April 2018

OREGON CHARDONNAY 2.0: LINGUA FRANCA BUNKER HILL 2016

There’s a lot to digest here. First of all, it would have been easy for us to dismiss this as another ‘somm label’. You know, famous sommelier decides he can do it better and goes off to create some undernourished wine that ‘pairs well with food’. Only in this case the sommelier in question is one of some repute, Larry Stone, and he partnered with a ‘hall-of-fame’ Burgundy producer, Dominique Lafon. They then hired Thomas Savre, an accomplished young winemaker from Evening Land’s Seven Springs Vineyard and put him to work on the project.

Perhaps even a bigger challenge here is that we are going to talk about an Oregon Chardonnay that sells for around $50. But the performance here was so remarkable that we are thinking about it not as an Oregon Chardonnay, but as a white Burgundy look-alike that, given the cost of ‘real’ white Burgundy these days, actually looks reasonably priced. We know a lot of you are still like we used to be, thinking of Oregon Chardonnay a sea of lean, mediocre juice grown in the wrong location, planted to the wrong clone. There is still a lot of that. But the upswing in quality from those who have reoriented their Chardonnay programs and corrected some of the old mistakes is astounding.

Lingua Franca Chardonnay Bunker Hill 2016 is exclusively from Salem’s Bunker Hill in Eola-Amity, with 20-year-old CH76 vines on pure Nekia soils at an altitude of around 800 feet. It is a west-facing vineyard that is exposed directly to the cooling ocean winds of the Van Duzer corridor (yeah pretty geeky stuff). The name of the winery, Lingua Franca, which is defined as “a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different”, seems an appropriate tongue-in-cheek reference to this ‘Franco-American’ endeavor.

All we can figure is that these guys, who have tasted some of the world’s greatest wines, have figured out a way to make something in the image of a great white Burgundy. No easy task but knowledge is power. The wine has both substance and lift. The aroma is complex with layers of mineral, smoke, herbs, caramel apples, and a faint hint of that hazelnut character we associate with Meursault (or is that power of suggestion?). The wine is intense, long, racy and complex on the palate with a lasting finish of citrus, herbs, and white flowers. There are flinty, mouth-watering mineral notes as well, which we don’t typically associate with Oregon Chardonnay.

All in all this is an impressive glassful and indicates this project is going to turn some heads (the inaugural 2015s got some nice ink from Vinous), and that Oregon is capable of bringing Chardonnay drama when the juice is in the right hands. A good run of vintages probably hasn’t hurt the early success here but, clearly, there is some vision here as well. Talking about $50 domestic Chardonnay typically isn’t our ‘jam’, but exceptions do come along. We highly recommend this one as a breakout kind of effort as well as a darned tasty bottle of serious Chardonnay that deserves attention. Also there’s that whole thing about ‘preconceived notions’…

B. MILLET SANCERRE LE CHEMIN BLANC 2017-THE REAL DEAL

It is interesting in talking to our suppliers about the current high demand for Sancerre. Many told us they can’t keep the stuff in stock because of overwhelming on-premise demand and that a number of purveyors simply don’t bring the wines out to show as a result. This demand might also explain why we have had a tough time finding good, well-priced Sancerre. Demand has pushed up the prices, and a lot of , ahem, less compelling examples are coming to market. That is why finding on like this is noteworthy.

B. Millet, a 22 hectare estate based in Bué, is a third generation Sancerre producer run by husband and wife Betty and Franck Millet. In Sancerre, there is a mix of limestone and chalk terroirs. Bué is a top village in the region and the majority of the domaine’s white wine vineyards are located on the limestone that accentuates the minerality that Sancerre is famous for.

This is a classic, archetypal Sancerre that combines a core of bracing acidity and focused flinty minerality with aromatic citrus, grapefruit and herbal notes. The cellar regimen here is stainless steel for the Sancerre Blanc and the vineyard work is done by hand, with a rigorous green harvest during the summer. The resulting wine her has enough tenderness to the fruit to avoid being severe, but sufficient acidity to hum on the nicely on the palate.

