Blending. The Dark Art. I think you could go your whole life and not really master it. Which makes sense since art is like that; perfection is unattainable.

During blending trials you’re always worried: Am I capturing the best of this vintage? Or am I covering up distinctiveness? Am I using enough of my juice to make this financially viable? Would this clone have been better with another barrel? Can I beef this one up with some press fractions? Can I lean this one out with some early pick free run?

The options and combinations, assuming you have more than a few lots and more than a few barrels, can be nearly endless. It’s fun – but daunting.

Keefer Ranch

Which is why I jumped at the chance to head over to Freeman Winery and taste some sample blends with Keefer Ranch winemaker Craig Strehlow.

Keefer Ranch has, in the past 25 years, become known as one of the very best vineyards for Russian River Pinot and Chard. Marcy Keefer, Craig’s mom, sells her 30 acres of pinot and 20 acres of Chard to folks like Siduri, Kosta Browne, Freeman and Failla. You know, decent brands.

A few years back in 2006 they unveiled their own Keefer Ranch label. You can read a Wine Spectator article profiling them (and scoring the wine 90 points) on their site here.

The blends I tasted were from juice barreled down in ’08. Craig’s style as winemaker is restrained and elegant. On the nose and palate the fruit is red and pure but, unlike a lot of Russian River pinot, it is picked a little earlier and acid and freshness is a huge part of its appeal.

Clones include Swan, Dijon 115 and Pommard 4 barreled down mostly in Cadus, Remond and D&J. Total production for ’08 will be around 300 cases.

We tasted each wine in barrel separately, noting the differences that each clone and barrel gave. The Swan clone was savory, and the Pom 4 was packed with fruit and surprisingly floral. The 115 was picked later than the rest. Craig thought it was a little flabby, but I thought it was delicious. Keep in mind that he keeps his pH around 3.45 whereas most CA pinots live in the 3.6 – 3.7 range. So his definition of “flabby” may be different from yours or mine.

When we finished with the barrel samples, we dove into the blends.

Stir It Up

We started with a blend of equal parts of all the free run barrels. It was really good stuff. Laser-like, precise aromas and flavors with a good long finish. But Craig didn’t have any doubt about that. He knows he’s got some awesome wine.

The challenge was that he had three barrels of press fractions to work with and wanted some feedback on which blend we preferred from the following:

A. Free run with just the first press fraction barrel added

B. The above with the second press fraction barrel added.

C. The above with the third press fraction barrel added.

Each barrel you reject costs about 25 cases in production, plus the oak you’ve extracted over the elevage which depreciates the not inexpensive barrels. Sometimes better can be the enemy of good. At least in terms of the bottom line.

We tasted through each of the blends and gave our opinions. By far blend A, the one with just the first press fraction, hewed closest to Craig’s style. Alan (Craig’s and my mutual friend, and the photog responsible for the iPhone shots you see here) and I both agreed that blends B and C were both delicious as well, and might even get better with some age on them. What the blends lost in terms of the floral nose would eventually come back, we reasoned, with time in bottle.

Still neither of us could argue with blend A which was amazingly pure, elegant and, as I mentioned, a perfect example of the Keefer Ranch style. Since Craig is a pretty uncompromising bugger when it comes to quality, he wasn’t at all concerned with the lost 50 cases like I might have been.

All in all, very good times. I’m looking forward to tasting the final blend soon at our monthly tasting group, The Order of Meat and Wine. If you want to try the ’07 vintage you can order a bottle or three here.

Thanks to Craig for the hospitality and the opportunity to help, and thanks also to Alan for snapping the shots for the post.

With apologies to Chateau Petrogasm.

Sadly Morgan is sold out of the ’07. However, head over to bedrockwineco.com and tell him Josh sent you. Maybe miracles can happen!

Also, for those of you saying “WTF?” the password is: Panty solvent.

Preliminary crush data for 2007 were released on Feb 10th. And there was much rejoicing. Some of the data are pretty interesting. I’ve highlighted a couple bits below.

This first graph (created in the wonderful Apple spreadsheet app, Numbers) shows the highest price per ton paid for each grape variety in California Sonoma County. Considering the high price of Napa Cabs, you’d expect the top prices to go toward Bordeaux varieties. Well, that’s not the case this year. Oops! Got a little ahead of myself there. The graph below represents only a subset of the data. Tony Correia, an expert on vineyard economics, called me on this one.

The top per ton price was indeed paid for Napa Cab: over $37,000 a ton. Doh! He speculates that it may be a Harlan buy. Thanks for the correction Tony! And check out this great piece on vineyard economics for Wines and Vines where Tony talks a bit about the realities of vineyard investment.

