Friday Snippets

The first fruit of the 2010 Harvest arrived from the McIntyre Estate Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands yesterday. From 4.66 tons of Martini clone Pinot Noir we will make approximately 150 cases each of Blanc de Noir Sparkling wine and Rosé of Pinot Noir. The picture on the right shows the bins of fruit at the crush pad, and below are samples of juice after various press cycles. Check out the video for a detailed look at the process.

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Our Sales Manager, Gregory Peebles, has been busy making new friends out in the wider world. You can now find La Rochelle Pinots in these new accounts...UnCorked in Saratoga; Postino Restaurant and Jackson's Wine and Spirits in Lafayette; and  UnWined and Joseph George Wines in San Jose. When you visit these terrific restaurants and wine shops, please let them know we sent you!

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On Friday, September 24th from 6-8pm, I will pouring a selection of La Rochelle and Steven Kent wines at UnCorked in Saratoga. Come on by and taste a flight!

New Wine Club for La Rochelle

We're excited to announce a new wine club in La Rochelle which showcases our Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Rose and Sparkling Wine! We're calling it the White Wine Club and our first release will be October 23rd - 2007 Blanc de Noir, $30.

• White Wine Club Benefits;
  All Members Receive guaranteed allocation of club wines and complimentary entry for two at La Rochelle Wine Club Release Parties
  
  2-Bottle Members Receive
  Two (2) VIP tasting passes with each release
  15% member allowance on all White Wine Club releases and select tasting room releases
  
  6-Bottle Members Receive
  Complimentary tasting for two in the La Rochelle tasting room year round
  20% member allowance for all La Rochelle wines

Upcoming Releases

October 2010 – 2007 Blanc de Noir, $30 (Steven's Video Tasting Note)
December 2010 – 2009 Pinot Blanc, $26
February 2011 – 2010 Pinot Rose, $20
April 2011– 2010 Pinot Gris, $26

Wine memberships are available in 2 or 6 bottle allocations and are released every February, April, October and December. You have the option to pick up your allocation at the winery, or ship (direct shipping laws apply). These wines are first allocated to club members and are then available to everyone.

Click here to join this exciting new wine club

Friday Snippets

Just when we thought that it would never arrive, the harvest comes creeping in on little cat feet (sorry Carl Sandburg). Yesterday, Wente Vineyards' Large Lot facility received its first truck loads of fruit from the Central Valley. The Small Lot winery will see our first fruit on Wednesday as we bring in about 5 tons of Pinot Noir from the McIntyre Estate vineyard for the 2010 vintage of Blanc de Noir sparkling wine and Rosé.

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Did someone just scream SPARKLING WINE FROM LA ROCHELLE!!!!!?????? 

Oh...it was me. Anyway...we are very excited to be introducing a new wine club opportunity for white wine lovers...and the 2007 La Rochelle Blanc de Noirs Sparkling Wine will be the first release for this new club on October 23, 2010. Here is Steven talking about the new wine of which only 80 cases were produced in this first vintage. For more information about joining, click here.

Honoring the Best in Wine

Multi-generational businesses (especially in wine) are rarer and rarer these days. Rarer still, are businesses in which the people on the selling end are treated with great respect and kindness. Just a couple of reasons why it was such an honor to be invited to Joseph George's 70th anniversary tasting for his best customers at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga yesterday.

Back in 1966, my family started distribution of its wines in California, and Joseph George was our first. Over the years, we've maintained contact with the George family, especially with Bert George (pictured, right) who opened the family wine shop in San Jose in 1997. Bert George is one of those legends in Bay Area wine, and his wine shop is home to the rarest and best wines from California.

Under normal circumstances, getting owners (especially those from Napa) to attend tastings is extremely rare, but on Sunday there were many wine stars present pouring their wines. Though, I didn't get to taste as many wines as I wanted, a couple that stood out for me were the 2006 Lewis Cellars Cabernet and 2006 Portfolio (made by Genevieve Janssens).

We had the great fortune of having tables for La Rochelle and Steven Kent, and we poured, among others, the 2008 Sleepy Hollow Pinot Noir and 2007 Clone 4 and Clone 30 Cabs (Gregory Peebles, our Sales Manager pictured, left).

The evening was terrific: a beautiful venue, great wines, and a great family. Here's to another 70 years!

Sleepy Hollow Vineyard

Just signed a contract for fruit from one of my favorite Pinot sites - Sleepy Hollow Vineyard...4.5 tons of the Martini Clone and 1.5 tons of Dijon 113.

