Acquiring my wine grapes was
done perhaps hastily and perhaps randomly. And perhaps you can remove the
perhaps from that sentence.
After almost a month Mike
Larner emailed me back with the following:
Mike,
So I didn't scare you off with all that economic loss talk, ehh!
Unfortunately I don't have anything for sale, well fortunate for me I
guess. I know of a vineyard coming on line this year, same soil,
climate, and good clones. I on't know if it has a home, but i will
contact them and get back to you (I have done some consulting work for
them, so I know the vineyard pretty well). Otherwise call Jeff Newton,
I think Watch Hill vineyard has some unsold Syrah. However, you may be
up against many others since the frost did a lot of us in, I lost near
10 acres in one night! What was that about economic losses!
I will be in touch.
All the best,
Michael
Oh yeah, the frost! Maybe
there weren't any grapes to be had in Santa Barabara County. I called the
people he suggested and they had nothing to sell. A prudent person would have
waited and explored the area further, since I wanted to center my wine
operations in the county. An impatient person would have done what I did: check
out Wine Business Monthly classifieds and make inquiries.
Wine Business Monthly is one
of the main trade publications for the North American wine industry. The
articles have names like "Tasting Room Survey Report" or "Annual
Crusher/Destemmer Comparison", and can vary widely in terms of usefulness. They
also publish the numerous various press releases emanating from the industry,
usually who's buying who, which winemakers are switching companies, new brands
and wines introduced, distribution deals, etc. The print version mostly consists
of ads, for everything related to winemaking: corks, crushers, fermenting
tanks, barrels and every other piece of equipment. The first time I opened this
magazine I couldn't believe how many items and products potentially went into
the making of a bottle of wine.
Wine Business Monthly's
primary value, however (especially the online version) is their classified ads.
This is where industry people can source or sell barrels, grapes, bulk wine,
equipment, land, etc, and this is where I looked. One listing I responded to
advertised up to 10 tons of
I decided at the outset that
my primary grape variety for the virgin go-round would be syrah. Syrah was
plentiful and it was a widely recognized varietal - it's certainly acceptable
to bring a
Most importantly syrah is
known as a variety that will not only tolerate rough or indifferent treatment,
but actually likes it. I heard from more than one established winemaker
(including Mike Larner, who grows a lot of it as well) that a vigorous pumpover
was the best way to extract the maximum flavor and color from syrah grapes,
without much worry as to whether their feelings would be hurt. A thick-skinned
Mediterranean grape, evolving in the hot sun, begging you to bring it harder!
Syrah in fact most probably originated in the
Put succinctly syrah is relatively
difficult to screw up. And it's damn tasty. Syrah comes in different styles - a
colder weather version that shows white pepper and anise characteristics all
the way up to a full on California (or Australian) fruit bomb, and everywhere
in-between. It's the only red grape used in the Northern Rhone area (e.g. Cote
Rotie and Hermitage), where it makes some famous and pricy wines, and it's
right behind Grenache as the most widely used grape in the South (ranging from
Cotes du Rhone to Chateuaneaf du Pape). You will likely not find a 100% syrah
in the
I've had some beauties from
So Syrah was going to be the
maiden voyage, if it happened at all. I also harbor a dream to make pinot noir,
but whereas syrah likes to be spanked, pinot noir is by universal acclamation
the most difficult red grape to work with by a considerable margin. This was
driven home to me by the AHC winemaking class where we used pumps to rack and
transfer all the wine except our pinot noir, for which Norm brought a specialized
siphon-type thing whose name escapes me.
The fragility of pinot noir
was further brought home to me when, during a brief heat wave in Santa Maria,
the class's pinot noir, which had been tasting excellent, rolled over and died,
its color a disheartening brown shade, and the taste worse than the color. The
other wines were unaffected. To add to the fun, a ton of quality pinot noir in
SB County is now going for between $4000 and $5000 while even the top syrahs go
for much less. And of course after you buy those nice grapes you're obligated
to use some nice new French oak as well.
I budgeted $2000/ton for my
syrah purchase, figuring I could snag a couple of tons, so when I saw the
grapes from Solano County advertised for half that I knew there would be a
catch. I answered the ad to see what the deal was.
A man named Roger King
called me back almost immediately after I sent the email - he didn't own the
vineyard but was the head of the Solano County winemakers association (I
think), and was closely involved with the vineyard, owned by a man named Steve
Wirth.
Roger explained the vineyard
situation to me - the vineyard had been laid out and planted under the
direction of a winemaker in
Roger King owns his own
vineyard in Solano County and reinvented himself as a grower/winemaker after a
long stint in the corporate world (as a ski executive, mostly). He was uncertain
about the clone(s) that had been planted in the Wirth vineyard, but had some
theories about it. Since I knew nothing about syrah clones, that part of the
conversation went by without much input from myself.
In recent years clones have
received increasingly greater attention in CA winemaking circles (the
definition of a clone is simply a common DNA imprint, just like humans, sheep,.
etc). It mostly has been centered on various pinot noir clones. By all accounts
the different pinot noir clones all taste somewhat different, as well as
ripening at different times and having varying requirements as far as
temperature, moisture, etc. Because pinot noir is such an unstable grape that
mutates readily, the quantity of different clones has built up over the
centuries. Pinot noir, pinot gris (grigio) and pinot blanc are all different
mutations of what started out as the same grape, and it's not unheard of
(although rare) to see a pinot noir vine with a branch that has produced
clusters of white or pink (the usual shade of pinot gris) grapes. This is
considered a bad thing, by the way.
