Pinot Envy?

A little prank played by a Sonoma winemaker, (Read Eric Asimov's account of it and follow that up with Samantha @ Sans Dosage).  That publicity stunt told more about Adam than about Raj, but it did flag the fact that people think Cali pinot noir  is a very big deal. Continuing on the theme, there was a super-charged panel discussion on pinot pursuit of balance  in San Fran.  The twitterverse and blogosphere and print media is on it,  everyone seems to be talking pinot. The question I have is not only why but why now? Because the grape is staring puberty in California in the face? Or is it fighting for its life or at least identity? 

Holding the minority position, I've had some nice examples of the varietal from Oregon, one or two from the Finger Lakes, but California pinot's  bright fruit and one or two flavors, for me, grows dull and difficult. This shouldn't be surprising as I tend to gravitate to wines that are anti-fruit, not austere but where the fruit is subtle. Consider the source; carignan is my favorite grape from the west, held up by syrah, mourvedre and at least in one person's hands, cabernet franc.

In the far west, the heart-break grape, often breaks mine with its  candied and fruited  personality. On top of that, winemakers there often have an abject  fear of tannin. Acidification is most often needed, even in those who try to work naturally.  I love the delicacy of Burgundy, I love that whiff of Chanel, edge, and florality, I love perceptible tannins, structure and freshness.

With out a doubt, the Cali-pinot style is changing; more producers are leaving behind the  heavy duty candy and the alcohol. The fat and  toasty oak is falling off the bone. Some people aren't even trying to extract for color anymore and allowing the wine to be its more delicately, tinged self. It is morphing into something more interesting for me,  but still, I do wonder about its potential in the land where carignan + mourvedre + syrah do so much better. 

I do believe there are spots that it can be expressive. I  have long wondered about the grape's expression up on the Santa Cruz mountains. It was there, at Four Gates that I had a too -pink -for -me, but a very interesting one, not only a sense of place but one that had an arrow pointing to it.  

Calera in that same area, less pink but still.... Last week, my colleague Michael Steinberger raved about the Santa Cruz winery, Rhys. And because he does,  I'm curious to taste them (in the past they haven't returned my calls). I'd like to see if the grape in the Rhys expression shows sophisticated instead of the obvious.  Maybe there's hope? Maybe there is a California pinot with charms I could extol?

I keep on coming back to the question of why does the passion for pinot and the search for it exist in California? I'm not convinced it isn't about the desire for it instead of the belief.

 When I asked winemaker Gideon Bienstock of Clos Saron why he grows pinot up up there in the hot Oregon House Valley, he said, "Because life without pinot isn't worth living."  
 Gideon's vineyard's rocks

  If I had a garden I'd probably be compelled to grow tomatoes wherever for the same reason, but if I could not buy pinot from Burgundy, the Loire, Alsace or the Jura, or the odd Piemontese bottle, would I learn to live without it or would I learn to embrace the strong black cherry and mallow and 'colas' of the state's grape expression.  Or is there an expression in  pinot that I have yet to discover that I would really enjoy? 

Jasper Morris recently published Inside Burgundy.  Morris discovers the region by vineyard and soil. He speculated that his book will never be outdated as the vineyards and the soil, famously built on a clay/limestone mix, remain the same. I find this a poignant counter-position for most New World winemakers who rarely put the soil first, but rather the climate, coastal or inland. Pinot, I believe is a grape that is site specific first. Place for pinot does matter.

 Today on twitter, one person noted that in the the Balance in Pinot conference few even brought up soil.  It was not part of the discussion. I wonder how long before soil becomes a significant player, or does the American democracy (which translates to grapes; plant what you want, it matters not) will interfere with finding a true sense of place.

Here's my thought. I'd like to see the wine from  grape grown on a site that is specific, not just cool climate,  seek out a limestone/clay base.  Go for naturally or organically grown, unirrigated, own-rooted, vines that were massale selections and not skinny, sterile clones. I think a good dose of stems would be useful, because California can use the edge that mitigates the intensity of sunny fruit.  No cold soaking for extra color and extraction and brightness of fruit. I would really be very curious to see what this would show, (and so if you've got some old Paul Masson and Martin Ray pinots, send me an email please).  I have an even more radical idea; treat pinot noir in California as one would treat a pinot noir from lesser terroirs in France, simply. 

I think only then can I see what the grape can do in California. Who knows, if I've gone back to loving California carignan, perhaps I can claim pinot noir as well. 

But, nevertheless, I  have been going out of my way to try them. And I will in the future. So far the most intriguing pinot  I've tasted from California was at the March  La Paulée de New York.  

Finally! I got to put my nose in one of those pot wines from a certain Santa Barbabara wine maker.
The weed added a certain complexity, and certainly added an edge to what I usually feel is just too much fruit.  

