Our Sonoma Wine Discovery Trip
Steph & I just returned from a nice long weekend trip to Sonoma -- or more precisely, we just returned from a trip to the Russian River appellation of Sonoma County. Try as we might to break over to Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, or Carneros, we just couldn't seem to detour from the stellar wineries along West Side Road. The goal of the trip was to find some new small wineries to feature here at the bar. Specifically, those with great wines, great stories, and no distribution.
We had a skeleton itinerary -- some favors to cash in -- some popular ex-Cask Room vintners to visit in person, but we primarily had a very open schedule. A funny thing happened along the way to those few appointments: we'd meet some people at the winery and get "insider" recommendations for other wineries to visit -- and cancel some of the "favors." It wasn't so innocent. I was poking around for information from the moment we made our first stop at Hook & Ladder off Olivet Lane.
This winery is owned & operated by Cecil & Christine DeLoach. They started DeLoach winery and sold it a few years ago. I've tasted some of their wines down here in San Diego, but we figured we'd start the day with some good Zin. I asked one of the local tour operators in the room where we should go next -- knowing my predilection for small family producers. He said "Harvest Moon." When I asked where it was he said "about 200 yards up the road." He said that we were in luck because the winemaker Randy was onsite that day.
Off we went to Harvest Moon. This turned out to be the first find of the trip. A tiny producer of primarily Zin, Randy & Anthony were very happy to have us come in and talk about carrying their wine. We'll definitely be bringing in a few different varietals from them. The production is tiny -- less than a few hundred cases of each of their wines. They don't have a distributor, so when we asked about logistics, they offered up that they frequently come to San Diego & they'd simply load it in the pickup and drive it down by themselves. How cool! One of my favorite moments of this visit was constantly hearing Randy correct people that he wasn't a winemaker -- he was a winegrower (in fact, that's what it says on his business card). This was also the first in a long line of comments from people about their love/hate relationship with the Wine Spectators and Robert Parkers of the world. Seems that ratings are fleeting and provide more harm than good for the industry, per many winemakers & wineGROWER's opinions.
It was now time for us to meet our first appointment. We have featured Pellegrini Family Wines a few different times over the last 6 months. It started with the Olivet Lane Pinot Noir, then we had a 25 case love affair with Cloverdale Ranch Cabernet. A short dance with the Carignane from their Mendocino Vineyards was in the middle somewhere. This visit was a hands-on behind-the-scenes kind of trip. We met with Cellar Master Bill and proceeded to tour their modest but state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Russian River:
Bill took us through the famous Pinot Noir vineyards where they sell most of the grapes to Merry Edwards -- one of the foremost producers of California Pinot, and a frequent 95+ point rating from the big critics. Pellegrini knows how good its juice is -- they just feel more comfortable in that $20-$30 price range (not the $70+ range for Merry Edward's wines for the same juice). Here's Steph & Bill standing next to some newly acquired Zinfandel vines from the DeLoach sale:
and, the famous pre-Phylloxera Martini-clone Pinot Noir plantings:
We proceeded back into the cask room (hey, that sounds familiar!) and were able to enjoy barrel samples of their 2005 Merlot and 2005 Cabernet (both fantastic, and dare I say better than the stellar '04!). I know that we try to not repeat with our menu selections, but I might just have to bring back the Cloverdale Cab next year when the 2005 is on the market. You see, even though the wine is going into bottle this weekend, Pellegrini will hold the bottles back in the 59 degree barrel room until next January or so. Not everybody will keep wine in the barrel for 18 months, and then keep it off the market for another 8 months while flavors steep in the bottle. After tasting the samples, Steph found a bag of new corks on the way out of the barrel room:
We spent a good 2 /12 hours with Bill at Pellegrini and gained even more love for the family & the winery than what we already had. Thanks, Bill!
