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The Making of a Food Wine, A Case Study: Donelan Acquerello 2010 Syrah

May 7, ’13 8:57 AM

Donelan Acquerello 2010 Syrah w Tyler Thomas & Gianpaolo Paterlini

“Talking to other winemakers helped me understand what it means to be a winemaker.” -Tyler Thomas

“It’s not about knowing the tricks of the trade, it’s about how you’re going to use them.” -Gianpaolo Paterlini

Donelan 201 Acquerello Syrah

click on comic to enlarge

The importance of knowing your context plays behind the history of success for both Tyler Thomas, winemaker of Donelan Family Wines, Sonoma County, and Gianpaolo Paterlini, Wine Director of Acquerello Restaurant, San Francisco.

Winemaking with Tyler Thomas

Tyler Thomas graduated with a Master’s from UC Davis’s Viticulture & Enology program after having already completed an advanced Masters in Botany. His roots in science run deep. After finishing his work at Davis, however, Thomas recognized the importance of grounding his knowledge in experience, and in 2004 started a job at HdV in Napa Valley, with an agreement to also integrate work elsewhere in that first year.

After the 2004 harvest with the winery, then, Thomas traveled for the reciprocal harvest that New Year in New Zealand, returning North to do research on Sylvaner vines in Germany. During his time in Geisenheim Reingau, Thomas was able to take trips throughout Europe, meeting with winemakers in Burgundy, and Alsace as well.

It was through his time in Germany, Thomas explains, that he really learned what it is to be a winemaker. Thomas would sit with others in the region and simply define terms. The winemakers would discuss together their differing cultural views of wine, terroir, technique, and quality. The experience made clear for Thomas how culturally embedded views of wine, and its foundational elements turn out to be. In recognizing the importance of context, the point that you always choose how to make your wine, or what counts as quality came clear. “Talking to other winemakers helped me understand what it means to be a winemaker,” he says.

His background in Botany, and training in viticulture provided ample tools for winemaking, but as Thomas clarifies, his time abroad “was formative in shaping my philosophy. When I returned, then, to HdV, I recognized it was not what you do, but how you think about wine that makes you a winemaker.” HdV winemaker Stephan Vivier further rooted such understanding in Thomas. Vivier originates from Burgundy. In traveling abroad, Thomas was able to recognize a kinship in Vivier with other winemakers in France. Thomas’s early training with grapes, then, came from Vivier’s French sensibilities working with California fruit. The experience established in Thomas an approach defined by both patience, and thoroughness. In his approach to making wine, you sit back and wait, letting the wine takes its time, but you also keep clear track of where it’s at, and make sure what can be done early is tended to up front.

Gianpaolo Paterlini Grows the Acquerello Wine Program

Gianpaolo Paterlini grew up in Acquerello, the restaurant his father, Giancarlo, helped establish. Paterlini’s early memories, then, include his father’s work with the then-smaller Italian restaurant established in a neighborhood of San Francisco that was truly neighborhood then for all its establishment now.

At the age of fourteen, Giancarlo let his son know there would be no more free spending money, but if he wanted a job to earn cash, there was one to be had. So, Gianpaolo began working as a bus boy on weekends. At the time he had no interest in continuing his career in the service industry. Then he went to college in Boston. In summers, Paterlini’s work experience expanded to include food service, leading him to a restaurant job in Boston during the school year.

In Boston, Paterlini began work at Blue Ginger where he came to recognize a huge potential in the industry he hadn’t noticed before. He also saw how much fun it could be. Eventually, his life took him back to the Bay Area where he connected with the famed Sommelier, Raj Parr. Parr showed Paterlini what a top quality wine program looked like–it wasn’t just a great wine list, it was a wine list with an investment in wine education. Additionally, Parr helped Paterlini gain harvest experience with winemaker Sashi Moorman in Santa Barbara County, working in the Lompoc wine ghetto, side by side with many of the best labels from that region. In Lompoc, Paterlini explains, he didn’t only help make wine, but with the mass of winemakers in close proximity, he also drank some of the great wines from throughout the world. Work days would end with bottles for tasting.

In 2007, Paterlini’s experiences came together to illuminate the value of Acquerello for him in a new way. It was a quality restaurant that had never had a dedicated Sommelier. So, with his father’s blessing, Gianpaolo returned to the family restaurant focusing first simply on the restaurant’s established wines. Within short order, wine sales of the establishment increased. As a result, Paterlini was able to legitimate the value of establishing a full fledged wine program, based in what is now a 90-plus page wine list and education program focused primarily, though not exclusively, on Italian wines.

The Birth of a Partnership: Donelan Acquerello Syrah

Donelan Acquerello at the end of lunch

Thomas and Paterlini met through the restaurant. Owner of Donelan wines, Joe Donelan, had been a long time customer of Acquerello, with a friendly connection to the Paterlini family.

In his interests to stay informed and current with wine, Gianpaolo regularly tastes through California wine country (traveling as well to Italy and elsewhere). Through repeat visits to Donelan winery, Paterlini and Thomas recognized a relationship with wine that spurred both their interests. Over time, the connection bred a conversation about developing a unique Syrah together.

The focus of Acquerello’s wine list is deeply Italian, with some Champagne pleasantries, and California highlights as well. The wines by the glass, then, focus on Italian offerings that pair well with the current menu. Together the wine director and chef work for weeks to create a menu that seamlessly couples seasonal flavors with interesting wine. Paterlini had worked with wineries for a few custom bottlings before. From Italy, Sottimano created a 2007 Langhe Nebbiolo for the restaurant that, as Paterlini put it, was chosen because it “blew my mind so I bought a lot for the restaurant.”

In California, Paterlini has been able to garner two different vintages from Dan Petroski of Massican, to create first an Acquerello Chardonnay, and then in 2012 a Sauvignon. Massican is known for creating white wines from California with clear Italian inspiration. In those cases too, Paterlini happened upon barrel lots of Massican wine he enjoyed.

Enjoying Wine with Lunch

In private conversation when Thomas had briefly stepped out, Paterlini took the occasion to tell me what he appreciated about working with Thomas, “I know no one makng better Syrah than Tyler,” he tells me. “But I knew too that in working with him we’d get the experience of talking through what component parts would bring to the blend.”

The Donelan project differs from previous Acquerello wine partnerships in that when the possibility first arose, Thomas emphasized the process of partnership. Where Sottimano and Massican wines were discovered already complete and chosen for how they work well with the restaurant, the Donelan conversation occurred before a wine was made. “I wanted to make sure that the whole thing made perfect sense for Acquerello.” Thomas explained. In his view, making wine for Acquerello was exciting, but it was also a high responsibility. There was no point in doing it unless it was something the restaurant was going to love. But creating a wine they both believed in depended too on making it with the Donelan philosophy. The goal, then, became to make an Acquerello wine in the Donelan style — distinctly Syrah, strongly food focused, developed patiently over time.

Making the Wine

In order to accomplish the Acquerello goal, Thomas set about developing an abbreviated version of the Donelan teams approach–a series of blending trials over the course of a year. The first step would be to identify the barrel that would serve as the core of the wine. Together Thomas and Paterlini located a lot from the Kobler Vineyard, a site that produces friendly Syrah on the ligher side with lots of acidity and smoother tannin, flavored with elegant notes of mountain blueberry carrying frost touched edges.

Once the core of the blend was identified, the goal became then to determine what little bits from other barrels were desired. Together Thomas and Paterlini tasted and talked through the gifts and elements of other lots of Syrah in the winery. Their discussion focused on how each barrel would impact the blend, what it would add, or, detract.

The Donelan team, met repeatedly with the team of Acquerello to hone in on the restaurant’s perfect wine. At its final stage, five possible assemblages were brought to the restaurant in San Francisco where the entire staff of Acquerello blind tasted the five selections side by side. Remarkably, in the end, they all agreed on one. “At the end of the day, it was my call what blend was picked,” Paterlini explains. “But, instead, we included all 10 people [the Acquerello staff]. We all happened to agree, but the point was to act like their opinion matters, because it does.”

After the blend was finalized, Thomas performed a final test. He took a sample bottle with him to the restaurant one afternoon and sat down with Paterlini. Together they blind tasted through the red wine portion of the wines by the glass (BTG) menu checking to see if the Acquerello blend suited the overall architecture of the restaurant’s BTG program. The goal in tasting was to identify a consistency of mouthfeel between the Donelan wine, and the Italians on the restaurant’s list. “Did we get the mouthfeel to a point where it can represent Acquerello well?” Thomas asked.

Paterlini nods, “mouthfeel is the most important thing when selling wine to customers. You need to give them a texture they can relate to.”

The Final Wine

The Donelan Acquerello Syrah has the flavor of Donelan but with a more breezy pleasure. The focus is on open juiciness, the wine giving a portico of freshness to welcome the midpalate. It’s a shape Donelan wines don’t tend to have, yet it drinks like its part of the Donelan portfolio’s extended family.

Thomas addresses the presentation of the final wine, “the wine tells both our stories.”

Paterlini agrees, “we did exactly what we wanted to do. We made the wine we wanted to make.”