Other than that, recent tastings have uncovered....

+++

Anthill Farms, Tina Marie Vineyard 2009  

 The fruit was reversed on this, on the finish instead of the attack.Found the etheral weight interesting. But still fruit forward, I  mean backward.

 

Lioco Sonoma Pinot 2009

Was this wine really $14? At 13.5 % it still has all of that bright fruit that I swear I don't know what to do with but the little bit of bug shell and aspirin bitter makes it palatable.

Kutch Anderson Valley 2009

Found this round and powerful but helped out with some  nice rosewater that might have come from the 50% whole cluster. Bring on the stems.

 

 

Comments

[Gideon]

Always a pleasure to hear from you, Alice. If I may, I would like to give a more compleat answer to the question 'why grow Pinot here, in Oregon House, CA? '(Yuba County, Sierra Foothills AVA).
Yes, life without Pinot may not be worth living... but I believe that seeking clay/limestone soils for potential Pinot vineyards outside of the Cote d'Or to the exclusion of any other soil type does not make sense. Do you think the Romans, when they brought Vitis Vinifera along with their aromies as they marched north into Europe were overly specific in what type of soil they used for which variety? I happen to think that the microclimates, being impossible to ignore, were more significant in deciding what was planted where. And then time, centuries of experimentation and comparing, established what works better within the context of European soils and climate. We grow Vitis Vinifera in CA, where a similar process was started at the Gold Rush, and aborted by Prohibition. After that, much of what happened was more fashion driven than anything else.
In our Home Vineyard, we enjoy an excellent microclimate for Pinot: as demonstrated by our harvest dates, (usually from early September to early October at 21-24 Brix), it is not exactly "hot" as you referred to it. The soil is a complex mix of allovial clay/loam layer, on top of a pure volcanic ash layer, on top of fractured/decomposed Diorite (Granitic rock). It's an unusual type of soil for any type of agriculture but it seems to be well suited to vine growing. Our vines are low in vigor and produce very low yields without us needing to do any "green harvesting", use fancy trellis/pruning methods, etc. Then, beyond the basic suitability of the soil and microclimate to vine (and specific varietal) growing, comes the issue of terroir expression in the wine. Amazingly, a lot of people talk about it, but few actually understand its main implication, which is specificity, distinctiveness, "otherness". It's a liability to most wine producers, because it means that if your wine is truly committed to its terroir, some may like it a lot, but others may not... this is dangerous if you plan to sell your wine in the large distribution as it requires more from the consumer. In the case of our own Pinot, I would describe the terroir expession along the following lines: the wines tend to be medium in color and body, strong in acid and tannic structure, and a bit rustic in their youth. A superficial layer of black cherry and somethig like molassses covers strong earty/spicy/mineral elements, which come out with aeration and time in the glass. The wine is long lived by CA standards - since our first harvest in 1998, we have not yet seen any vintage reach its full maturity, althogh the 2000 seems to be getting there.
So is it a "classic" Pinot Noir? I am not sure how to think about it... It is certainly quite different from most Burgundies I have had. It's its own thing - a distinctive wine.
A well known wine writer, considered a Burgundy expert, remained skeptical for many years about our Pinot Noir: for his Burgundy-centric palate, the wine was interesting, but not convincing as a Pinot Noir. Recently, he told me than he served a bottle of the 2007 Home Vineyard to a couple of friends of his who just loved it and, he added, 'and so did I'. So, possibly in time, you and other skeptics will also grow to enjoy (get used to? open up to? learn to understand?) it more!
(I could go on, get into winemaking practices and so on, but let's leave that for another time...) Cheers.

[Alicefeiring]

Gideon,

Delighted to hear from you and hopefully there will be more coming from people dedicated to the grape in their place, as you are.

I think decomposed granite is an interesting terroir to explore for pinot. It's not that I believe that only argile-calcaire soils work for pinot (to my palate) but whether it's in Alsace or Piemonte, that's what seems to express a more complex beast to me. I do wonder if without crushed rock pinot tends to get sloppy.

The fact that you can grow without adjustments in your area (and with you growing the grapes) is a fine advert. And no complaints from me ever, about a bit of rusticity in a wine, I rather like it.

Feel free to go on at any time at all.

[young collector]

As far as your thought experiment goes - what about Calera? Limestone, organic, "indigenous yeasts" (whatever that means), <2t/acre yields, 50% stems, 30% new oak. Mills vineyard is ungrafted.

[Alicefeiring]

Hey Peter, there we go, Santa Cruz again. I didn't know that Mills was ungrafted.

[Lmbrooks]

Please don't call it Cali. It makes you sound like a fool.

