Exiting 2014 with Pretty Bubbles in Pink and Gold

We celebrated the end of 2014 with a visit to Gloria Ferrer, one of my favorite sparkling wine producers in California. It was brisk in Sonoma but still warm enough to sit outside on the sunny patio.

What better way to toast an exciting year than with pretty pink bubbly! The 2010 Brut Rose's toasty nose with rose flowers led to a palate of crisp red berries in this Pinor Noir-dominated wine.

Next we had my favorite Gloria Ferrer wine, the Royal Cuvee from 2006, which smells of butterscotch and tastes like lemon merengue pie. This wine is a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, aged for 5 years on the lees.

Happy New Year! Cheers to more empty bottles in 2015.

Pinot Days

Yesterday I attended the Pinot Days Grand Festival Tasting at Fort Mason in San Francisco. My ticket included a sit-down tasting with 4 winemakers, and I chose the one called "Passion, Personality and Pinot," featuring the wines of Inman Family, Winderlea, Clos Pepe, and Big Basin. Each winemaker talked for 10 minutes about their vineyards, winemaking philosophies, and the 2 wines they chose to share with us. All of these wineries are small, low-production operations that use sustainable or organic vineyard practices and natural (spontaneous) fermentations. Each winery's offerings included 2 wines for comparison.

Inman Family: A one-woman show, Kathleen Inman called her winery Inman Family to encourage her daughters to participate. While her daughters and husband help out, she is the vineyard manager, winemaker, sales and marketing manager, and tasting room manager. When I think about the work I did at Wiemer, I marvel at how she does it all - she is one tough cookie (who drinks a lot of coffee). Inman Family is located in Russian River Valley and their focus is Pinot Noir, but they also make some rose and Pinot Gris. We had the 2007 and 2008 Inman Family OGV Estate Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. The 2008 was slightly richer but I preferred the more restrained 2007.

Winderlea: Located in Dundee, Oregon, the Winderlea vineyards are slowly being infected with phylloxera, a root disease that wiped out vineyards in Europe in the mid- to late- 1800s. The red basalt volcanic soil of the Dundee hills has helped to slow down the spread of the disease throughout the vineyard, so they are keeping an eye on it and replacing vines as needed. We compared the 2009 and 2010 Winderlea Legacy Pinot Noir, made from their older vines. 2009 was a warm vintage so this wine was very jammy, while the 2010 was a cooler vintage, and I preferred this wine's more earthy, spicy, refined flavors.

Clos Pepe: Winemaker Wes Hagen loves the cool climate and maritime influence of the Santa Rita Hills for the consistent vintages they are able to produce. When other areas in California are struggling with heat spikes, this area in Santa Barbara county hardly gets above 80 degrees, and on average their warmest temps are in the 70s. We compared the 2009 and 2010 Clos Pepe Estate Pinot Noir. Wes said that 2009 was a perfect vintage and allowed him to make a very deliberate wine - every action was due to his inclination instead of being dictated by weather. He described the 2010 as "overtly slutty" in the sense that it is showy and obvious in its intentions and delivery. I found it to be too fruit-forward for my taste, but Wes said he is making wines to be aged and this wine could probably use some cellaring so that it will eventually emerge as more of a "sexy librarian" like the 2009.

Big Basin: Bradley Brown is proprietor and winemaker of Pinot Noir and Rhone varietals (Syrah/Grenache) at this Santa Cruz producer.  Instead of a vintage comparison like the previous 3 producers, Bradley served 2 unreleased Pinots from the same vintage but different vineyards: 2010 Big Basin Coastview Vineyard, Monterey County and 2010 Big Basin Woodruff Family Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains. The Coastview Vineyard Pinot was more jammy but with a great minerality and acidity. The Woodruff Family Vineyard Pinot had great acidity, marked salinity, nice structure and balanced fruit. This vineyard is dry farmed (no irrigation) and is the oldest vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Bradley expects to release theses wine in a year or so. There's only about 100 cases of each.