As the two continue talking, the relationship expressed within the wine becomes clear. It’s the approach they took to making the wine–working together, incorporating the entirety of both teams to find agreement through discussion–that showcases Thomas’s winemaking style. He values steadiness and patience housed in a path of rigorous attention, coupled with discussion with his people along the way. The Acquerello Syrah is a Donelan wine because it follows the Donelan process–similar oak regime, similar blending trial process. It’s the texture, and architecture of the wine that belongs to Acquerello.

***

The Donelan Acquerello 2010 Sonoma Syrah is only available at Acquerello Italian Restaurant in San Francisco.

Other Donelan wines are available in the Bay area through Marathon Brokers, or by contacting Donelan Wines directly.

Thank you to Tyler Thomas, and Gianpaolo Paterlini.
Thank you to Emily Kaiden.

Copyright 2013 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

 

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A Life in Wine: Frederic Panaiotis, Chef de Caves for Ruinart Champagne

Apr 11, ’13 1:54 PM

Talking with Frédéric Panaiotis

“There is a French saying,” Frédéric Panaiotis tells me. “Help yourself and the sky will help you. I like this. This is my motto.”

Frederic Panaiotis

Frédéric Panaiotis, the Chef de Caves for Ruinart Champagne

I met Frédéric Panaiotis after arriving embarrassingly early to a private Ruinart dinner due to a mix-up with my driver. He and Nicolas Ricroque, the champagne’s brand director, welcomed me warmly and offered bubbles to set me at ease. We began with Ruinart Blanc de Blancs and their dinner’s good view. Later, with food, we’d also step back into older vintages of Dom Ruinart paired with courses made for us by the talented chef Michelle Bernstein.

Ruinart began as the oldest established champagne house in the world, founded in 1729, at a time when bottling the beverage had been illegal. With its forbidden nature, so the story goes, it was desired and enjoyed at the court of Versailles, where the original Ruinart family was friendly. Over drinks one evening with the king, Nicolas Ruinart had an epiphany. His champagne would please. The Ruinart “wine with bubbles” business began September 1, 1729 with the intent of offering unique gifts to Nicolas’s fabric customers–the family owned a cloth company–but within six years of founding the bubbles venture it dominated the family interests and by 1735 they shifted entirely to champagne.

Now, a little less than 300 years later, Ruinart persists, founded on blending strategies with a focus on chardonnay. Today, Frédéric Panaiotis serves as the house’s Chef de Caves, or chief winemaker, in charge of nursing the grapes from vineyard to vin clair (champagne’s first step still blend), to bubbles, all with the intention of maintaining the Ruinart house style.

It is this willingness of the winemaker to give over to something older and longer that gives champagne its persistence and brilliance both. Panaiotis recognizes he is part of this longer tradition. “When you join a champagne house,” he tells me, “it is important to understand my name will not stay.”

Panaiotis emphasizes the importance of this history. “In California, a winemaker can make their mark on a house, and that is understandable. But, in Champagne, it is different.” He continues, “In Champagne, you should never remember who was making the wine 40 years ago. He is just one of the guys making sure the wine style is the same.” The comparison highlights two different models of success–one of persistent innovation, on the one hand, and one of established grace, on the other, both to be valued but for different contexts.

Panaiotis discusses the history of Ruinart w Morimoto's help

Frederic Panaiotis discussing Ruinart champagne at a special demonstration with Chef Morimoto, Pebble Beach Food & Wine 2013

Panaiotis strikes me as a man full of grace, and gravitas both. As much as he regards himself well integrated into a larger team–both historically and currently–he also acts as the facilitator of that team’s larger goals.

It is in listening to Panaiotis, I am struck by how the two models–California and Champagne–showcase not only different ideas of history, but also differing examples of leadership. He appreciates the value of both approaches, having resided in Mendocino for almost three years between 1989 and 1991, assisting in the production of sparkling wine for a California label.

Now as chief winemaker for Ruinart, Panaiotis emphasizes the strength of the house band. “When it comes to winemaking, a well-honed team is so much more efficient and reliable. There can always be someone that is sick, but not all of us. So, the response, the assessment of the wine has to be done by the team, not one person.”

Successful focus on the group together, however, depends on also recognizing each individual’s talents. Creating that well-honed contingent, Panaiotis explains, comes from smartly utilizing each person’s abilities. “I must understand who on the team is more competent, more sensitive on certain areas than others.” In describing his meaning, Panaiotis uses himself as example. If he is feeling off one day, it’s necessary for him to recognize who around him can be more effective. “Everyone has expertise, skill in something.” He says, “I have to recognize that. Then I can trust you. Then the team responds. Whoever from the team for each part of what we’re doing.” Panaiotis emphasizes the advantage of this approach, “it’s very satisfying and more fun when we all work together.”

Nicolas, Michelle, and Frederic

Brand manager, Nicolas Ricroque, Chef Michelle Bernstein, and Frédéric Panaiotis doing final preparations for dinner

Getting Panaiotis to discuss his time in California uncovers an aspect of his character I suspect is foundational–curiosity coupled with systematic study. His education focused on the sciences, taking him through a career that has included chemical wine analysis, years of research on cork taint, and several positions making sparkling wine, in both California and Champagne. Talking about his work in Mendocino, Panaiotis tells me about his studies. “I took Spanish while I was working in California. Wine is great. With wine, you learn something everyday.” He references an idea we both agree upon–the more you know, the less you know. “But with me, it is not enough, so I study languages.” Currently Panaiotis is getting started with Mandarin.

It is not just a thirst for more knowledge that drives Panaiotis, it is also an interest in deeper understanding. We touch on the idea of food and wine pairing, a subject common to the world of wine. But with Panaiotis it blooms into a conversation about culture, recognition of values and ideas. Panaiotis’s thinking is multi-layered throughout. To understand food and wine pairing more effectively, he studies other languages.

He explains his reasoning. “Language is a key aspect of learning how people think,” he offers. “I am always interested in food and wine pairings. Language is key to understanding a culture’s ideas.” By recognizing the ideas of another culture, you gain new insight into flavors and food relationships as well. The various forms of study, then, all circle back, even while revealing something new in themselves. It is both that are true.

In discussing Panaiotis’s wealth of experience he reveals again his blend of grace, and gravitas, coupled with what I recognize as genuine humility, a trait he already revealed through his discussion of team work and leadership–a person of genuine humility, I believe, recognizes what they are genuinely good at, while understanding too there is always more to learn.

Through the Ruinart dinner, and the next day’s Morimoto cooking demonstration, Panaiotis showed his talent for pairing food and wine, an ability clear throughout our discussion as well. But he understands the source of his own strengths. “I am not gifted.” He explains. “People think I am gifted in food and wine pairings. No. No. No. I am not gifted.” As he speaks he is utterly sincere and to the point. “I work very hard all the time to keep learning.”

The hard work Panaiotis puts into his job he also does with clear gratefulness and joy. “I don’t make champagne,” he tells me. “I make something to make people happy. Putting a smile on people’s face, that is my job. How many people can say that?”

***

Thank you to Frederic Panaiotis for including me, and taking time to talk with me.

Thank you to Nicolas Ricroque.

Copyright 2013 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

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A Visit to Haute-Saône, France: Drinking wine with the Captain at Chateau La Barre, for Annemarie, and Jeremy

Apr 1, ’13 12:00 AM

Touring the Vineyards of Chateau La Barre

Chateau La Barre Vineyards

climate meter at Chateau La Barre Vineyards

It’s warm when I arrive for the visit of Chateau La Barre. The weather is a relief for the region after fog and cold for several weeks. The area is known for its continental climate but can also get hit with bouts of severe chill due to the mountain influence from the North. Though the Vosges range is in the distance, it still weighs influence on the vines.

My visit to the winery is unusual, as the Chateau owner is known now for his privacy. He’s resistant to interviews but offered to meet me finally in recognition of his family winery’s up coming tricentennial. Owner and vigneron, Jean-Luc Picard, treats his vines now as an homage to his ancestors.

His invitation to meet arrived with a short but direct explanation: We’re not going to talk about his previous career. It’s the Chateau we’re there to discuss, and, though he’d rather avoid interviews, he respects the work of his family and wishes to celebrate their accomplishments. Prior to retiring to his homeland of France, Picard had had a distinguished career as a fleet Captain, but now he sees that recognition as a distraction from the work he’s trying to do for the region.

Meeting the Picards

Jean Luc Picard inspecting his vines

inspecting the vines with Jean-Luc Picard

Before I have the chance to sit, Picard ushers me out to the vineyard. It’s the vines he wants to show me. The Estate’s recent developments are exciting, thanks in part to Picard’s archaeological and historical interests as well.

Winemaking hadn’t been part of Picard’s imagined retirement. He’d grown up in the vineyards with his father Maurice teaching him vine maintenance but Picard’s passions took him away from home. With his older brother Robert devoting himself to oenology, Picard felt free to follow the decision of a different path. The traditions of the Picard estate would rest in his brother’s family.

Then, almost three decades ago tragedy struck when a winery fire killed both Picard’s brother, and nephew, Réne. The loss was devastating, and the future of Chateau La Barre seemed uncertain. Robert’s widow, Marie, was able to keep the winery operating successfully until a little less than 10 years ago when she fell ill. Around the same time Picard was first considering the possibility of retirement. With the news of Marie’s illness, and clear counsel from his friend, Guinan, Picard decided to take some time in France. Then the visit led to an unexpected discovery.

