Monday 16 December 2013

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars: Keeping the Faith?

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars: the Fay and SLV vineyards looking
east to the Pallisades
Five years after its acquisition by current owners Antinori and Chateau Ste Michelle from founder Warren Winiarski, Adam Lechmere visits
pioneering Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and asks whether its reputation as a beacon
of California elegance has survived the transition to more corporate ownership.

Read the article here

This article is published in current issue of The World of Fine Wine

Saturday 14 December 2013

Stoner, and California wine

Julian Barnes writes an interesting essay in the Guardian on Stoner, the surprise 50-year-old bestseller about an American academic who remains stoic in the face of disappointments. It’s a wonderful book (I’ve just bought half a dozen copies for Christmas presents), written in a minor key. The opening sentences set the tone – ‘Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now…’ – it’s rather like a Victorian watercolour, all washed greys and delicate greens, but no less striking for that. But back to Barnes: he makes the point that the novel’s success in Europe (it was published in 1965 and has taken off in the last six months or so – I bought it when I happened to catch Ian McEwan on the radio praising it) is not matched in America. The short story writer Lorrie Moore patronisingly calls it ‘a terrific little book...but minor’, (pretty rich since it’s vastly better than anything I’ve read of hers). Barnes quotes the novelist Sylvia Brownrigg saying its ‘reticence seems very not American… we’re such a country of maximalists’.
Stoner: 'reticent'

It makes me think that the much-touted ‘style change’ in California, given momentum by the cool and difficult 2010 and 2011 vintages (I’ve written about it as much as anyone else), is never going to take hold. The reasons Americans like the big, fruity style are so much more than Robert Parker, and Jim Laube in Wine Spectator, championing it in the 80s and 90s. Yes, California can and did produce elegant wines. I've had Spring Mountain Vineyard 79, Inglenook 61 and Newton 81 (all Cabernets) that weighed in at 13% or so, were vibrant and fresh and had many years ahead of them. But were they the norm then? Surely their peers were as hot and opulent as they are now, and the reason we don’t see them is because they’ve fallen apart, or indeed were drunk within a few years of being made?

For the style change to become widespread, so much else is going to have to change. American food, for one. I’m not talking about the rarefied Michelin top levels but the mid- to high-end $20-30 main course sort of operation. Ingredients are of the very highest quality but they are so made and each dish is such a cacophony of flavours that a wine has to shout to be heard.

I had a rainbow trout the other night that I imagine was delicious – it was beautifully cooked  –  but it came smothered under a pillow-sized heap of fried vegetables, carrot and bean, cashews, six different kinds of squash, a riot of taste and texture. Anything short of the 15.5%-proof Parador Tempranillo we were drinking would have been swamped.
 
Darioush: not reticent
Brownrigg describes the character of Stoner as passive, and suggests that’s what Americans find difficult. So too with wine – the big California style is active, bold, even strident, the wine shoulders its way onto the table in a bottle that demands attention with its weight and heft and a punt that swallows your fist entire. The contrast is restraint, acidity, structured tannins, austere fruit. Wines that don’t shout.

But. ‘There are always old boys down in Texas that like the big style,’ a Napa winemaker said to me. To paraphrase Julian Cope (talking about a band improbably called Tight Bro’s From Way Back When), ‘These guys don’t do low’. Indeed – and not only Texas. If your wine has a healthy domestic market, why on earth would you change its style? Doug Shafer intimated at a London tasting this year that perhaps to his personal taste the Hillside Select would be more pared-down, but every vintage sold out, so he’d be stupid to do anything different.

Reticence and maximalism are held in the balance; the scale might tip a degree here and a degree there but it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of cool vintages and some quietly striving winemakers to have any noticeable effect.


Monday 9 December 2013

Napa mountain vs valley floor: a tasting held at St Helena in the Napa Valley to determine stylistic differences between Cabernet Sauvignon grown in mountain appellations and on the valley floor.