The B. Millet Sancerre Le Chemin Blanc 2017 is the real deal, definitely strutting the clear signature of the region and yet at the same time ‘user friendly’. Given what we have seen from this heated market over the last few years, not to mention some unfortunate supply problems thanks to Mother Nature, we found the price performance here to be compelling as well.

THE NEVERENDING STORY

In a recent Wine Spectator, we read yet another article about how “the battle over (consumer) shipping could rage for years to come.” Yeah, and the sky is blue, the ocean is salty, and the problems in the Middle East aren’t likely to get resolved soon either. Duh. Must be a slow news week.

For as long as we have been involved with the industry there has been substantial resistance to addressing some sort of national policy with regards to wine shipments direct to consumers. Every state has its own unique set of rules regarding alcoholic beverages and doggedly clings to those tenets in the face of the growing awareness of life across state lines, brought to you by the internet.

The arguments in favor of maintaining the status quo never seem to change either. The ‘talking heads’ consistently put forth that the problem with having ‘open borders’ has to do with tax collection and minors. Our take is that those are the easy targets for politicians who are simply protecting a source of donations in the wholesalers who directly benefit from maintaining the status quo of a well-managed legal monopoly.

Alcoholic beverage companies operating within a ‘closed system’, without any real competition from outside of their borders, are in a position to make silly amounts of money simply because they have that virtual monopoly. If you think about it, they are not unlike the bootleggers that most of the curious alcohol laws were created to thwart in the post-Prohibition era. The wholesalers and retailers within a given boundary ‘don’t want anybody muscling in on their territory’.

If this all sounds like the dialogue for some 1930s gangster drama, it kind of is. But instead of ‘tommy guns’ to deal with intruders, it’s a state’s parochial legislation which will cost sometimes prohibitive sums of money for outsiders to fight. This we know from both observation and experience. No other business has to deal with this sort of minefield, though the internet age is creating similar issues regarding sales tax. In all of this, however, no one seems to be particularly concerned with consumers .

The point is that the issue will never be resolved because those entrenched in the various markets will continue to fund the political machine to protect their interests. You can debate the 21^st Ammendment vs. the Commerce Clause all you want (the diametrically opposed legal precedents that give rise to a debate in the first place). Those within the particular states have absolutely no interest in doing anything else but fighting to block competition, nor in all fairness should they. They don’t give a damn about the consumers’ right to do anything except buy their stuff. In many cases they don’t even do a very good job in offering the pricing, products and service that would remove the consumers need to look elsewhere .

We’re certainly not going to solidify the definitive argument today. We don’t expect there is one. The debate has been raging for as long as we have been doing this and shows no sign of tapering off. The position of one state or another may change, the intensity of the political saber-rattling increases or ebbs, but the situation itself will always exist as you have one side of the equation with absolutely no reason to accept or work for any kind of change.

Our question here is a simple one. The discussions of consumers’ right to buy alcoholic beverages across state lines have been voluminous, often very heated, and we expect will be ongoing. But, really, how much are we talking about here as a percentage of all alcoholic beverage sales? All of the bar and restaurant business is local, and those bars and restaurants make up a huge portion of the wholesalers business. There isn’t a huge incentive to buy spirits and beer across state lines, and the cost of transport plus the hassle would deter most buyers from doing it anyway.

That leaves wine. How many wine buyers, as a percent of all wine buyers, care enough to reach out to other markets to acquire certain labels or genres. We’re guessing that percentage of buyers looking to other markets to be infinitesimal as a percentage of the total buying population..

And why do these few consumers do it? To save a couple of bucks? Not on every day stuff. The numbers, with the cost of transport figured in, don’t typically make sense. In fact, from an acquisition perspective, only higher end purchases pencil out from a cost perspective. So, really, you’ve got a few high-end buyers who can’t find what they want in their own environment that are venturing out to look elsewhere. We’d suggest, if they could get the stuff locally at a fair price, a good many of them wouldn’t bother with the hassle and risk of shipping and this conversation wouldn’t be happening at all?

The only answer is that they can’t get what they want locally at a reasonable price. More likely they can’t get it at all! So what are they supposed to do? This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any other industry. If I want to ship a couch from Maine to California, I can. It may be crazy given the cost of shipping something as heavy as that couch, but the law doesn’t prevent it. Yet the wine guy is supposed to just suck it up and buy local because of some arcane local law that was enacted 80 years ago?

