Christmas Update at William Hill

Here's a little update on the vineyards at the William Hill Estate winery in Napa. Things are looking great this winter and we're looking forward to another year and another harvest.  This clip features my unintentional impression of a news caster.  Happy New Year!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Winter Mud Ride at Annadel

We got a break from the rainy Christmas weather long enough to fit in a dirt ride at Annadel Stata park in Santa Rosa. It was a beautiful day and a great ride although the trails were still a wee bit muddy. My rear tire only spun out two or three times. Finally I can take pictures on the fly with the new phone. Here's the scene at the junction of Marsh Trail and Two Quarry.


Date: Dec 18, 2009 11:04 am
Distance: 13.6 miles
Elapsed Time: 1:52:14
Avg Speed: 7.3 mph
Max Speed: 24.4 mph
Avg Pace: 08' 16" per mile
Min Altitude: 249 ft
Max Altitude: 1,404 ft
Start Time: 2009-12-18T19:04:41Z
Start Location:
Latitude: 38.417470º N
Longitude: 122.575262º W
End Time: 2009-12-18T20:56:55Z
End Location:
Latitude: 38.417574º N
Longitude: 122.575240º W

Click here to see the ride in Google Maps

December in St. Helena

Wintertime heralds the return of Mustard Green on the valley floor.  Here it begins to sprout among the rows of the Thomann Station Vineyard at the Louis M. Martini winery in St. Helena.

Wine Ageism: Tasting Older Vintages

This video above has been one of the most interesting posts Gary Vaynerchuk has made on WinelibraryTV as of late for a number of reasons.  First, I like it when Gary steps outside his regular routine of reviewing wines, for while I respect his reviews I much more enjoy his take on the wine world in general and the educational bonuses that can be gleaned from watching his program.  Secondly, this video is awesome as it features some of the rock stars of the wine industry.  (Robert Parker is exactly how I pictured him: a big head with big hair).  Thirdly, this video was interesting to me in light of what I experienced today at the Louis Martini Tasting Room in St. Helena.

At the end of the clip Vaynerchuk, Parker and the rest of the tasters at the Master Wine Tasting Future in Rioja, end up tasting a 1945 Marques de Riscal Rioja.  Gary describes the wine as smelling of "petrol, gasoline, and funkified poop".  The wine is obviously extremely old, but its hard to tell from the video whether the wine is passed it's prime, as there are also descriptions of the wine as having firm tannins, bright fruit, and scoring like a 91-92 point wine.

This video highlights my confusion and interest in the concept of older vintage wines and their actual value.  As someone who sells wine everyday - many bottles of which are decades old - I find myself caught in the quagmire over whether or not these bottles are actually any good to drink.  There are so many factors that can contribute to the aging of a bottle of wine, both good and bad.  And in a world where everyone's sense of taste and smell are totally relative, its even more difficult to ascertain the value of a bottle that's older than myself, especially in tasting it.

A great example of this pickle occurred today at the Christmas bottle signing with Mike Martini.   A guest was visiting us from Tiburon and had come in to try some of the older vintages of our Los Ninos wines, Bordeaux style blends from our Monte Rosso vineyard that are meant to be purchased by parents the year they have kids and saved until their 21st birthday.

This guest had daughters born in 1994 and 1996 respectively, so Mike opened a bottle of each to taste.  Now the saying is that wine gets better with age, yet my experience so far has led me to believe that this is completely relative.  Depending on where the bottle was made, when it was made, how it was made, and how it was stored, we could be tasting something really special, or something totally nasty.

So imagine my excitement then when Mike and the guest began gushing about the wines!  I poured myself a taste of each only to have my world come crashing down.  These wine smelled bad and tasted bad too.  Like nail polish mixed with metal, gasoline and sour rotten fruit.  I immediately was filled with questions.  Could Mike just have been humoring the guest who couldn't tell these wines were turned?
Could this all just be a matter of acquired taste?  Is this what really good wine is supposed to taste like?

My educational journey in wine so far has been filled with lots of unanswerable questions like this, as you really can't know the answer to a wine question until you've tasted a wine that answers it for you.  As my mind was reeling with these ideas and I was wondering what to say, Mike actually gave me an answer.  In order to compare and contrast these wines against an even older vintage, Mike went and grabbed the inaugural 1979 Los Ninos to taste against the 90s vintages.  At first, the experience was the same, metallic brackishness mixed with sour fruit and maderized sherry.  But then we grabbed the Decantus Areator.  After pouring another tasting through this naturally decanting device I perceived a whole new level to the wine.  The funkiness was still there, as well as the sour metallic taste, but now the wine was brighter, and there was a definite increase in the amount of "fruitiness".  And as we went back and forth to the 94 and 96, there was a definite difference in how those wine tasted as well.