We’re standing in front of a special section of vineyard Picard wants to show me. What’s unique is that the grapes are entirely pale and green skinned, an ancient variety known as Savagnin. The region has been dominated by red wine production for centuries, more recently practicing in traditional techniques of wild yeast fermentations, and aging in neutral oak barrels. As Picard explains, the style is one resembling one of the oldest winemaking styles in France, with the most delicate of grapes, Pinot Noir.

Generations ago Chateau La Barre was instrumental in helping to restore the style, once called Burgundy, through the work of Picard’s great grandfather, Acel. Though the approach was met with resistance initially, ultimately, the family was lauded for their efforts to return to less interventionist winemaking based on the grape types that grew best on the land, requiring less use of fluidized treatments, and more reliance on the vines own unique ecosystem.

Prior to Acel Picard’s efforts, it was more common for wine to be made with the use of replicated nutrient intervention. Acel’s view, however, was that such an approach created less palatable, and less interesting wine. So he scoured the historical records for evidence of older techniques. In doing so, he found ancient texts left from devotees of an ancient religion known as Christianity in which it was believed that God spoke to them through the vines. Though Acel refused the more mystical aspects of the religious views, he found the vineyard practices of the texts insightful, and adopted the technique of tending and selecting individual vines, followed by simple winemaking. Chateau La Barre’s wines soon became known for their earthy mouth-watering complexity.

Picard’s own work builds on the efforts of his great grandfather to return to older techniques but in researching archaeological sites of the region, as well as ancient texts, Picard discovered a subtle mistake in Acel’s efforts. While Acel worked to restore red winemaking traditions known to Haute-Saône, he actually restored techniques native to an area of France slightly afield from the region. La Barre, it turns out, does not rest within the old boundaries of the ancient wine region of Burgundy, but instead a political shire of the same name. Picard himself does not believe this historical reality lessens the importance of Acel’s efforts, it just changes their tone slightly, but he does want to see what can be done to explore the winemaking traditions that really were found closer to La Barre centuries ago.

Enter Vin Jaune and the Ancient Varieties

Jean Luc in his vineyards

Jean-Luc Picard standing in his Eline Vineyard

Through archaeological work Picard preformed a sort of miracle. He was able to locate still intact seeds from ancient vine specimens known once to have covered this region of France, Savagnin, as well as seeds for the red variety that had once covered the wine region of Burgundy, Pinot Noir.

Before the destructive effectiveness of the technology was properly understood, Thalaron radiation was tested as a soil cleaning technique during the last agricultural age. The bio-effects were irrecoverable with vineyards throughout the Vosges zone being destroyed and then unplantable for a generation. As a result, a collection of indigenous grape varieties were believed to be lost, including Savagnin, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir. Once the soil recovered well enough to replant large interests in inter-global varieties took over and any attempts to recover the original grapes seemed over.

During the Restoration period scientists attempted to re-engineer Savagnin as well as other ancient varieties such as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay but Savagnin proved too susceptible to geraniol instability to engineer. When funding for the project was cut, efforts to restore Chardonnay were deemed the least advantageous and ultimately only Pinot Noir vines were genetically manufactured.

Through intensive research Picard was able to find a cave in the Vosges range containing ancient wooden vessels that proved to have a few small seeds inside. Through similar research he also located similar containers in the area of Gevrey-Chambertin within which he located Pinot Noir. Chardonnay and Cabernet remain extinct.

With the seeds Picard was then able to develop new plantings of both Savagnin and Pinot Noir, and restart sections of his vineyard with them. It is the area with these plantings he has named Eline. It is this he wants me to see.

Thanks to Picard’s efforts we now know there is significant difference in the flavor and aging potential of wines made from the engineered Pinot Noir versus the naturally grown variety. Picard has also discovered evidence from old electronic documents known as The Feiring Line: The Real Wine Newsletter of unique vinification techniques known as vin Jaune that were once used for the grape Savagnin. Through further study he has already discovered the steps to make vin Jaune and is five years into the aging of his first vintage.

I ask if we can taste his Savagnin but he explains it has only been under veil for a little over five years, and needs at least another year before he’s willing to show it. The veil, he explains, is how vin Jaune is made. It’s a film of yeast that covers the surface of the wine and helps it age slowly. When the wine is done it will be named Ressick, he tells me, for a planet that aged too fast.

***

Thank you to Jean-Luc Picard for giving so much of his time.

Thank you to Annemarie for suggesting the interview.

Thank you to Jeremy Parzen for having the background to hopefully get it.

Happy April 1, Everybody!

Copyright 2013 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

 

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The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 1: Considering Recent History

Feb 15, ’13 11:10 AM

Thank you to Eric Asimov for recommending this article in The New York Times Diner’s Journal “What We’re Reading”, February 19, 2013.

***

Circling George Vare: One Way White Maceration Ferments Came into California

George Vare, an investor with decades of experience in Napa wine, celebrates the work of experimental winemakers. For Vare, the passion of young people trying new approaches exemplifies the future of the California wine industry.

Operating outside the mainstream appears as a theme in Vare’s own history with the industry. In early 1995, Vare and Michael Moone decided to step outside the Cabernet and Chardonnay focus of 1980s and 90s Napa Valley and established a new company, Luna Vineyards. Vare had worked for decades already at scouting and expanding the commercial success of now historic Napa wine labels, including Geyser Peak Winery, Beringer Wine Estates, and others. In 1995, however, after considering the pulse of Napa wine, Moone and Vare realized there was room for taking their business in a different direction.

George Vare in his Ribolla Gialla vineyard

George Vare in his Ribolla Gialla, Friulano vineyard

Though Italian immigrants had helped establish the original wine industry through the valley, by the end of the last century, little interest in Italian varieties could be found rooted in the area. Together, Moone and Vare decided to take advantage of that missing piece by making Sangiovese and Pinot Grigio.

The original goals of Luna were to make Italian varietals to rival old world quality. Early vintages were described as carrying “old world austerity and terroir, bolstered by new world fullness and verve” (Boca Raton News 16 March 2003).

In March 1995, Vare and Moone’s Luna purchased a Chardonnay vineyard at what were then the Southern reaches of the Silverado trail. What is remarkable about the story is that soon after buying the 82 acre vineyard they replanted most of the site to Pinot Grigio, establishing 44-acres of the variety by 2000, and increasing from there. At the time, the idea of pulling out Napa Valley Chardonnay and replacing it with Pinot Grigio, was surely crazy. So, the group renamed themselves the Luna-tics. Where Oregon had begun the Pinot Gris experiment as early as the mid-60s, Luna stood as one of the leaders of the grape in California. In this way, the intention to do things differently defined the beginnings of Luna. As John Kongsgaard once explained, the self-named Luna-tics even used to play classical music to the vines.

John Kongsgaard Starts the University

After 20 years of success in the Napa Valley wine industry, Kongsgaard was brought in to Luna in 1996 to establish the house’s winemaking style. Konsgaard had started his career making wines in 1980, side-by-side with Doug Nalle at the now defunct Belvedere Winery. By the mid-1990s, however, Kongsgaard had proven himself as an influential winemaker through his 13-years of work with Newton Vineyards.

In 1997, Kongsgaard and Vare began making regular trips to Italy, originally searching for “the holy grail of Pinot Grigio.” As Vare explained, they searched first in Alsace, and though they liked those wines, the climate didn’t suit Napa. Alto Adige also proved too cold. Finally Friuli gave a closer parallel, and a wealth of influence through small scale and experimental winemakers of the region.

Kongsgaard worked with Christopher Vandendriessche, of White Rock, as assistant winemaker initially. Together they helped establish what Abe Schoener calls a university environment in Luna’s winery. Schoerner had begun working with the team at the end of the 1990s, gathering data on their vineyard sites, but also learning from Kongsgaard as Schoener’s mentor. Schoener makes clear too that Vare supported and encouraged the winery’s university methodology.

By allowing interns to make their own barrels of wine, while also doing their work for Luna, the facility trained a number of young wine enthusiasts that would go on to influence the area’s wine industry. But the approach also effectively expanded the experimentation witnessed by the mentors as well. Kongsgaard has stated that he fine-tuned some techniques he’d go on to use for his own label through the early investigatory period of Luna.

Schoener explains, Kongsgaard had a talent for standing back to let his mentees explore their interests in wine, while being there to facilitate a successful project at the same time. Vandendriessche operates with a similar approach in his work today at White Rock as well. The site served as Schoener’s first winery in establishing Scholium Project, and today facilitates the work of other new winemakers getting ready to release their work.

Learning from Radikon and Gravner

After Vandendriessche chose to move his attention to the White Rock facility, Kelly Wheat was brought in as the new assistant winemaker to Kongsgaard. Wheat began traveling to Friuli with Kongsgaard and Vare, who had already established strong relationships with the winemakers through Friuli and Slovenia. Wheat benefited, then, from the friendships already started with the likes of Stanko and Sasa Radikon, Josko Gravner, and others.

Radikon had begun experimenting with making his wines with extended skin contact in 1994, utilizing open top wood fermenters. Stanko Radikon’s father had talked about techniques used in Oslajve prior to the onset of more contemporary pressed wine techniques. Eventually Stanko decided to invest in using them.