The governments rail on about lost taxes. Really? How much are we talking about? We’d guess they’re getting all but the tiniest portion of the tax due because most of the market doesn’t care enough or have any motivation to step out. The taxes the states don’t get are because their market has failed to satisfy the needs of those few customers that do want another option.

To put it simplistically, these wholesalers and governments seem to be overly concerned with the one or two buyers out of every, say, 10,000 that feel that need to go to other markets to get what they want. Hundreds of millions in tax revenues (or more) that are coming in give way to concerns about a few thousand bucks that aren’t? The Spectator article mentions a couple of cases where a state attorney general has filed suit against out-of-state wine interests. Don’t state attorney generals have much more important things to do?

Granted the whole shipping thing is probably perceived as a bigger problem today than it was twenty years ago. But that is likely because there is more information available to the consumer regarding new wines and places to find wines that may be outside the state boundary. We don’t expect that the internet is going anywhere, so there will always be access to tantalizing information regarding wines and wine prices for the consumer to take in. But, sadly, the alcoholic beverage wholesaler, sitting in a truckload of money grousing about the few pennies he didn’t get and paying someone to ‘fix it’, isn’t going anywhere either. Neither are the ‘squeaky wheels’ that will start the next cycle of this ongoing hysteria. Does this make the whole discussion pointless? Sadly, it does.

The Best Charbono in Years

Unless you have had a somewhat unusual wine experience, we are pretty confident that this will be the best Charbono you have had in years. We can say that because it is very likely the only example of this varietal you are likely to have experienced over the last few years. There is precious little even being produced any more.

Charbono has a shadowed past. To this day there is no agreed upon origin of the grape. Some suggest it comes from the northwestern part of Italy under the name Bonarda Piemontese. Others claim it comes from the southwestern part of France and exists under the handle Corbeau or Douce Noir. The only things that can be stated with any certainty is that the Charbono grape thrives in a harsh mountain terrain, and that it made it across the ocean as the Italians that settled California early on planted multiple-varietal field blends to assure, through diversity, there would always be some sort of crop to harvest.

For a lot of you, there is no point of reference for a wine like this. In truth, we don’t need more than our fingers to count all of the California versions of Charbono we have had over the years. The thing is that, among the limited experiences we have had with California versions of this varietal, there have been a disproportionate number of intriguing efforts. So on the rare occasion we are presented with a Charbono, we pay attention.

This story is particularly interesting. We initially were a little skeptical of the ‘program’ at Inizi, a small side project for some wine professionals who have ‘day jobs’ at other wineries. That in itself is not a big deal. But the fact that they were focusing on eclectic Italian varietals like Sagrantino and Tocai Friulano, and blends of things like Dolcetto and Montepulciano, gave us some concern that they were a little bit out on the fringe from a marketability standpoint. The Inizi Charbono 2014, however, showed us some of the best traits of this somewhat hard to pinpoint grape.

The profile is engaging red and mainly black fruit, a touch of woodsiness and lots of spice, ample enough but with plenty of freshness and lift. There’s some tobacco and vanilla in there, too. It is a delightful example of what Charbono can be. It is a unique situation. The grapes come from the Heitz Brothers vineyard near Calistoga, a 1.5 acre plot with 40-year-old, head-trained, dry-farmed vines.

A long, dry vintage delivered great optimally ripe fruit that was 30% whole berry fermented. About 25% saw once used barrels, the rest neutral wood, for 10 months. Plenty to like here, Charbono is one of those grapes that has elements that remind you of other varietals, but ultimately has its own unique character.

Mauro’s Very Special V.S.

As has been obvious over the years, we are huge fans of Spanish wines. We love the dusty plum fruit of an old Rioja and the opulence of an old vine Garnacha that tastes like a new twist on Chateauneuf. But we also understand that these are unique flavor profiles that might take a little getting used to for someone accustomed to the straightforward, in-your-face blast of fruit from a top flight Napa Cabernet. Well here we are going to present an immensely impressive wine that not only will pander to the hedonists who like a lot of engaging flavor up front, and purists who don’t mind modern styling provided the wine still has the trappings of classic Spanish reds, but save folks money who think you have to pay $150+ to get something truly special.