I chaired this tasting in early November 2013. Panellists: Chris Howell, Tim Mondavi, Cathy Corison and Jean-Charles Boisset. Organised with superb efficiency by Patsy McGaughy at Napa Valley Vintners.

The purpose of the tasting
The idea was to tease out the differences between mountain – or hillside – Cabernet Sauvignon, and valley floor or benchland fruit. In the morning we did a walkabout tasting with around 40 wines, blind but separated and labelled mountain or valley floor, with one table of ten wines completely blind. The afternoon panel tasting featured 12 wines, non-blind, which we tasted in flights of four: two valley floor and two mountain. List of wines below.

Diamond  Creek, Diamond Mountain District
Background
The first thing to note is that it is extremely difficult to single out characteristics unique to valley floor or mountain in Napa. This is partly due to the singular topography of the region, of which more later, and partly – I think – due to the relative youth of winemaking in the region. As Chris Howell said – and Tim Mondavi echoed – ‘Napa is still in its adolescence’. What was remarkable about the panel line-up was that the 12 wines should show such a wide range of characteristics, from the opulent perfume of the Raymond to the pared-down elegance of the Corison. Howell’s mantra that ‘site will prevail’ must be tempered by Mondavi’s comment that ‘the hand of the winemaker is evident’, and Howell’s own contention that ‘when we talk about place we are essentially talking about winemaking.’

Diamond Creek: Red Rock Terrace (foreground),
Gravelly Meadow (left)
Red Rock Terrace (beyond lagoon)
Newton, Spring Mountain District
Master Sommelier Andrea Immer Robinson agrees: ‘The hand of the winemaker can have a huge impact and it seems to take one of two paths: uber-ripeness/excess (sacrificing much in the way of other detail/layers/interest in fragrance, flavor and complexity), or emphasis on new oak introducing wood tannins and raw fragrances that dominate the fruit.’

Various definitions of mountain and valley floor fruit
In two weeks of Cabernet Sauvignon tastings in the horseshoe of Napa mountain AVAs, from Mount Veeder in the south (from whose southern vineyards you can see see downtown San Francisco) to Diamond Mountain and Howell Mountain in the north, back down to Pritchard Hill and Atlas Peak in the south, I heard as many definitions of mountain or hillside wine as I had conversations. There is the political, as succinctly put to me by Stuart Smith of Smith Madrone: there’s a conflict between lowlands and highlands. Producers on the valley floor resent us up in the hills, mainly because with the current draconian Hillside Ordinance they can’t get up there themselves (the Smith brothers, or Peter Newton, would never have been able to plant their high vineyards had they not done it before the ordinance came into effect). Further  development is hamstrung with bureaucracy. Many would disagree of course – if it wasn’t for the regulatory constrictions, the hills would be carpeted with vineyards.

Newton: the gardens
Rudy Von Strasser at his winery on Diamond Mountain has another view: mountain wine is more of a marketing hook than anything else. His point is that there are so many stylistic variables – some mountain vineyards have very expressive fruit, some valley floor wines have the elegant austere profile that you would expect from altitude – that searching for stylistic pointers is difficult if not impossible.

There are five AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) in Napa that can be described as hillside or mountain. On the Mayacamas range on the western side of the valley are Mount Veeder, Spring Mountain and Diamond Mountain, and on the eastern side – the Vaca range – are Howell Mountain to the north and Atlas Peak to the south. Just north of Atlas Peak is Pritchard Hill, not an AVA, but home to Colgin, Bryant, Tim Mondavi’s Continuum, Dalla Valle, Chappellet – the latter one of the great Napa pioneers. The mountain AVAs average 600-2000ft [182-609m]); the highest vineyards sit at around 2,600 feet [792m] on Atlas Peak.