Previously, Radikon explained, wines were made using all of the fruit, rather than removing the skins. The result was to develop wines with greater texture, aroma, and flavor, that also kept longer after being made. The skin contact style of winemaking, then, was historically situated–a normal approach for the technology of the time–but it was also economical–it made the wine last.

Drawing on Georgian winemaking history, Gravner began using extended maceration fermentation in clay anphora in 1996. He had helped introduce the focus and freshness of temperature controlled stainless steel vats to Friuli, thus introducing the winemaking changes associated with newer technologies. But after a friend brought Gravner a kveri (Georgian anphora), the winemaker experimented with the winemaking techniques of that region, known to be thousands of years old.

With both Radikon and Gravner there was an adjustment period while moving to the historical-but-new-to-them techniques. Each winemaker had developed expertise with their previous styles, and were known for making quality, terroir-driven wines. In shifting to the use of extended maceration, however, they also needed time getting to know the effects of the approach. In 2001, Gravner released his first fully anfora based portfolio (though bottlings as early as 1998 are still available for purchase in the United State). In establishing friendships with both Radikon and Gravner, the Luna-tics were able to learn new techniques both through direct witness at the Italian wineries, and through on going consultations had by phone.

Kongsgaard and Vare had befriended Radikon as early as their first trip to the region, meeting Gravner a few trips later. On one visit with Gravner, a barrel with a plexiglass side stood in the corner. Grapes were inside aging not only on lees, but skins, with the wine in such a state for over a year. The Americans were able to taste the wine from the experiment and were pleased at the result, not having heard of such an approach previously. As Vare described it, the wine had a nice weight and texture, without any bitterness.

Showing Skins: the practice moves to California

After returning from a visit with these winemakers in Friuli in 2000, Wheat decided to try the techniques himself and make extended skin contact lots for some of the white wines at Luna.

In 2000, Wheat began making a Pinot Grigio blend that sent 40% of the grapes straight to press before fermentation, while the rest were put through a crusher to allow more aromatic and textural contribution from skins.The technique loosely resembles the impact of older technology that broke up grapes more than simply pressing them, causing more skin and stem influence (and thus both more aromatics and more body) on the juice.

Wheat experimented further however, making small lots of white wine left to ferment like a red. Inspired by his time in Friuli, Wheat located some Friulano in 2001, sourced from the Hollister area (and grown in limestone) and fermented to dryness on skins, working similarly as well with Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay grown in or closer to Napa. The most successful of these, Schoener believes, was the Fruilano.

Having worked with Luna in various capacities for several years, Schoener became winemaker there after Wheat’s departure in 2002. Witnessing Wheat’s trials with skin contact, Schoener encouraged the Luna label to make some skin contact bottlings. Having become more mainstream by that point (Vare was also no longer acting president), the board was resistant to investing in wines without more proven market success. Schoener stayed in the role at Luna long enough to help winemaker Mike Drash take up the reins in 2003, only ever intending to secure a smooth transition from Wheat to the new person. After Schoener dove into his Scholium Project, beginning to make a skin contact Sauvignon Blanc, the now oft mentioned Prince in his Caves, in 2006.

Luna would not be bottling skin-contact only white wines. However, drawing on Wheat’s experience with the approach, Drash continued making what Luna called their Freakout White blend. The wine included extended maceration of Sauvignon Blanc, as well as Friulano left to ferment to dryness on skins.

Looking for Texture: Pax Mahle experiments

Over in Sonoma County, independently of the work being done with the Luna-tics, Pax Mahle had started Pax Wine Cellars in 2000. The label had a central focus on Syrah, but made Rhone whites as well. Working against the norm at the time, Mahle was committed to making low alcohol white wines, without the influence of new oak. One of the downsides of whites made in this approach, however, is a textural change in the wine’s mouthfeel–they become lighter, with less weight, and to some people, less interest. Searching for a way to offer more textural interest without reliance on new wood, while keeping alcohol levels low, Mahle began experimenting with skin contact lots in 2003. Just like the adjustment period between a new technique and quality wine necessary for Radikon and Gravner, Mahle explains it wasn’t until 2007 that he bottled a skin contact wine. He wasn’t willing to put a label on something he couldn’t get behind. It took those several years to find a barrel he believed in as a stand alone wine. Prior to 2007 the experimental lots were blended back into other white blends.

***

To read part 2 in this series: The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 2: Variety, Terroir, and Mind Scrambling

Part 3: The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 3: The Craft of Wine Tasting, and the Question of Responsibility, Conversation with Two Sommeliers

To read last year’s series explaining Orange Wines beginning with how they’re made, then their presence in Georgia, Italy, and California, begin here: Understanding Orange Wines Part 1: A Quick and Dirty Look at How They’re Made and What Their Tannins Do To Our Saliva

***

Over the next weeks I’ll be exploring the work of contemporary skin contact wines from California and Oregon winemakers, both varietals and blends. I’ve been lucky enough to taste several dozen examples both bottled and barreled from a range of grape types in both California and Oregon, and to interview a range of people on the subject.

I’ll be traveling in Sydney, Melbourne, and Geelong as well, however, and so my posts here will be mixed in with updates from Australian adventures.

Cheers!

Copyright 2013 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

 

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Opening Space for Complexity and Experience: Eric Asimov’s HOW TO LOVE WINE, A Book Review

Oct 16, ’12 1:17 PM

Eric Asimov’s “How to Love Wine”

My copy of Eric Asimov’s How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto has already been filled with folded down corners and marks on pertinent sections. The pencil appears where he shares ideas I want to reflect on further–like his consideration that a great wine moves in “a fragile ambiguity” offering experiences of doubt and tension (48). The dog ears hover over moments of prose I find enticing and beautiful. There is a sort of almost incongruity in this, as Asimov’s writing here focuses on a central thesis–wine is for ease and pleasure. Along with that thesis, is a common refrain recommending we move away from the tasting note culture of wine, in which apparently objective analysis seems to bear down on bottles, and to instead drink wine as integral to a culture of enjoyment. For me to mark the text, then, as an academic would, with notes of professional analysis, might seem to avoid Asimov’s point. The ultimate conclusion Asimov offers, however, supports that there is no one right style of wine, and no one right answer on what should be enjoyed. (There are some recommendations on how to enjoy it–over time, with a meal, etc., but not a limitation on those possible ways.) It is instead, simply, that if we wish, we should feel free to go ahead and love wine.

Asimov’s book brings together the journalistic tone we know of him already from his regular writing in The New York Times, with personal stories in which he invites us into some of the intimate moments that changed his view of wine. I found myself charmed at the flow of these remembrances, feeling for the younger Asimov that revels in the joy of discovering the power of a meal, that is, “the sum total of the event” (107)–the place, the mood, the food, the place settings, the wine. And especially for the Asimov that celebrates sharing these moments with others, including a 30-year Bordeaux with his parents on their 30-year anniversary. And that I believe is part of the point of this book.

Let me explain.

There are times in this read when I question the contrast between the more spare manifesto tone, and the memoir approach. The book begins with the sense that it needs to convince us of something, and at first I resisted what felt to me an opening with a defensive stance. After the first couple chapters, however, we step into a more relaxed voice that wants to share stories with us, and invite us into a more familiar understanding of Asimov’s personal connections with wine. By the conclusion it is clear Asimov, as he puts it, does not wish to proselytize. The early chapters, then, must stand for some other purpose. At first the move from the earlier, into the narrative reflection felt disjointed to me. In moving through the book as a whole, however, I recognize these first chapters are there to do what might be important work–that is, help us to clear a space for ourselves from the heavy assumptions of a wine culture that demands infallible knowledge and analytic tasting notes. In stepping out from under such weight, we can instead simply breath, relax, and enjoy as we read. Not only for hedonistic pleasure, but also for the sense of complexity that comes with no longer expecting an expert to deliver packaged and memorizable answers for us. The responsibility of authority comes back to us. In purposefully helping to create this kind of space, I believe Asimov is doing something to be appreciated, and that he can be thanked for.

U.S. wine culture often appears as intimidating, pretentious, and alien. Novices and connoisseurs alike doubt their own ability to successfully select a bottle of wine, as if it is a test not only of ones knowledge, but perhaps too of ones value as a person, or as a professional. There is, in other words, a fear that when it comes to wine it is far too easy to screw up. Eric Asimov, with his job as the Wine Critic of The New York Times stands as one of the arbiters of taste for the nation, and the world of wine at large. With such a position, then, if there are people qualified for delivering the test results of appropriate wine knowledge and value, Asimov is one of them. From that position of authority, Asimov avoids announcing what wine it is right for us to drink, and instead invites us to relax and enjoy whatever we drink with greater ease and freedom of pleasure. In this way, the stories he tells us are not only wonderful anecdotes about a person I love to read. They are also invitations for us to see that he (and by implication, the other arbiters of taste in the wine world too) is simply a person. Any experts in wine have ample knowledge, yes (and that should no doubt be respected), but the knowledge they have arises from their own experience with wine over time. Wine knowledge, then, is dynamic, changing, and, at its root, personal. If we want to love wine, we can develop our relationship with it ourselves too, just as Asimov or any other expert has.

