Cin Cin Dinner...I Second That Emotion

Just last week, I had the opportunity to spend an evening with friends and fellow wine lovers at Cin Cin Winebar and Restaurant in Los Gatos. Chuck Easley, my good friend and the owner of T-Vine Cellars in Napa, and I hosted a five course dinner that paired extraordinary food with a total of five of our wines.


What made this dinner unusual and special was a suggestion by Chuck to make an emotional connection with the wines and the audience. So for each course, there not only was a wine and a dish, there was a song to set the tone for that course.

For the first course chef Chris Schloss paired a Smoked Alaskan Black Cod with the 2007 Steven Kent Merrillie Chardonnay. I chose the song "Roll Me Away" by Bob Seger. The pairing was particularly poignant for me in that it brought back a memory of an experience with this wine on a houseboat at Lake Powell in Utah. On the most beautiful day possible, on the most gorgeous lake imaginable, I shared this wine with my wife and my father and my sister as that great song wafted from our boom box...just a beautiful confluence of people, place, and wine.

And it was this confluence that we alluded to over and over again during the dinner. Wine is not about fermentation and aging regimes; it is not about how many points it got in the wine magazine; at its best, wine is about the people with whom you share it and the experiences and memories you create together. The cost of the wine, the relative prestige of the brand, are immaterial if it's shared with the right people. The most expensive wine in the world is just a glass of fermented grape juice if you're sitting by yourself.

Chris and I paired a couple of La Rochelle Pinot Noirs (Sleepy Hollow '08 and Deer Park '07) with John Hiatt (Duck Confit Dumplings) and Bruce Springsteen (Milk-braised Berkshire Pork Shoulder and Belly), and Chuck paired his wines with songs by Marvin Gaye and Eric Clapton (the T-Vine Grenache, Chocolate Fromage and "Sexually Healing" course was very popular!). The wines were tremendous, the food was spectacular but, again, it was the vibe of the place, and the happiness of the diners that was the best pairing.

I want to thank Lisa Rhorer, Don Durante, Chris Schloss and their team for helping to make this a wonderfully successful evening. The food at Cin Cin is consistently great, and the wine program and hospitality are also first rate. I highly recommend you check them out.

Thanks too to Chuck Easley for his consistent support, friendship, and generosity. His wines are wonderful and should be part of your cellar.

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

Pinot Patchwork?

Last night I saw an interesting post on Twitter. Jayson Bryant of TheWineVault, tweeted, “If smell were a fabric, what would Sauvignon Blanc be?” Immediately I thought of linen. Cool, crisp, clean. He then asked me "what about Pinot Noir". My first thought was corduroy. Textured, structured, yet soft, like our Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir. Then I thought, no, pinot noir is more like velvet – deep, dark, elegant, smooth, luxurious. Hmmmm…which is it? Maybe it’s actually shantung silk, silky with some texture, crisp and brilliant color…I can’t decide! Maybe the true answer is that Pinot Noir would be a patchwork quilt. Some pinots are corduroy, some velvet and others silk…aren’t those differences part of the beauty of Pinot Noir? What are your thoughts?

La Cruz Release Heralds New Appellation

We recently released our latest Pinot Noir made exclusively for members of our Pinot Noir Program. The 2007 Pinot Noir - La Cruz Vineyard, Sonoma Coast marks the first wine we have made from this wonderful appellation.

La Cruz Vineyard sits right on the Petaluma River and is comprised of two distinct sections. These sections are further divided into blocks based upon varietal and clone (in the case of Pinot Noir). The upper portion of the site is called the El Coro block and is comprised of very light, infertile soil, while the lower block is alluvial soil from the river...much darker, heavier, and fertile than El Coro. The photograph to the right shows El Coro block soil along with bird netting that is held together by plastic spoons.

In 2006 we harvested only Dijon clone 115 but got it from both vineyard sections. We vinified each section separately then blended them before release. The photo below and to the left shows the distinctly light brown soil of the El Coro Block.

This wine is distinctly different in weight, aromatics, and flavors than any other Pinot we have made. While our main source of fruit (the Santa Lucia Highlands) is generally characterized by dark raspberry fruit notes and significant mid-palate viscosity, the La Cruz wine is much more an amalgam of rose petals, blood orange with a transparency in the mouth that shows off the very clean, expansive acid line of the wine.

In the future we hope to have a couple more sites from this appellation so that we have wines to share both with club members and Tasting Room guests. For the time being, however, if you would like to get a couple of bottles of this wonderful wine, we'd like to invite you to join our club.

