of any given grower. To be a winegrower in the Cahors AOC is to daily roll the dice. Terroir has no ornamental value here. Rather, it not only frames the conversation, but it has the last word.

Preliminaries

From Cahors to Saint-Vincent-Rive-d’Olt is about 13 miles due west; not far, but the winding road adds time. The village has a population of 183, and less than 400 including the surrounding villages of Douelle, Parnac and Luzech. All along the road may be seen vineyards, many in the yards of private residences. The first village we passed through was Douelle which translates as ’stave’, as in the stave of a barrel.
Many, many years ago this was home to a number of cooperages producing barrels for the regions’ winemakers. Nowadays there are none remaining in the Lot region. They went out of business because larger cooperages outside the region offered better prices, and the barrels were made of a different kind of oak than the one locally grown. Different flavors came from oak from other areas. Local oak was a bit ‘green’. Political tensions within the Lot followed upon the choice by regional winemakers for barrels from outside the local economy. But that was 70 years ago.
Concrete tanks became rather more popular for the small to average sized winery because of the differences in the time and labor required for racking. Spent barrels would continue to be used owing to their greater micro-oxygenation proficiency, but imagine one tank verses fifty barrels: racking one tank takes two hours; racking fifty barrels takes two days.

Upon entering Luzech, past a small, well-stocked open market, we drove up a hill to a magnificent vista. It was from there that one could easily observe the alluvial to terrace, hillside to plateau terroirs, and specifically nearly all of the holdings of Le Bout du Lieu, a small part of which are on the first terrace; their larger vineyards are found on the second and third. (To clearly photograph them from the vista is another matter! A layer of fog played havoc.)

A bit about Luzech situated on what was once an island in an extreme meander of the Lot river. Years ago, before the building of dams and other water control structures, this particular stretch of the Lot was quite wild and treacherous, a tumult of powerful currents. Those traveling by boat, merchants in the main, would begin at the foot of the village and by the end of the day would have only traveled the length of the ox-bow, again arriving at Luzech at night. What took one minute to walk, was a challenging one day journey by barge. Indeed, many sailors lost their lives, so many that a little commemorative chapel was built at the end of the ‘island’ opposite Luzech. Now, the river’s flow is regulated by dams, land loss by canals, the flood events, too, are therefrom diminished.

Incidentally, from the vista point it is estimated that 15% of the total acreage under vine cultivation in the whole of the Cahors AOC may be seen. It is obvious that this AOC ought to be one of the premier wine touring destinations in all of Europe. Plans are underway to more aggressively promote exactly this. Just 50 years ago a larger percentage of the land was dedicated to a wide range of agricultural activity. Farms formerly dominated the region. Vegetables, corn, wheat, walnuts, fruits, pig, cow and sheep husbandry were the mainstays of the local economy. The vine now plays a far greater role.

Frosts remain a great threat. Even as recently as last week the cloudless night sky sent temperatures plummeting. No young shoot can take such thing. Historically, in 1956, a very late frost killed 99% of the young growth. Even with global warming frosts are a perpetual danger. Interestingly, owing to the scattered distribution of vineyards and the attendant micro-climates, damaging frosts and hails do not necessarily effect the region as a whole. Hail storms, for example, are very focussed. One vineyard may be destroyed while the neighbor’s is spared. In any event, the closer the river, the deeper the valley, so increases the risk.

With headwaters in the Pyrenees, the Lot is the greatest meandering river in all of France, with this area around Luzech having the most extreme loop. It is a tributary of the Garonne. The explanatory tile pictured above provides useful illustration.

The Terroirs

First we visit their vineyard on an alluvial terrace. Limestone and the first hints of gravel may be seen. Some say this is not a good terroir to make quality wines. Lucien is not in agreement.

Lucien Dimani “As long as you work well, you control the crop and the yield, you shouldn’t have any problem. Of course, if you want to do 8 tons an acre then here it is possible. You are close to the river. But it is something you cannot do on the second or third terraces, never mind on the plateau. The yields decline naturally the higher you go. There will not be the same quality, but here you can produce something similar. I know this because of blind tastings. I am sure some people would not believe me I tell them the wine they are drinking is from the first terrace.
These vines are from 28 to 30 years old. And this is high density for here. The number of vines in a vineyard depends where you are. If I compare it to Bordeaux it is a low density. So let’s say it is from average to high density, closer to high. There is an AOC recommended ratio, a minimum density of a vineyard, about 3000 vines per hectare. Here we have about 4500 vines per hectare. We have good results from this vineyard as long as we manage the crop and the fruit is not clustered too close together.
Trellising remains the same in all our vineyards, the same kind of canopy management. The only thing we change is sometimes the vigor management, but this bears primarily on the age of the vine and not the soil; and what wine we plan to make of these grapes. We’ll drop clusters to concentrate the flavors in the remaining grape clusters.

A lot of people are organic here, but do not always pursue certification. We have a lot of new converts as well. It has become more common. Of diseases, we have mildew and odium; but we can control them. We don’t have too much pressure. It depends on the vintage. But normally it is not something that is hard to control as long as you do your job in the vineyard. If we have to spray, we spray. If it is dry there is no reason to spray. Lutte raisonnée.

My father [Arnoldo] is the vineyard manager. He started working in the vineyard with his father when he was 6 years old. I, too, started working when I was 6 or 7, to help. A long time ago it was school and work. Now, everywhere in France there is the problem of the next generation of winegrowers. And it is even more difficult these days to find people willing to work at harvest. It’s easier in Bordeaux, but it is starting to become harder every year for hand-picking. So, 90% of the harvest is by machine, machines shared among neighbors. Here there are four properties and us. We share the harvesting machine. If tomorrow there were a law that we had to do everything by hand, no one would do it. And hand-picking is a huge cost.”

We next travelled to a second terrace vineyard.

Lucien Dimani “Here there is more gravel. This is also alluvial but with gravel. Even higher up will be found more gravel. We went a bit higher in elevation to another terroir. The root stock here is SO4. This is the oldest vineyard that we have. It is a vineyard we bought that my father took care of for 20 years. He did not plant it. He first rented it. Another, younger block is beyond the trees. This vineyard is a second terroir. There is a bigger difference between red clay and alluvial soils than between graveled and alluvial-graveled soils. Again, in blind tastings it is confusing. But if you have red clay it cannot be mistaken. Nearer the river the soils are also deeper. And the vine depth varies. Here the vines are about 8 to 10 meters down. It also depends on the vineyard density. The lower the density the roots tend to grow more horizontally.”

Then comes a higher vineyard yet, their third terroir.

Lucien Dimani “Vineyard orientation catches the maximum sun. When we do the leaf removal for air circulation and exposure we do it only on the rising sun side. Otherwise the sun will burn the fruit. Later, mid-August, when the sun is not so intense, we do the other side, but only on special plots. We only remove the leaf on the fruit; not above or below. The idea is to limit the humidity in the bunches themselves. Botrytis likes humidity. By select leaf pull we limit it. And we do de-budding when we prune. But we also do a green harvest later in the year if we have too many bunches that might become a source of disease. The fruit cluster, how tightly packed, depends on the clone. Of course, without irrigation a higher crop means lower concentration and lower quality. There is a balance between the crop and the quality. But there are limits above which the quality is not necessarily enhanced by lower yields. You may have 2 tons an acre, but if you lower the crop to 1.5 tons an acre you will find the quality will be the same in a vineyard harvesting at 2 tons. You will have lost half a ton per acre for nothing. You will have worked for nothing. It is about balance. Here in this vineyard the harvest is around 2.3 tons per acre.

This vineyard, the third terroir, sits on a small plateau. It is not strictly speaking a plateau; but we call it such because it is a flat spot on the top of a hill. The red clay is very visible. You saw the digging coming up. The surface is lighter, but if you dig it is red. The vine are between 30 and 35 years old.”

The significance of the respective soils, the terroirs overall, on the resulting wine will be explicated in a later post. For now we drove to the winery itself where I was to meet the formidable Arnaldo and his wife Monique, equal partners in all the winemaking labors. They had prepared a deep tasting of vintages and bottlings from respective terrace terroirs. A full account of this part of the visit will be written at a later date. Suffice to say for now that their hospitality and generosity was very well regarded by this traveler. I thank them. To their son, Lucien, rugby player, my narrator and teacher, and to his lovely American friend, Eileen, I, too, offer my humblest thanks for the nearly three hours they sacrificed for me.

Admin

The Terroirs Of Cahors, A Brief Primer

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:05:35 +0000

A city and its people offer to the traveler the opportunity to learn as much or as little as they wish. However, for the wine writer there is much less latitude. Cahors is a demanding AOC. There can be little true understanding without the writer’s submersion into its dizzying terroirs. As noted in an earlier post, the wines of Cahors have long been welcomed at my table. Yet choice of her wines in America has long been seriously limited. So it was that I attended a Cahors tasting in San Francisco and was spiritually transported by the rich variety. Yet even then, despite my many conversations with the patient producers attending, I could not begin to guess at the terroirs expressed, the real source of the differences. Now that I am in Cahors for the Malbec Days festival, I can begin to get answers to the new questions the San Francisco tasting awakened in me. Little could I have guessed the extraordinary lesson waiting around the next turn.

Wandering the streets of old Cahors in a jet-lagged fog early Monday morning, I saw a sign pointing to the Maison du Vins de Cahors. Just across from the train station, I walked in, barged in, if you like, and began to explore the sober working space. I was directed to the main office where I was introduced to the remarkable Jean-Marie Sigaud, President of the Union Interprofessionelle du Vin de Cahors (UIVC). With the assistance translating offered by Juliette and Maxim, I enjoyed a conversation that essentially threw me into the deep end of the pool, no more so than when I was introduced to The Map, the graphic depiction of the terroirs of Cahors. The work product of many days and hands by the Geographic Institute of the University of Toulouse, The Map, pictured below, is the non-plus-ultra of a terroirist’s education.

I shall leave the explication of its complexities for a later post. But I will say that there are 9 different terroirs classified. From the four alluvial zones, also known as the terraces, to the two different types of limestone covered slopes, up to the plateau, itself of three soil varieties. Even a cursory glance at The Map below reveals the enormous combinations afforded the winemaker, all given by the Lot’s graceful meander. Much more to come…

Admin Just how many producers are expected for the event?

Jean-Marie Sigaud We expect around 400 producers.

And of those producers, will small ones be present as well?

J-M Sigaud Not all of them. Those producing under 500 hectoliters will not be present. There are about 150 producers in the AOC making below that amount.

And where are Cahors wines sold?