Mariano Garcia, winemaker at Vega Sicilia for about a couple of decades, is the force behind Bodegas Mauro. This is an exceptional performer in the somewhat less defined Tierra de Castillo y Leon, sort of the outskirts of Ribera del Duero. His ‘regular’ bottling were one of the eye opening efforts that really got us into Spanish wines back in the early 90s, and some of his reserve bottlings have been epic for their genre in the same way that certain producers have become iconic for Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Napa Valley.

This particular wine is a ‘modern’ reserve, meaning that the eye here is on making the best wine possible while no being confined to the guidelines of traditional nomenclature which carry certain rules that winemakers might find a little confining. This wine is not made every year and comes mainly from two plots of older vineyards. The wine was bottled in March, 2017 after spending 26 months in a combination of French and American oak.

The scents of smoke, vanilla, and chocolate harmonize beautifully with the classic cassis and plum fruit character of this 100% Tempranillo. The entry is cool and authoritative with the intensity and dimension of the oak fused with the sleek, polished palate. This is on par with any Classified Growth Bordeaux and we’d make the comparison with a ‘trophy’ Napa Cabernet except that the Mauro Tierra de Castillo y Leon V.S. 2014 is more harmonious and refined than most New World reds we can think of. Packed with flavor, this plays on many levels. You can delve into the wine’s sweet and savory complexity for an engaging intellectual exercise, or you can just sit back and let the intense, layered, toasty, chocolaty flavors roll across the palate.

This is very serious wine that, while it is true to its genre, doesn’t expect you to cross the line to appreciate the context. There’s plenty of well-heeled but intense flavor to make quite an impression. Yeah, 2014 was a problematic vintage in some parts of Europe. But clearly not in the Ribera/Castillo y Leon or a wine of this magnitude would not have been possible. This to us is that ‘crossover wine’ that will give Bordeaux and Cabernet drinkers a whole new perspective. Killer juice here, this wine just arrived and, while this has not been reviewed, this series has averaged 95 in Wine Advocate over the last several vintages. This is definitely one of the best versions of the V.S..

JUFFER SONNENUHR TWO WAYS

There are lots of ways to present a wine and we thought that, over all the time we have been doing this, we had probably done all of the possible permutations at one point or another…until today. But then offer like this have never came along before. We had the opportunity to purchase two different Rieslings at great discounts, from one of the greatest vintages in Germany in this century and from one of the most storied vineyards in the Mosel. Same price, same pradikat levels, both knockout deals, but the wines are from two different producers. You talk about wine being made in the vineyard? You will never have a better chance to see that it action, and get some pretty wicked spatlese in the bargain.

We’ll start with the vintage. As we have said on multiple occasions, the 2015 vintage in Germany (OK, a lot of places in Europe for that matter) was special. It stands alongside the 2001 as the icon vintage of the 21^st Century (thus far anyway). The wines have unique power and cohesiveness to the fruit and surprising palate length. Wine after wine has exhibited the same vintage personality as we have tasted through probably 200+ examples.

The vineyard? Maybe Brauneberger Juffer isn’t quite as well known to the broad market as Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Graacher Himmelreich, and Bernkasteler Doctor because producers like Prum and Thanisch have been here much longer promoting them. But among those more tuned in to great Mosel vineyards, Brauneberger Juffer is one of the great ones. We have come to appreciate the vineyard a lot over the last three decades as we have been presented several striking examples from the likes Fritz Haag and Schloss Lieser. More specifically the Sonnenuhr part of the Brauneberger Juffer is the best part, the ‘sweet spot’ if you will.

Given those similarities, and the strong characteristics of both the site and the vintage, our ‘tale of two Juffers’ would seem to come down to the producers. Or does it? That is what makes this exercise so exciting. Besides the fact that the producers are different, and presumably the grapes came from different plots in the vineyard, we don’t actually know the harvest must weights. There is a range to qualify for spatlese designation, including declassified auslese. The alcohols are .5% apart (8% vs 8.5%), but that is all we know.