[Alicefeiring]

Larry, if you are indeed Larry Brooks the winemaker, surely you can say more, especially with your history with pinot. Place? Clone? Irrigation? Wood? Stems? What California can produce? Where it should be grown, where it shouldn't be grown and why do so few winemakers talk about the soil? If you're not The Larry Brooks, well, you can take a stab at the questions anyway.

[BelgianGourmand]

Interesting, Alice, interesting.
Though I do think you're completely right when you say California is more apt for GSM, carignan, cinsault and all that, I'm still sceptical on the possibility-part for Californian Pinots. Even high in Santa Cruz ... I dunno. Of course you're much more experienced than I am (it's hard to lay hands on them in Belgium), but when I was in the states last year I tried as many of them as possible (my wife had this nice wine shop close to her app. in St. Paul), and none of them did the trick. General problem: too much, way too much unbalanced alcohol, which invariably gave the wines a nasty bitter aftertaste if they weren't overoaked. Some had other aroma's than the cola like stewed fruit, but even then, they didn't do it. Oregon though, was another story. Had some nice examples from there.
Maybe it's this belief of varietal typicity that thwarts everything here. I, for me, don't believe there is such a thing as 'classic' PN. The French would love to see that established, but defending such ideas are maybe more rearguard fights than anything else. Ever tasted German Spätburgunder, Jura PN, Lorraine PN? There are most def recognizable PN-characteristics in them, but why compare? Why speaking of a classic standard (I hate standards, btw). I think States PN-producers would hugely benefit from seeking their own PN expression and stop comparing all the time. I want difference in my glass, not comparison.
@Gideon: the Romans did select varietals according to terroir (though they didn't wield a notion like terroir). The fact that almost 70% of European vineyards are on hillsides is thanks to the Romans. Fertile, easy workable land was only used for classic farming. Rough, poor terrain was used for vineyards (of course there is also the fact that disease control was much more easy on hillsides, etc.). When planting vineyards their first selection criterion was natural provenance. If the variety was already there (cultivated by the Gauls, Etruscan, Greeks, Dalmatians, ...) and had proven its worth on a certain soil in a certain area, it was selected and planted in an organized way. Knowledge they had from these 'natural provenance'-examples was transposed to the planting of new vineyards in other regions. They also selected over the ages, assessing yields, durability, etc. We musn't forget they had for about 2000 years of time to select, assess, reassess, ... .
The notion of terroir though, is more medieval (especially in burgundy, cistercian monks doing a lot of work), typicity, on the other hand, is certainly an early 19th century concept, and the link between typicity, terroir and quality is definitely a mid 19th century invention (think of the classification of 1855).

[Alicefeiring]

California is a huge state with varied climates and soils, so I do believe part of it must be able to produced interesting pinot. It shouldn't have anything to do with European pinot, and comparisons would not/ are not fair.

But in some places, some stone/mineral rich soil, my sense is basic soil, it could be interesting. And the irrigation has to stop, and a little virus wouldn't be so bad to impede the maturity of the fruit.

I did mention the Jura, Alsace & Loire, I'm not wild about spatburgunder, but I've had the occasional Piemontese pinot that I've really appreciated. They've a different kind of limestone there, but still, there is something to the affinity the grape has with limestone, no? To ignore it seems to ignore the wisdom of the elders.

As always, thanks for your comments.

[BelgianGourmand]

I hope there will be once smby who makes a nice Californian Pinot. As I said, what do I know about Californian wine? I have just a wee inkling, that's all. Comparing US PN with European examples isn't only unfair, it's a belittling and reductionist attempt to fit new things in what we think we all know so well.
Limestone, yes! Just because it structures - by emphasizing a straight acidity - the otherwise quite plump and sweet juices of PN (same for chardonnay - just tasted a fabulous 2009 from Thomas Pico). One of the best recent samples was François Grinands Etappes 2009. On limestone. Still get goosebumps when I think of it.
Why not spätburgunder, Alice? Try the späts from the Shelter Winery (Baden). You'll like them.
Piemontese: for me only in Monferrato, i.e; Silvio Morando and, a partly PN, with barbera, Fortetto della Luja. Other ones I should try?

[BelgianGourmand]

Ow, btw, sure I know you had a lot of pinots from the Loire, Jura (though I prefer those from Auvergne) and Alsace (though apart from Schueller and Barmes I did not taste anything I fell in love with). But try those from close to Burgundy, from Guy Bussière in Val de Saône, they are so tender and crisp, or those from La Lorraine (upper North-West of France). Hm, I should send you a bottle when you're in France again.
Sorry for all these long, ranty comments. It's just an exciting topic. We'll have spaghetti al ragù tonight, and though I know it doesn't fit at all, you've made my mouth water for a good pinot. I'll go for a Bussière. Santé!