California Crows a Cru

Look out Chambertin, Corton, Échezeaux, Montrachet, and Romanée-Conti, for Sanford & Benedict, Bien Nacido, Pisoni, Gap's Crown, and Savoy are coming for you. That was the mild boast in Friday morning's World of Pinot Noir seminar "The New 'Grand Cru' of California," even if chipper moderator David Glancy admitted right off, "There's no such thing, we're making it up." That didn't stop Glancy, however, from saying, as the fun and fact filled two hours came to a conclusion, "If there can be thirty-three Grand Cru in Burgundy, which is much smaller, why not two hundred Grand Cru along the much larger California coast?" Certainly the evidence in the 10 glasses the audience got to taste would suggest he could be right.

Obviously anyone attending an event like WOPN in a place like the coast-hugging splendor of the Bacara might be a tad prejudicial about the value of California grape juice. (Writer meekly raises his hand.) But the very nature of even suggesting a Grand Cru designation means you'll encounter a veritable greatest hits--this session wasn't as much about surprise as affirmation. (The market also implies worthiness--almost all the wines retail for a hefty $90.) The ten wines/sites were split evenly mid-state:

Central Coast

Sanford 2019 Block 6, Sanford & Benedict Vineyard, Sta. Rita Hills

Bien Nacido 2021 Estate, Santa Maria Valley

Talley 2021 Rosemary's Vineyard, Arroyo Grande Valley

Pisoni 2021 Pisoni Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands

Mount Eden 2019 Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains 

North Coast

Hyde 2019 Estate, Carneros, Napa

Three Sticks 2021 Gap's Crown, Sonoma Coast

Merry Edwards 2021 Meredith Estate Vineyard, Russian River Valley

Red Car 2021 Estate, Fort Ross-Seaview

Walt 2017 Savoy Vineyard, Anderson Valley

This write-up would be nearly as long as the seminar itself if I took you through the tasting and comments about each of the wines, which feature a talented and well-spoken panel of winemakers, GMs, and farm managers. But here are some the highlights:

*Yep, whenever anyone talks about why Santa Barbara County is a great place for grapes, the free space on the SB Bingo Card has to be "transverse mountain range." Not only did Laura Hughes from Sanford mention it right off, Anthony Avila from Bien Nacido also refered to this key topography. And then other locations tried to explain that, while they lacked the atypical east-west ranges that allow for cooling ocean air to help lengthen SB grape hang times, they had something else that was analogous: Santa Lucia Hills has a north-south wind route off Monterey Bay, according to Mark Pisoni; Ryan Prichard of Three Sticks noted Gap's Crown had the Petaluma Gap working as "Sonoma County's air conditioner."

*As with the French Grand Cru, almost of all the suggested California Grand Cru sites sell grapes to various winemakers, so it's fascinating to see how prized grapes can have different expressions through different techniques. Alison Frichtl of Walt Wines was perhaps luckiest of all--while for the panel she discussed Anderson Valley's Savoy Vineyard, she also has the opportunity to work with fruit from several of the other sites, too, including Gap's Crown and the Sta. Rita Hills. (Note: It's good to have a billionaire couple own your wine company.)

*Wine folks love to talk dirty. By that I mean soil is super important to them, which is no surprise. Terroir might refer to all the environmental factors one grows grapes in, but the root of the French word refers to lands. Pinot Noir evidently likes less hospitable dirt, and the new word of the day for me was chert, an oxidized silica that you can torture vines in, just enough, in the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard. 

*If vineyards aren't organic already, everyone seems to be headed that way. Win, planet Earth!

*Disasters are the mother of invention. (Therefore Frank Zappa = Disaster) Sonoma's devastating fires of 2020 led to many wineries dumping their smoke-infused grapes. At Merry Edwards winemaker Heidi von der Meyden opted to pick early instead, a full 2 Brix lower than she usually would at the Meredith Estate Vineyard. Turned out it was a beautiful wine. So that's when she picks that vineyard ever since.

* Whether we care to bandy about the term Grand Cru or not, Pinot is here to stay. In 1960, California had 531 acres of the grape. In 2022, that number was over 47,000 acres. 

*You can have pretty much any background to end up sitting on a panel at WOPN as a vinous expert. Some folks got into the business the old fashioned way--family. (Thanks, dad!) Some entered through the world of hospitality, getting the bug while serving and drinking wine. Some were scientists wanting to do something non-theoretical. Often travel was involved. Sure, many of them wound up at Cal Poly or UC Davis to study wine, but a degree wasn't a be all, end all.

*The range of deliciousness is great for Grand Cru Pinot. Sometimes there's more saline, sometimes more earth. Sometimes more cranberry, sometimes sarsaparilla. Sometimes a nervous energy, sometimes a plush elegance. Sometimes a hint of mint, sometimes a pop of black pepper. 