We drove through the Russian River Valley and made our way to Healdsburg -- our camp for the trip. This turn-of-the-century town is replete with old Victorians and a quaint city square, framed by unique restaurants, remote winery tasting rooms, and retail operations. The drive into Healdsburg from the south takes you over the Russian River itself -- which winds pretty much east to west as it finally deposits into the Pacific Ocean:
The next morning we met with Matt Weese, Cellar Master for Mauritson Wines. I had tasted one of their Zin's down here in San Diego and was enthusiastic enough that I thought a visit to see their vineyards and the rest of their lineup was in order. Clay Mauritson grew up one of four brothers in a farming family. The family has sold all of their Dry Creek grapes to other vintners for most of their existence. That is, until Clay, a former Oregon Duck football player, convinced his parents to let him make some wine. It was a wise decision, because his first Zin scored 93 points from Wine Enthusiast. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll tell the full story when we bring in the killer Rockpile Zins. Here's a picture of Matt Weese using a "wine thief" to let us taste the unreleased Bordeaux blend. It was incredible and it will definitely find a place on the menu here when it's released.
Matt was a great tour guide -- explaining to us how they built a great crush facility and decided to contract it out to help pay for its construction. It was then that we saw the tiny Thumbprint Cellars bottling their 2004 Cabernet. 200 cases, all bottled by the winemaker & 4 of his closest friends, along with a laptop & desk speakers blasting some iTunes, and some food from Costco. This really puts things into perspective: 200 cases isn't that much. Here's winemaker Scott Lindstrom-Dake (pouring) leading the bottling (or is he leading the sampling)?
On the way out of Mauritson we heard from Matt that one of the cute gals (Nicole) running the tasting room is the daughter of John Bacigalupi -- one of the preeminent growers & pioneers of Pinot Noir in the Russian River Valley. We didn't get to visit them on the trip, but rest assured -- a connection was made and we'll likely be scoring some of their killer Pinot for pouring here at The Cask Room!
We then left for the beautiful drive down to Garry Farrell. Gary is one of the pioneering winemakers in Russian River. He spent his formative years at Davis Bynum crafting Pinots that America had never seen before. He worked with the Rochiolis in getting some of the oldest and best clones of Pinot available in the country. This was an educational visit, and it didn't dissapoint. Danny Rodriguez led us on a great tour of the state-of-the-art gravity flow winery. It was the first time we saw the pneumatic punch-down mechanisms for the open top fermenters. Danny did a great job in explaining some of the milestones that Gary had made -- he really was one of the reasons that California finally got recognized for producing Pinot on par with the best of Burgundy, France. We particularly fell in love with the Rochioli/Allen Vineyard Pinot Noir from Gary Farrell. A bit too pricey for us here at the bar, but a worthy candidate for your collection nonetheless.
We left the beautiful hilltop estate of Gary Farrell and lamented the loss of the day. Are you serious? Only two wineries in one day (technically three -- as we did stop at Mossocco first)? We had planned to hit five! Well, the good news was that we had great recommendations so the day wasn't lost. We were pointed to Moshin for Pinot and it delivered when we ordered it with dinner. We were referred to Russian Hill and didn't get the chance to taste it, but we met the owners and have a sample coming down to San Diego.
We made our way back to Healdsburg and scored a feast of a dinner at Barn Diva. We kept ordering food as we saw more & more interesting dishes pass us enroute to other diners. The deep fried goat cheese was amazing -- in a Del Mar Fair kinda way!
The next morning we awoke to an 11 a.m. tasting/tour at J Winery. We've carried the J Sparkling before, and I honestly forgot how good & how different it is. We met Genny Wright-Haley who did an amazing job with our private tour and food & wine pairing. I didn't know they aged the sparkling wine for 4 years in the bottle before the final riddling. Nobody else does that! What does this longer age do for it? More bubbles! And the best kind -- tiny! Here's a picture of their automated riddling system:
Riddling is the process of turning the bottles a quarter turn to get the sediment (dead yeasts) to settle in the top. Check out these bottles and all the gunk in the old school riddling rack:
It turns out that J makes some incredible single vineyard Pinot Noir that doesn't see distribution. The Nicole's vineyard was quite wonderful. Too bad we can't get it for the bar! You can join their wine club for it, though! We'll have the vintage sparkling in here as soon as it's released!
