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.