Ahem, moving along. The top spot for district 3 (Sonoma) goes to Pinot, with a top $/ton clocking in at a swarthy $11,464.00.

Nice work if you can get it.

The next of the top tier performers, all at 10K per ton, are the Bordeaux varieties: Cab Sauv, Cab Franc and Merlot. I suspect those prices were paid by Joseph Phelps or a similar producer that can command in excess of $100 a bottle. Those are followed by Syrah, Zinfandel (Turley?), and Petite Verdot.

Unfortunately, as you’ll see in the next graph, the average price per ton for Pinot is nowhere near the lofty heights shown above. So, in the off chance you were contemplating buying some property and planting a vineyard in CA, the numbers below should sober you up. Or perhaps not…

The trend line here is certainly promising. Average Pinot prices are up 13% year-over-year. Since land available for planting high quality fruit is pretty darn scarce, there’s every reason to believe that, at least at the upper end, growth will continue into the future.

Growth is slowing however. Prices for in ’06 rose at a rate of 17% year-over-year. Again I think this will affect the lower end more than the upper. This is certainly supported at least in part by the extremely high price at least one producer is willing to pay for a ton of pinot (see the first graph).

But you never know. Predicting the future is a fool’s game. Take a look at the price per ton for Nebbiolo:

Everything was going along swimmingly until this past year. Then, suddenly, prices fell off a freakin’ cliff. Look out below!

To be fair this is most likely a function of once miniscule supply finally meeting and/or exceeding demand. Still, these are the same forces we deal with in every market, so I wouldn’t discount it entirely.

Anyway, interesting data. All in all though, the future continues to look very bright for my beloved Pinot noir.

Over at Grape Radio they’ve produced a tremendous podcast on Pinot Noir clones moderated by former UCD professor Carole Meredith. Really great info for both enthusiasts and producers alike.

Thanks to the Grape Radio folks for recording and providing this great seminar from World of Pinot Noir 2006.

Check it out.

At least according to David Stipp in his article on Christoph Westphal and David Sinclair’s biotech start-up Sirtris. I can tell you I’m a believer. I’ve been taking resveratrol for the past two months and, coupled with a decent diet (which of course confounds resveratrol’s efficacy) I’ve lost over 20 pounds. Anecdotal evidence is all we have at this point unfortunately, but soon we may have much more.

Here are a couple clips from the three page Fortune article to wet your whistle:

…if it succeeds, its medicines may retard the onset or progression of a whole slew of age-related diseases, from diabetes to Alzheimer’s to cancer. The drugs may also have an extremely provocative side effect: They might extend life span. You have to go back to the advent of antibiotics in the first half of the 20th century to find such broad therapeutic potential.

And my favorite part of the article comes in the last graph.

When asked about it, though, he suddenly reverts to vortex-avoidance mode: “part of my job is to calm people down,” he says. “You have to remember, most things in biotech don’t work.”

Sobering words – especially for us hopeful resveratrol watchers of a certain age. But here’s an antidote: pour a glass of pinot noir, and while imbibing, step back and regard the big picture. Humanity has dreamed for millennia of medicines that extend life span. Sirtris may not fulfill the dream. But the company’s very existence shows that the quest for compounds that slow aging has been transformed from sorcery into the fairly routine process of pharmaceutical development. Thus, the dream is likely to be realized within, at most, a few decades. The question now is when, not if.

Excellent advice. Nothing pairs as well with immortality as a nice glass of pinot.

(Hat tip: Dad, who pointed out the article.)

Today I had the opportunity to sit with Robert Parker and a room full of other wine industry nuts at CIA Greystone in St. Helena and taste through a flight of 11 different Pinots from California and France blind. I’d been looking forward to this event since I heard about it here, and it did not disappoint in the slightest. I, on the other hand, was a different story.

Before we started tasting Parker told us that the wines were young, none more than 4 or 5 years old, and that the split was 6 French and 5 California. We were also told that alcohol ranged from 14-15.5 from within the group and that the California Pinots came from all over the state (The twelfth wine was a delicious Domaine Grand Veneur Chatrauneuf-du-Pape “Les Origines” Grenache that Parker had thrown in as a ringer).

As you will see below the wine list was very impressive, and Parker was of course a knowledgeable and unpretentious tour guide. Best of all, the results from the tasting were very surprising – at least to me.

Essentially we were asked to taste each of the 12 wines and try and determine its place of origin. We weren’t asked to identify regions, just country of origin. France or California. Heads or Tails. At the end we all raised our hands and some rough estimates were made. There was no real ranking of the wines, and all but one were judged to be excellent by Parker.