By sharing his memoir with us, Asimov accomplishes the manifesto portion of his text by example. In the midst of what might otherwise seem alien, or intimidating (the world of wine), what Asimov’s book does, is invite us in to the experience.

***

Eric Asimov‘s book How To Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto was officially released today, October 16, 2012. It is available in the United States from William Morrow.

Thank you to the William Morrow division of Harper Collins for sending me an advanced copy of this book.

Most importantly: Congratulations and thank you to Eric Asimov for this excellent book, and for all his important work. May we all strive to bring such humility, grace, and clarity in excellence.

***
To hear more on the book from Eric Asimov himself, check out this interview by Levi Dalton on his podcast series, I’ll Drink to That! “Episode 33″.

Asimov, Eric. How To Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto. ISBN: 9780061802522; ISBN10: 0061802522; Imprint: William Morrow ; On Sale: 10/16/2012; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 5 1/2 x 8 1/4; Pages: 272; $24.99

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

 

 

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Tasting the Visual, Sharing Influence: Patrick Reuter of Dominio IV Wine, Shape Tasting

Sep 9, ’12 4:00 PM

Patrick Reuter’s Shape Tasting

close up of Dominio IV 2008 “In the Valley of Angels” Syrah, by Patrick Reuter

Studying aspects of wine or viticulture at UC Davis, it was standard practice for students to participate in regular wine tastings, taking notes on flavor and structure while tasting. Over time, substantial catalogs of wine notes were recorded, each student with their own notebook listing aspects of a wine experience.

During his studies, Patrick Reuter, co-owner and wine maker of Dominio IV Wines in Oregon, developed his own log listing characteristics of wines from weekly in depth tastings. Over time, however, he recognized that when he reviewed this information he’d recorded, he had no clear recollection of the wines themselves. The lists began to look remarkably the same–standard wine notes naming fruit, acid and tannin made no genuine impression on his memory.

close up of Dominio IV 2008 “In the Valley of Angels” Syrah, by Patrick Reuter

Reuter began experimenting with what impressions from wine did make sense to him, and found himself sketching notes of wine rather than listing attributes. What he found was that when he recorded the visual experience he had of a wine’s flavors, the memory of the wine remained. Looking back over his drawings of a wine experience, Reuter could more readily recall the wine he’d tasted, even long after.

close up of Dominio IV 2008 “In the Valley of Angels” Syrah, by Patrick Reuter

Eventually Reuter realized he could use his wine sketching as a tool for his wine making. One of the challenges with listed tasting notes is in how they treat wine as a static snapshot in time, as if all flavors and the structure present simultaneously. That is, tasting notes generally offer only a limited description of a wine, they do not show how the presentation changes in your mouth. But, by incorporating a sense of time and duration into his drawings, Reuter could record and then analyze a sense of the structure and layout of the wine as a whole. He could draw for himself an image of the wines presentation–whether it was all fruit up front; how full or not the mid-palate was; how long the finish carried and whether different flavors arose there. In doing so, he could then also see where a particular wine might be deficient, or overly powerful.

When it came to blending, he could draw the presentation of different barrels and then go back over the images to see where different barrels might best complement each other to produce a better blend. As Reuter explains, “you might have a barrel that is fruity up front, but then there is a gap [where the flavors fall away]. Visually you can see the gap. But another barrel, it might fill that gap. In the drawings, you can see that, and then use it for blending.”

Dominio IV 2008 “In the Valley of Angels” Syrah. Click on image to enlarge.

Moving from left to right shows the development of the wine over time. The width of the image from bottom to top shows how full the wine presents on the palate, and where the flavors and structure offer the most concentration.

Developing Shape Tasting

Dominio IV 2006 Tempranillo.

An early shape tasting image by Patrick Reuter

The image still shows the wine over time, with the large circles representing the late mid-palate, but Reuter had not yet incorporated text, or more subtle drawing elements into his tasting notes. As Reuter describes the experience of this tasting image–”The wine starts and you are rolling in texture. You come to the mid-palate and it’s so big you don’t know if you are going to come out the end of it. Then, suddenly it’s all finish.”

In recognizing his own interest in presenting wine visually, Reuter began reading more about synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory pathway, like taste, triggers a response in another sensory pathway, like vision. The experience of synesthesia is such that people will do things like see flavors, or recognize certain letters with a particular color. Studies have shown that synesthesia is incredibly common in children, and that with acculturation the experience lessens for most people into adulthood. However, for some people, some synesthetic experience remains into adulthood. It also appears possible that such experiences can be cultivated.

A Shape Tasting Workshop for Wine Distributors led by Patrick Reuter. Photo by Patrick Reuter.

After developing a clearer sense of his own Shape Tasting method–an image shows wine presentation over time, left to right; rounder shapes represent fruits; colors purposefully reflect flavors; lines are acidity; x’s and checks are tannin and texture–Reuter was encouraged to share the process with others.

Recently, a visit from wine distributors getting familiar with Oregon wine was planned, and a visit to taste with Dominio IV was included for them. Reuter decided the best way to make his wines memorable for the visitors was to help them go more deeply into the experience, rather than just focus on a typical high speed tasting style. He prepared, then, to have them perform their own Shape Tasting process. After briefly tasting each of the wines, Reuter asked each person to select the wine that spoke to them most strongly, then to receive another pour of that wine and spend more time with it. He guided them through the Shape Tasting process and then everyone took half an hour to draw their experience of the wine, leaving then, with their own graphical representation of their favorite Dominio IV wine.

Dominio IV 2006 “Song” Syrah

In talking through Shape Tasting with Reuter, something amazing happens.

I’ve been asking him to walk me through how his experience of visually tasting wine works, and then too to tell me the steps he went through in developing his tasting images. The most recent ones (like the 2008 Syrah that opens this post through several close-ups, and the 2011 Viognier that follows next) I find so beautiful.

He tells me about work he did with Skip Walter in Seattle to get clearer on thinking of his Shape Tasting drawings as a kind of artistic graph. It is this combination of careful precision to drawing an accurate image of the wine’s duration and fullness of presentation, with the artistic expression of that, that fascinates me. Because of the determination to graph the process of tasting wine, the drawings offer a sort of mathematics of experience.

But then, unexpectedly, he pulls out the 2006 “Song” drawing (above) and points to the words incorporated into the image (the earlier images, like that for the 2006 Tempranillo, shown earlier above, notice have no text), and says, “that’s when I found your website.” I am stunned. And then he tells me how seeing my wine comics made him realize he could further develop his Shape Tasting images to be both more accessible, or readable to people in general in how they show others the experience of the wine, and to do so by offering something to both visual and textual learners. What he’s developed through this incorporation since is a pleasing aesthetic balance in the images. These drawings look to me at home in themselves.

I have been fascinated from the beginning by Reuter’s idea of Shape Tasting. I am generally interested in how others experience what they love (and the truth is, I don’t just get a list of flavors and attributes when I taste wine either). But, the drawings he has done most recently, I find the most beautiful both for how they integrate drawings with text, but also for how at ease with themselves they read to me. The 2011 “Still Life” Viognier drawing, shown below, and the 2008 “In the Valley of Angels” Syrah, at the top above, both understand what they’re doing in a way that makes the presence of the wine accessible as well. The same comfortable, while dynamic presence I recognize in these most recent drawings I also find consistently in Reuter’s Dominio IV wines. They offer a union of simplicity with richness I consistently find appealing.

Dominio IV 2011 “Still Life” Viognier (not yet colored).

Reuter shows me his Shape Tasting image for the 2011 Viognier we have just tasted, then describes how Viognier, for him, offers a kind of dual personality. It opens with so much fruit, you could almost think it was Chardonnay at first, he explains. But then it changes, and the second half of the wine is more like Riesling, all lines of acidity and motion. Reuter’s drawing beautifully captures that two sided, while coherent nature. I am convinced.

***

Dominio IV Wines are biodynamically farmed, and family owned in Oregon by Patrick Reuter, and Leigh Bartholomew. Their winery is located in Willamette Valley, and they also own The Three Sleeps biodynamically farmed vineyard in Columbia Gorge. Additionally, they source some sustainably farmed fruit from Southern Oregon.

Dominio IV Wines are available through their website in both:

Wine Shop: http://www.dominiowines.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=56&vmcchk=1&Itemid=56

and

Wine Club: http://www.dominiowines.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=38

To hear more on Shape Tasting from Patrick himself, check out this series of videos of Patrick Reuter walking Jeff Weissler of Conscious Wine through the process: http://consciouswine.com/tasting-wine-shape-tasting-dominio-iv/

Thank you to Patrick Reuter for taking the time to meet with me and share his Shape Tasting with me.

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

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California Interlude: The Release of Dirty and Rowdy [Family] Wines

Aug 15, ’12 12:26 PM

Together, Hardy Wallace and Matt, along with Kate Graham and Amy, have started and today release Dirty & Rowdy [Family] Wines. Hardy and Matt share the overall demands of the business, and all of the high level wine making decisions, while Hardy is on site through the year to maintain the hands on wine making. The family is of affection. In June, I was lucky enough to spend time with Wallace and Graham, tasting their Mourvedre and Semillon, while talking about how they understand the work they do.