Entirely different grapes,
such as Pinot Meunier (widely used in
champagne) are thought to be pinot noir mutations as well.
In the winemaking class Norm
had brought a cross section of different clones from the same vineyard for the
class to taste. They definitely tasted different, and you could tell the
differences just from the juice. I had already realized that there were
different pinot clones but I never realized there were so many: In Santa
Barbara County there are many different
pinot clones, some more widely used than others of course. (The well regarded Fiddlestix
property, a 100 acre pinot noir vineyard in the prestigious Santa Rita Hills
AVA, has at least 10 different clones planted. Melville's vineyard in SB County
has 14 different clones planted); most winemakers will blend them; some like to
make a single clone pinot noir. Norm in fact makes 2 versions of a pinot from
the same vineyard, one using only
Almost every family of
grapes has a variety of clones but in some cases it just doesn't matter. For
example there are various Sangiovese clones, but ultimately there are two types
of Sangiovese: Piccolo (found in Chianti) and Grosso (most notably in Brunello
and Rosso di Montalcino). As you might guess one is larger than the other, and
they are very different to the point where they are almost different varietals. However the various
clones (despite having different DNA) within these two main groups are fairly
similar from a winemaking and grape growing perspective, so in the case of Sangiovese
(clonally speaking) perhaps all you really have to know is: Grosso or Piccolo?
Incidentally Sangiovese is
the most widely planted red grape in
Of course Sangiovese and Pinot
Noir are the extreme examples, and the current thinking is that syrah clones do
make a significant difference, so I hoped for the best. I wish I could spin a
few nifty facts or anecdotes about syrah clones, but that's a research project
for another day. And after all, at this point no one seems to know what the
clone(s) is/are in the Wirth vineyard anyway.
I told Roger Id need to come
up, meet him, taste the homemade wine and look at the vineyard. The reason for
the low price was now obvious, since no one had ever made any money from these
grapes.
Jason is one of my main wino
buddies and my best friend dating back to college. He lives in
The largest city in
Luckily, as soon as
Fairfield ends the wine country begins - it's like someone flipped a switch:
one moment you're at a light in front of a rundown mini mall featuring liquor,
check cashing and donuts (there must be some sort of trinity in there
somewhere), and the next you're passing a lush vineyard estate (gated of
course, to keep out the mini mall people). We continued down the road to
Roger loves to talk, mostly but
not exclusively about wine, so we chatted in the parking lot for a while. He
had brought the bottle of wine so I suggested we go inside and try some. He
produced a bottle of the homemade (or I should say non-commercial) wine, which
had been blended with 10% cabernet sauvignon. The tasting room attendant opened
it and the moment of truth had arrived. I deeply wanted this to be a revelatory
moment, when classic aromas of anise, pepper, leather and smoke would caress my
olfactory lobes, and the rich, seductive glyceriny mouthfeel would make images
of the
OK, it wasn't quite like
that. But. There was something there, as the wine had a nice aroma, with a certain
degree of complexity. I would agree with Roger that the wine was cleanly made,
and actually I could happily drink it with a meal, but honestly it was very
average on its best day. All things considered it was what I expected when I
was being honest with myself in my anticipation of the tasting, visions of Purple
Rhone Angels circling my head notwithstanding.
On to the vineyard. Roger
took off, we followed in Jason's car. On the way we stopped at Roger's syrah
vineyard, which he claimed had produced several 90 point wines He didn't
elaborate on who were assigning the points. Perhaps Roger was. It reminded me of
a winery website I had seen some time ago, in which the winery had rated their
wines themselves. They all scored very high.
Apropos of awards and
ratings, a recent email from Roger informed me that the wine I had tasted at
Anybody who has spent much
time in
We stood around Roger's syrah
vineyard, which was indistinguishable from most other vineyards, especially in
its pre-veraison state (veraison is when the grapes turn from green to red.
It's marked by several pagan festivals and a 4 day non-stop feast. OK, not
really). He remarked on the trellising system, which I believe he said was the
same as in the Wirth vineyard. In my viticulture class we had gone over various
trellising systems extensively; sad to say I remember none of it. As with so
many things wine-related, it's remarkable how many ways there are to train a
grapevine.
After chewing on some hard
green syrah grapes and standing around a bit we resumed our drive to the Wirth
vineyard. I had already decided I was going to buy a batch of grapes, mainly
because it was time to be a player, damn it. The price was right although, in
my eagerness and naiveté I didn't realize that the cost of processing the
grapes would be the same regardless of the tonnage cost of the raw material, and
that the initial cost would in fact be less of a portion of the total cost of
producing a bottle of wine. I actually did realize this implicitly but I was
talking myself into getting into the game, like right now. Plus, I didn't know
how many more of these sorts of grape expeditions I could really go on.
The vineyard looked exactly
like Roger's, only bigger. We chewed on more hard green grapes while Roger
expounded on the trellising system, canopy management strategy (the canopy is
the green leafy part, which needs to be arranged to provide optimum sunlight and
shelter for the grapes themselves). It all looked copasetic and I was excited.
As I mentioned, unless the vineyard had been overrun with mildew, or was dotted
with abandoned tractors and huge weeds I was in.
"I'll take six tons", I
said.
We shook hands on the deal.
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