J-M Sigaud You have three different markets: Export, around 20%; supermarkets make up 60%; 20% direct including tasting rooms, to tourists who come directly to the Domaine, private sellers, open markets, salons in different cities…

Why is it so difficult to find Cahors’ wines in America?

J-M Sigaud (laughs) Until 4 or 5 years ago production and consumption were balanced in the local market. Now, it is that the French drink less, not only of Cahors wine but of all wines. French people are drinking less wine. So we decided to go and begin greater exports the the United States and China.

Has there been any negative feedback from the use of the word ‘Malbec’? Traditionally the grape was called Côt or Auxerrois regionally. Some traditionalists, even in the US, think that this may be principally for marketing purposes.

J-M Sigaud There are three names. Auxerrois used to be the most used name of the grape. Traditionally it was Auxerrois. And technically it is called Côt, but more generally it is now called Malbec. So if you go to Bordeaux we will talk about Malbec because they don’t know the word ‘Auxerrois’. They don’t know what it is. We use the word Malbec because it is more internationally known. Auxerrois is only known here.

Those of us who love Cahors wines get a little bit worried that the closer one steps toward the general name most closely associated with Argentina, maybe the closer will become the winemaking techniques. We worry that the wines of Cahors will get softer, easier to drink when young. We like the purity of the Cahors expression.

J-M Sigaud The Malbec of Cahors will always reflect the difference of terroir. It will never be like the Argentine. Here we have enough rain. In Argentina they have to irrigate. We have six different terroirs in the Cahors appellation. You therefore have differences in quality.

You have the river, the first terrace, second and third. Each time you go into a deep bend in the river then you have this configuration. But you don’t have this configuration on both sides. Each time the river bends you will have a cliff on one side of the river and you will have terracing on the other.

Well, that is very helpful!

J-M Sigaud The best terroir is the third terrace and the plateau, between 200 and 300 meters high. The river itself is 120 meters above sea level. Would you like to know the nature of the terroir? Where the river flows you have this rich alluvial soil, a flood plain. That’s why it’s not very good for the Cahors vines; it is too rich. And you have the terraces which are the slopes of exposed earth over time. So, you have on one side of the river a cliff and plateau; on the other, the hillside slopes, the terraces exposed by erosion, all of which are of a different soil type and composition. In addition you have the North and the South. The North receives less sun than the South, so the South is preferred.

And there is the plateau; it is of clay, red clay. There are two types, red and white. The best terroir is red clay. We have a press document, but you are here before it is ready! The AOC is 50 kilometers long; the river makes it longer! It is about 4 or 5 kilometers wide.

And that is what you came here for; to find the difference between Argentina and Cahors?

Yes and no. I want to deepen my readers’ understanding of Cahors wines because Argentina is so much more present in the marketplace. I would like to move that in another direction, to get people to taste Cahors wines. People just don’t know Cahors. And I fear, which is to say, I know, that the Cahors style, its powerful terroir expression, and wines of similar strengths, are not well represented in America. I think Robert Parker, Coca Cola, fast food, and sweets have a lot to do with it. There are many who feel as I do. We’re looking for wines of greater finesse and character, terroir wines. We’re looking for difference. The wine of Cahors, certainly for me, and I think for others, is very much that wine.

J-M Sigaud Merci. The production of good Cahors wine is between 40 and 50 hectoliters per hectare. And the vine density is about 4,500 per hectare. About 80% is Malbec, 15% Merlot, and 5% Tannat.

And the rootstock of the vines?

J-M Sigaud In the ’70s the rootstock was SO4, and in the ’80s we had a lot of Riparia, 3309 and 41B, with a little bit of Richter [110]. And since the year 2000 we’ve used Fercal on the limestone soils of the plateau. Each producer had to take the good rootstock depending on where he was situated. It really depends on each parcel.

The harvest is around October 1st. And the harvesting degree will be between 12.5% to more than 14% of alcohol. Of course, you’ll have higher alcohol on the south side. Then you have the savoir-faire of the winemaker. The grapes will be mature, more or less, between the 1st and the 15th of October. Each producer has to decide when he wants to harvest. The more he waits, the greater the alcohol. In Cahors, despite the alcohol level, the biggest difference is the terroir in which the vines grow. Machine harvesting is done over 90% of the area with the best wines harvested by hand. Some of the producers even select individual grapes. At least one of them!

Does the Merlot mature at the same time as the Malbec?

J-M Sigaud Tannat after, Merlot a little bit before; three passes through the vineyard. The rootstock has an influence on the ripening.

I was then generously invited to lunch, but not before I laid eyes on an extraordinary map pictured above. The product of the Geographic Institute of the University of Toulouse, it is an extremely fine hand-painted representation of Cahors’ diversity. It is clear to see, once the geological principles are grasped, that Cahors AOC wines have an infinite number of expressive possibilities.
And while at lunch Jean-Marie Sigaud selected three wines from the restaurant menu, each to show how these elements bear upon the black wine in the glass, in this instance the terraces to plateau. Each of the wines, grown very near one another as the crow flies , was from an increasingly high elevation: Chateau Gaudou, Chateau Nozières, and Clos Troteligotte respectively. Though all three were very good, it was the last, Clos Troteligotte, made by the Christian Rybinski, that possessed the greatest electricity and finesse. It is from a plateau terroir, and continues a family tradition.

The conversation continued over lunch:

Do you enjoy your work as president of UIVC?

J-M Sigaud (laughs) It is a passion. The wine makes me crazy because it is such a passion, such a love for the wine. I don’t want to leave.

Are you elected to your position?

J-M Sigaud I’ve been president for 23 years, elected by the winemakers. In 2013 I will likely be leaving my position. But I am really not sure.

Well, it’s a very important time for Cahors wine. Surely they need a steady, experienced hand.

J-M Sigaud The most important thing is to meet a lot of winemakers because they all have a lot of differences between themselves. My politics is based on difference; it is difference that makes exemplary the culture of Cahors wine. Eighty percent of our winemakers are independent and 20% are in the cooperative. That is why we can have such different wines. One thing to remember is that when speaking to winemakers be sure to get your terroirs straight! (laughs) Especially for me.

Nowadays viticultural consultants speak only about the facts as they see them. To speak about terroir is not important to them. Nobody is interested in that! You are the first one to come here and ask to learn about our terroirs. (laughs)

The world has gone crazy!

J-M Sigaud Yes! You can’t speak about wine if you can’t speak about terroir. For many a wine is only a cépage and not a terroir. But here there is a new trend. Producers in Cahors want to underline the point that terroir is very important. Until now it was considered only a second thing, not the most important. Now it is both a cépage and a terroir.

Are négociants as interested in terroir here?

J-M Sigaud Yes, completely. The négociant makes a selection of different wines considering their terroirs. And they put the individual terroir on the label of the bottle. It’s a part of their communication with the public. Here it is very important.
A last word about these wines, [the ones we were drinking at lunch]. The basic principle is this: The further we leave the river, the better the terroir.

To make wine is a very personal thing. Each wine is like a portrait of a producer and his vineyard. The winemakers you want to meet here are those who while doing their job live for their passion.

END

Specific details of the multiple terroirs to come. But first I must enjoy my dessert.

Admin

Mendocino County Takes The Lead

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:45:31 +0000

On April 27th I had the distinct pleasure of attending the 2nd annual Taste of Mendocino, America’s Greenest Wine Region at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco’s Presidio. This well attended, downright crowded event, was a revelation. Living for far too long in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma, the membership of the Mendocino Winegrape and Wine Commission (MWWC), some 84 wineries and 343 winegrape growers strong, has decided enough is enough. Among their multiple initiatives is the effort to put their wines and progressive green credentials before the American public. In this time of environmental concerns, climate change, debates over ‘natural’ and biodynamic wines, of the American consumer’s evolving palate, Mendocino County has a wisdom and a vision accumulated over generations that will benefit us all to learn. From the website:

“Founded in 2006, MWWC is dedicated to sharing knowledge of the singular attributes of the winegrapes, wines and wine estates of Mendocino County with a diversity of audiences around the world.
Mendocino Winegrape & Wine Commission members benefit from research and education programs that emphasize positive relationships with winegrape and wine buyers within our own organization and extending into communities around us. Collaboratively, we place a strong emphasis on organic grape growing and specialized viticultural techniques appropriate to the dozens of grape varietals grown in our 12 diverse regions.

Mendocino County’s authentic “green” credentials are unsurpassed by any other wine region in the world. From pristine wild lands and coastline to multi-generational hands-on family farmers and winemakers, this is a region that has been at the forefront of the sustainable, organic, Biodynamic and fish friendly farming movements.

Now, whereas the county’s narrative is compelling, able to persuade drinkers to look for the region’s many and varied wines, it is the quality of what is in the glass that will keep them coming back for more. And let me tell you, the wines I tasted, only a fraction of those on display, were among the finest domestic efforts I have ever enjoyed. The acid levels were wonderfully high, the tannins firm, the oak judiciously used. The fruit was, dare I say it, pure?

Of course, these are general considerations. Mendocino County AVAs and growing regions are very different; I must confess I was somewhat perplexed at the event’s format. The differences between the Potter Valley and the Anderson Valley are enormous. And a few producers, a very few, disappointed. But with respect to varietal correctness, I was simply astonished as I moved from table to table. Expression after expression were true, soulful realizations of the their grapes. Syrahs were restrained and beautifully perfumed; Pinots, boldly fruited and transparent in the Burgundian style; the Cabernets, exquisitely balancing fruit, lower alcohol, acid and tannins; the Petite Sirahs again showcased that variety’s beguiling sensitivity to terroir; and the Zinfandels, a grape much abused these days, were tightly wound, almost abstract when compared to the awful alcoholic fruit bombs regularly detonating on our dinner tables. Perhaps most surprising were the Merlots, a grape I had largely abandoned. No longer.

These are but a handful grapes grown throughout Mendocino County. Indeed, owning to the geological complexity of the county, its boundaries seemingly drawn by a demented cartographer, it is obvious why dozens of varieties may call this region home. Yet it is also true that for this very reason that experimentation with varieties is enthusiastically embraced here. As with the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, it is very clear that California’s great learning curve of matching grape to place, vine to terroir, is being successfully realized in Mendocino County. A great many of the region’s producers are farmers, the highest compliment one may offer; true American farmers, respectful of the land, attentive to its rhythms and its greater wisdom. For they know better than most that it is only with such a disposition that honest wines may be made.

Here are a few specific producers who caught my attention. I will mention, with one exception, only the reds.

Albertina Wine Cellars. Though fruit forward and with softer tannins than I prefer, the quality of their Cabernets was quite high.