Both the Karp Schreiber and St Nikolaus Hospital labels boast long histories, the Karp Schreiber tracing its roots back to 1664 and the St. Nikolaus Hospital winery having existed for more than 500 years as the money-raising arm of the foundation that runs the actual hospital in Bernkastel-Kues, the hospital itself founded in 1458. As we opened these two side by side, they started in different places. The Karp Schreiber Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese 2015 shows a more delicate, filigreed profile, with whiffs of slatey minerality to the peach and pear fruit, a livelier, more active mid-palate and an airier finish of spice and slate. It is a bit higher pitched on the palate with a more evident mineral element.

By contrast, the St Nikolaus Hospital Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese 2015 is a more centered wine that shows a more direct, pronounced element of peach and pear, with a little hint of apricot possibly as a result of a greater must-weight (this is the one that is the .5% higher in alcohol), but not necessarily. The sweetness level seems slightly more overt out of the gate and the palate is more concise.

As we sat there going back and forth and between the two, it was fascinating to watch them change in the glass, and certainly even more intriguing to watch as they began to show a much more familial streak that we have to presume is the vineyard talking. The Karp got more mid-palate-focused as time passed while the St. Nikolas more high-pitched minerality and lift than it had presented early on. In short, as they developed they became much closer to each other as the elements of one of the middle Mosel’s best terroirs took hold of the proceedings.

While there were still slight differences in line with their original profiles, it was Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr that won the day with the strongest voice. As to our preference, it was not unanimous and way too close to call. We highly recommend taking the opportunity to experience this unique comparison yourself. As to predicting a winner, the winners would be those that take advantage of these two exciting spatlesen from a great vineyard in an epic vintage for a good 40% less that you would typically find anything from this esteemed dirt. These are steals for under $20, the educational/geeky opportunity merely a special bonus here!

DEROSE: GREAT OLD VINE REDS FROM THE LAND TIME FORGOT

This is a story that spans three centuries. We are speaking of the historic Cienega Valley located near Hollister between Hwy 101 and the 5 Freeway. Probably the only time most folks have heard of Hollister at all, except as a freeway exit or a clothing brand, is as the claimant as one of the ‘earthquake capitals of the world’ (along with nearby Coalinga). In fact, the San Andreas fault not only runs through the town of Hollister, but through the main building of the winery we are featuring here, Derose.

It all starts way back in 1854 when a French immigrant called Theophile Vaché was marketing his vinous wares in nearby San Bautista. It goes through German immigrant William Palmtag who won medals his wines at the 1900 World Expsotion in Paris, and later on involved California giants of their respective times, Almaden and Heublein. During that last Heublin phase, probably due to that company’s historic meltdown, these grand old vineyards on this terraced hillside suffered a bit from neglect.

The DeRose and Cedolini families purchased this estate in 1988 and subsequently rescued and revitalized 100 acres of overgown vineyards including 40 that were planted before 1900. Historical research also found that this is the oldest existing winery in California as well. This isn’t one of the first areas people think of with regard to fine wine, however. In fact we’d be a little surprised if many folks even knew of it. There are no plans to put a “Wine Train’ in the Cienega Valley, but there are very special and unique wines produced here that make this an important wine stop nonetheless.

DeRose Cabernet Pfeffer Cienega Valley Old Vines 2015 ($24.98)-Four of the 10 acres of Cabernet Pfeffer that exist in California are here at Derose. This obscure varietal is said to be a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and either Gros Verdot or Trousseau (depending on who you ask). The real issue is that it doesn’t taste like Cabernet but something entirely different. Lighter on its feet, without the hard tannic back bone, it leans more flavor wise to dark cherry and pomegranate with a lifted palate feel and notes of pepper (pfeffer is the German word for ‘pepper’). Stylistically unique, it plays best with pork, chicken, duck and salty cured meats. From very old vines planted between 1865 and 1905, this is a one-of-a-kind wine but quite the engaging experience.