Cimarossa: rock breaks the surface
The differences between mountain and valley can be roughly defined in terms of topography, style, viticulture and winemaking as follows:

Topography
The hills are more exposed to prevailing winds, giving more stress to the vines. Slopes are steeper – sometimes even vertiginous - terracing is common.
There is greater variation in soils in the mountain AVAs – from volcanic tufa, white volcanic ash, to loam, limestone – what they have in common is that they are generally poor, very rocky, with good drainage – depths vary from no more than a foot


Chappellet winemaker Phillip Corallo-Titus
and formerly buried rock (Pritchard Hill)
to several metres. In many areas, rocks break the surface of the ground. Use of dynamite and drilling equipment is common when planting. Ann Colgin told me it took a year to prep her land on Pritchard Hill, using '12 giant earthmoving machines and a bit of dynamite'.

It’s worth mentioning that  this makes mountain viticulture a very expensive business – planting is difficult when you have to remove several hundred tons of car-sized rocks (preparing and planting a mountain vineyard can cost anything up to US$200,000 an acre) and different  ripening times within blocks require many passes at harvest. Some vineyards will be separated into a dozen or more blocks for separate picking and vinification. Mountain wines tend to be produced in small quantities from land that is extremely expensive to farm: from Colgin to Bryant Family, many of the Napa ‘cult’ wines are from the high ranges.

Orientation is very varied. A vineyard like Dino Cimarossa’s on Howell Mountain  curves around  the hilltop facing four different ways at once.
Cimarossa aerial view with vineyards facing every point of the compass

Temperatures
One the most interesting characteristics of Napa mountain AVAs is that they are anomalous: unlike many other mountain regions around the world, they can’t be described as cool climate regions.

The inversion layer means that cooler air in the valley pushes hot air upwards: night-time lows can be higher than valley lows (up to 11C warmer), but the daytime highs are lower than on the valley floor – afternoons tend  to be cooler. Temperatures hardly ever get above 100F, considerably cooler than valley summer temperatures.

The fog line from Colgin
early morning, November, Pritchard Hill
Mountain regions tend to be drier - there are no summer days of intense wetting from the fog – and they are seldom affected by frost.

There’s variation in temperature between the AVAs. Diamond Mountain in the north is one of the warmest regions, while Mount Veeder, which abuts Carneros and is a few miles from the Bay, is cooler.

The Napa Valley Vintners website has a good clear summary of each AVA here

Robert Craig: rock, Howell Mountain

The Vines
Vines in the mountain AVAs are stressed, by wind exposure and by lack of water. They are smaller, less vigorous – six- or seven-year-old vines can look like two-year-olds.

Bunches are smaller, especially Cabernet: it’s common to see bunches no bigger than a fist.
Berries are smaller with  thicker skins – the skin to juice ratio is half what it is down in the valley.
Yields are much lower – typically 1.5 to 2 tons per acre
  

Winemaking and viticulture
Cain: the terraces
Harvests are later than below in the valley – generally by about two weeks – the grapes hang longer but typically are picked at lower sugar levels - 25 degrees brix, as opposed to 27 degrees and higher on the valley floor.

If red winemaking is all about tannin management then this is never more true than for mountain fruit – every winemaker I have spoken to has the same story: the biggest challenge is handling the tannins in Cabernet. Peter Rubissow describes his vineyard on Mount Veeder as 'like a racehorse - very powerful and difficult to handle'. Intervention is minimal; cold soak, gentle pumpover and punchdown and infrequent racking are common.

Style
Wines have fresh natural  acidity and tannic grip and often a mineral character.
Red or blueberry fruit (there's much debate about this: Dawnine Dyer on Diamond Mountain for example reckons 'fruit is more black than red'; others see blueberry, red cherry, redcurrant. My notes tend toward the red side of things, even to raspberry in the older wines); green spectrum – herb, hay and sage rather than capsicum or fresh-mown grass.

