California Style and Corison's No Show Girls

Still on the California mission, my next stop was the Skurnik tasting. I plucked a wineglass and took a few minutes to examine the tasting book for prospects. There was a new boy on the block, Stewart Cellars. Their copy included, "only native yeast fermentations." I circled the winery and proceeded to table 56. The owner is from Texas. The winemaker is Paul Hobbs. I was surprised that the Russian River Pinot,'06 was drinkable ($400 a case, wholesale.) What does that mean to me? It wasn�t overtly offensive. There was no in-my-face candy or strong toast or cherry. First impression? Heat and an odd, silty gritty texture, like find ground sand. Mr. Stewart told me with a great deal of pride how he sold off the '05 vintage and wouldn�t bottle it under his own name. "I make a Californian wine, not a French wine and the '05 vintage was French." Upon further pressing he explained, �It was too earthy. It just wasn�t a Californian wine.� Had he been reading Robert ******? The critic who reprimanded and punished Steve Edmunds (Edmunds St. John) for making a �French� wine? When did fat, fruit-driven, alcoholic wines of no interest become California? Doesn't it seem as if the state might have an identity crisis? It might be the wrong analogy, and I'm sure I'll rethink it and choose a better one in a few days but for some reason I began to think of parents whose smart children dropped out of school, ran away to the Unification Church. On to the next child--the Stewart '04 Cabernet at $520 a case. Perhaps the Californian of his dreams? No irony, just straightforward over ripe, toasted, thick-headed stuff. But there was indeed irony in the room. Because two tables away was Cathy Corison. From what I can ascertain, Corison, who debuted in 1987 has never gone after an �American taste.� (Is this way Parker hasn�t covered the wines in ten years?). Her �03 Kronos, from her own vineyard, was wildly expensive but elegant, a descriptive I don�t use frivolously for California. What�s more is that her 1996 Cabernet was herbal (that�s not American, I guess, maybe that�s why I liked it) with plenty of thoughts and counter-arguments thrown out in the texture and meaty flavors and good vibrancy. The wines were about 13.6 and when I asked her how she was able to manage this remarkable feat of lowish alcohol she said, � I don't make a Las Vegas showgirl of a wine.24 brix is plenty of ripeness.� When I asked her if in an odd year she would ever try reverse osmosis she just about went apoplectic. Perhaps she conceded, if she were to lose her wine due to some bacterial invasion, but never for flavor or alcohol profiling. I left feeling hopeful. There were some people who still made expressive wines. Next stop was to see what Randall Grahm was up to since he jumped on the biodynamic wagon. �Ready for some MOX-ed wines?� he asked, knowing my distaste for the process of bubbling oxygen into the wines. Two years ago I had a conversation with Jim Fulmer, head of the U.S. Demeter, the keeper of the Biodynamic trademark. I tried to persuade him to disallow the use of MOX for Biodynamic wine. As it overtly changes the wine�s chemistry it seems to be completely against the core of Biodynamic belief. But Grahm doesn't see any conflict at all. He uses it, he says, not to decrease the reduction in his reds but to increase it. Even though he says he does not use it to erase his tannins, that was part of the wine picture as well. That said, the Grahm wines are very improved and it was nice not to get aromatic yeast on his whites. As I was walking the aisles for my next victim, or the next to victimize me, I looked up. Saw Mike Dashe and whispered to myself, " A sign from God.� To be continued......