Terrific Wine, Better People

I had the occasion to taste at Testarossa Vineyards today after having visited Ridge Winery earlier in the day for their 2008 Monte Bello assemblage event. I have enjoyed the Testarossa wines quite a lot (their 2005 Pinot Noir, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard was stunning) and have been up to their tasting room only once before.

The team there, led by Jeffery Marino, the Tasting Room Manager, could not have been nicer and more generous.

The thing that most tasting room teams share, and what the Testarossa folks have in spades, is a love of wine. Apparently, quite a lot of them had had some of our Pinots in the past (I think I have Bob Zamorra, a great wine lover in his own right, who works both for us and Testarossa, to thank for that!) and liked them. And being as passionate and as generous as they are, they allowed me to taste some wines that have not been released yet or that were part of their library.

The 2006 Chardonnay, La Cruz Vineyard and 2007 Chardonnay, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard were both stunning. They were outshone, however, by the 2006 Diana's Reserve Chardonnay that is a blend of the finest barrels from each of the vineyards from which they source fruit.

On the Pinot Noir side, the 2006 Pinot Noir, La Cruz Vineyard was gorgeous (another tie-in: our 2007 La Cruz Vineyard will be released very soon) as was the 2007 Sleepy Hollow.

More info about the winery can be found at www.testarossa.com. Tell the great team there, that we sent you!

Beauty and the Beast

It was the end of a working day last week, and I wandered into my wine cellar in the garage looking for a bottle of Pinot.

From the 2005 vintage, we had produced a number of very small (some only a single barrel) offerings and will have 11 separate single-barrel releases in 2009. Anyway, I found a bottle of one of the 2005 wines wedged behind some Cabernet.

The 2005 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, Pommard clone is both beautiful and ugly simultaneously.

Shortly after I acquired the La Rochelle brand from my cousins, we decided to change the packaging to more clearly delineate what we wanted La Rochelle to be. Before our current label design (created by Nick McNeill), we developed a new look that was just horrendous. The picture to the right shows the abomination (kids, this is why you leave the label design to the pros!).

The wine inside the bottle was wonderful. Explosive aromatically (fresh raspberry and cranberry fruit, spice from barrel), the wine had a beautiful, silky mid-palate, open fruit flavors, and great acidity. I had it with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. Yum score = 100.

Beautiful labels, do not guarantee delicious wine, and - thankfully enough, in this case - the ugly ones don't also describe the wine inside.

2006 Pinot Noir, Santa Cruz Mountains Released

While single-vineyard wines make up the backbone of our Pinot Noir Program (in fact, we will release a wine from the Deer Park Vineyard from Santa Cruz Mountains for the wine club later in the year), our appellation wines boast a complexity and deliciousness that typify our best offerings.

Grapes have been grown in the Santa Cruz Mountains since the 1850s with Pinot Noir a growing contributor to the overall acreage planted in the appellation, especially recently. Unlike other more hill-challenged appellation, many of the vineyards in this appellation are small, the average size (according to John Haeger in his seminal book North American Pinot Noir) being just 11 acres.

The Deer Park Vineyard provides the vast majority of fruit for this offering with the San Vicente Vineyard adding the last few percent. This wine is dramatic, imbued with wonderfully intense dark-berried fruit, great mid-palate acidity and a fair amount of tannin. This is one of those wines that needs some time before it shows its best.

When it does, though, the results will be stunning. Only 80 cases of this wine were produced and can be ordered in our on-line store.

The Game's all About Food

We may root for a particular team, wear that team's jersey, live and die with the fortunes of that team...but we all really know, the big game is about the food and wine. I am serving the dish below...what Pinot would go best?

In Good Company

There are a lot of great wines produced in California. It has always been a goal (especially in our Cabernet House where the Livermore Valley appellation doesn't get the credit it deserves) to make wines that are considered among the best.

And while I am deeply conflicted about the wine reviewing process (more on that another time), the benefits of a positive review are undeniable. Jim Laube, the California wine reviewer for the Wine Spectator magazine, just published a list of top scoring Pinot Noirs from last year, and our Garys' Vineyard from 2005 is included.

We are re-releasing the last 120 bottles from our Library. The limit is 2 bottles per person. The price is $75 per bottle. Click to order Pinot Noir - Garys' Vineyard.

It's Soy Good...