DeRose Negrette Cienega Valley Old Vines 2015 ($39.98)-Speaking of one-of-a-kind wine experiences, this is the only varietal Negrette bottling we know of from this part of the world, and maybe anywhere. A dark grape with primarily dark red and black fruit character laced with notes of smoke, brown spices and white pepper, this is a substantial red with rich, smooth old vine fruit. Again very pleasing and rather complex, a plush, ample texture with some supporting ripe but slightly chewy tannins, this is a wine of substance with plenty of stuffing but that doesn’t cross over to extreme ripeness. Some of these vines are 120 years old and the old-viney complexity is a big part of the wines appeal. Grapes harvested at less than one ton to the acre.

DeRose Zinfandel Old Vines Cedolini Vineyard Cienega Valley 2015 ($29.98)–This one is love at first sniff for any true fan of Zinfandel. It will also win a lot of converts to the varietal among those who don’t think of Zinfandel as ‘serious’ wine. One good whiff of the spicy, brambly, old-vine berry aromas transports us back to some of Zinfanel’s greatest hits from the breakout efforts of the early 1990s. DeRose has 15 acres of Zinfandel vines originally planted on their own roots in the late 1890s. Dry farmed on steep hillsides in Cienega Valley, the head-trained vines produce highly pigmented grapes inscribed with a spicy mountain terroir. This kind of profile is very hard to create. You either have the special old vines and the understanding of what to do with them, or you don’t. Captivating aromatics and tender, ripe, plush but still buoyant fruit on the palate are on stunning display here. This is the essence of what ‘old vines’ are all about. In all of the wines we taste we’re lucky to run into two or three a year like this one. A rich-yet-balanced expression of Zin-ness, with flecks of the area’s spice and faintly chalky mineral terroir, this wine has incomparable harmony and surprising complexity. Everyone should taste this just to see what Zinfandel at the top of its game can be, and Zinfandel fans simply should not miss it, period!

This is a one of a kind property with a unique story and some very special wines. History can be very tasty sometimes and, for as unique and distinctive as these wines are, they are very attractively priced. Quantities, as you might guess, are limited.

Another Great Kiwi Pinot from C.P. Lin

One of the most fascinating stories we have ever come across in the wine trade is that of C.P. Lin. Born in Taiwan, he has been blind most of his life because of a carcinoma of the retina. His parents left Taiwan when he was relatively young and headed for New Zealand. In college, C.P. was a promising mathematics student at Canterbury University. While at university he became involved with a social wine club that gave him the opportunity to explore the grape. He became fascinated with the subject and his acute sense of smell and touch gave him the tools to explore a career in wine.

It wasn’t a cakewalk, and in fact his classmates laughed when he responded to a teacher inquiry about why he was taking the winemaking class by announcing that he wanted to make world class wines. As a matter of fact he couldn’t actually graduate because he couldn’t perform the lab work required to do so due to his disability. Yet on he went to make wine commercially for nearly two decades and become one of the best known winemakers in New Zealand, achieving an international reputation for Mountford Estate winery in Waipara.

There are many legends surrounding C.P.’s prowess and acute sense of smell. His run at Mountford was pretty epic. His unique talents and personal story were truly one of a kind, and he would have been ‘news’ just for doing this at all. But the level of performance, particularly with Pinot Noir, was extraordinary. Dude has chops and an unbelievable nose and we were willing participants in spreading the word about his wines, even hosting him once at a tasting at the old location. What was most impressive was the purity and style of the wines. The Pinots tasted like Burgundy, the Riesling like a German, and so on.

C.P. left Mountford after 16 years because, according to him, because the winery’s orientation became more focused on dollars than wine quality. He then founded the Erewhon project. The name is an anagram for ‘Nowhere’ and a reference to the remote vineyard sites that C.P. is working with in this multi-vineyard blend focusing on fruit from Waipara and Central Otago.

We sold the 2013, to our knowledge the first edition and now have the 2014, another winner with perhaps an even more tender palate feel (no small trick in New Zealand). It’s another stunning effort from C.P. though perhaps, again, more ‘Kiwi’ than his Mountford stuff. The Erewhon Pinot Noir New Zealand 2014 has all the cool, savory (but not too savory) flavor profile that the very best from the region have, but not of the green or edgy character that can sometimes detract.