Barra of Mendocino. All organic, they offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a Sangiovese, all very good.

Bink Wines. The wines of Deb Schatzlein, present at the tasting, were among the finest of the afternoon. She makes Syrah, Pinot Noir, Merlot, and ‘Melange’, a Bordeaux-style blend. Made in small lots, I strongly recommend you sign up for her wine club. I might add that her reserved demeanor, whether from shyness or the tiresome obligation to pour her work for a room full of strangers, added to her charm. Like many of the producers in attendance, they are not your practiced ‘happy talk’ B.S.’ers, but very down to earth people, if I may put it that way.

Chiarito Vineyard. Winemaker John Chiarito offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a transcendent Nero d’Avola. (Mr. Chiarito is the first to plant this variety in the US.) All brilliant. I was given a taste from one of the last bottles of his long sold out 2003 Negro Amaro. Out of Ukiah, he is doing superb work. Hats off!

Lolonis Winery. The moment I stood before their table, a gentleman placed a cloth Ladybug, their logo, on my shirt. After tasting their excellent Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet, I turned to go and ran into Petros Lolonis himself, a man of great dignity and gravitas.

Terra Savia. Winemaker Jim Milone makes a 100% Chardonnay sparkler that was equal parts finesse and play. A serious wine!

Paul Dolan Vineyards. It is hard to find the words to describe these world class wines. I won’t try. My advice? Get on the list. These were the finest domestic wines I have tasted in a very long time. And the prices for most of Dolan’s efforts are laughably low. Amazing juice.
——————-

It was at this point, only an hour into the tasting, that I was called away to the seminar The Grape Grandparents of Mendocino County. Hosted by MWWC President Dave Batt, it featured UC Davis Coop Extension advisor Glenn McGourty, winemakers Alex MacGregor, Charlie Barra, Greg Graziano, Steve Sterling, and Bob Blue. Below are accounts of three of the speakers. A full account of all remarks will be presented here at a later date.

—–Glenn McGourty, Advisor for the UC Davis Cooperative Extension

“We’re not allowed out in public very often. We dance, we sing, we drink wine, we have a good time!
Everybody knows Sonoma and Napa, but there’s a large area on top of that called Mendocino and Lake County. That’s our territory. Size wise, it’s a combination of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together.”

Mr. McGourty went on to describe Mendocino County as sparsely populated, about 90,000 souls. It is 100 miles long and 60 miles wide. Most of it is in the Russian River and Navarro River watersheds, and a little bit of the Dry Creek watershed from Sonoma County. It is a very mountainous region owing to the ongoing collision of the North American and Pacific plates. The regions of the county vary widely. The Pacific Ocean is a big air conditioner with the temperature a steady 50 F. Elevation is gained as one moves inland. The relation of an area to fog affects local climate. Fog brings cooler temperatures. Areas beyond the fog are, of course, warmer, with more moderate temperatures for areas above the fog. In the Anderson Valley fog is present almost every day in the summer time. Yorkville Highlands is above the fog, where the Dry Creek headwaters are. The Mendocino Range define the westside of the Russian River to the Hopland area, where nearby lies Lake Mendocino, the headwaters of the Russian River. Also framing the region are the Mayacama Mountains, at once the westside of the Napa Valley and the eastside of the Russian River Valley where Mendocino County begins.

Italians first grew grapes in Mendocino County, but only for family consumption. Hops were the principle crop in the late 1900s. Greeks grew grapes as well, the Lolonis Family, for example. Prohibition killed the approximately 20 wineries then in existence. [Parducci survived owing to its production of sacramental wines.] It was, in any case, always a race to drink the wine before it became vinegar. Low tech was all that was used. They weren’t making wine for Robert Parker! Mendocino has kept the old that was good, and they’ve added to it. Head pruned vines, simple farming, organic by default, light shakes of sulphur twice a year was about it. Carignane emerged as popular variety. It sustained good yields, an extra ton over Zinfandel. The important point to take away is that, apart from home winemaking, commercial wines were initially grown for the bulk wine market. The region’s history of these early days is that of the evolution from bulk and jug wines to varieties. [For supplemental information please see this.]

To illustrate these last two points we turn to two speakers. The first provides a thumbnail sketch of a kind of winemaking that continues Mendocino’s organic tradition, organic avant la lettre; the second speaker delves into deeply respected regional themes.

History in a glass.

—–Winemaker Alex MacGregor on the 2007 Trinafour Carignane, Niemi Vineyard, Redwood Valley

“This is of Finnish, not Italian origins, from a Finnish colony that bought property in the ‘teens and in the 1920s planted grapes, then ripped them out after World War 2 and replanted in the 1950s on St George rootstock, dry farmed. It’s never been sprayed. By default it’s farmed organically, but it has since been certified organic. These vines used to yield 7,8,9,10 tons an acre. By the time they got to 60 to 65 years old, they’re yielding 2 to 3 tons an acre. It’s definitely not a sexy clone unless you say ‘Carignane’. A neat history in a bottle. I try basically not to screw it up. It’s farmed by Alvin Tollini; his family has been farming for 3 generations. I make it with native yeast fermentation, native malolactic, there is no fining, no filtration, there’s no new wood. The only trick that I use in this wine is that it goes on top of a little bit of dried Petite Sirah skins, ripasso style, from Petite in the same vineyard, about 10%. They are not dried on mats like Amarone. I dry them in a tank, with heat, and once they’re really, really without moisture left, I’ll put the Carignane on top of those skins for 3 or 4 days and then drain to wood. It’s pretty straight forward.”

From Jug Wine to Varieties.

—–Charlie Barra [his oral presentation has been edited]

“My family migrated from the northern part of Italy, from the Piedmont district, in 1900. And they were grape growers over there, my grandfather, like my dad. And they came first through San Francisco and the earthquake, then they moved to Santa Rosa; they finally moved to Mendocino county to grow grapes because the area was very similar to from where they came. The terrain and climate was very similar. They planted small vineyards there, selling grapes to larger wineries who then made vin ordinaire and jug wine. That was their primary market. Then along came Prohibition. They had quite a difficult time; and without resources, I don’t know how they ever made it. But they did. Sometimes I have a suspicion that they converted some of their wine into alcohol, but I’m not sure about that! That all happened during the 30s. That was quite common with Italian families who moved into the Mendocino County area. (They moved into other areas, too.)

We were a very small grape growing area because we are a very cold climate. The Mendocino climate is very unique. Hardly anywhere else where they grow grapes that has a climate similar to what we have in Mendocino County. Very warm days, good for growing fruit; very, very cold nights, which is very good for preserving the balance in the fruit that determines the quality of the wine that you’re going to make. Now, as a grower, I like to take a lot of credit for what I do because I work very hard. I would point out that I just finished my 64th harvest! As a grower, you don’t miss a harvest. The reason you never miss a harvest is that you get paid once a year. You had better show up!

The climate that we have is unique, very consistent; it’s the kind of climate that you can grow many different varieties of grapes. But in the beginning, when they produced vin ordinaire, they grew Carignane, Alicante, Palomino, [unclear], all those varieties, and they sold them to large wineries for jug wine. That went on for quite a few years. And because of our very cold climate, you could not plant vineyards on the bottomlands. The most productive lands in Mendocino County were not planted to grapes. They were planted to hops, pears and prunes. That’s what we had on the bottomlands. They could withstand the frost better than the grapes. Grapes were only planted on the hillsides. Where I grew up, I was born in Calpella, just north of Ukiah, all of the vineyards were on the hillsides.

Mendocino County did not get into the varietal wine business, like those you’re drinking, until at least 75 years after Napa had already made a reputation, before we even got started in the wine business. This is why you don’t hear about Mendocino County. But you’re going to hear a lot about Mendocino County when it comes out of the bottle! It’s superior, it’s very easy to drink, and has more flavors than any wines that I have ever tasted.

I was born in 1926. I grew up in a vineyard. Ten years ago I could prune a vine as well as anyone else. In fact, when I graduated from high school they gave me a pair of pruning shears for a present! In my senior year, I was 19 years old, of course, World War 2 was going on, and grape prices were very good. I had the opportunity to lease a large Zinfandel vineyard growing on a hillside, 1945, from an Italian who was retiring. So I had to make a deal with the high school principal to go to school half a day. So I started farming in 1945; and in that year I made 3 times as much as the principal! He was making $3,300 a year. And I made over $10,000.

I had very difficult years, but I also ended up owning over 400 acres of vineyards and a pretty big winery in the county. I finally had to sell 200 acres of vineyards because it was cutting into my fishing time! Then in 1950 I decided to plant a vineyard all my own. I bought a 150 acres out in the Redwood Valley. You’ve got to remember, this was all borrowed money because my family had absolutely no resources. I planted varietal grapevines, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, some Cabernet, Petite Sirah, things like that. In doing this I made friends with Bob Mondavi. Unfortunately, when the grapes came in I had no market because nobody was buying varietals from Mendocino. So I had to sell my varietal grapes that were producing 3 to 4 tons an acre, to the larger wineries as vin ordinaire at $40 a ton, which was very difficult to do. Then about 3 years after production started Bob Mondavi and the Wente Family came up and made me a deal that they would use all the varietals I could grow if I would deliver them to Livermore and Napa. I was willing to do it, except that I didn’t know what they were going to pay me. I asked what the price would be. They asked what do you get now? I said $40 a ton. They told me that if I delivered them to their wineries they would pay me twice as much. So that got me started in the varietal wine business. That was 60 years ago. By that time Napa had already made its reputation. But we’re catching up very quickly.

I don’t have any problem withe the varietals we’re growing. In the case of Pinot Noir, we have Pinot Noir planted in lots of different locations. We’d always bring samples to wineries for selling our grapes. At one time, by the way, I was growing 600 tons of Pinot Noir, and I couldn’t give them away. We’d take these samples to a winery. And the winery, without knowing where they came from, would choose the Mendocino Pinot Noir, without exception.”

The seminar started a little late, and went over its alloted time. Regrettably, I had less than an hour left to taste through more than a dozen producers. The tasting room was now jammed. There was simply no way, especially with family obligations back in Santa Cruz, that I could intellectually engage the wines, let alone their makers. I decided to flee, but not before asking Charlie Barra one question, the answer to which might serve as a coda for Mendocino County producers as a whole.

Admin Mr. Barra, could you say a bit about your aversion to pesticide use? Were you ever visited by pesticide dealers?