In the past we have done a very small bottling of the individual clones as well as doing a 3 part Martini - 1 part Dijon 113 blend for the Pinot Noir Program members.

For the 2008 vintage, we have decided to take Sleepy out of the club and make her available to everyone. Look for that release in October.

29th Annual Harvest Wine Celebration

Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend will mark the 29th Annual Harvest Wine Celebration! This annual fundraising event by the Livermore Valley Winegrower's Association is always an action packed weekend and a great way to get out and visit your local wineries, meet winemakers, enjoy music, food and of course taste wine!

We're planning a fun weekend at Steven Kent and La Rochelle and will be debuting several new releases! For those who's first love is Cabernet, you won't want to miss the debut of our 2007 Livermore Valley Cabernet! Want to delve further into the varietal? For an additional fee you can taste your way through our Cabernet and Cheese pairing in the Barrel Room. On deck for this tasting...2007 Ghielmetti Vineyard, 2007 Smith Ranch and 2007 Home Ranch. Is Pinot your passion? Then head over to La Rochelle where we'll be pouring our 2007 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, along with 2007 Classic Clones and a special Pinot Noir Program wine. Winemaker Tom will be on hand to talk about his fine creations. Click Here for detailed information about what's happening on our site.

If you'd like to join in on the fun, you'll need a ticket! They can be purchased online at the Livermore Valley Winegrower's website or you can stop by Steven Kent or La Rochelle and purchase one in person!

We hope to see you at the winery!
Tracey

Getting It!

I was talking to one of our Pinot fanatic guests at the Tasting Room recently about all of the great new vineyard sites that we have coming on-line from the 2009 and 2010 vintages: Londer Estate and Savoy from Anderson Valley; Donum Estate from Carneros; Tondre Grapefield and Soberanes Ranch from the Santa Lucia Highlands; and Gran Moraine from the Yamhill-Carlton district in Oregon, and it really hit me how many great relationships we have built and are building with people who are as passionate about growing great Pinot Noir as we are about making great Pinot Noir.

And I got this sort of mental thought bubble while we were talking of a map with a growing number of pins in places that are perfect for growing world-class Pinot and about all the hard work that goes into making a special place and a special wine ready to show to the world that special-ness.

It is really exciting to think that in the next 12 to 24 months our guests and club members will be able to taste these amazing wines and that the two ends of the loop - from ground and grape to wine in the glass - will have been finally linked together for thoses vintages by someone who gets it!

What's the Point(s)?

Has it always been human nature to assign value to aesthetic objects? Grading a math test on a 100-point scale is a no brainer. You are right or you are wrong. But assigning a score to something like wine that is so personal and individual in its characteristics (as well as in the standard against which you assign the points in the first place) seems to me to be more about the reviewer than about the thing being reviewed.

The very quick history on 100-point scoring systems is this: Robert Parker in the early '80s cottoned on to this system as a way to differentiate his new newsletter, The Wine Advocate, from all the other magazines out there rating wine. This brilliant appropriation of a system that is instantly recognizable shorthand to everyone who had ever gone to school is as responsible for Parker becoming the pre-eminent critic as anything else. As other magazines such as the Spectator and the Wine Enthusiast saw how the public enthusiastically adopted this model, they changed too. Even the venerable Charlie Olken, publisher of the Connoisseur's Guide to California Wine, adopted the points to go along with the "puffs" he has been using for decades.

The tricky thing is that the points don't mean anything objective. Each reviewer has in his or her mind a set of criteria for a particular wine that is absolutely individual. No two people taste things the same way, consequently, my 90-point California Chardonnay is going to be different than someone else's. The only thing that makes the score valid is the authority we invest in the critic him/herself.

The latest "new" scoring system to be trotted out eschews numbers totally and instead awards badges. This system, on its face, seems more egalitarian and less strict than the numbers. If I think this wine represents a certain level of quality and fits into a subjective category that I just made up, its gets a badge. Despite my deep ambivalence toward the 100-point system, the squishiness of the Badge's parameters makes me think that it's more feel-good than useful.