It’s fleshy and pretty, but at the same time purposeful, pure and precise. Mulberry, plum and confectionary cherry combine with spice, stones, thyme, tea, and flecks of mushroom, and the wine is both lifted and tender with surprising continuity from front to back. The 2014 got a 92 from Wine Spectator yet again back in March, 2017 with comments, “Rich, plush and generous, with fleshy dark cherry, plum and sandalwood flavors. Notes of black tea and fresh earth linger on the finish. Drink now through 2026.”

Like last year, the notes are nearly a year old on this wine which means it was probably tasted last January or before (it takes time to put ‘print’ magazines together). We suspect this Pinot has come a long ways since then. Again, one of the most complete Kiwi Pinots we have tasted and the price is extremely attractive given the performance here…orange label notwithstanding. Only 832 cases produced, more than last year but still not very much. A must have!

Distinctive Corsican White: Clos Nicorsi

Vermentino has many manifestations. There are crisp, high pitched versions that that come from Liguria and other parts of Sardinia that show a little hint of the sea There are the somewhat riper, rounder versions that seems to be popping up from Tuscany, and the somewhat steely versions from southern France (where the grape is called Rolle). We have tasted many versions of all of them, but we can’t say we ever had one like this.

This is from a unique spot, situated on Cap Corse, a finger-like peninsula on the northern coast of Corsica. that juts northward into the Tyrrhenian Sea. This rugged area is a distinctive display of seascapes and vineyards. Located on the coast near the village of Rogliano, Clos Nicrosi has been cared for by the same family since 1859. The story goes that one Dominique Nicrosi left the island penniless, made his fortune in the southern U.S. (Alabama to be specific), and then left the U.S. because of the coming winds of the Civil War.

Upon returning to Corsica, he bought a mansion on the coast that had some vineyards which he renamed Clos Nicrosi. His grandson, Toussaint Luigi, took over the estate a century later. The wine was ‘discovered’ and presented to the world thanks to a ‘scouting’trip’ led by Jean-Marie Peynaud (son of Lucien Peyraud of Domaine Tempier) and Kermit Lynch. It was this wine that proved to importer Lynch that all of Corsica wasn’t just a bunch of nice vineyards producing rustic ‘plonk’.

Apparently Luigi’s wines enjoyed great popularity on the island, but were virtually unknown anywhere else. The rest, as they say, is history. Clos Nicorsi is now farmed by the next generations, Jean-Noël Luigi, along with his daughter, Marine, and son, Sébastien. They farm 20 hectares of vines, half of which is located on the Cap Corse itself.

The Clos Nicorsi Coteaux du Cap Corse Blanc 2016 is made with 100% Vermentino from 15-20 year-old vines planted in shale soils from the Cap itself. They do all the right things in the vineyard and in the cellar including controlled yields, hand harvesting and direct pressing. The fermentation happens in thermo-regulated steel tanks with only native yeasts.

The Clos Nicorsi has the brightness, lift, salinity and minerality that connects it with all of the other manifestations of Vermentino. Where it differs is in size, mid-palate volume, and palate authority. This one has a more substantial mouthfeel, more like a Chateauneuf Blanc, but with the lilting spice notes of Vermentino and a certain subtle nuttiness to the flavors that makes this an intriguing drink.

It sure caught us by surprise. A unique and classy rendition of this varietal and a superb choice with fish in particular. It is still well under the radar as evidenced by the fact that we found zero reviews in any of the major publications for any vintage. But this stylish white definitely deserves a wider play.

LISTEN TO YOUR DIRT

We have told this story many times over the years. But it is arguably the very best example of the point we are trying to make. There was a family vintner that made Zinfandel in the Russian River area that we met at a ZAP tasting in San Francisco some years ago. We liked his wines, and he had no regular distribution in Southern California. No problem, we said. We can take down whatever it takes. To make this work. It was classic Russian River Zinfandel with the tender ripe berry profiles of some of our favorites at the time, including the Deloach Zins that Mike Sullivan (now of Benovia) made when he was there. Plenty of ravishing red fruits, plenty ripe but not overdone (usually sitting in the upper 14% alcohol range) and classic spice and pepper nuance, this was simply an engaging bottle of Zin that showcased the genre nicely.