Inherent structure: mountain wines tend to have defined, grainy tannins and lower acidity – the tannins are precise, often kick in late in the palate after a rush of bright fruit; I see it as the scaffolding that holds up round, warm fruit

There’s also often a certain rusticity, as put to me by Chris Millard at Newton. He  describes his wines as rustic, a term that can be pejorative in Europe, but Millard sees it as the difference between wild rather than cultivated fruit: a wild briar with small intense blackberries and those big, perfect, clean cultivated blackberries you buy in the supermarket.

Again, there are different views. Here’s Robinson on tannin and fruit differences: ‘I felt the hillside wines had better integration of their tannins so that, while brooding, their intensity was well-harmonized with the rest of the wine’s components. Generally I get darker fruits and greater salinity and savoriness on the hillside wines, more red fruit and candied qualities on the valley floor.

THE TASTING
It quickly became apparent that there would be no simple conclusions. Cathy Corison suggested mountain and valley floor wine could be distinguished by the ‘broadness in the fruit’ of the former and the ‘snappy acidity’ of the latter. Chris Howell said the difference resided in the quality of the tannins mountain fruit produces: thick-skinned mountain-grown grapes give powerful tannins that need careful handling in the winery. ‘The fruit from the valley envelops the tannin structure, while the mountain tannins are truly different. Valley wines are more flattering, more approachable and friendly.’

There was some discussion as to whether winemakers in the valley were achieving this approachability by picking later and riper, but Corison disputed this. ‘There’s a difference regardless of how long you leave the grapes to hang.’

For Corison, this is due in large part to relative acidity and pH values. Unlike many mountain regions, Napa’s high vineyards, because they tend to be warmer at night, produce lower acidity than in the valley. So the two styles can be distinguished by their structural differences, Corison said. ‘We are in the fog, we have cooler nights, and we keep this snappy acidity.’ The higher pH of mountain wines was the one ‘consistent thread’ that ran through the tasting, she concluded.

Ovid: the stony soils of Pritchard Hill
The hand of the winemaker
The role of the winemaker in setting style was discussed in detail. ‘When we want to talk about place, we are essentially talking about winemaking choices,’ Howell said, though he felt that ‘site will prevail’ more in the mountains than in the valley. At Cain, winemaking ‘is not purely a quest for fruit. I am always thinking what is beyond the fruit: not just structure but texture as well.’ Mondavi agreed that often, ‘the hand of the winemaker is evident’, and his marketing chief, Burke Owens, agreed. He pointed out that Corison’s single-vineyard Kronos Cabernet Sauvignon ‘has many of the markers found in mountain-grown wines as a result of vine age and grape growing choices. It is more burly, has a richer and broader palate impression and …a dense structural core and length of finish that is highly reminiscent of mountain fruit.’

Tannin structure and acidity aside, the most significant finding of the tasting was how difficult it is to define differences between mountain and valley fruit. Winemaking practices, relative age of vines and other variables ‘add to the complexity of the topic,’ as Mondavi said. The twelve wines showed considerable variation in style. This, he said, was evidence of the ‘wonderful diversity of Napa. We are still young and finding our own niches.’ Howell compared Napa Valley to an adolescent: 'You're young, you're finding things out. It's going to take a few years before you really know yourself.'

Postscript
Stephen Brook, Jancis Robinson and Margaret Rand did a similar exercise in London for World of Fine Wine in 2010 (Issue 28). Their conclusions were equally opaque: a trio with many decades of experience behind them, they were able to distinguish mountain from valley or benchland Cabernet only 50% of the time. 'In theory, it should not have been too difficult,' Brook said.

THE WINES

All 2009 Vintage

Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
Fresh hay, some green notes, bright dark fruit, sweet plum, damson, fresh cherry and blackcurrant. Very light and fresh palate with racy acidity and suave tannins, some perfume – light violet and pot pourri but not nearly as pronounced as the Kronos

Corison Winery Kronos Cabernet Sauvignon, St Helena
Deep opulent nose with damson and black cherry and some spice, defined, grippy tannins and robust acidity, earthy freshness to the palate, damp forest floor, even garrigue, hints of parma violet and cedarwood.