After the sit-down tasting I walked around the tables and tried some more wines from local producers. Chandon (located in Carneros) is known for sparkling wines made from traditional Champagne grapes, but they also make still wines from these grapes. I tried their 2010 Pinot Meunier (fruity and lively), 2009 Pinot Noir (more structure and spice) and NV Brut Rose sparkling (65% Chardonnay sparkling with still Pinot added). I've been to Chandon Australia and Moet & Chandon in France, so Chandon California is a must-visit for me. Other tables I visited included Cuvaison, Buena Vista, Cartograph and Robert Sinskey, plus the earlier wineries from the sit-down tasting to further geek out with the winemakers and taste what else they had brought. Walking around a huge warehouse with tables upon tables of wine can be overwhelming, and you have to have some discipline at these things. So I stopped by familiar tables and producers I'd been wanting to try. After a couple hours I was feeling wine-fatigued, so I headed for the table marked "FOOD" and got some empanadas and alfajores from El Porteno, brought in from the Ferry Building. Yum!

A nice little Saturday.

Princess of Pinot - sparkling and still

Last weekend I visited the Carneros wine region of California, a wine region just north of San Francisco that covers the southern portions of both Sonoma and Napa. Carneros was designated an AVA (American Viticultural Area) because of its soil and climate. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir thrive there, so sparkling wine is a large focus of many wineries in the area.

We visited Acacia Vineyard first, where we tasted a bunch of their single-vineyard Pinot Noir. I liked their 2006 Beckstoffer-Las Amigas Vineyard bottling best, better than the current release of 2007. The Beckstoffer vineyard was very old and they actually pulled the vines out in 2008 because it was yielding so little fruit.

At Gloria Ferrer, a sparkling wine producer owned by Spanish sparkling wine producer Freixenet (you know that $10 Cava in the black bottle?), we had a tour of their facility and tasted some bubblies. My favorite was the 2002 Royal Cuvee, a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that aged for 5 years on the lees. This amount of aging resulted in really toasty flavors that I liked.

Domaine Carneros, owned by Taittinger, is a beautiful property that I first visited in 2004. They produce sparkling wine and Pinot Noir. First we had a tour and tasted some of their sparkling wines. The best bubbly of the bunch was their 2005 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs, their premium bottling. We tasted a few of their current release Pinot Noir bottlings before meeting their Pinot Noir winemaker, TJ Evans, who then gave us the behind-the-scenes tour. We had some pre-sparkling tank samples and then 5 barrel samples of Pinot Noir - all different clones. In California they are very focused on clones and how they differ in terms of flavor and structure. Different lots are often blended with the proportions of the different clones in mind. At Wiemer, we grow Pinot Noir clones 115 and 777. I tried those at Domaine Carneros plus 3 others. It was interesting to taste the differences between the clones and also to compare their same clones to ours at Wiemer.

One of the cool things about visiting both these sparkling wine producers was seeing the machinery they use for riddling and disgorging. This is a gyropallete, which riddles 500 bottles at once in about 3 days. Remember how we were hand-riddling at Wiemer for 3 weeks?

North of Carneros, outside the city of Sonoma, we visited Buena Vista Winery and tasted some bigger reds - a highlight of the trip. Their 2006 Ramal Vineyard Pinot Noir Swan Selection was the best from the weekend. I also liked their Merlot, Syrah, and a couple of wines from the 2005 Atlas Peak collection - Cabernet Sauvignon and Claret (a Bordeaux blend). But I have to say that I only liked the Cab after our server sent it through the Vinturi aerator 3 times, which is supposed to be equivalent to a year of aging in the cellar or an hour in a decanter with each pass - this was after I told him I only like Cabs when they are old.  It is interesting that every winery sells the Vinturi. I wonder if it is because many of the wines in California are very fruit-forward and in-your-face, but some people like their wines a bit more demure, with a little more age on them.

I didn't know this at the time, but Buena Vista Winery got all of their plants from the Hermann J. Wiemer nursery. Everything comes full circle!