Tasting Dirty & Rowdy Wines

The 2010 Dirty & Rowdy Mourvedre

The 2010 Dirty & Rowdy Mourvedre comes in at 12.8% with a lighter bodied presentation of the dark elements classic to the grape.The wine carries a dusty fineness of dark berries, with a balance of freshness and earthiness both, very light petrol and powdered sage, and a long toast with light tang finish.

Wallace explains his inspiration for this wine is the lighter style of Cru Beaujolais, with its combination of refreshing body carrying a depth of stoniness and character. At the same time, his interest in making the Mourvedre comes from his love of whites, with their ability to offer a transparency of the dirt from which they originate. His goal, then, is to create a wine with rich flavoral components, a transparency of the place in which it is grown, and at the same time a lighter weight in the mouth.

Wallace illustrates that his favorite wines can be understood as an analog to sushi. “The wines I love most have had the least amount of touch. Every time a wine is touched [in production], it is one step further from where it’s from.” Sushi, on the other hand, offers the least intervention for food–as raw fish, it is dealt with only in as much as will make it safe to consume, and as much as it takes to cut and place it on the plate. The paradox of this wine arises in that Mourvedre, as a variety, offers a great weight in its character, but Wallace manages to draw on the heft of the Mourvedre in a lighter frame of presentation. Traditionally the grape has been dealt with in red blends to bring darker notes. It is less often treated as a straight varietal.

To deliver his vision, Wallace created the 2010 Mourvedre with Santa Barbara Highlands fruit, 100% whole cluster, and only enough punch downs to push the cap during fermentation.

The 2011 Dirty & Rowdy Mourvedre

For the 2011 vintage, Wallace wanted to create an even lighter presentation for the Mourvedre. He chose to pick the fruit earlier for a little more freshness, and during fermentation was even lighter in his pushing on the clusters. He’d push the cap down once a day in 2011, “just enough to see my feet in there.”

In getting Wallace to discuss his views on wine, conversation comes around eventually to a profoundly spiritual heart focus. In the way he discusses wine and wine making, what shows is a belief that inasmuch as any of us have a spiritual life, it is right here in our everyday. The choice comes in whether we be open to it. “When fermentation gets going… [he pauses] I want to be present for it. That process… the center of the earth is connected to the center of the universe, hopefully with gentle hands between.” Wallace’s devotion and focus comes too from more than 17 years studying, and playing North Indian Classical music, a form that brings together incredible discipline and clarity with the understanding that any of us are, and can be conduits for that spiritual life force just mentioned.

Wallace explains that his views of wine overlap his understanding of music. “Music communicates the things we don’t have language for. Wine does this as well.” Kate agrees, nodding, “What Hardy is doing, it’s all about the heart. [Engaging in wine and music, or any of our other projects] they’re a way of noticing, what does it do to you? And, also, of paying attention to, what are you doing?” Revealed in these questions is a simultaneous awareness of surrender to what can’t be controlled, and recognition of the power of personal choices. It is in the midst of this understanding that the seriousness shows something more. Wallace spells it out. “We’re trying to make it as fun as possible, by taking a light hearted approach. It should be fun. It is our life.”

The 2011 utilizes fruit of Shake Ridge Vineyard, and carries a greener, toastier nose, with light green melon and wild berry. The palate again shows that powdered touch on an earthy pepper palate and a berry tang finish. This wine is juicy in the mouth, with a drying finish. It does drink with the lightness of white wine, showing, compared to the 2010, a younger, stronger structure with pleasant lift, and a freshness and liveliness pumping through it.

The 2011 Dirty & Rowdy Semillon

In 2011 Hardy & Matt added Semillon from Yountville to their portfolio. Interested, again, in generating a wine with the mixed qualities not necessarily typical of the grape, they chose to do two separate fermentations that would be blended after.

The ton of Semillon was split into two lots, half de-stemmed and fermented in an open top with vigorous tred. The wine fermented easily and was never racked generating a lot of juice. The second lot was half pressed, with everything going into a concrete egg. The fermentation, however, was slow to start so Wallace took a small portion of juice from the first lot and added it in. Fermentation then took off, and when complete the wine was racked into barrels. After, both lots were blended back together.

The 2011 Semillon shows a nose of dusty, citrus brightness with apricot, and very light pineapple hints. The palate is vibrant, totally avoiding Semillon’s potential for fattiness in the mouth. The wine carries a dusty, grippy finish.

***

Congratulations to the Dirty & Rowdy family on the birth of their wine label TO-DAY. (p.s. Yours is my favorite wine t-shirt. I wore it all over Oregon yesterday to boost the love in anticipation of your release.)

If you are interested in purchasing Dirty & Rowdy wines they are available via mailing list. You can sign up with your name and address via email to: info (at) dirtyandrowdy (dot) com.

They are also being distributed in New York by Jenny & Francois Selections.

Thank you so much to Hardy Wallace and Kate Graham.

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com.

 

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Feet Made of Leather: The Wakawaka Chronicles, for Denise

Aug 13, ’12 6:25 AM

Your feet look like they’re made of leather.
Let’s go walk around the farm. –Clare Carver

In Spring of 2001 I ran away from my ex-husband. My daughter was 18 months old, and he believed we were simply taking a trip North to visit family for the summer. I’d convinced him by planning to commercial fish for salmon that year, as I’d grown up doing, which meant I’d be paid, and he, therefore, would have more money. In the end, I never went back, and I haven’t seen him since the moment he dropped his daughter and I off curbside at the airport.

Our marriage began having trouble almost as soon as it started, and when Rachel was born problems escalated. Determined to do what I could to make things work, I tried various tactics for well over a year until first he told me he didn’t want me to leave the house (ever) for my own safety, and then added that he’d be filing all our money in an account with only his name on it. I’d been waiting for a sign of confirmation on whether I should leave or keep trying. The combination of isolation and lack of money seemed an obvious answer by that point. In the end, I spent the last month with him afraid he would kill me. Not by planning, but because the tension coming off his body was so high it seemed he could snap at any moment, and at various points he did snap, just not with me right next to him. Before our getting to me planning to leave in secret, I’d done the responsible thing and talked to him about us splitting up. At first he’d responded in a way far too reasonable. The next day he threatened me.

The departure from that relationship is a moment that has shaped my entire life. I pushed my way into graduate education with funding because I was determined that running from an abusive marriage wouldn’t be the marker that defined my life. Working as hard as I did to succeed in school, while living below the poverty line, and raising a young child, in my mind was no hard work compared to what I’d gotten myself out of with him. Strangely, how hard I’ve worked to transcend the limits of that marriage has simply affirmed what a gift my abusive relationship was. Not that I would ever wish it on anyone. (I pray daily we will all work together, to love openly enough that we may never witness another relationship or person so unhealthy again.) Still, I cannot deny my having been there rests in my past now as a gift.

I have spent the summer talking with people. Listening, mostly. It has been an incredible blessing. Earlier this week I had dinner with a woman I think and feel very highly of, Remy, of Remy Wine. She was asking me to describe to her how I understood my own work–this traveling around writing about wine. I outlined the bullet points of what I believe I do but finally said to her that again and again I find myself in moments of incredible intimacy with others. Moments where people open to share with me sometimes the best of who they are, sometimes their most precious values, sometimes the awkwardness of what they do, sometimes the uncertainty of why I want to talk with them at all. But where ever these pitches of conversation may point, in each case, I experience an openness asking me to listen. So, there I sit, apparently to write about a person’s wine, but what I witness there is a person present in front of me. What I listen for is their story.

My life has taken me through so many moments. It took almost two years after that curbside drop off, but finally I got through my escape from my husband with full custody of our daughter, and nothing else. I’d left our belongings behind. At the close of it I felt certain nothing else would ever be so hard and so I decided to try everything. I’d already trained camels for four years; worked as a 1-900 psychic for a time. So, I decided to go to graduate school. It turned out the daily exertion of thinking so hard towards unclear ends that a PhD in philosophy demands, while raising a daughter on my own, felt, after three years at McGill, far harder on me than my divorce had been.

Why do I write these things?

In listening to people there is regularly a point that appears in which the story depends on describing what, for the person, is a pivotal moment. What’s become clear is that at this point of a person’s story there is usually one of two differing, both incredible threads. On the one hand, there has been story after incredible story of a person there in front of me taking a seemingly insurmountable risk in order to follow their dream, or their heart. I can’t count here how many people in wine have a story like this, but many many of them do. A story of walking away from a well established job in order to choose what the person almost can’t help but do–make wine–even at the risk of no money and total failure. Or, of inexplicable, almost out of no where, a realization that they must make wine, even without a family history of doing so, and often without any real knowledge of how one even makes wine. Or, even the story of someone that fell into a wine making job after college and now has had their entire life passion shaped by it. In each case, there is a kind of unison present between what the person knows they want to do, and what they actually do–live a life of wine.