Charlie Barra I could tell you all kinds of stories. I’ll tell you this. My best friend operated a pesticide warehouse and sold for large companies. He would come on the ranch and try to convince me why I had to use pesticides on my fruit. He would scare the hell out of me! He’d say he’d gone to such and such a ranch and saw what I had. He then said he went back two weeks later and it was a complete disaster! They scare you into buying pesticides. Fortunately I didn’t listen very well, until one day I told him to get his fanny off my place and don’t ever come back again. I threw my best friend off the ranch! Because it was all salesmanship. If I can grow grapes without pesticides, and I’m not an expert on pesticides, but if I can do it, anybody can do it. You just have to make up your mind. Yeah, in the beginning there was a little fingernail biting. But in the end, it’s good for everything around you, your health, your wildlife, and I feel good about what I am doing. That’s very important, to know that you’re not destroying anything. I won’t say it has anything to do about wine quality. I don’t even care about that. I care about the environment and the people around me. We need more of that in this country.
—END—

Am I raving in my enthusiasm for Mendocino County wines? Maybe just a bit. But for someone whose palate often feels a stranger in California, I have at long last found another region, in addition to the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, my taste preferences may call home.

Admin

California Dept. of Corrections: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:39:28 +0000

April 1st, 2010

In what it hopes will become an annual event, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has announced the first Cells Of Hope: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines. The press release, posted just hours ago, calls upon ‘home’ winemakers currently residing in medium security penitentiaries throughout California to submit samples of their wines. A distinguished international panel of celebrity experts will then convene later this month on Alcatraz Island for an informal Lecture Series and Grand Tasting, capped by an Awards ceremony and raffle. The public is invited.

Award Categories include:

Best Fruit Wine
Best Non-Fruit Wine
Most Wine-Like Wine

Additional Technical Awards will be handed out for:

Best Label
Best Use of Clothing
Best Hiding Place
Most Creative Commissary Smuggle
Best Yeast Source

Award Winners will receive a year’s subscription to the Wine Advocate.

Lecturers will include Pancho Campo (subject to availability) on The Prison Wines of Iberia ; Gary Vaynerchuk on I KNOW Why the Caged Bird Tweets! Using Social Media To WIN Early Parole, Michel Rolland on Multi-Flush Toilet Micro-Oxygenation, and Robert Parker will close the evening with a talk on Boosting Alcohol Levels With Popular Candies.

From the official press release:

“Formerly hidden from view, ‘Pruno’, as it is affectionately known within our prison system, represents an untapped spirit of excellence that flows through the veins of nearly everyone within our walls. Cells of Hope: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines aspires to promote the creativity of what may be accomplished with the simplest tools, food scraps, and lots of time.

In keeping with California’s long tradition of home winemaking, it seems only right to tap into a great and endlessly renewed pool of talent residing within our walls.”

Believed to be the first of its kind in United States history, well-known wine industry booster and program supporter Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar said today,

“Cells of Hope will not only reaffirm California’s special place in the wine world, but it will also highlight our state’s continued commitment to innovation. If it is not being done here, it is not worth doing.”

Asked of potential criticism of the event, Gov. Schwarzenegger said,

“Have you seen my poll numbers?”

At a hastily called news conference, California Dept. of Corrections spokesperson Dusty Dubois responded to the swarm of stinging state Republican tweets that the program would cost too much.

“Not a single dollar of taxpayer money will be spent on Cells of Hope. I am pleased to announce that the entire operational budget has been underwritten by none other than California’s own Fred Franzia of the Bronco Wine Company.”

Ms. Dubois added that Mr. Franzia had also assumed the responsibilities for the writing and free distribution of a bi-lingual handbook with the amateur winemaker/inmate in mind. Copies were provided to the assembled press corps, and among the many lavishly illustrated chapters there may be found,

— Don’t Throw That Away! Harnessing the Power of Wild Yeasts
— Moisture Is My Friend
— What’s With All the Bubbles?
— Common Juice Toxins and How to Detect Them
— Paper or Plastic? The Pros and Cons of Filtration Media
— I Don’t Want to Wait! The Beneficial Effects of Aging
— Trojans Or Aluminum Foil? The Closure Debate
— How To Be Greener In the Big House
— Happy Endings. Why Parker Points Matter
— Exercise Yard Terroirs

Late Breaking Development

Perhaps still smarting from the 1976 Paris Tasting smack down, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has late today announced a tentative agreement with California to participate in the Artisanal Prison Wines’ competition next year. Said Mr. Sarkozy, “We have many more winemakers in prison than does California. Victory will be ours!”

Admin

Last year’s effort: Robert Parker Accused of Wine Boarding.

Tasting Dão Wines at Paço dos Cunhas de Santar

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:56:05 +0000

It rarely happens in life that one enjoys a perfect day, a day of balance, when both the intellect and body are equally engaged, happiness and sadness, noise and silence in equilibrium; when one is free to reflect on past and present; a day one briefly glimpses what it might mean to be immortal; when one’s body is lightly transported between ancient and thoroughly modern frames of mind, all bracketed by a sun that rises and sets over a green world. Such was my first day in the Dåo, a wine region in the north-central of Portugal.

From a stay at the Pousada in Ourém, we three lucid dreamers, the brilliant Virgilio Loureiro, cinematographer Nuno Sá Pessoa Sequeira and yours truly, set out to visit the varied typologies of rock presses in Parada de Gonta, Prazias, Paraduço and Vale do Salqueiro (among others), some used until the 1950s. I shall save those extraordinary visions, there is no other word, for another post.

On this occasion I mean to parse the day into discreet, manageable episodes. The first shall be the lunch and wine tasting enjoyed at the solid tourist destination, Paço dos Cunhas de Santar, just outside of Viseu. From Casa de Santar’s Alminhas (little souls) vineyard, the site of the Vale do Salgueiro rock press, a portion of which had been broken to provide a foundation stone for a recent outbuilding, we drove to the estate, our group including our guide, Alberto Sampaio, winemakers Carlos Silva and Mario Rui Ferreira (a very interesting and energetic individual), among others.

Leaving recent political history aside, the provided literature describes Paço dos Cunhas de Santar like this:

Paço de Santar was built by order of D. Pedro da Cunha in 1609. A large ancient farmhouse has stood on this site for hundreds of years. It’s sole purpose was to produce olive oil, fruits and wine for the grand and prestigious Oporto markets. Today, Paço de Santar has 32 hectares of traditional Dão varieties and 5 z (sic) of olive trees.

It was opened to wine tourism in 2008. And its restaurant, open everyday, provided us a spectacular meal. Indeed, our elegant host, son of the Comte de Santar, winemaker Pedro Vasconcelos e Sousa, sat us down to the following menu.

To Start

Bread Toast of Mushrooms, Emulsion of Tomatoes and Cardamon

Main Course

Codfish in Maize Bread, Potatoes and “Migas da Beira”

Second Course

Roasted Goat, Rice of Mushrooms and Spinaches

Dessert

Cheese Serra da Estrela, “Requeijão” and Sweet Pumpkin

—–

During this beautiful repast we tasted and discussed many of the wines of the Dão. Below is the list, largely in the order sipped, and my brief thoughts, if warranted, about each.

2008 Cabriz Bruto, Quinta de Cabriz, a blend of Malvasia Fino and Cercial. Refreshing and light. My understanding is that this sparkler makes up 10% of their sales.
2008 Comdessa, Casa de Santar, 14% alc. This white wine had a full mouthfeel, a little heat, lightly acidic; its all new French oak was reserved. Almost a Viognier character.
2008 Paço dos Cunhas de Santar ‘Nature’. A ‘biologique’ wine -moving toward Biodynamic certification- it had soft, rounded tannins. Vanished in the back palate; a light oak influence.

2007 UDACA (União das Adegas Cooperativa da Região Demarcada do Dão) Touriga Nacional, 13% alc. Twelve months aging in mixed oak barrels. Light, fragrant bouquet, simple body, sweet, smoky, but short finish.
2007 Vinha Paz Reserva (Antonio Canto Moniz), Touriga Nacional; American and French oak. Sweet, full body, masive mid-palate, round tannins, very long finish- oak present.
2007 Quinta da Falorca, T-nac, Touriga Nacional, 14% alc. Gorgeous nose, full body, beautifully structured; no oak. Brilliant expression of Touriga. A truly world-class effort. (As a side note, after I had made my feelings about the wine known, I was approached by folks associated with the parent quinta. They explained that a certain Mark Squires, Robert Parker’s hit man inexplicably assigned to Portugal, gave T-nac an ‘89′. As silly as that is in itself, Mr. Squires also recommended that they grub up all their Touriga Nacional and replant with Cabernet Sauvignon. Truly terrible advice, a disservice to the grape and to the Dão patrimony.)

2003 Quinta das Roques. 13.5%. Touriga Nacional. Just a baby. Needs time. Very well structured.
2004 Quinta de Cabriz (Dão Sul), Escolha. 14% alc.
2004 Quinta da Falorca, Garrefeira, Old Vines 14.5% alc, Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro Preto and Tinta Roriz. Full mouthfeel, very firm tannins, rich mid-palate. Oak present, a little unbalanced, hot on the finish. Thoughtful wine.

Also served was the 2003 Quinta das Roques Reserve Blend. From the Pessegueiro (peach) vineyard. 13.5% alc. A seamless wine. From mid-palate to finish, a beautiful elaboration. Quite elegant.
2004 Conde, Casa de Santar 14% alc. Very elegant, balanced. Holds the alcohol well, rounded tannins. Good quality, if not particularly memorable.
1994 UDACA 12.5% alc. Touriga Nacional and other, unspecified grape varieties. Extremely satisfying. Very deep, rich and mysterious. I will be fortunate to taste this wine again someday.

I should also mention a 2009 Quinta da Falorca, Rosé of Touriga Nacional (not pictured). 13.5% alc. A little candified, but with good acid. I am especially fond of Tavel rosés. I have had quite a few. So, my palate would need to taste many more Portuguese examples of rosé before I could even hazard an opinion as to the quality. I will say that I did not find Quinta da Falorca’s effort compelling, mindful of the caveat above.
Lastly, we tried to enjoy a magnum of 1970 Dão Garrafeira out of Viseu. Produced by the Federacão dos Viticultores por Dão with the greatest hopes, sadly the wine was quite medicinal. Its day has passed.

We finished the lunch in very good spirits. Thanking our gracious host, we departed light-headed, with much work still remaining this day, about which more later. Resting with the setting sun, we would find our way to the restored 17th century Pousada Santa Marinha in Guimarães.

Update It has come to my attention that a couple of the wines mentioned above also made the reputable Sarah Ahmed’s list of Top 50 Wines of Portugal.