Continuum Estate Red Wine Blend, Napa Valley
Perfume of parma violets, palate of plum and black cherry and this lovely ripe open breathy freshness. Late-developing dusty, structured tannins that pick up the fruit and carry it through to a solid food-friendly finish. A hint of alcohol imbalance but that slight burn dissipates with the acidity. Very fine

Lokoya Cabernet Sauvignon Diamond Mountain District
Fresh minty nose with dense dark fruit, minerality and sour-mash red fruit on palate. Acidity dominates the suave, elastic tannins while the length is saline and intense. Very fine, warm, mouthfilling, powerful but delicate.

Kapcsandy Family Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Cuvée, Yountville
The nose is very perfumed with cigar box aromas, which carry through  to a palate dense with sweet dark briar and stone fruit: blackberry, blackcurrant, damson and plum, agreeably balanced with notes of bitter coffee,. Tannins ripe and juicy with fine acidity.

Cain Vineyards and Winery, Cain Concept, Benchland, Napa Valley
A true multi-terroir wine. Bordeaux blend, with fruit purchased from Beckstoffer vineyards in Rutherford, Oakville; Carneros;  St Helena; Stagecoach on Atlas Peak. Gouts of blackberry and damson on the nose with savoury notes continued to the palate which becomes almost pungent, with animal skin, woody rot and elegant decay. Very powerful young tannins. Precise, young, needs at least three years

Cain Vineyards and Winery, Cain Five, Spring Mountain district
Bordeaux blend. Classically restrained nose (Howell: ‘We’re not purely on a quest for fruit – we’re thinking what’s beyond the fruit’). Sour plum and damson on the palate, some redcurrant, mineral tones, robust, firm, intense, dry young tannins which promise mouthwatering juice to come. (2016-20?)

The Hess Collection Winery, Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Veeder
Tar and violets on the nose, restrained, elegant rustic but fine late-developing tannins (rustic in the sense of a fine artisan earthenware pot compared to a bone china teacup). Sweet dark fruit with hints of red – wild raspberry, cherry and nice acidity. Straightforward, precise, not complex.

Raymond Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon District Series, Rutherford
Sweet red fruit  - strawberry marinaded in balsamic vinegar – on the nose. Some resiny notes on the palate, all very aromatic and opulent: tar, wood and chocolate. A dense, rather sensual wine.

Raymond Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon District Series, St Helena
What is the difference between the terroirs? It would take a more sophisticated palate than mine. In this St Helena offering I see the same tarry, opulent, perfumed notes as in the Rutherford. The tannins have slightly more grip, I would say, but swap my glasses round and give them to me blind and I’d need many years of tasting the neighbouring AVAs to distinguish them. Lovely wine.
 
Alta Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Oso Malo’, Atlas Peak
Produced in tiny quantities, 24 months in oak. The one slight disappointment of the lineup. An aromatic tarry nose gives way to a bold, bright palate with perfumed, highly-spiced and even raisined fruit. An old-fashioned feel to the wine – dense, powerful tannins and pronounced alcohol burn at the end.

Duckhorn Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon, Howell Mountain
Very bright open nose with dense, opulent briar fruit. Very polished, black and red fruit on the palate – redcurrants, cherry, some attractive leafy notes. Classic mountain tannins come late in the palate and give the whole  a robust structure. Excellent.








THE PANEL

Cathy Corison
Founded the Corison label in Rutherford in the mid-1980s. Described by San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonne as ‘a folk hero among those seeking a reprieve from Napa’s overwrought Cabernets’.




Tim Mondavi
Director of winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery until 2004. Now on his 9th vintage of the Pritchard Hill Bordeaux blend Continuum.