Mike described this change as a "blowing off" of the negative bottle bouquet that can arise during the aging process, and it was a really enlightening experience.  I realized that the key to enjoying a great bottle of wine is patience, patience that is required in holding onto a bottle of wine long enough to let it age, and patience upon opening to allow the wine to shine forth its true potential.  Most wines today are made for the exact opposite experience, and can be enjoyed immediately upon popping the cork.  I simply realized that my whole palate and tasting perception has been built upon these types of wines approachable, yet still very good, younger wines.  While wines do definitely have a shelf life, I simply haven't been tasting enough of them that were meant to go the distance.    In the end it really is about acquired taste.  I didn't enjoy my first taste of Cabernet when i tried it, so I'm guessing its going to be a while before I can build up the patience to really enjoy an age-worthy wine.

'Tis the Season for Fog

Another great morning driving to work in Sonoma county.

One Day In The Valley

After living in Sonoma county for almost a year, I finally got a chance this last Saturday to go visit some of the local Sonoma Valley wineries in my backyard.  It was a great day of tasting at Kenwood, Chateau St. Jean and Benziger family -- three wineries with similar focuses yet very different tasting experiences.

We started our day off at Kenwood, and while we didn't take any pictures while we were there, this was our best overall tasting.  The Kenwood winery sits, appropriately, just within the city limits of Kenwood on the side of Highway 12.  The tasting room was a century old barn that was predictably homey.  Kenwood is famous for their artist series of Cabernets that feature different works of art fromt the owner's private collection.  I scored major points with the tasting room staff for recognizing that the artist of this Cabernet...

                                               
Also did this slightly less known painting...

     

The best part about Kenwood was Dale, the old-timer working behind the bar.  Dale had some great stories to tell and had just the right amount of personality for a morning wine tasting.  When he found out I worked for Gallo, Dale told us some fun stories about how "Ernie" would come through Sonoma and buy grapes from lots of struggling growers, literally keeping the Sonoma Valley afloat for many years.  Its really nice to get the perspective of the older generation on Gallo from the folks that were actually in the wine industry and saw just how much the company actually did to advance people's knowledge and prop up the entire agriculture of the area.  I hear so often the initial gut-reactions of folks to the "jug wine" of Gallo that its nice to finally hear someone speak fondly of "Ernie" and Julio.  I'll have to revisit Kenwood to try some of their other wines.  I already have some new ideas for their artist series.  Maybe the '09 vintage can feature Thomas Kincaid: "Painter of Smarm".

From Kenwood we continued on to Chateau St. Jean.

The wines were great and the grounds spectacular.  I also had fun swapping wine retail stories with the guy behind the bar, who admitted that he much often preferred Whiskey to wine.

They had a super cool private chateau for club members and we also got to see some burning rootstock, a reminder that while the picking is over, the growing never stops as we look forward to next year.

After a lite lunch, Brittany and I headed into Glen Ellen to visit the Benziger Family Winery.  Brittany was quite taken with my new phone and took lots of pictures as I was driving.  You can see my reaction.

The Benziger Family winery is situated in a natural bowl above the hamlet of Glen Ellen in the shadow of Sonoma Mountain.  The sun was setting and it was getting quite chilly, but our main goal was to take the biodynamic tour of the property.  Our tour guide John gave us a great rundown of how the Benzigers farm grapes in the bowl, citing come pretty cool natural methods they use on the property.  For every mechanical process you might find at other wineries (water filtration pumps, mowers and tractors, insecticides) the Benzigers have developed a natrual alternative. 

When they couldn't drive tractors up the steep slopes to mow weeds, they brought in four wheel drive grass-muchin' sheep.  When they needed waste water filtered, they built a natrual swamp on the property that filters it for them.  When they needed good bugs to eat the bad bugs in the vineyards, they planted beautiful gardens with specific plants designed to attract those bugs.  

Indeed, everything at Benziger was designed to encourage nature to do as much of the work as possible.  With little interference in the growing process by "man", we got very different wines at the end of the tour for tasting.  The Benziger wines tasted much more raw and earthy.  You could really taste the difference from wine to wine. 

The best part about our tasting day was seeing three different wineries with three different focuses.  Kenwood brought the country charm of a family winery with its homey tasting room and friendly staff.  Chateau St. Jean impressed with their wide variety of wines and beautiful setting.  At Benziger it was all about the land and farming.  All in all, it was great to escape the glitz and pomp of Napa Valley and taste wine in the country.