Admin

Dark and Delicious, Petite Sirah Among Friends

Admin, Ken Payton — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:34:55 +0000

Friday night’s Dark and Delicious, the annual celebration of Petite Sirah and food, brought a friend and me over seventy miles to attend. Through slow south bay traffic, we finally crossed the Bay Bridge and picked our way through the bleak, melancholic expanses of the Alameda Naval Station to the Rock Wall Wine Company, our destination. Darkness had fallen by the time we arrived, and we couldn’t help wondering after the choice of venue; that was until, turning a final corner, we gasped at an unobstructed view of San Francisco skyline just sparkling to life this temperate evening.

Perhaps 6:15 p.m., the building was already packed. Arousing, rich aromas and a slightly harsh white light spilled over a long line of souls waiting to enter. And excellent live music could be heard. I mean, very good music, a superb band, the name of which I will post shortly. Of the crowd, I could see the dress code was casual, but some were decked out in their finest, including my companion. Dior mingled with Levis. Thankfully, very few wore perfumes or colognes. (Nothing kills the ability to taste wine more efficiently than perfumes.)
All ages were present. I was pleased to see a great many young people in the mix, twenty-somethings mingling with mature professional men and women. I would estimate the average age of the crowd to have been around 40.

The room was divided into three sections, long rows lined with winery and restaurant offerings. These rows were capped by yet another row of servers at one end, and tables covered with Silent Auction opportunities at the other. Although each row was crowded with guests, they were well behaved and polite, quite unlike the slow motion brawl of a ZAP event, for example. Indeed, folks at Dark and Delicious had ample chance to chat with winemakers and chefs; and more so as the evening rolled on, when the live music ended and the Bee Gees, Michael Jackson and the Commodores hummed over the speakers. Then the rows furthered thinned, many folks preferring to dance. This was my opening to more leisurely taste the Petite Sirahs I had come for.

I tasted extensively, sampling (and spitting) nearly every wine. But I do not think it fair to write notes in such an environment. There is simply no way one can credibly claim to have properly thought a wine. For wine is not about tasting alone. Petite Sirah demands careful attention, so varied is its terroir expressions. It is simply too easy to get lost in its mystery, to ‘rate’ in a purely reactionary manner what one does not immediately understand. I have held my head in shame at many of my blogging colleagues who write in this manner. In fact, one of the most fascinating aspects of Petite Sirah is how dramatically it changes in the glass, how it responds to humidity, the ambient temperature, the salt air, and most importantly, food. In addition, the finished grape’s great aging potential, routinely under-estimated in the traditional literature (witness Jancis Robinson’s faint praise), makes patience a necessity whenever a new bottle is opened. The finest examples are rather thrilling contests between the all-too-human, childish demand for immediate gratification and the immense rewards granted adult patience. Who has not been disappointed when finishing a bottle only to find the final pour to be far more sublime than the first? Like a selfish lover, no one leaves the experience any happier.
Of course, the wine of any variety may be so designed as to be ready by the time it arrives from the market to the table. And a heavy dose of new oak on garish display Friday night may fool some drinkers, but not me. The Petites I like best are mysterious, mercurial yet balanced . Now, because of both the cautionary remarks above and out of an abundance of respect for winemakers, their labor, heartache and unique agricultural challenges, I shall mention only two wineries of very special merit, in my opinion.

First up is the Aver Family’s ‘06 Blessings. This wine made from 100% estate grown fruit, wowed me months ago and it continues to soar. Mr. Aver, learning of the Dark and Delicious event late last year, was wise enough to set aside the few bottles he brought last night. His ‘07 was not ready so he made the painful decision to bring the last of his very first Petite Sirah effort. It is especially pleasing to know the grapes are grown in the Santa Clara Valley. The august California winemaking history of the area is perhaps taking a huge step forward with this wine, retaking its place as an important growing region. Petite Sirah growers take note! And drinkers, get your name on their list. As a small producer, they will sell out easily each year, as the ‘06 Blessings already had months ago. Great juice.

Next is a producer I know absolutely nothing about, a new discovery: Marr Cellars Winery. I tasted were the ‘05 Cal. PS Alger Vineyards, Tehama County(!), the curious ‘06 Cuvée Patrick PS, also from Tehama County, and the ‘05 Shannon Ranch, Lake County PS. I met the winemaker, Bob Marr, and shall interview him later this month. The prices are very competitive for such quality, between $18 and $20. Very well-balanced and focussed, the fruit quite pure. The higher acidity and the restraint of oak flavors won me over.

Finally, it was a great a pleasure to meet for only the second the man whose historical family-owned Concannon Vineyard is the first to have released single bottlings of Petite Sirah way back in 1964, an eternity by California standards. Founded in 1883, Concannon has long carried the torch for this lovely grape. Tireless in his promotion of the grape, this picture of Jim Concannon, too, captures the spirit of Petite Sirah itself, at once youthful, spirited and wise. It was an honor to have again shaken the gentleman’s hand. Good work, sir!

Hats off for Jo Diaz!

Admin

Should Wineries Promote Green Practices?

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:18:08 +0000

A report just published by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication titled Americans’ Actions to Conserve Energy, Reduce Waste, and Limit Global Warming demonstrates the willingness of Americans to engage in a broad range of conservation practices even if they do not always follow through. Despite the recent body blows climate change science has suffered, it is clear from the report that the depth of America’s commitment to ‘green’ themes has only increased with time.

Conducted between the months of December, ‘09 and January of this year, 1001 Americans surveyed, 18 and over, readily agreed with the proposition that recycling at home, bicycling to work, using public transport, reducing energy use at home, among a few of the survey’s questions, were important personal pursuits and social values generally. However, the report also highlights the contrast between the motivation to act ‘green’ with the actual performance of the same. Now, what might prove of interest to the wine industry is that despite or perhaps because of shortcomings of the practical application of ‘green’ behavior of the surveyed, a large percentage indicated their willingness to reward companies perceived to engage in environmentally beneficial activities and to punish those companies perceived to be engaged in destructive behaviors.

From the report:

Consumer Behavior

Q201. Over the past 12 months, how many times have you rewarded companies that are taking steps to reduce global warming by buying their products?

2010 2008
Many times (6+) 4 5
Several times (4-5) 7 11
A few times (2-3) 17 22
Once 5 4
Never 68 58

Q202. Over the past 12 months, how many times have you punished companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products?

2010 2008
Many times (6+) 5 7
Several times (4-5) 7 8
A few times (2-3) 13 14
Once 3 3
Never 72 69

Q203. Over the next 12 months, would you like to punish companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products…

2010 2008
More frequently than you are now? 32 40
About the same as you are now? 58 53
Less frequently than you are now? 10 7

Q204. Over the next 12 months do you intend to buy the products of companies that are taking steps to reduce global warming…

2010 2008
More frequently than you are now? 34 40
About the same as you are now? 58 56
Less frequently than you are now? 8 4

Clearly, benefits may flow to a winery able to raise its ‘green’ profile. I have written about The Gort Cloud in precisely this connection. And Social Media, Facebook, for example, offers the winery an easy way to reach potential customers and other influencers. However, if we examine the otherwise excellent list of 50 Facebook update ideas for wineries from a recent post on the wine industry blog Fermentation, we find no mention is made of ‘green’ practices of any sort (as of this writing). I believe this to be an unreasonable oversight. I would strongly encourage wineries to add such a category to their Facebook update cycle as well as to their blogs, and any other public interface for that matter. It can do no harm, and may successfully tap into the incompletely realized personal ‘green’ ambitions of the American public.

2/18 Update. Please see the just released Drinks Business Green Awards for 2010.

Admin

A Look Inside The Colares Cooperative

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:36:32 +0000

Presented here is a detailed look into a historic winery, the Adega Regional de Colares outside of Lisbon, Portugal. It is also the conclusion of my thorough interview with Colares enologist, Francisco Figueiredo. He was very generous with his time, spending more than two hours indulging my curiosity. I would encourage readers to, well, read the first two installments: The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk and From The Vineyards To The Adega Regional de Colares. It is a strange twist of fate that well after thinking I should not soon pass this way again, in two days I shall in fact be returning to Portugal for more wine work. More details to come.

Admin You were bottling the other day? This is your machine?

Francisco Figueiredo Yes. It is a little messy in here because we just got forty pallets of bottles. We were bottling some of the red 2004 Colares. And this is our bottling machine.

I’ve seen these guys before. Is this Italian?

FF Yes. Many are. So are the crushers and de-stemmers. The press is French. We have, more or less, modern machines. We still have some work to do. We have some walls to paint. We laid down a new floor about two years ago. We have to go slow with the investments. We will repair the roof and the walls soon, I hope.

These are the old lagares where the grapes used to be crushed and pressed. And part of the reds were fermented here. We don’t use the lagares anymore.

Does anyone still use lagares?

FF Yes. In the Douro Valley there are places where they still use them. And some of our own growers, they also do their own wine at home, they use them… Here are the old cement vats, fermenters also. We don’t use them anymore, either. And here is an old centrifugal crusher. And our new one. We use a pneumatic press for our wines. We also have two hydraulic vertical presses over there which we can use if we have a problem with the pneumatic press. And we have a machine to fill the ‘bag-in-box’. We use that type of package for our table wines. They are the boxes with the small tap. We use vacuum filling. The wine stays good for quite some time. And that is now our substitute for the glass jug. We are getting good sales from using the bag-in-box system.

So we ferment in temperature controlled stainless steel. Some of the red, because we don’t have enough room in the stainless steel, we still use those big wood vats over there. We call them ânforas; we still use them for some of the table wine. Of course, we have no temperature control with them. An interesting fact about those is that, as you know, for our steel vats we have to use the pump to circulate the juice, from the bottom to the top, to pump over to get the color out. But in the wooden ânfora, the process is done naturally because the carbonic gas pressure that builds inside is enough to push the wine to the top; and it fills that cup on the top so that the pomace always stays beneath the wine. We can do this without the use of pumps or electricity, just the carbonic gas pressure which build up naturally during fermentation. I have not seen these anywhere else in the world. The system is the same for the cement vats called ânfora Argelina, but I have never seen wooden ones.

Where did these come from?

FF They were built here. The wood is Portuguese Chestnut. Each takes ten tons of grapes. And later we then bring over the pneumatic pump and open a small door to take the pomace to the press. This has a tube inside. The cup on top has a hole, in the center, so the wine goes up, fills the cup, and the wine then drains back on top of the pomace.

It’s like a giant coffee percolator!

FF (laughs) Yes. Almost exactly like a coffee percolator. This is the same system as the traditional cement that appeared in the ’60s.

May I climb up?

FF Yes. As long as you are not afraid of heights!

We climb up a narrow ladder.