We established a pretty good business with this vintner for several vintages, tasting new releases that fit the profile, then buying and selling a rather substantial number of cases. Next year’s sample came, same story. Then one year we anxiously opened the newest effort when it arrived, poured it and looked at each other quizzically. The comment was something to the effect of ‘what the hell happened?’. The vintage was a normal one for the region, devoid of any weather ‘events’ that might have explained this particular wine’s variance from the norm we had come to expect. It was instead rather lean and somewhat short, with some green streaks to the fruit and an alcohol level in the low 12% range.

Puzzled, we called the winery principal, whom we had gotten to know reasonably well after working with him for several vintages. Our question was pretty direct. Why was this Zin so different from all of the years previously? His answer kind of shocked us. “The wines were too ripe for me to enjoy with my dinner’, he said, “so I harvested with lower sugars in mind to make a wine more food friendly”.

Say what? The guy’s vineyard gave him lush, juicy, delicious Zin every year, and there was a ready market from ZInfandel buyers for his wines as they had been previously. Why mess with it? Zinfandel itself has its own quirks from a growing standpoint, including a tendency to ripen somewhat unevenly and for the sugars in the grapes potentially to jump quickly if it got a little toasty warm outside late in the season. Also as a grape that didn’t reach physiological ripeness without a good bit of hang time and thin skin for a grape with such potentially high sugars, it presented certain challenges to the grower just by definition.

If you don’t get that physiological ripeness, however, you run the risk of green edges to the flavors, and a clipped, narrow flavor band. In other words, you end up with not very compelling Zinfandel. There is a point to this story, besides bemoaning the loss of a source of delicious, well-priced Zinfandel because of decisions we openly questioned. As you probably guessed, we didn’t buy that vintage of Zin or any subsequent ones.

But the moral of the story is that the whole idea of terroir exists for a reason. Certain grapes are presumably planted in certain places because it is presumed that those are the ones that will perform the best there given the soils, temperatures, diurnal shifts, winds, and a whole host of other things that define the difference between one place and another. To us, the growers’ first directive is to listen to their dirt and understand what the vineyard is prepared to give them. The next directive is to usher in what that dirt gives you as best you can.

Granted that way of thinking may be our problem. We have an issue with trying to make chicken wings into pork chops. There’s a reason you don’t see people trying to grow pineapples in the desert. If the varietal and the place give you a successful beverage in a particular style suited to that combination, why would you fight and take extra steps to make it into something else that it wasn’t necessarily meant to be? Farming is a dicey enough proposition without trying to superimpose a philosophy that may go against Nature outright. More important, the results aren’t necessarily all that compelling when you do make that choice.

As to our Zinfandel growing vintner, he could have a vintage that is cold where the grapes don’t fully ripen. Such are the risks of being a grower. The grapes and the place go along way in mediating potential problems like that. But for the grower to elect to do it, contrary to what the vintage and varietal are trying to give them in a given season, makes no sense to us. That being said, you can probably guess how we feel about 11% alcohol nouveau Mourvedre, most ‘somm label’ reds, In Pursuit of Balance ‘early harvest’ philosophies, and any number of the other seemingly faddish, specifically intended concoctions we have seen lately.

It is hard enough to grow great grapes. To take an extra step to try to impose one’s pre-conceived stylistic notion on something that is ultimately determined by Nature rarely ends well. So our message to all of the ‘tinkerers’ out there that are trying to create wines to fit some sort of premeditated stylistic profile, listen to your dirt! Guide the grapes through the process of doing what they are meant to do in a given spot. You should worry about things like physiological ripeness and even ripening of the fruit, not some arbitrarily imposed alcohol or acid reading that may not fit with the typical profile of a particular vineyard or region.

We hate to sound like old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preachers saying our Zinfandel vintner’s early-harvest effort was an ‘abomination against Nature’. But, in truth, it kind of was. Sadly, there is way too much of that kind of thing going on these days and California seems to be a particular hotbed for that kind of thinking. We have had the good fortune of having conversations with a number of Europe’s icon vintners over the years. They are keenly attuned to their vineyards. You know how often this kind of “I’m going to harvest at so-and-so with a certain profile in mind” discussion comes up with them? Never.