Interestingly, even given that limited set of criteria (I had a 50-50 chance after all) I still did miserably, no better than guessing randomly, though I’m fairly certain some others in attendance shared my fate. Below is the evidence of the sad affair with the list of wines preceded by my predicted country/state of origin.

Wine 1
My guess: CA
Wine: Marcassin Vineyard, “Marcassin Vineyard,” 2002 Sonoma Coast.
Price: $275
Notes: The Marcassin had black fruit with spice and sweet tannins, but it was also hot. Very hot. Or maybe it was just hotter than the rest, but it stood out as a CA wine. In the end nearly everyone got this one right, but at the time I felt like I was big and strong and on a roll. Daddy couldn’t lose. Until…

Wine 2
My guess: FRA
Wine: Martinelli Winery “Blue Slide Ridge,” 2003 Russian River Valley.
Price: $145
Notes: I thought for sure this lovely wine was French. It was so pure and light, unlike any of the others in the tasting. With fresh acidity, red fruit, blueberries, and a glorious floral nose, it’s the style of Pinot we aspire to at Capozzi. I won’t lie, I was already booking my trip to France to learn at the feet of the master who’d made this. Little did I know all I would have to do is drive a half mile down River Road to complete my pilgrimage. Hey, at least I saved plane fare.

Wine 3
My guess: FRA
Wine: Mommessin Clos de Tart 2003 Morey-Saint-Denis.
Price: $200
Notes: This one had one of the more interesting noses. Smelled of coffee and dark fruit and dust. Loads of tannins. Parker called it a “big wine.” In retrospect I have no clue why I called this one for France, but my gambit paid off. Who’s the big winner? Josh is!

Wine 4
My guess: CA
Wine: Domaine Dujac Clos de la Roche 2002 Morey-Saint-Denis
Price: $200
Notes: My notes read “syrupy. dark fruit on the nose and palate. nice acid – fairly hot.” Sounds like CA, right? Wrong! Another Morey Saint Denis product showing New World character as well as a bit of Brett. And speaking of Brett, this wine sparked a lengthly discussion about the various strains of Brett and at what level Parker considered it to be a fault. I’ll spare you all the gory 4-ethyl phenol details, but according to the chicken scratch that passes for my notes, Parker had this to say: “I don’t mind some Brett in a wine.” “No Brett can make a one dimensional wine” and “I’m a fruit guy first, but Brett under control adds complexity.” Parker chalked up his affinity for the smell of mouse droppings, horse blankets, band aids and stables to the fact that he grew up on a dairy farm. My threshold is much lower, but I agree, at least in principal, that Brett is something that complexes a wine. Of course so would the smell of baby diaper, but I digress.

Wine 5
My guess: FRA
Wine: Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Grands Echezeaux 2002 Vosne-Romanee
Price: $585
Notes: Forest floor and a little Brett. Parker called it “dirty” and I remember agreeing. Thin. Moderate and unremarkable acidity. Ho hum. That’s right, a $585 dollar bottle of Ho Hum, from the Big Daddy of the Pinot world. I was floored when this one was revealed. I tasted it a couple more times after the reveal to see if I could convince myself that I’d simply overlooked a subtle genius. No go. Kinda disappointing, I must say. But I got the country right, so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

Wine 6
My guess: FRA
Wine: ROAR “Gary’s Vineyard” 2004 Santa Lucia Highlands
Price: $60
Notes: This is the one I thought was DRC. It was also the favorite of the most people at the tasting by a wide margin. Thats right, the least expensive wine was the crowd favorite. Surprising. The most remarkable thing about the wine was its complexity. I couldn’t pull out aromas and flavors, it was all a jumble. But it was a delicious, perfectly integrated jumble. And the finish was looooong. If you’ve never experienced a Pinot with a long finish, seek thee out this wine. It is a winner. Unlike me. With this miss I’m back down to batting .500.

Wine 7
My guess: CA
Wine: Domaine G. Roumier Bonnes-Mares 2002 Chambolle Musigny
Price: $200
Notes: This wine reminded me of my early experiments in making Pinot in my parents garage with my friend Ken, and not in a good way. It was pretty bad, hot and acidic at the same time with a simple fruit core that kind of danced on your palate for a second and then was gone. Parker excoriated this wine, and based on his sheepish comment that he was “glad I’m not a winemaker in this room,” I think he thought it was a CA wine. Just like me. We both lose.