FF You can see the tube. This is really spectacular to see during fermentation because the cup is filled with wine and it bubbles! It is a pretty sight.

The doors are very small. How do you clean out the interior?

FF We go inside. Someone has to go inside to remove all of the pomace. We put a ventilator up here and let the vat breathe for some time because of the danger of suffocation. In fact, four people have died in Portugal during this harvest time because of carbonic gas. They die without knowing it. We are very careful about that. For cleaning we have a special device that sprays hot water. But it is very difficult to be 100% sure that it is perfectly clean. It is wood, after all.

But we don’t have a problem with Brettanomyces because our wine has a low pH. And we don’t have a lot of sugar in the wine. We produce dry wines, around 12% alcohol. All the sugar is consumed by the yeast. So it is not easy for Brett. The main problem for us is not having temperature control here; not the wood but the temperature control. The wine can heat up quite a bit, around 40 degrees celsius.

Really?

FF Yes. That is high enough for the wine to lose a lot of the aroma. The tube, by the way, is connected to the crusher so that the grapes come through here. We use two or three of these vats or ânfora, each year.

Whose initials are these, JVN? The maker?

FF That means Junta Nacional do Vinhos, the National Wine Institute [founded in 1937]. Since the fifties, until 1994, this cooperative was a kind of hybrid organism; it was half cooperative, half was intervention by the state, the agricultural minister. Because of that all of the wine had to be made here in order to use the Colares DOC. That is no longer the case.

And what are these tools?

FF We don’t use them any longer, but they are for pushing down the cap. They were used if we didn’t put in a full 10 tons of grapes inside the ânfora. With less grapes inside, the carbonic gas would not be enough to push the wine out of the top. These forks would be used to push the pomace, the cap, down to mix with the wine. We now use a pump for that if it becomes a problem.

These are beautiful. I trust they will eventually end up in a museum.

FF Yes, yes. Some of them already are. And they are not permitted for use these days. They are made of wood and iron. What was done at the time was to paint, to use special paints to protect the iron parts in the tools and machines. Now it is all stainless steel. But every year all of the old tools had to be painted with the special paint that protected the iron from contact with the wine.

We climb down the stairs.

So, to be clear, someone has to climb into the anfora from the top…

FF Yes, yes. You go up to the cup and climb in from there using a ladder. The center tube is pulled out and someone goes down.

Do you ever have any cork issues?

FF No. We use only corks. I have never received cork taint complaint. Never. I will always choose cork.

I agree with you completely.

FF Would you like to taste some of the wines?

Of course! You know, I have a odd thing to ask. Being from America, we like to collect hats or shirts of the places we’ve visited. I’m looking for something with the name ‘Colares’ on it. Do you know where I can find such a thing? A rather silly idea!

FF No. But it is not a silly idea. It is an idea I have given to the directors. Why not a polo shirt or something? Even for the workers!

Not to mention Gonçalo, the winegrower we spoke with earlier. He wasn’t even wearing a hat!

Francisco laughs while getting two tasting glasses.

It must be very satisfying work for you. You’re doing so many things at the same time; preserving a way of life, preserving a wine culture, preserving memory…

FF Yes. It is all very important. I am also afraid that things might not go well in the future. The vines are in danger. That’s the only thing that I regret.

He uses a thief to draw a barrel sample. This is the white Malvasia, sandy soil, 2008. We will bottle it probably in a couple of weeks. [Late November.] Malvasia has a very citric, very minerally, acidic taste, and an almost salty taste, I notice. It also has an oxidative character; I think of hay or honey.

Very oceanic… very bright and fresh. How is the water quality here?

FF We analyze it inside our HACCP plant: ‘Hazard Analyses and Critical Control Points’. (laughs) There is some paperwork that we have to do. We have to analyze the water. It is good.

That’s one helluva name. So when you’re doing bottling session how many people would normally be here?

FF Working? Around four. We do it with a small crew to get into the rhythm. We can do about 1000 to 1200 bottles an hour. That is a good speed for a machine like ours. One guy puts the bottle on the carousal, another one taking it off and putting in the cork, another one carrying the bottles, another stacking the bottles. It would be quicker if we had one of those pallet movers, but we don’t have one yet.

Do you use wild yeasts?

FF No. We inoculate. The reason is that I had some experiences making the wine with natural yeasts, the wild yeasts, but I had some problems with starting the fermentation. It is too risky for me to risk that when I do 7000 liters of Ramisco or 2500 liters of Malvasia. But I did make an experiment. It is a question of trying to select a natural yeast from the area; that would be a project that I would like to do.

So you have experimented…

FF Yes, with several yeasts. For the whites we use a Portuguese yeast; it was selected in the Vinho Verde region, in the north of Portugal.

How was it done historically?

FF Naturally. But the big difference is that it would have been in an open lagar. That makes a lot of difference from using the closed stainless steel vats. I have made wine at my parents home using, not a granite lagar, but a small plastic lagar, more or less; and I had no problem starting the fermentation. Sometimes we have a problem with it stopping!

It can stop at 12% ?

FF Yes, before the sugar is depleted. That is a risk for the wine. But the main problem is fermentation within a closed tank. That’s when it becomes difficult. We would probably have no problem if I did the Ramisco in the lagar.
Francisco draws a second wine.

Have there ever been experiments done with fortified wines in Colares?

FF No. Just for the workers. I have done one this year. (laughs) We call it jeropiga or Abafado. I have taken the juice out of the tank before fermentation started and added our wine distillate. I made five liters last year. We give a small bottle for each of the workers. It is for drinking now. We have a tradition of drinking it during Saint Martin’s Day, the 11th of November. That day it is traditional to release the young wine for the first time; and you also drink abafado. An abafado is when the fermentation has started a little bit, like a Port, it is the same. Port is a special type of abafado. We add the spirits before the fermentation has started. One is usually a little bit sweeter than the other.

He pours the second wine.
FF This is the Ramisco. This has been in the big wood vats for around two years. Then it was put into these oak barrels. This is not young oak. It is three year-old oak. Our Ramisco wine doesn’t go well with new oak. It is too strong for our wine. So we use a two to three year-old barrel. What we are doing now is three years in the big exotic barrels in the other room [another part of the adega] and one year in the small oak barrels. We now see that this is the best for the wine.

How warm does it get in the other room?

FF This room is much hotter than the other. Even during the summertime the other room only gets to 16, maybe 20 degrees celsius. Here, no.
We drink the Ramisco. This Ramisco is regional because it has not yet been certified. It becomes DOC only after certification. Before that it is regional. Six months before bottling we have to send the wine to a certification board and they will certify the wine as DOC.

What does certification involve? And who is on the panel?

FF It involves a chemical analysis and a tasting. The panel is made up of one representative of the city, there are the persons who represent the associations and cooperatives of the Estremadura region, and then there are representatives of the producers. The panel or board has about 15 people.

What wine do you use for topping off?

FF We use the same wine held in a different vat. We can mix a maximum of 10% of different years of Ramisco. If we have the need we can do that, to play with the volumes. When you use new oak, and I’ve this experience in other places, you often have to use 15%. The Australians usually don’t top. They put the barrel on its side and leave it there for a only a few months. They probably do that in California as well.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think of wine ratings, and wine descriptions, the tasting notes?

FF They are very exaggerated. Wine is simpler than that. I think that is the beauty of wine. Sometimes a wine smell like something, but the critics exaggerate. Sometimes the wine smells like something tangible, but….

We exit the adega and make our way to his car where I retrieve my personal effects.

What do you have here in the back of your car?

FF My mother-in-law sent this to my mother. It is a basket of walnuts and some chestnuts, and a bottle of jeropiga! (laughs) It is my mother-in-law’s present to my mother.

Thank you very much, Francisco. This has been an eye-opening visit.

FF It was a pleasure, Ken. Let me give you some wine before you go.

Does the adega keep a wine library?

FF Yes. Since 1931, the first harvest in the year of the foundation of the cooperative; the first wine we made.

Back to 1931? My goodness. So what is next for you, your next series of tasks?

FF We will bottle a few things. We always have a busy commercial time at Christmas. After that, in January, we usually transfer the young wines to the wood vats, take the lees out. Then we continue to bottle if we have the need. And I start in the springtime I get out of the cellar to give technical support to the vineyards. And then the cycle begins again!

Admin

Morgan’s Halfway House For Wannabe Winemakers, pt. 2

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:14:17 +0000

The title for this second and concluding part of my interview with Morgan Clendenen, owner and winemaker for Cold Heaven Cellars, comes during her detailed discussion of the very real practicalities of farming grapes. Make no mistake. It is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. Not that there is much anyone can do about it. She holds farmers in the highest regard. They are different. They know what is within their abilities. Indeed, having learned her lessons well, Morgan approaches winemaking with a kind of dispassionate Eastern quietism, an attitude she will patiently encourage, well, wannabe winemakers to adopt. It is all about a clear understanding of what is within one’s power, one’s control, and what powers properly belong to the world. Small miracles and potential disaster struggle for ascendance in the brain.

This attitude is equally important to cultivate in the winery. After making wine for more than a decade, three truths have emerged for Morgan Clendenen: Do not hesitate to do what you must to save a vintage; there is always more to learn; and winemaking is not for whiners.

Part 1.

Admin Could you say a little more about your earlier Pinot effort?

Morgan Clendenen I haven’t made one since 2002. In 2003 I was getting all of my Pinot from Au Bon Climat and we lost our entire crop that year. That’s when I started making Syrah. The 2008 and 2009 are the first Pinots since then. I love Syrah when it is from a great vineyard. So many people do Syrah, and Syrah usually is not something I reach for. My 2005, I’m absolutely in love with this wine, but it has a Pinot Noiresque quality to it. That’s probably why I love it so much!

Yes. Syrah has fallen on hard times here in California. I like Northern Rhone expressions in any case…

MC Syrah is a real tough road here. The only thing I’ll say is that my Syrahs tend to stand out, away from the group, not being so ubiquitous, because we do two years barrel, two years bottle before release. I come from…, I was raised raised in the house of Au Bon Climat cuvée; the acidity and restraint are definitely a number of the building blocks of my wine education for winemaking.

Yes. Would you say a bit about ‘green’ practices on the property itself? The vineyards? Do you have certain standards, certain requirements?

MC Not directly, because I don’t own the vineyards. Sanford and Benedict was for a period of time organically farmed. I have issues with some of the organic farming. I find that there is a lot more ‘product’ on the grapes themselves than some of the people who farm non-organically. I see more product! And I just can’t help but wonder how much of that is getting into the wine, and how that makes it ultimately ‘better’.

What do you mean by ‘product’?