Soy. Not a descriptor I would normally attach to a wine. Sushi maybe, wine no. I've seen this word used before to describe wine and as a matter of fact I have heard Steven refer to it several times with some of our pinots in La Rochelle. I never could quite get the soy. I just chalked it up to my amateur palate. Then I opened a bottle of the 2003 Garys' Vineyard Pinot Noir which was created especially for the Steven Kent Future Release Program. One sip and I was hit with a soy bomb. Yes, a soy bomb! It was unbelievable. Not only was the flavor amazing, but the mouthfeel was silky and coated my tongue like a cashmere jacket in autumn. It was perfect. How could I have missed this?

I thought back and remembered when we released this wine in 2005. We had never done a pinot before and I was not familiar with the grape. Sure, I had pinot noir prior to this but it was a casual acquaintance, not a varietal I could appreciate. I remember tasting the 2003 and enjoying it, but thinking I enjoyed cabernet more. Since its release I have had the honor of tasting many more pinots, whether our own at La Rochelle or those we bring in for tasting to compare and contrast with our own. While I still enjoy my cabernet, I have come to appreciate what pinot noir has to offer. I enjoy opening each bottle, wondering what flavor awaits me…will it be earthy…dark fruit…perhaps cardamom - a favorite of mine, or another spice??? Or maybe this time it's soy.

Grab a bottle of pinot and open it up…what do you taste???

(ed. note: Just our opinion, but the wines that are predominantly made from Sleepy Hollow Vyd. fruit also display this soy quality in spades.)

Pressing Matters...Harvest is Over

Harvest time is always the most exciting time of the year, not always for positive reasons however. Wine, for all its importance if culture and history, is still - at its core - an agricultural product. As such, the grower ceeds much control to Mother Nature. We are never comfortable about the vintage. We're a little more at ease when all the fruit comes in, but then there is the next important matter of when to press wines off the skins.

This is where we are now with our Pinots. All of our fermentations are done in 1.5 ton open-top fermenters. Tom Stutz tastes each of these fermenters (we have over 30 going at any one time) every day tracking the progression of flavors, aromas, sweetness, tannin, and the like until he feels that the wines can come off the skins. We tend to leave our wine in fermenters nearly until the point the caps submerge (this indicates that there is no more production of carbon dioxide, a by-product of fermentation and the substance that keeps the cap afloat).

Once the wine is pressed off the skins you can't go back. You can't add more color, more tannin, more extract (you can technically, but those kinds of manipulations are not in our winemaking playbook). Essentially, the wine is made. Any flavor and aromas changes to the wine will come from the presence (or lack) of new barrels and exposure to oxygen.

Over the course of the next week or so all of our wines will be in barrel undergoing the next phase of their lives.

Tasting at La Rochelle

We invite you to join us for a pairing of gorgeous Pinot Noirs and spectacular cheeses. Click the play button below for more info:

Tasting the 2006 Pinot Noir - Paraiso Vineyard

The 2006 Pinot Noir - Paraiso Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands has just been released exclusively to members of our Pinot Noir Program. A favorite of La Rochelle guests last year, this new vintage triumphantly carries on the where the 05 left off. Chock full of bright cherry fruit and elegance (hear more detail in our video tasting note below) this wine will be gone very soon.

To be one of the few who will enjoy this gorgeous wine, click here for more information about joining our club.

Click below to hear more.

Creating Depth and Breadth

One of the most fun things about La Rochelle from a wine-making standpoint is the sheer number of different Pinots there are to make and drink. Pinot Noir is perhaps the best argument for the French notion of terroir, that hazily-understood notion that says that all aspects of the vineyard site (temperature, soil type, sun exposure, wind, rainfall, etc) have a significant and unduplicate-able effect on the final outcome of the wine. Each of our Pinots is a physical manifestation of the vineyard site, vineyard practice, winemaking philosophy, and vintage.

La Rochelle was founded on a passion for Pinot Noir and with a mission to show as many of the facets, beautiful and idiosyncratic, of this noble variety. Consequently, the search for great vineyard sites in as many of the great growing areas in California and Oregon as possible consumes a lot of our time. Currently, we have sourced fruit from nine different appellations:

• Monterey
• Santa Lucia Highlands
• Arroyo Seco
• Santa Cruz Mountains
• Chalone
• Russian River Valley
• Sonoma Coast
• Anderson Valley
• Umpqua Valley of Oregon

The first releases of wines from Chalone, Sonoma Coast, and Anderson Valley will be in 2009/10. There are still a number of appellations that we are on the prowl for: Willamette Valley, Santa Rita Hills, and Santa Maria Valley.

We will never (at least I can't conceive of doing this) produce large lots of Pinot Noir. We want to continue to scour the landscape for great vineyard sites farmed by people as passionate about growing Pinot as we are in making it. This is the only way have to guarantee that our wines have the quality we expect of them.