Wine 8
My guess: CA
Wine: Williams Selyem 2003 Russian River Valley
Price: $ 67
Notes: A really nice wine. It showed off a blueberry nose and a long finish. It was clearly a California wine, but it’s a restrained version of the style. Bob Cabral, the winemaker for Williams Selyem, was at the tasting and I noted that he voted for this wine as his favorite. Good for him. He knows his wine. Good for me also since I was able to call this one correctly. It was my last correct answer of the day.

Wine 9
My guess: CA FRA
Wine: Kistler “Cuvee Catherine” 2002 Russian River Valley
Price: $235
Notes: Parker really was effusive with his praise on this one, noting its “integrated acidity” and “savory mouthfeel.” I thought it was a rich, almost syrupy pinot. Not my favorite style, but excellent for what it was. Parker thought it was “a beautiful wine.” Which makes sense since he routinely gives Kistler 98 point ratings. This is another one that in retrospect I should have called for CA, but for some reason did not. Meh.

Wine 10
The ringer, and we all knew it. Tasty. Unfortuantely I guessed that it was a Merlot.

Wine 11
My guess: FRA
Wine: Brewer-Clifton “Mount Carmel” 2004 Santa Rita Hills
Price: $100
Notes: Another wonderful wine. A bit of Brett on the nose, but lots of fruit and sweetness on the palate. The Brett made me think France. The fruit should have given me pause. Wrong again.

Wine 12
My guess: CA
Wine: Louis Jadot Chambertin-Clos de Beze 2003 Gevrey-Chambertin
Price: $200
Notes: Another wonderful wine, equal to the Brewer-Clifton. I don’t have very good notes for this one for some reason but I remember thinking the final two were very similar. Way to go out with a whimper.

Final tally: 4 for 12.

Copia may be in trouble financially, but they have been scheduling quite a few interesting events lately. The best of the lot is the “Oregon’s Best Pinot Noir” tasting on November 19th which will focus on the Dundee Hills AVA. Producers pouring there will include Argyle, Domaine Drouhin Oregon, Domaine Serene, Erath and Sokol Blosser.

Best of all, admission is very reasonably priced at $25 bucks a ticket.

Oregon’s Best Pinot Noir
Sunday, November 19, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
$25 (includes admission)/$15 member
Walk-around winetasting

You can register for the tasting online here.

Over at Wine Sediments. Less than 400 cases made, so if you’re interested go give it a read.

The biggest challenge facing wine growers is finding the right vineyard location with the right climate that will allow grapes to reach a desirable sugar content and flavor maturity at exactly the same time (if that sounds like a mouthful, I’ll explain more below).

At Capozzi we think we’ve found just such a sweet spot in the Russian River Valley for Pinot Noir, and wine critics like Linda Murphy of the Chronicle seem to agree. Last week she wrote that the “Russian River Valley is a Pinot paradise.” The reason for such praise is our area’s ability to ripen Pinot so that a grape’s color, aroma, and tannins are mature without sugar levels getting so high that a balanced wine can’t be made. It is a delicate balance and, for Pinot especially, picking when the berries are truly ripe is the only way to make truly great wine.

Still, as an industry we’re relatively inexperienced when it comes to determining where cultivars are best suited to be grown. Given our imperfect knowledge, a reasonable question to ask is, “What about the vineyards planted to grape varieties that aren’t perfectly located? How do they manage their grapes and make fine wines?”

One answer is that increasingly wineries are turning to Reverse Osmosis ( or “spinning cone”) technology to fine tune their wines. What RO can provide to a winery is the ability to either remove alcohol from a fermented juice that is “too hot” or remove water from must (unfermented juice) that has been diluted by rain.

Problem 1: High Alcohol

High alcohol is an issue in very warm areas because the hot weather causes grapes grown there to “sugar up” well before they’re physiologically mature. Picking grapes in this condition is bad form, kind of like your shady Uncle Forthington marrying some 18 year old strumpet. Consequently, when grapes are left to ripen to maturity, sugar levels are often too high to make a balanced wine.

Problem 2: Rain Water Dilution

On the other end of the spectrum, rain is mainly an issue in cooler areas where, in an attempt to achieve physiological ripeness, growers let the grapes hang well into the beginning of the rainy season. If there is enough rain it can dilute the wine and ruin the vintage.

Both problems can lead to bad wine and, in the extreme, financial ruin if not addressed. RO solves both these problems fairly effectively. As an added benefit, it appears that there are a number of alcohol levels where a given wine tastes best. By adjusting the alcohol via RO, blending it back at increments of .1% and then performing sensory evaluations on each, RO practitioners claim they can find 3 to 4 sweet spots that evaluators consistently prefer.