MC Well, there are a lot of organic compounds that they use in spraying vineyards. I don’t know. I’m not vineyard manager or viticulturist. I make wine. So I really can’t tell you those kinds of things. I know that Le Bon Climat is farmed organically, and I will tell you that they are the ugliest damn grapes I get. (laughs) They are! We have a motto in the winery: “Ugly grapes make great wine.” (laughs)

And I had some ugly Pinot Noir this year and I had some beautiful Pinot Noir, and I have to tell you, the beautiful Pinot Noir tastes beautiful! The ugly is o.k. (laughs) Now I’m struggling to decide what I want to do, whether I want to blend it all together or keep it separate.

With organic preparations you are often required to use them more frequently. Their effectiveness is limited if contrasted with more industrial strength pesticides. They break down more readily, and so on. What kinds of pest pressures do you have there?

MC We have mealybug, I know that. White fly is a huge problem out at Sanford and Benedict over the years. The white fly basically shuts down photosynthesis, that it causes your grapes not to be physiologically ripe in the end. That’s a bad thing. Mealybug is really horrible because it kills the plant. We’ve really been watching the mealybug problem. We have a big mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat. And I think part of the reason we have a really big problem is because we are organic. What’s being applied over there is not proving effective enough to take care of the problem.

That said, I want to be greener. Hey, I moved my winery into Buellton and moved my house to within a mile of my winery. Before I was driving 45 minutes to get to my winery every day. That doesn’t feel green! Especially when you’re driving a big truck. In those terms, there is always something we’re trying to figure out; how to be a greener business, how to leave a smaller carbon foot print. And I have toyed around with biodynamics. It’s something I’ve read about, studied some… I’ve even gone as far as to procure the horn! (laughs) But I have never buried it in the ground.

Where do you keep the horn?

MC I have the horn at the winery, actually. It’s a buffalo horn; it’s not a cow horn.

Well, buffalo horns won’t work, of course.

MC I don’t know. The place where I was doing it, at the ranch, (actually it’s my ex-husband’s ranch, but we’re pretty friendly on that; basically, I let you keep your stuff. We’re cool.) So over at the ranch, because I was growing organic vegetables over there, I was extremely interested in biodynamics. Yves, my French partner, just laughs his ass off at biodynamicism. He says it’s a fashion, and then takes me to look at vineyards that he knows are biodynamic. And they are pretty sad looking. But I can’t say that they make terrible wine. You know? Biodynamics has some interesting things about it. It is rather archaic in some of its principles.

I remember meeting Telmo Rodriguez, a Spanish producer; and he said his vineyard was biodynamic. It was a time when I really didn’t know much about it. I asked him about it. He wouldn’t tell me! Finally I asked, ‘if you’re not willing to share with people what specifically you are doing in the vineyard, then don’t talk about it being biodynamic’. It is a vineyard he owns, after all. I think what’s going on is that Spain is a Catholic country. Biodynamicism is a little bit of witchcraft mixed in with some homeopathy and astrology. In that way it makes it interesting to me. But, I’ve never had the chance to actually see it in action. So… I’m almost dead certain that Beckmen Vineyards is all biodynamic.

I think that anything that puts you in your vineyard more frequently, that makes you more connected with it, is better for your vineyard. Period.

I think that is exactly right. But now, with respect to the mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat, it might be interesting to think about one of the major selling points of the biodynamic approach is that it restores a certain kind of balance. It would be interesting to see whether you could do like a test block.

MC It’s at a point where nothing, not even biodynamics is going to cure it. (laughs) It’s really bad. I’m sure the rains are not helping. Rain just spreads it around. It’s a constant battle. I have a total respect for farmers. How to deal with that kind of uncertainty in a job… you can’t predict what the weather is going to do. And even when you try to predict it, that doesn’t mean you can always do something about it. I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to be a farmer.

It’s funny. During harvest, when it starts raining, everybody around me gets all nervous an upset; and I say, ‘you know. I’m just not gonna’ because there is nothing I can do about it’. The best thing I can do is that when my fruit comes in see what the deal is and go from there. To winemakers I ask ‘Why cry over spilled milk?’ Now, I don’t hear the same bellyaching from farmers out there working their butts off.

Yes. I had a wonderful conversation with Bryan Babcock last year sometime. He is a hard core farmer, I’d say. And he is very outspoken in this regard, about the exigencies of farming. He’s a tough guy.

MC For Le Bon Climate vineyard, Jim (Clendenen) would be in total agreement with Bryan. And I think it is the same thing with wine. If you get wine that doesn’t have any acidity in it you’d be a fool not to put some acid in it, in my personal opinion. I had a guy at Morgan’s Halfway House for Wannabe Winemakers this summer (laughs) who was making some Syrah. I looked at his numbers. He told me how much acid he was going to put in, and I said, ‘you know, I would put in twice as much.’ He said that he was afraid to do that. I told him not to be afraid of the acid. As perfectionists, we want to produce the best wine that we can. That is very trying. In your mind’s eye you’d really love to have fruit and juice that’s perfect; juice you don’t have to add anything to. Everything is natural, and so on. But that is just not reality. Yes, you can take your natural fruit and just let it go, don’t do anything to it. Or you can hold its hand, make sure it gets to the end point, the right place, and still have it be commercially viable. If you don’t do that you’ll end up with wine that the public may not necessarily want to drink.

So, just as in the vineyard you have to address problems as they come up, sometimes you have to be a lot more pro-active than in your heart you want to be, whether it’s chemical or whatever. And in the cellar it is the same thing. You want perfect fruit, but that does not mean you’re going to get it. You have to work with your boundaries to make the best wine you can.

Last year at Le Bon Climat the grapes were absolutely perfect. The numbers, perfect. I didn’t have to do anything. It was a cakewalk. I loved the wine. But that only happens once every two of three vintages, that you get the perfect balance. So, yes, we’re going out there, we’re testing the sugars and such, but sometimes it’s a box of chocolates; you get what you get. This year was very odd for me, the 2009 vintage. The sugars were not very high. I don’t think I picked any Viognier above 23 Brix. Most of it was 21.5; but it was physiologically ripe. Very, very strange vintage. But they will have low alcohols; they will be fresh. It not going to be green, I can tell you that; which is what 21.5 would suggest.

I thought about additions and that sort of thing, but the fruit tasted good. The juice was yellow, with a green tinge. It was a very unusual year for Viognier. A friend of mine, Karen Steinwachs, who is the winemaker for Buttonwood, I met her for lunch right before Christmas, and she said she brought in, I think it was Sauvignon Blanc at 22 Brix, somewhere in there, and she still got 14.5 alcohol! We can’t figure it out. How does that translate? It doesn’t make any sense. There is something going on, but we can’t figure it out. And she is meticulous. She tested it at her lab and she sent it off for testing. Now, we know within 99.9 % that fruit, the Brix level, was at 22. We’re stumped. Perhaps different yeasts are responsible. There are so many different yeasts now, maybe that’s the reason. Some scientist may tell you that’s just rubbish, but in five years maybe some breakout scientist will say something different. There are certain things that I don’t know to be always constant. So I told her that I’ll tell her what my alcohol is in the end. I’m not predicted to have anything above 13.5% alcohol. It’ll be interesting. If it goes higher then she and I will definitely be contacting Davis! Houston, we have a problem. (laughs)

Is she using wild yeasts?

MC She’s using commercial yeasts. I use commercial yeasts. The Saints and Sinners is a wild yeast, however. I am not a big fan or wild fermentation because most of the time some of the wine gets stuck, it doesn’t finish. If you’ve ever restarted a fermentation I don’t think there’s anything more unnatural that you can do to wine. It made me sick to my stomach and I never want to do it again. When you have to take wine and heat it up, and then add 25 pounds of sugar… that does not feel good. It does not feel natural. It feels intrusive.

Strictly speaking, with the wild yeasts on the grape skins, and even though you may use a commercial yeast, you really don’t know which yeast finished the fermentation. There is no way of knowing. There are thousands of yeasts in there.

Yes. Indeed, a number of commercial yeast companies now include combinations of wild and commercial yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae principally. The idea is that the wild yeasts get a toehold before the commercial populations overwhelm them. Some qualities are imparted before others.

MC That’s what we’ve been doing in my cellar. We’ll monitor the juice, and when it is starting we’ll let it go for a couple of days. And then we inoculate. I do like natural yeasts; I just don’t want to have to deal with restarting the fermentation. You’d then have to use commercial yeasts in any case. I think that is the dirty little secret of natural fermentations. People always talk about using nothing but wild yeasts, well, ya know, bullshit! I don’t believe you! Especially for California with the high sugar levels, if you then go with wild fermentations it is a recipe for a stuck fermentation, in my mind. You don’t really know what goes on behind closed cellar doors! (laughs)

And just because it’s ‘commercial’, that does not make the yeast unnatural. It’s yeast, for god’s sake. It’s not plastic. In the past I played around with making sourdough starters from red grapes. One year I did one from Sanford and Benedict and two other vineyards. And it was interesting! The sourdough starters themselves were so very different in the breads. I had one from Gold Coast vineyard that, I swear to god, tasted like cinnamon in the bread! And that was because of the yeast starter. I took some red grapes; I put some flour in at a certain temperature, and created a starter. Once I had it started it was like having a newborn. You had to feed it… I mean, ok, I can’t deal with this anymore! (laughs) So I really like my yeast that comes in a packet! I am very comfortable with it.
I actually use a Champagne yeast for most of my Viogniers because I like the clean expression; it is a clear expression of the grape without adding this fruit factor or floral factor, all these things that the different yeasts are supposed to do. If it ain’t broke I’m not going to fix it.

Well, wonderful. I have a lot of material to work with here. I want to thank you…. wait, one more question. What do you think of the usefulness of new Social Media for a winery’s promotion? Does it help? Can you see the benefits?

MC You know, I use Facebook for work all the time. I get accosted by my friends all the time. ‘Ah, you’re on Facebook all the time, blah, blah, blah.’ Well, it allows me to get in touch with people in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, France… boom, all from one place. I think if you’re smart and learn how to use it, it offers great benefits. And it’s free. How many things out there are free that you can also benefit from, certainly on a business level? It can be intrusive. At times I wonder what the heck am I doing. I do get stalkers! But for the most part it has really helped my business.

I’ve always been a little behind the scenes, a little bit underground. I am not, as my Facebook persona may suggest, as out front as you might think. I always been more of a ‘behind the scenes’ person.

Thank you very much, Morgan, for the opportunity to speak with you. Oh, one last question, did you really ride an elephant in a vineyard?