Chris Howell
Longstanding, highly cerebral winemaker at Cain vineyards on Spring Mountain.





Jean-Charles Boisset
President, Boisset Family Estates, Burgundian owners of Raymond Vineyards, de Loach in Russian River Valley, the ancient Buena Vista in Carneros, among others








Chair: Adam Lechmere
Former Decanter.com editor, freelance journalist







all panel pics by Ashley Teplin, Teplin + Nuss  Public Relations

Company Profile: Wine.com and its founder Mike Osborn

Wine.com, the largest retailer of imported wine in the US
Wine.com, founded by entrepreneur Mike Osborn, is now the biggest retailer of imported wine in the US, finds Adam Lechmere. And as the growth in Millennial spending power converges with the growth in mobile technology, it’s tipped to get even bigger.

Read the interview here

First published in Meiningers Wine Business International

Interview with Jared Liu of Chinese website yesmywine.com

Jared Liu, co-founder of yesmywine.com
Jared Liu co-founded yesmywine.com, China’s biggest wine retail website and its third biggest imported wine retailer, in 2008. With the Chinese e-commerce market expected to reach 250m by the end of the year, yesmywine.com, with six
million registered users, is set to continue its domination of the sector. The five-year-old site’s statistics are impressive: it sells an average of 20,000 bottles a day, peaking at 120,000, and it has a considerable presence amongst female wine buyers. Yesmywine. com has just broken even, and a stock market flotation
is on the cards.







Read the interview here

First published in Meiningers Wine Business International

Thursday 5 December 2013

Cooking with Cormac McCarthy

As the Counsellor comes out and is generally panned (shame - the screenplay is brilliant) I thought it time to revive this gem from Vanity Fair a few years ago:

Cooking with Cormac McCarthy

Pasta.
Plain.
But Good.

INGREDIENTS:
Pasta.
And salt.
And water.
And Fire.

DIRECTIONS:
Place the pasta in the water and the salt in the water and the water in the pot and the pot on the fire.
In the pot? The fire in the pot?
No. The water in the pot. The pot on the fire.
The pasta in the water?
Yes, in the water.
And the salt in the fire?
No. The salt in the water.
And the water on the fire?
No. The water in the pot and the pot on the fire. Not the water on the fire. For then the fire will die and dying be dead.
Nor will the water boil and the pasta will drain dry and not cooked and hard to the teeth.

The salt falls nor does it cease to fall.
The water boils. So be it.
Cease from placing your hand in the boiling water. Place your hand in the boiling water and it will cause you pain.
Much pain?
Very much pain.

In
the pot the bubbles bubble up and bubble some more. The bubbles are
bubbly. Never more bubbly bubbles bubbling bubbliest. And having
bubbled the bubbles still bubbly.
Or bubblier?
Or bubblier.
Across the kitchen a board intended for chopping. Here. Take it. Chop.
What will I chop? There are no ingredients to chop.
Just chop. Don't cease from chopping. To chop is to become a man.

After 10 minutes. The pasta stiff and dry and upright no more. The pasta lank and wet and soft. In the eternal damp of water.
Pour water free like some ancient anointing. The pasta left alone in the pot. Alone and naked.
The salt? Where's the salt?
The salt is gone. Lost to the water and gone forever.
I grieve for the salt.
It is the salt for which I grieve.

Tip the pasta out.
The pasta?
Yes. Tip it out. Onto.
A plate?
Yes. And stop.
Finishing your sentences?
Yes.
Why?
Because it's so.
Irritating?

Nothing
in your memory anywhere of anything so good. Now the pasta is eaten.
Disappeared. The pasta disappeared as everything disappeared. As the
comma disappears and the semicolon disappears and the inverted comma
disappears and the apostrophe disappears and the adjectives and the
pronouns all disappear.
Leaving just full stops and And.
And And?
And And.
And And.

(first published in Vanity Fair, 2008. By Craig Brown, I think)
 .