With the economic incentive being what it is, it isn’t hard to see why, according to Clark Smith of Vinnovation, that perhaps half of all California wineries use RO, mostly on the high-end.

Controversy and Quotes

Plenty of controversy surrounds the use of RO however, and few winemakers admit to using the technology. Non-interventionist winemakers and many critics tend to loathe RO because it is such a manipulative technique. RO also seems to destroy the characteristics that gives a wine a sense of place. Those who believe that the only thing separating wine from Pepsi is the notion of terroir believe that technologies like RO are a very real threat to the industry. The fear is that wine will become homogenized, lose its soul and become just another commodity.

Clark Smith, the controversial advocate and co-owner of the company that services most of the wineries that use RO, has written quite a bit about RO and high alcohol wines, and when and why it should be used. Below are a couple of clips.

First from his well written and very interesting blog:

All wines require fine-tuning just as all other cooking requires the chef, just at the end, to “adjust seasoning.” There are hundreds of ways to do this. Even in a single vineyard, single varietal situation, a good winemaker will divide the harvest into sub-lots which are treated differently — different maturities, different yeasts, different oak — just to provide blending options later on. Alcohol adjustment is just another example.

Scientific enologists often don’t take this approach, preferring to adhere to their theoretical notions of purity of varietal character, minimum manipulation and so forth rather than to roll up sleeves and apply technique to an harmonious and focused product. This inattention is evident at the preponderance today of technically unflawed but utterly uninteresting wines on the market.

And from his open letter on winecrimes.com

Shouldn’t we only grow grapes where alcohol adjustment isn’t necessary?…There really is no such thing as an ideal location, any more than there is a perfect “10″ human body type. I love the Bordeaux communes’ recognizable personalities, and it’s OK with me if the winemaker applies a technique like reverse osmosis to accentuating them. No vineyard is always balanced.

But others see more devious uses for the technique. Tom Hill had this to say about RO being used to remove rainwater over at wineloverspage.com:

The technology is widely used in Bordeaux (where high alcohols are seldom a problem), where they are called concentrators, to remove water from the must afore fermentation, and increase the intensity and concentration in their wines in order to garner high scores from certain Monktown attourneys, insuring high prices for their wines. Certain Monktown attourneys do not seem to be decrying the practice with the same fervor with which they attack filtration of wines. The use of RO&SC seems to also be spreading to Burgundy and even Piemonte.

As usual Randall Grahm has something to say on the subject, and I tend to agree with his assessment. He advocates for transparency and authenticity, both of which are ethos that are near and dear to my heart.

If a producer makes a vin d’appellation then there is an implicit contract that he or she enters into, effectively promising to produce a wine of some degree of typicite, which I suppose would also include the characteristics of the vintage. If that producer utilizes certain techniques to wipe out vintage characteristics, even though he or she is perhaps producing a wine that most punters would prefer, I believe that winemaker is acting in bad faith.” – Quoted in The Science of Wine

Will We Use RO?

I think that Pinotfiles don’t need to worry too much about their favorite wine undergoing RO. Pinot is just too delicate. RO, though perhaps not as rough on wine as some might tend to believe, is still far from gentle and Pinot is a variety that “bruises” easily. We also are blessed with a vineyard that ripens our fruit to near perfection, so we don’t have a pressing need for RO technology to make our wine. Finally, RO does tend to strike me as a bit shady, at least when it is used and the fact is covered up. I believe that we should be open and honest and let our wine stand on its own merits.

Ultimately however, for reasons of quality more than any other, the answer is no, RO isn’t something that we’ll be using at Capozzi.

Kent is the winemaker of Green Truck Cellars, a small Pinot producer in Napa Valley. And when I say small, I’m talking 400-500 cases small. Earlier this year he traveled to France on a journey to discover more about the barrels he was using; how they were made, how the wood was selected and harvested, how the craft of cooperage is performed, and finally to visit and see for himself some of the great vineyards of Burgundy.

On his Pinot log is a series of posts on French Oak barrels I desperately wish I had written (or, more accurately, that I wish I’d been in a position to write). The storytelling is very fine, and the details and the vagaries of NTBois cooperage in particular, and French cooperage in general are so good that if you are at all interested in Pinot and it’s birthplace, Burgundy, there is hardly any better reading to be found.

You’ll have to scroll down to read the relevant posts since the blog doesn’t allow for permalinking (switch to WordPress Kent). Look for the entry entitled “06.16.06 | Bullet and Barrels“.

Great stuff.