MC Yes, I did. That is totally true. A socialite that used to live here in the valley held very elaborate parties. She chose her guests based on their entertainment value and willingness to go along with her party ideas. For her 50th birthday she had an Indian themed party. All the guests, all women, were required to wear a sari. The party was held by their pond located in the middle of their vineyard. I actually ordered a sari from India and learned how to fold the layers of cloth; there were many! Nothing like being swadled in a colorful sheet when it’s 100 degrees out! But the surprise of the party were the three elephants… I must say it was a majestic feeling, lumbering slowly through the vineyard, slightly higher than an elephant’s eye. I will never forget that view, for a time an Indian princess riding in a California vineyard.

Very cool. Take care, Morgan.

MC Bye, Ken.

Admin

Morgan Clendenen of Cold Heaven Cellars, part 1

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:29:27 +0000

Morgan Clendenen of Cold Heaven Cellars has been quietly perfecting her take on Viognier since 1996. She writes:
“My mission and goal as a winemaker is to illuminate and define Viognier, to elevate its profile and explore its potential through keen observation and copious tasting. I seek to sound the depths of this enigmatic grape, to reveal its secrets and shine a bright light on the extraordinary fruit grown in the cool vineyards of the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez Valleys of California ’s Central Coast.

Despite this strong ambition she flies under the radar, working and experimenting diligently according to her own vision. She has little interest in the expansion of Cold Heaven if the proper fruit cannot be found. Though her love of Pinot Noir may eventually require a call to a local contractor. And neither are Cold Heaven’s labels festooned with marketable tropes. They are reserved, dignified. Yet Ms. Clendenen is also a vivacious, quick-witted soul, and seems easily capable of commanding a room. So her wines, her beloved Viogniers, possess these complimentary aspects of her character: finesse, balance and a lively acid.

I spoke with her just last week, Wednesday, one of many days California was being flattened by a runaway train of foul weather. A last note, I have enjoyed only three of her wines. That will certainly change.

Part 2 will post later this week.

Admin What a lot of rain! How are your vines? Any vineyard erosion?

Morgan Clendenen This is the time of year you want rain. It’s good for the vineyards. As long as we don’t have any frost, we should be sitting pretty. The abundance of rain usually means an abundance of grapes. But Mother Nature… she’s a tricky bitch! And erosion is always a problem in California whenever it rains. So if you’ve planted in a dubious place then it may happen. But Le Bon Climat vineyard is constantly dealing with erosion factors. We try in various ways to slow the water down. But it’s an ever changing Earth we live on. Ours is a constant struggle to try to control the environment. It’s kind of funny. Well, maybe not funny: it is what it is.

About water. Do you folks irrigate?

MC Most everything I deal with is irrigated. And I’m very happy because in the past few years we’ve had some tremendous heat waves right before harvest. When you have these heat waves what you get is sugar ripeness but not always physiological ripeness. I saw a little bit of that this year. It was interesting that the sugars were there but the physiological ripeness wasn’t. And then it kind of switches places where the grapes became physiologically ripe but the sugars were not as high because we had a cold snap after a heat wave. Irrigation helps us moderate these swings.

There is only one vineyard that I can think of, I’m sure there’s more around here, and that’s Foxen. They have a specific vineyard that they dry farm. But everything that I deal with is does have irrigation. It’s a drip irrigation system.

On a personal note, just to get this out of the way, why is it that there are no two pictures of you that look alike? It’s the oddest thing. You’re like a changeling!

MC (laughs) I don’t know! The picture on the Home page of the winey site is odd because what you see is a reflection of me off the glass of a painting. You see what I see in the mirror, not what you would see looking normally at me. So I look very different to everybody. But I think I look the most like me in that picture! (laughs) It’s just how it is. When I look at myself it is always a reflection.

So no Grace Jones-like body doubles! Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you was because of a wine of yours I enjoyed many years ago, an early, maybe the first bottling of the Domaine des Deux Mondes, Saints and Sinners. I’ve had Viogniers from all over California since then but I’ve never forgotten that wine. Your winery’s name stuck in the back of my mind. And then to have encountered the winemaker herself on Facebook, well, there you go.

MC Well, thank you. That wine is basically just a recipe I followed from Yves Cuilleron [from Condrieu] to make a wine in his style. It’s a partnership I have with him. He’s very well known for his wines. He makes several single vineyard Condrieus. His sense of doing more than one, playing around, manipulating the grapes to some degree, is always very interesting to me. In fact, his sweet wine has always been a benchmark wine for me. But with that wine, the Domain des Deux Mondes, we decide that we do this fun thing where we would blend finished wine from one of his vineyards with finished juice from one of mine. It was a 50/50 blend. We had so much success from that, and had enjoyed doing it, we decided that we would take some of my grapes and use them for Yves style.

Now, Cold Heaven’s style is nothing like that! Nothing like that. Deux Mondes is not Cold Heaven. It’s not the wine I personally would go for in a line-up. It’s very oaky and it tends to be a little riper than everything else I do. But it shows that, yes, I can make lots of different styles besides what I do. But I choose to go in a different direction with Cold Heaven because I like it the best. And that typically means lower sugars; I like high acidity. I like it to be natural.

I buy very few grapes from warm sites. I’m not interested in warm sites for Viognier, quite honestly. I’ve been working with Sanford and Benedict vineyard and Le Bon Climat vineyard which would always serve up a good helping of acidity; and I would barely, if ever, have to acidulate those wines. The first Deux Mondes was a 2004 vintage.

That may have been the vintage. I’m a little surprised because I am no fan of oak and I like high acid. But palates change. Clearly, I was still evolving! But about Sanford and Benedict. On your website you describe having found there a then “rare clone” of Viognier. Could you tell me something about that clone?

MC What we have over at Sanford and Benedict is not really known to us because whoever planted it seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. They had grafted a bunch of Viognier onto Cabernet rootstock. Then a section of it died and they went in and replanted on some other rootstock, also unknown to us.

And why did the section die? Do you know?

MC We don’t know. I wasn’t around during that period of time. It was in the eighties. So, there was a lot of change-over over at Sanford and Benedict about who was farming. When I came on board there the guy who was farming was never seen. I never saw him! He was like a mythological creature. So when that job was taken from him and the new people took over, I see them all the time. They are very pro-active in that vineyard. Coastal Vineyard Services. It’s questionable, the clone. We just don’t know.

We were approached at one point by the former owner of Sanford and Benedict. He said he wanted to plant more Viognier for me. We wanted to get a specific clone but we couldn’t get it. We ended up getting a Davis clone. What is planted mostly in California is the Davis clone; that’s what’s there. So when we planted Le Bon Climat vineyard as my primary vineyard, we planted that with a Chateau Grillet clone.

Then when I was dealing with Vogelzang, they called me up and said, ‘Look, we planted what we thought was Roussanne but it turns out that it is Viognier’. (We call it the ‘R’ clone. As in ‘Randall’. It was supposedly brought in by Randall Grahm as Roussanne.) When they tasted that wine they swore it tasted like Roussanne. I said ‘You’re out of your mind! I don’t think it tastes anything like Roussanne’. Now, I like Roussanne. I don’t like Marsanne at all. I won’t work with Marsanne. I hate Marsanne. It is my least favorite grape in the entire world! But I love Roussanne. If I could get Roussanne here I would be excited. I would like to work with that grape more. But there’s not a lot of it around here. And quite honestly there’s not a lot of cool climate Viognier vineyards around here. Cold Heaven hasn’t gotten bigger and bigger every year because I don’t want to make wine just for the sake of having my name on a label. I make the wine I want to make, you know? Unfortunately, not every vineyard is up to snuff where that’s concerned.

Let me add that I don’t think the Davis clone planted in a hot sites is good. Our clone I work with is in a warm site, but I like it a lot because it seems to hold its structure better than the Davis clone does. It seems to keep its pH lower, it seems to have a little more acidity. So I particularly like this grape. It doesn’t go as tutti-frutti as I think the Davis clone does in warm sites. I like that clean, more acidic expression of the grape. I just think it’s more food-friendly. The Le Bon Climat is just a great catch-all wine for things you normally have difficulty pairing foods with: Mexican, sushi, Asian, Chinese, spicy, Indian… it is very interesting that acidity really blends so well with spicy foods.

It’s an anomaly in California. What I do is an anomaly compared to 9/10ths of the industry.

The Vogelzang tends to be (we call it) ‘blousy’. It’s bigger, more fruit forward… it’s big on everything! The alcohol is not through the roof. It’s 14%. But it’s well integrated. Then you move into Le Bon Climat. It’s so funny. People come into the winery and love the Vogelzang, but they don’t get the Le Bon Climat! Then you’ll have a sommelier from a restaurant come in and he will go absolutely apeshit for the Le Bon Climat over Vogelzang. That’s the great thing about making more than one expression. But they are not different styles. They are stylistically different in their clonal selection and their vineyard sourcing.

So the winery treats the different grapes in pretty much the same way.

MC We do. We don’t use any new oak. We don’t like any oak flavors in the wine. We have such naturally high acidity in most of the wines that we do barrel fermentation that rounds that out a little bit. Whereas stainless becomes a little too eye-popping, I think. I’ve done some stainless experiments. I did some Viognier in stainless this year. Once it was though primary fermentation, I put it in barrel for malolactic. It’s not that I’m against stainless steel. I use it when I’m kind of curious what kind of product it’s going to give. But my wines do better with some neutral oak. And I use neutral French oak, mostly Francois Freres.

I’ve been using neutral oak since 1996. It’s been our philosophy since the beginning. Then when Domaine des Deux Mondes came around, Yves used considerable new oak. I had to start buying barrels for the first time in 2004. So we use about a third new oak on those wines. And we use Ermitage as our barrel producer specifically for Viognier. I don’t like Francois Freres new barrels for Viognier. It’s not a good fit to me. Neutral barrels are fine. But as far as the oak, for whatever reason the Ermitage just seems to be a lot more seamless in the wine.

Do you specify the tightness of the grain?

MC I don’t. When we first started the project Yves told the guys at Ermitage what was going on, they actually just gave us three barrels in the beginning. Then one year old barrels were shipped from Yves cellar. They were cleaned but one wonders just how clean can you actually get something. Are you still getting some yeast cells in there, whatever? So Ermitage gave us these barrels. There wasn’t deliberation on my part. Since then I’ve stayed with that because it just seems a good fit. So, no, I don’t get into tightness of grain… all of that. But I am starting to more of that because I’m now making Pinot Noir. This year I have a lot of new barrels in the cellar and we’re constantly tasting the wines side by side. I am very, very curious what each barrel is bringing to the plate on the Pinot. I have a 2008 and a 2009 in barrel.

END OF PART 1

Admin