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.

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?

Visiting Vineyards - Searching New Sources, Cementing Relationships

Tom Stutz and I spent the day in Sonoma County last Friday meeting with three growers to taste wines, walk vineyards, and talk winemaking philosophy.

La Rochelle does not own any of its own vineyards so it has the opportunity to source out the best possible fruit and to create relationships with people who are as passionate about growing great grapes as we are about making great wine.

2009 is going to be a very important and exciting year for us as we bring on new fruit from the Gran Moraine Vineyard in Willamette Valley, grapes from Londer Vineyard's estate vineyard in Anderson Valley (we now have 2 sources there), and fruit from Donum Estate vineyard in Carneros (another new appellation).

On this trip, we had the great fortune to talk and taste with Anne Moller-Racke from Donum Estate. Her winemaking and grape growing philosophy matches ours nicely, and we are lucky to be one of the very few to get grapes from her vineyard.

We also met with the Ross Cobb, the winemaker of Keller Estate, the owner of La Cruz Vineyard. Ross also owns his own eponymous brand, making great Pinot from Sonoma Coast fruit. The pictures show the Petaluma River off to the west from the Coro block of La Cruz Vineyard and our block of clone 115 Pinot beginning veraison.

Our appointment with Al Steele, the vineyard manager for Dutton, served the duel purpose of locking in the details of the Dutton-Campbell Pinot Noir for 2009 as well as looking at the Morelli Lane Vineyard, one of the new sites for the Merrillie brand (more on this later). It also included lunch at the Underwood in Graton (our Sonoma Coast restaurant of choice!).

La Rochelle began life in Livermore with the mission to make world-class wines. We also wanted to work with world-class people...it's nice to see that this part of the equation is working too.

Differences Between French and American Barrels

In an earlier post I wrote about the flavor and aromatic differences in two newly released La Rochelle Pinot Noirs. Though made from the same fruit and in the same way, the Pommard Clone in American oak differed greatly from the same wine aged in French oak.

While much of the differences in wine owe to the winemaker's hand, the actual structure of the trees made into barrels in France and the US is responsible for the "macro" characteristics of grain tightness, aromatics, flavors, and durability, among others. With the advent of improved curing regimes for American oak, qualitative difference between domestic and imported barrels are much less than they used to be.

Wooden receptacles have been used to store and age wine for hundreds of years, at least since the 1600s. We think of the 60-gallon barrel (or barrique) when we think of wood, but large wood upright tank made of redwood are still in use today. Chestnut has also been used for aging wine, and Balsamic vinegar starts as Trebbiano and is aged in a series of different woods to provide much of its flavor.

Oak is uniquely qualified for aging fine wine because of its relatively neutral aroma and flavor (compared to Redwood), its tightness of grain (Chestnut is not used much anymore because its porosity allows too much wine to evaporate), and its ability to bend without breaking (steam and fire are used to bend staves as barrels are being made).

White oak, Quercus alba, is the species of oak grown in America used for barrels; Quercus sessilis, is the European species. Midwest and Eastern states produce nearly all American barrels, with Missouri leading production. the map to the right shows production areas. Quercus alba differs structurally from Q. sessilis in the number of tyloses it contains. A tylose is a cellular structure in the xylem of the tree that blocks the nutrient-carrying tubes that run from the root up the tree, making the wood watertight. The American species has significantly more tyloses so the staves can be milled from larger sections of tree and up to 50% of the tree will be usable for barrel making. The European species, with fewer tyloses, needs to be handsplit into staves along the tylose lines, and up to 80% of the wood is wasted.

American oak barrels, as a consequence, are less porous than French oak and less tannic. At the same time, American oak is significantly more odorous than the French counterpart, contributing aromas of vanilla and coconut while the less powerful spice aromas of clove, and cinnamon are a feature of French oak.

French oak is used in large part because it tends to bolster the mid-palate of the wine, providing a sense of roundness and shape (just as it does in the La Rochelle Pommard clone Pinot Noir).

At La Rochelle, we tend to uses significantly more French than American oak. The aromatics of French oak and the structuring effects of French barrels work better with a majority of the Pinot Noir we harvest. For our Cabernet brand, American oak is often used because the depth of Cab fruit stands up well to the powerful aromatics.

A great deal of the improvement in American oak can be attributed to the air-drying of staves. French coopers have been doing this for centuries, but it is much newer for American coopers. In the early 20th century whiskey producers used newly sawn wood from which to make barrels. The extremely high tannin level and balsamy quality of the wood was overwhelmed by the product inside. Recently, American coopers have been air-drying their barrel staves for 24-36 months, stacking the wood, open to the elements, so that as the wood gets wet then dries many times over the course of time, much of the tannin and sappy quality of the wood is leeched out.

Toast levels of the barrels also add significantly to the aromatics, flavor, and quality of wine. the better barrels are toasted over an open fire both to bend those staves into a barrel shape and to bring out specific flavors and aromas in the wine. It is known that specific flavor elements such as coffee and chocolate are created in the wood at various temperatures and toasting durations. Depending upon the type of wine being made, we will buy barrels that have undergone medium, medium-plus, and slow heavy toasting so that we can capture these organoleptic elements in the finished product.

While American oak was originally seen as a poor man's alternative to French oak, its recent quality and the characteristics it brings to wine aging make it a very valuable tool in the wine maker's arsenal.

Defined by Barrel: The Wood Affects the Wine

We have written many times before about how the transparent nature of Pinot Noir reveals everything about itself. The place of its origin, the lateness of harvest, the yeast types used for fermentation, the length of time and type of barrel used for aging all put their very obvious stamp on the finished wine.

A great part of the fun of wine is in the knowing, and we think the deliciousness of the La Rochelle wines can be more greatly appreciated when you know more than just the surface details.

The 2007 vintage will be one of the best Pinot vintages in recent memory. The La Rochelle wines are just now rolling out. Some of the first include a pair of wines that, on the surface, differ only in the type of barrel used for aging. But a deeper look, will show just how profound a difference that aging vessel can make.

We have just released two single barrel wines: the 2007 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, Pommard Clone, American Oak and French oak. The barrel used to age wine obviously affects that wine's aromatics and flavors. But it has as dramatic an affect on the texture and structure of the wine as well.

Up front there is substantially more woodiness in the American barrel than there is in the French counterpart. The aromatics include the relatively overt, smoky, sweet oak notes of a Nadalie American oak barrel (Virginia wood) while the wood effect of the French (Nadalie, Allier forest) barrel is more in the shaping of the wine. The aromatics persist longer in the American barrel, the dark fruit notes heightened by the sweet underlayment of wood.

In the mouth, a similar sensation is also present. The French barrel seems substantially more elegant: tighter and less overtly fruity than the American barrel, while the smoky sweetness and dark fruit aromas are translated readily to the mouth in the American.

Imagine the route of the wine through your mouth as a highway. Upon entry, both wines are on a two lane road. Quickly though, the American's exuberant fruit expands the road to 4 lanes. On the mid-palate, the American road is wider still, and on the finish, the road resembles a funnel: the fruit, tannin, and acid are rampant. Conversely, the French road widens only a little and only on the finish. This wine lacks the American's full-throttled wideness at this point, relying instead on a staid and elegant containment (a very well paved, pot-hole-free journey). The French does, on the finish, hint at its own abundance, however: an abundance that will reveal itself over the next several years.

Only 20 cases or so of each wine was produced and it is moving quickly. Grab yourself a bottle of each and make your own comparisons. Let us know which you prefer.

Next time we will discuss just why there is so much difference between French and American oak barrels.