The points thing is complicated. I personally don't think of wine in terms of how "perfect" (how close to 100 points) it is. The fact that wine is constantly changing means that my 95 point rating for that Cabernet is only valid for that particular drinking experience from that particular bottle. Assigning points to a product that is a melding of science and creativity; the result of the felicitous relationship between farmer and farm seems so wrongheadedly reductive. And at the same time, if we get a great review, we trot it out to show the world:

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2007 LA ROCHELLE
Pinot Noir Russian River Valley

<!-----------------------------------------------------------> Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine
Volume 34 Issue 8: June 2010 91
Maybe it is some kind of blind bias for the wines from this Pinot Noir region, but with so many good offerings from La Rochelle, it is the Russian River Pinot that has turned out to be our choice. We like its bright, keenly defined red cherry fruit, we like its dried flower nuances and we like its supple, slightly velvety yet keenly balanced stance on the palate. Some may find its evident, latter palate acids to be a bit too high. We do not, but we do expect them to smooth further with age.
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I told you it was complicated.

Evolution of a Different Sort...

In a recent post, I wrote about the relative importance of wine evolution vs. wine aging. Michael Pollan, in his  amazing book, Botany of Desire, explores the wonderfully twisty idea that certain plants have evolved human tastes in order to insure their continued existence.

In his sections on the apple and tulip, Pollan posits that these plants have selected for specific human desires (sweetness in the case of the apple, beauty in that of the tulip) through the generational physical manifestations that fire our imaginations. The book explores the possibility that both the human and plant are manipulating each other in a farthest-reaching evolutionary dance...just a wonderful thought to chew on.

Let's put this through the wine filter...can it be said that the first natural (arbitrary) cross between Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc which led to the creation of Cabernet Sauvignon, in turn lead to that new variety's hegemony among red grapes because it appealed to man's desire for richness and round fruit and structure? Did we choose to plant a lot of Cabernet in California because it happened to grow well and produce a tasty wine or did the grape fulfill our desires and therefore subtly compel us to spread its genetic material?

I don't that there is an answer, but what great fun to contemplate over a great glass of wine.

Smile at the Cellar Door

A recent blog post by wine critic, Steve Heimoff, leads me to this thought:

if you are lucky enough to live in or near wine country, get to know the wines and the people behind those wines. Letting a a numerical score (which implies an objectivity that doesn't exit) substitute for relationships seems like a recipe for a stunted, reductive experience.

Remember wine is all about relationships, the relationship of the grower with the vines, the winemaker with fruit, the Tasting Room team with its customers, and the customer to the experience. No purported exactitude can ever take the place of a smile at the cellar door.

Silver Lining

When business is off for one part of an industry, the negative ramifications are usually felt up and down the chain. Sales for high-end wines have been hit the hardest in the current economic downturn. The total volume of wine is right where it was in 2008, but price points tend to drop as disposable income diminishes.

Where the silver lining lies is in new opportunities for purchasing fruit. La Rochelle Winery will be getting a couple of tons of Pinot Noir from a new site in the Santa Lucia Highland called Soberanes Vineyard. This site was planted and is being farmed by the same people behind Garys', Pisoni, and Rosella's vineyards...three of the best sites in the world.

On the Chardonnay front, Merrillie will now be getting fruit from Rosella's Vineyard (pictured right) one of the top Chardonnay sites in the Santa Lucia Highlands. Coupled with the Sleepy Hollow Vineyard fruit from which we made wine for the first time in 2009, Merrillie is poised to begin her new life as a Chardonnay-only brand in 2011 with a stable of some of the top Chardonnay vineyards in the state.

The Year to Come in Pinot Noir

Because of the way we make our wines, we tend to release later than most other Pinot Noir producers. While some producers already have 2008 vintage wines in the market place, we are just now releasing the bulk of our 2007 vintage wines. What this means for lovers of La Rochelle Pinot Noir is access to a bunch of wines from one of the greatest vintages for California Pinot.

Over the next several months, you'll see one of my favorite wines the 2007 Pinot Noir - Santa Lucia Highlands, and two wines from my favorite site - 2007 Pinot Noir - Sleepy Hollow Vineyard, Martini Clone and Clone 113 (available in June). If you like to compare wines that are the same except for one variable, take a look at our 2007 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, French Oak and Mission Ranch, American Oak offerings.

For members of Pinot Noir Program, we have a stellar lineup of wines including 2007 vintage wines from  Paraiso Vineyard, Deer Park, and Sarmento Vineyards, and a 2008 release from a new site: Spring Hill Vineyard in the Sonoma Coast appellation. The Pinot Noir Program features single vineyard wines made exclusively for members. 

For those hankering after white wines, we have wonderful things for you too. In August we will be releasing the 2009 Pinot Gris; in October, our first Blanc de Noirs sparkling wine from the Santa Lucia Highlands, and January 2011, our 2009 Pinot Blanc.

The future is very bright for lovers of La Rochelle Pinot. We appreciate all of your support, and look forward to seeing you at the Winery soon.