All of the time, though, these California Pinots delighted. So call them whatever you want, just be sure to have me over if you pop any of their corks.

World of Pinot Noir 2023: New Finds

 

Let's make this very clear to start--by "new finds" I mean to me, probably not to the rest of a wine savvy world. I realize that you don't have to be Oregonian to know about Ken Wright, for example, but you could also be me and not know his lovely wines well at all. And if you want to read the first part of my 2023 World of Pinot Noir coverage, that's over at my Old Friends post.

All that throat clearing aside, let's begin with Chardonnay to really shake stuff up. And a relatively new project, too, Walson Holland, doing boutique-y things based in Ojai, but with grapes from all sorts of fine sites. Take the 2020 Chardonnay from Duvarita, which is so west in Santa Barbara it lies outside the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. Deliciously mineral, magnificently saline, this is a fascinating wine. Plus the marketing is topnotch--check out the release box in that first photo. (It's not a surprise winemaker Benjamin Holland did some time with Sine Qua Non.)

And while we're enjoying whites, I'd be remiss not to single out 2021 Sojourn Cellars Sangiacomo Vineyard Sonoma Coast Chardonnay. Elegant layers of apple and lemon-lime cascade over a steely structure. Given 70% of what Sojourn does is Pinot Noir (which was also scrumptious), it was fun to find this singing Sonoma white.

Then again, Sangiacomo Wines itself, which for 80 years sold their grapes, have only been making their names wines since 2016. (Heck, they have two different websites for the two different operations.) North Coast legend James McPhail makes their wines, 5 Chardonnays, 8 Pinots, 1 Vin Gris of Pinot, or as the person at the table put it, "you only do this when you own the vineyard," since they grow grapes specifically for that punchy product, no saignée for them. Their 2021 Five Clone Pinot Noir Roberts Road Vineyard was ridiculously seductive, with a velvet mouthfeel and their website description nails it: "Bursting with fresh red fruit flavors including raspberry coulis, sun-sweetened Bing cherry, and freshly picked wild strawberries with notes of five-spice rounding the palate."

Sangiacomo Fedrick grapes are just one of the sources for the 2019 MacRostie The Loch, which also features Pinot from Olivet Lane, Rodgers Creek, Gap’s Crown, Wildcat Mountain, and the Dutton Manzana Vineyard. While many wineries tout a single vineyard designate as the peak of their programs, at MacRostie the goal is to blend the best of the best barrels, hence this wine that, in the spirit of the upcoming Oscars I noted "was everything everywhere all at once," and therefore as wildly enjoyable as that film. Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen has crafted a powerhouse gem.

An equally impressive Sonoma showing was the Pinot from Red Car, whose name makes it clear they started in Los Angeles. (They've been completely Sonoma-based since 2010.) Their 2020 Estate had some charming blood orange notes to its fruit, but the standout for me was their 2020 Heaven & Earth, an organic vineyard at 500 feet elevation eight miles from the Pacific. The pourer said, "When you get up there, you don't see any other vineyards around." Based on the multi-faceted wine, that's going to change, with its brambly blackberry and marine influence.

Let's keep going north, to the Willamette Valley and Ken Wright Cellars. I have to be honest and admit I don't know Oregon wines anywhere near as much as I should, especially once I learned that Wright was the first Oregon winemaker on the cover of the Wine Spectator way back in 2015. (Of course, I don't read Wine Spectator anymore, either, but oh well.) I particularly enjoyed his 2021 Shea Vineyard Pinot, a mere 12.8% ABV but still enticingly floral with a kind of chalkiness that worked, attesting to the marine sediment soil of the site.

That's too neat a segue not to take to get to the wonderful work that Jessica Gasca is doing at Story of Soil. She was pouring back in the hard-to-leave corner where the Santa Barbara Vintners Association ruled the roost, and CEO Alison Laslett and Director of Operations Phil Carpenter hosted wineries that didn't want to pony up the hefty cost for their own table. Gasca was kind of enough to share her sold out 2021 Gold Coast Pinot, and it showed her appreciation for that Santa Maria vineyard where she first got the wine bug as an intern. Profound and round, it kept going and going and was never gone. 

And let's end on what was truly a new experience for me, Haliotide. A tiny, family-run producer in SLO County, they make single vintage, single vineyard sparkling that's some of the best I've had from these parts. What's more, winemaker Nicole Bertotti-Pope and viticulturalist Lucas Pope are hoping to make wine for the future, and sure enough, the 2017 Blanc de Blanc that popped out from under the table was their best, for as my note put it, "They've got ambition." The 2018 Extra Brut Rosé was a delight of grapefruit and bread notes. I would never have guessed something this good would come from a vineyard a mere 1.5 miles from the Pacific in Avila Beach.  

But that's why you go to World of Pinot Noir--your world always gets deliciously expanded every year.