Then, too, there are stories of people’s fear, fear they will fail, fear they’re doing the wrong thing, fear people won’t like them or their wine. (Let’s be honest, I have heard a few rather boring stories of how people think about wine. But those really are few, and the truth is those lives look rather different from the others–less expressive, less focused, less interested.) All of us have fear. I’ve come to believe it’s important for how it guides us, for how it keeps us alert, but also too for how it drives us to seek connection–to god, to others, to love, to our deeper selves. The stories about people radically changing their lives for wine seem to make contact with the stories about how scared someone is at the place where risk and fear intersect. How the story I’m hearing goes–either into a total leap of faith pursuing what the person wants, on the one hand, or, into vacillation back and forth between desire and uncertainty, not taking the clear leap, on the other–seems to rest in which phenomenon, risk or fear, takes the bigger hold on the person.

For some of us, a moment arises when the need to step forward into what we must do is so great, the risk associated almost holds no relevance. Let me restate. It’s not that the awareness of risk falls away ignored. It’s that inasmuch as the person is still reflecting on the risk there, it simply helps to focus their choice all the more. In this way, the awareness of risk in the face of what we believe we must do makes us more determined to commit it all, believing that is the best way to secure a chance to succeed. Weirdly, in these cases, the person’s ability to pursue success seems to coincide with their ability to risk even more.

But for many of us fear stands as a guidepost against which we cannot choose–fear acts as the thing that tells us when we must not risk failure even in the face of wanting all our dreams. For many of us, fear acts as the thing that makes us stop and not move forward towards what we want. From listening to these stories, what I’ve learned is that those of us that convince ourselves not to follow these heart dreams do it by believing and telling others that our fears are justified, because, the story goes, we’ve suffered through something insurmountable and unique. That unique thing proving we are right to shut down and not choose for the sake of what we want. We’ve suffered before and now believe we will suffer again.

I was raised to understand the best way to communicate lessons and truth was by telling (and, more importantly, living) stories. So, let me again say part of mine.

At the start of Summer 2012, I made a decision. Some of my friends believe I’m crazy. What I knew was that I felt compelled to write about wine, but not just wine, about the people and their stories connected to it. I also knew I wanted to travel, and I wanted to talk to people face to face, to enrich my wine knowledge by being present on the ground (which I always hope to do–I’m someone that needs projects and believes any of us can always be learning, even if we’re already experts in a field), on site with the places themselves that make wine in the United States. And so I set out to have a summer in which that’s precisely what I did. I’ve been lucky. IPNC invited me as a media person this year, which got me to Oregon. Others extended guest housing, and an interest (or willingness) to have appointments with me to talk to them. And I’ve had now almost two months of 10+ hour average days doing precisely what I set out to do–listen to people. Ten weeks on the road, minus 10 days of that visiting family, the whole time spent meeting people, or driving to meet someone. So, I’ve put a lot of work into this choice I’ve made. But I chose it just the same because it’s what I wanted.

The crazy part is that I have no idea what I’ll do really after the summer is up. I’m not being paid for any of this, and currently I have no actual job. I left a career teaching philosophy at the end of the Fall 2011 term. Teaching, and philosophy, both, were things I am good at, but I’d reached the moment when I had to choose to risk what might still be an insurmountable leap. The first step was away from a reliable job. The leap through the air I’m still in the middle of making. I have enough money to get through my summer. But none of this has been funded on a millionaire’s money. I have very little actually. And in a sense all of it has been scary. But more than that, it’s been what I’ve wanted to do. I’m talking about it now because so many people have asked me either what I’m doing, or why, or how I’m funding it. And even more have asked me how I got here from there, that is, wanting some sense of who I am, and why I live the way I do, ten weeks on the road.

Getting out of my marriage in the way that I did affirmed for me the importance of fear–believing he could either kill me or stalk me after–and that it does not actually rule what we may do. Leaving my marriage in the way that I did showed me that in the grip of the most consuming terror we still can choose for the sake of what’s bigger, for the sake of what we care more about. Going to graduate school made me realize the all encompassing, grind your soul out pressure of hard work can be important, can get you closer towards what you want in life because of how it shapes and trains you. And, again, that the fear of working so hard is no reason to avoid what we wish for. In the midst of both I’ve been in circumstances surely too severe to raise a child well on my own, and yet my daughter is a remarkable person. Her heart, it turns out, simply needs mine to be dedicated to hers. And so I am lucky. Having come through these things, I find myself now choosing something rather simple. To listen.

Living these moments with others, and a glass of wine, where all I can do is listen, and often listen as hard as I possibly can, while people tell me about the risks they’ve taken to get to where they are, or their view of the wine region in which they live, or how they came to use whole cluster or not in their Pinot production… living these moments is exactly what I have wished to do. It’s a life I believe brings together so much of who I am and what I’m good at. It’s what I intend to keep doing. Honestly, I am so grateful. I learn so much grace from these moments with other people. And sometime soon too I’ll step into whatever way I’m going to get back to making a living, both for me and for my daughter that I’ve raised on my own since the moment I left the curb at the airport, more than ten years ago now. I don’t know yet where that living will come from, but I can’t wait to find out.

There are so many things to be scared of. Many of them are legitimate fears, fears we can be grateful for because of how they focus us. In the midst of them, I ask, what would we do, each of us, if we could recognize that our dreams, our own determination, and our ability to do hard work are all so much bigger, and so much stronger, than what we’re scared to do.

Amen, with so much thanks.

***

Thank you to William Allen, to Don Beith, and to Dan Fredman.

With love to Meg, Stephanie, Neile and Katherine.

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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Working La Uva 3: Leda Garside and ¡Salud!

Aug 11, ’12 12:47 PM

The Work of ¡Salud!, Talking with Leda Garside

In 1992, Leda Garside began working with Tuality Healthcare. She’d worked already for years in Community Health as a Nurse with a Masters’ degree, and sought a position with Tuality with the hopes of connecting more closely to the Latino/a population in Western Oregon. She “knew they were there,” as she put it. “But, where?” Oregon’s agricultural industry depends on the work of innumerable farm and vineyard workers, many of whom happen to also be Latino/a, and Hispanic, but, in many ways, outside the fields the people are largely unseen by the general public.

The reality of life for many Hispanic farm and vineyard workers in the United States includes reduced access or lack of access to health care, reduced access to education, and general difficulty connecting to resources that many of the rest of us take for granted. Basic workers’ rights are also irrelevant to any agricultural workers at the level of legislation. While other forms of labor in the United States are legally regulated to demand minimum wage, eligibility of certain benefits, over-time pay, and mandatory work breaks, current laws require only that farm and vineyard workers be paid minimum wage. Breaks, over-time, and other benefits are not mandated. Additionally, for those working in agriculture without federal documentation, the possibility of filing complaint for situations like injury on the job, as an example, is unlikely.

At exactly the same time, agriculture is one of the major industries supporting the United States economy at large, and dominates economic concerns in certain portions of the United States. In this way, those that work the fields, be they Latino/a, Hispanic, or otherwise, are the people that ensure the success of one of the nations foundational economies.

Beginning with her work for Tuality, Garside begin investing in learning more about Occupational Health, and Migrant Health. As she explained, Migrant Health is not a topic generally taught in nursing programs, and yet it carries its very own particular needs for care. Initially, her work was centered completely within Tuality walls. But, by 1992, the beginning of her time with the company, a small program offering support for vineyards workers had already been started. The original program idea was instigated by conversations held between two Tuality Community Hospital doctors, with two Willamette vineyard owners. Together, Laurence Hornick and Jim Ratcliff of Tuality developed the idea with Nancy Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards, and Steve Voylsteke of Oak Knoll Winery, generating the notion that they’d take program seed money given by Tuality and add to it with a wine auction event aimed at raising funds. The plan was to create a healthcare program specifically for vineyards workers. ¡Salud! was born. Within the first year, other wineries became integral to making the program work, with the auction site being moved to Domaine Drouhin, while both Paul Hart of Rex Hill Wines, along with Dr. Robert Gross of Cooper Mountain Wine became part of developing the program. Within the first year, eighteen area wineries donated to the auction event, and within two years the basic model for ¡Salud! was put into place.

In 1997, !Salud! had grown enough they wanted to hire someone specifically to help direct, and also develop the program. Enter Leda Garside. Leda had already been teaching CPR within the original ¡Salud! program model, and had the advantage of having already begun connecting to local agricultural communities through community based occupational health development. She was working with people that harvested rhubarb for Flavorland Foods. At times, Garside explains, the Flavorland Foods program included giving 150 to 200 physicals to agricultural workers per day. She also was bilingual in Spanish and English. Through connecting to the agricultural workers with Flavorland Foods, Garside began to hear more about their particular stories, and those of their families, learning about the history of agricultural work through the area, and of the particular needs of people working in their unique industry. The direct knowledge gained from the experience Garside brought into her work with ¡Salud!

Beginning in 1997, Garside moved the ¡Salud! program to more involved on site work, a mobile clinic brought straight to the vineyards. In the beginning, she would transport a large BBQ tent, and all the medical equipment with her in the back of her vehicle, rebuilding the space with each visit, just to be close enough to reach out directly to the vineyard workers that needed check-ups and care. Her goal was to make the program accessible, while also showing the people the program was for that the healthcare was trustworthy. Eventually, during an outreach visit at a Portland park event, Garside spotted the Adventist Mobile Clinic, housed complete in a large, renovated RV. The Adventist Mobile Clinic was able to offer on site blood work, private space for more involved visits or consultations, and an indoor space for blood pressure work. Connecting with the directors of Adventist, a collaboration was made, and from their the program has continued to expand.

