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.

Touring Monterey County Vineyards

On a recent trip to the Central Coast vineyard sites from which we are sourcing grapes this year, the same conditions that greeted us in Livermore were evident down south: nothing is moving.

Harvest time is a lot like an automobile race except when it comes to grapes you never really know, until the moment it happens, whether it is a sprint, a 500-miler, if the starting flag has really dropped...

Our relatively cool summer continues. And with the cool weather comes slower maturation of fruit. As winemakers, we like this condition. We get slow development of flavors and sugar levels move up only grudgingly. As fruit processors, though, the hurry up and wait conditions are burdensome. The team is ready to sort fruit, crush and de-stem, start fermentations, etc. but they sit idle. The real trouble starts when all the fruit comes in at once...which may be a consequence of the weather this year.

Mission Ranch

The Mission Ranch is located about 115 miles south of Livermore in the Arroyo Seco appellation and was planted by my family in the early '60s. Over 200 acres, the site is planted mostly to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Syrah. From Mission we get the fruit for our Classic Clones blend: Mariafeld, Pommard, Wadensville, and Swann (a new clone for us this year). The photos below show Mission's proximity to the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation up the hill in the background (l) and the new Swann block (r).












Mission is now owned by Steve McIntyre. Our relationship goes back to the early 2000s when he bought the vineyard from the family, and he and his team have done a wonderful job supplying us with gorgeous fruit. The photo below of the Mariafeld block shows how immaculate the fruit and vineyard are.


As of September 15, 2008 the fruit at Mission was sitting at about 20 Brix, at least a couple of weeks away from being ready for harvest. Flavors are developing beautifully, however.

Paraiso Vineyard

This is the most southerly-located vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation from which we source fruit. Owned by Rich Smith, the vineyard site had provided outstanding quality fruit to us for many years...and the views are amazing. In the photo below, we are looking east from Paraiso's Wedding Hill, over the Salinas Valley all the way to the Chalone appellation in the Pinnacles on the east side of the Valley.



Located in the Santa Lucia range about 700 feet above sea level, the Martini and 667 clones have consistently produced wines that are highlighted by bright red cherry, cola, and orange oil notes. The 2006 release of this wine was made exclusively for members of Pinot Noir Program. Planted originally in 1973, the Paraiso block from which we get our fruit has been grafted over the course of time. Sometimes a vine or two is missed when they are top-worked. In the photo below notice the Pinot Noir and Gwerztraminer clusters sharing the same vine.


Sleepy Hollow Vineyard

Juxtaposed to Paraiso Vineyard in the south is the Sleepy Hollow Vineyard in the far northern reaches of the Santa Lucia Highlands. Owned by the Talbott family, this vineyard site produces one of the most distinctive Pinots we offer (think raspberry fruit folded into mushrooms, pine needles, and soy...mmmm! mmmm!).

The photo on the left shows Sleepy Hollow up against the foot of the almost vertical Santa Lucia, the center one shows the Clone 113 block marker (notice that it is planted on its own roots), and the one on the right shows the uppermost rows from which we harvest the Martini clone fruit that is the base for our multi-clone wine.



With weather remaining cool, it will be a few weeks yet before all of our Central Coast fruit is in to the winery. If the last part of the harvest goes as well as the early part, the quality of the fruit...and the wine...should be very high indeed.

Tasting the New Sleepy Hollow Pinot Noir

The 2006 Pinot Noir - Sleepy Hollow Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands is a blend of three clones: Martini, 113, and 667 (two Dijon clones). This wine is a gorgeous expression of the earthier, non-fruit aromatics face of Pinot Noir. Made exclusively for members of the Pinot Noir Program at La Rochelle, it will be available to taste for a limited time on our Pinot Noir Flight. Only 130 cases were produced.

Click on the video below for more detailed tasting notes.

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:

New Friends at Spring Hill Vineyard

Finding Pinot Noir is extremely difficult these days given the popularity of the variety and the paucity of really high-class sites. I was lucky enough to get a lead on a wife and husband team growing beautiful Pinot Noir on Spring Hill Vineyard, 20 acres just 7 miles west of the Petaluma Gap in the Sonoma Coast appellation.

Karen and Chris London are pretty amazing (I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Chris yet, but did meet Karen). Not only are they farming their vineyard themselves, but they have young children and are raising cattle and vegetables for local restaurants to boot.

Hoping for a couple of tons of fruit in the 2009 harvest year, I called Karen to see if Tom Stutz and I could take a look at her vineyard on the way through to the La Cruz vineyard about 8 miles further East. Karen, who is very energetic and justifiably proud of her site, indicated that she might even have a couple tons of fruit from one of her blocks available THIS year.

After walking the site with her and making plans for getting picking bins to Sonoma, we left her with a couple bottles of La Rochelle. She, in turn, gave us a couple pounds of beef from Silver Bell, a cow from her Scottish Highland stock. That night...one of the best hamburgers I ever had. Harvest from this site should be in the third week of September. Look below to see the crazy-looking cows the London's raise.

2008 Harvest Begins!

Just when you think you have a little bit of breathing room after the annual Livermore Valley Harvest Festival, bam! the real harvest begins!

Yesterday, we harvested a bit shy of 6 tons of Pinot Noir from the La Cruz vineyard in the Sonoma Coast appellation. Last year was our first harvest from this beautiful site, and we were able to get about 4 tons of clone 115 Pinot Noir from two different blocks.

This year, we were able to secure not only the 115 which we like a lot, but also small volumes of 667 and 828. This is the first time we will be working with 828 and it came in beautifully at about 25 Brix. There's the fruit below at the Winery.


Our winemaker, Tom Stutz, and I went and visited La Cruz a few days before the harvest, and Petaluma, where the vineyard is located, was suffering similar heat as we were in Livermore. Early in the day it was not too hot and harvest was already underway for other wineries purchasing fruit from this site. Notice in the photo below the light brown dirt in the foreground. The soil in the upper block is thin, loamy-clay on top of volcanic rock. This block, called El Coro has much lighter soil than the block surrounding the Keller Estate winery located down the hill.



You can imagine that you'd see tractors and picking bins, and picking crews, and the like on a vineyard at this time of year. But you might not think that one of the most ubiquitous of tools, especially in vineyards where there are lots of birds is the crucial plastic spoon. Notice the pile at the foot of the row end post in the photo below. Netting is used to keep the birds from devouring fruit, and the nets are knitted together with plastic spoons.



As more fruit starts coming in, I will give you an update as to how quality is looking, and how the first blocks are tasting as they get through primary fermentation. This is one of the most exciting times of year, and if early indications are right, most of our fruit should be coming in a two to three week window this year. Busy! Busy! Busy!