Garside now coordinates a year round, multi-level program offering extensive health and wellness resources to vineyard workers. The one requirement is that you have been “working with la Uva”, the grapes, be it for a day, a week, or many years. As a result, wine makers, and vineyard managers also receive regular check ups from ¡Salud!, having their cholesterol checked there alongside the vines. One winemaker I interviewed explained that the regular blood work done by ¡Salud! led to the discovery of a health anomaly that otherwise could have killed him unexpectedly. Many others have described to me the difference they’ve seen in the overall health of their vineyard community. One of the starkest of stories being a man that worked with a broken leg. He didn’t have access to healthcare, and though his leg hurt, he had to support his family, and didn’t realize the severity of his condition until one of the ¡Salud! Occupational Health volunteers gave him a physical.

¡Salud! includes now too a mobile dental, and vision clinic; Fall vaccinations against both tetanus and flu (both genuine concerns for people working with the vines because of their specific labor demands with metal plus dirt, and a wealth of other people); onsite occupational health work advising on things as simple as the need for eye protection from sun, to stretches that will help back pain; access to follow up care for more developed medical conditions; as well as connections to both child and adult ongoing education. Each of the offerings arise from the needs of the workers themselves, what is making a difference for them, and for their families.

The success of ¡Salud! has depended too upon Garside’s ability to reach out to and connect with the very people the program is serving. Fulgencio made clear to me that ¡Salud!, and Garside in particular, had helped him through the transitions associated with raising his children alone. Estella too let me know how integral to her, and her siblings health and education the program had been. Estella is the first to go to college in her family, thanks partially to the encouragement of Leda Garside. Fulgencio’s children too have gone on to, and one completed, college. Fulgencio’s children, and Estella, both now living lives of success while giving back to their communities.

Talking with Garside herself, she speaks always of her team. Sarah Jaquez, from Centro Cultural, who helps Latino families connect to children’s healthcare. Melissa, who has a Masters in Public Health, and Armando, a graduate in Community Education, both of whom help coordinate aspects of ¡Salud! Mobile Clinic. Cece, who serves as the director of the Tuality Healthcare Foundation and manages fundraising for the program, her daughter, Kate, now volunteering for ¡Salud!. Christina, a Registered Nurse that works directly with clinic patients to talk through test results and coordinate follow up visits, and Gary, the Adventist employee that tells me how much he enjoys driving the Adventist bus specifically to do blood tests at mobile clinics with ¡Salud!

Interviewing employees, vineyard and winery owners, and patients of ¡Salud! it is clear how important Garside’s work has been to them, and to the community at large. But asking Garside herself about her work she tells me this, “Getting to know this population of vineyard workers… I am privileged to know these people. I have been lucky enough to get to know them, to know their families, to make a more personal connection. This is special.”

***

In 2011 alone, ¡Salud! registered 3648 workers and families with the program, and documented more than 7000 individual medical and dental care encounters. The program reaches, on average, more than 40% of the vineyard worker population in the Willamette Valley.

Since the economic crisis of 2008, ¡Salud! has suffered financial cut backs, and has been having to reduce the services they are able to provide. The ¡Salud! Auction serves as both a large community event that many enjoy, as well as the primary fund raiser for the ¡Salud! Mobile Clinic. This year the Auction will take place November 9 and 10th at Domaine Drouhin Oregon. ¡Salud! also depends upon private donations.

To purchase tickets to the Auction: http://www.saludauction.org/auction/the-oregon-pinot-noir-auction/purchase-tickets/

To donate to ¡Salud!: https://tualityhealth.ejoinme.org/MyPages/SaludDonationPage/tabid/187963/Default.aspx

***
Thank you most especially to Leda Garside for taking the time to talk with me.

Thank you to Christina, Gary, Sarah, Melissa, Armando, Cece, Kate, Estella, and Fulgencio.

Thank you to Sheila Nicholas, to Harry Peterson-Nedry, to Steve Doerner, and Rollin Soles.

Thank you to William Allen.

Thank you to Katherine Yelle.

***

To read more on the history of ¡Salud! read Oregon Wine Press’s article on the organization, written by Karl Klooster: http://oregonwinepress.com/article?articleTitle=salute-to-iexcl-salud!–1317235589–976–features

To read more about ¡Salud! and Adventist’s work together, and the barriers to care faced by vineyard workers, read Katherine Cole’s article in The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2011/08/health_care_comes_to_vineyard.html

To read more on the lived reality of immigrants moving into the Northwest United States, read the following report detailing the results of interviews done with Immigrants, primarily moving into Washington: http://allianceforajustsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/2006-0214_In-Our-Own-Words.pdf

***

Working La Uva 1: A Life in Wine, Meeting Fulgencio: http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/08/09/working-la-uva-1-a-life-in-wine-meeting-fulgencio/

Working La Uva 2: Majoring in Community Health, Talking to Estella: http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/08/10/working-la-uva-2-majoring-in-community-health-talking-to-estella/

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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Working La Uva 2: Majoring in Community Health, Talking to Estella

Aug 10, ’12 9:45 AM

Talking to Estella

In the mid-1980s, Estella’s parents arrived from Mexico to begin life in Western Oregon. Soon after arrival, her father began work year round with a vineyard helping to establish, cultivate, and care for the vines, and in the fall to harvest and deliver the fruit to the winery. Her father has been with the same vineyards and winery for over 25 years. Her mother too practices farming through an area nursery.

Born here in the United States, along with her siblings, Estella has been able to focus on education. Today she is in the process of completing her college degree in community health. The program includes internships, through which Estella currently serves ¡Salud!, a community health and wellness, care and education program designed to support vineyard workers in the Willamette Valley.

I ask Estella what made her choose her degree program. She returns to talk of her parents. “My parents migrated here from Mexico, and all the hard work they did to get here, and to give my siblings and I our life here, was not appreciated by me or my siblings growing up.” As she continues, she explains to me that when they arrived, her parents had to work very hard to find employment, but also, because they did not understand English, it was hard for them to connect to services. After a few years they were given the opportunity to become residents, but still their situation was hard. Estella is the first in her family to go to college.

Several years ago now her father developed diabetes. Her mother has high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Vineyards workers tend to have very little access to health care. Employers are not required to provide health benefits to farm workers, and many vineyard workers also speak very little English. Estella’s parents would not have known of their health concerns, except for the on site mobile health clinic ¡Salud! that tested them. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are each manageable conditions that become life threatening when untreated. Estella explains to me that it is because of ¡Salud! her parents knew how to better their health, so they could continue working and care for their family.

Through his on going relationship with one winery, and with the same vineyards, Estella’s father has the position of being a touchstone for the overall health of his company’s vineyard. His consistent relationship with the place means that he has the hands’ on awareness about how each site, and vine are doing, and when it is time to replace or treat particular plants. Further, by knowing the other members of the vineyard crew, and the people that work at the winery, as well as the specifics of the vineyard sites themselves, the work of people like Estella’s father help harvest go both quicker and smoother year to year.

The kind of constancy found in her parents’ work Estella intends to show to her own family. Her further motivation for school, she tells me, is found through her daughter who just turned two at the start of August. Though she could have planned to marry and simply have a family, the inspiration of her parents’ hard work helped Estella see that she wanted to focus on long term education and well being. By gaining a degree, she has the opportunity to focus on giving back to the community, returning to it what she has been able to learn. Estella explains that currently she is in her second internship with ¡Salud!.

Originally, she volunteered for the program out of curiosity to see more of what it was about. Through the program Estella and her siblings had been able to receive health care along with her parents, and the program manager, Leda Garside would regularly encourage Estella to work towards college. “Leda gave me the opportunity, by encouraging me, and letting me know the doors to the [¡Salud!] Center were open.” So, when it came time to select a college internship, Estella requested ¡Salud! Quickly she fell in love with the program. What she appreciates about it is how much it is guided by the needs of the workers themselves, and by what aspects of it really are helping them. “That is why we’re here, to better not only their health, but their family’s too.” This is why she’s dedicated to go to college.

As Estella finishes her degree, she also works about 30 hours a week, while raising her daughter. Her partner, her baby’s father, she tells me, is very supportive, as are her parents, who live in the same city and spend a lot of time with their granddaughter. In considering what she has gained from her parents, and her work in college, Estella tells me this. “I wanted to be able to depend on myself, to know in that way my life was set. Taken care of. Especially since my daughter came into the world. From all of this I know I can pull myself through.”

Estella will graduate with her undergraduate degree in Community Health in Winter 2013. She intends to continue on to do a Masters Degree in Public Health, with the plan of working with migrant farm and vineyard worker populations.

***

Thank you to Estella for taking the time to speak with me. Thank you to her partner, and to her parents.

Thank you to Sheila Nicholas for inviting me to visit the ¡Salud! Mobile Clinic. More on ¡Salud! to follow.

***
Working La Uva 1: Meeting Fulgencio: http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/08/09/working-la-uva-1-a-life-in-wine-meeting-fulgencio/

Working La Uva 3: Leda Garside and ¡Salud!: http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/08/11/working-la-uva-3-leda-garside-and-salud/

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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