We left J and has some time to kill before our next appointment. I saw Foppiano nearby which makes one of my favorite larger production Petite Sirahs. We were just about in the lot when I saw the street sign for Limerick Lane. Score! We ran out of time the day before to hit the tiny Limerick Lane Winery which I had received a tip to visit based on their Zin reputation and their Syrah. Well, we did get the chance to visit and had some quality time with Richard Oberlin & winemaker Ross Battersby. They were happy to hear about our quest for some great small production wines and these did not dissapoint. The Zins were sublime, but it was the Syrah that most impressed me. We had a short tour of the facility, including a peek at the wine bottle pool behind the barrel room:
A quick stop for lunch at Oakville Grocery, and then we met up with one of the owners of Longboard Vineyards, Robert Watkins. Robert and his two partners had all helped take J Winery from a small producer to the leader that they are. In fact, winemaker Oded Shakked was the winemaker at J -- having crafted most of what is currently on the market. They started out making the Longboard wines part-time at the J facility until it became too big to do that. They all split from J and went head first into the wave of making their part-time venture a full-time one.
We tasted some great Syrah's -- their wonderful Russian River syrah will find its way down here at some point.
We said goodbye to Robert & Oded and made our way down to Paul Hobbs Winery. Paul is one of the "it" winemakers now. Everything he touches seemingly turns to gold (or red, actually). His winery is private and is a ways off the nearest street. It's set up kind of like a Dr. Evil lair. Very futuristic house/winery, with all of the latest gadgets for making wine (including gravity-flow design & the pneumatic punch down mechanism). We met Bill Wiebalk, their sales & marketing guy, who let us taste some of the current offerings as well as barrel samples of the '05 Cabernets from the Beckstoffer Vineyard in Napa & Hyde Vineyard in Carneros. Truly wonderful stuff, but nothing we'd be able to bring in here ($200+ a bottle). Here's me getting a barrel sample of the 2005 Beckstoffer Cab:
We finished our evening & trip with a relaxing bottle of sparkling rose from France outside the Farmhouse Inn & Restaurant. As we reflected on our trip, I was amazed at the diversity but pretty overwhelming quality of the wines from Russian River. The Pinot Noir's were outstanding, the Zins ranged from average to great, the Cab's from Russian River were pretty damned good too -- surprisingly, as the area is known for that cooling ocean fog in the evening/morning. The trip was a great success. It yielded us a good handful of new wines from tiny producers to bring in here. And, you won't be seeing them anywhere down here because they're simply not distributed.
/Mike
We had a skeleton itinerary -- some favors to cash in -- some popular ex-Cask Room vintners to visit in person, but we primarily had a very open schedule. A funny thing happened along the way to those few appointments: we'd meet some people at the winery and get "insider" recommendations for other wineries to visit -- and cancel some of the "favors." It wasn't so innocent. I was poking around for information from the moment we made our first stop at Hook & Ladder off Olivet Lane.
This winery is owned & operated by Cecil & Christine DeLoach. They started DeLoach winery and sold it a few years ago. I've tasted some of their wines down here in San Diego, but we figured we'd start the day with some good Zin. I asked one of the local tour operators in the room where we should go next -- knowing my predilection for small family producers. He said "Harvest Moon." When I asked where it was he said "about 200 yards up the road." He said that we were in luck because the winemaker Randy was onsite that day.
Off we went to Harvest Moon. This turned out to be the first find of the trip. A tiny producer of primarily Zin, Randy & Anthony were very happy to have us come in and talk about carrying their wine. We'll definitely be bringing in a few different varietals from them. The production is tiny -- less than a few hundred cases of each of their wines. They don't have a distributor, so when we asked about logistics, they offered up that they frequently come to San Diego & they'd simply load it in the pickup and drive it down by themselves. How cool! One of my favorite moments of this visit was constantly hearing Randy correct people that he wasn't a winemaker -- he was a winegrower (in fact, that's what it says on his business card). This was also the first in a long line of comments from people about their love/hate relationship with the Wine Spectators and Robert Parkers of the world. Seems that ratings are fleeting and provide more harm than good for the industry, per many winemakers & wineGROWER's opinions.
It was now time for us to meet our first appointment. We have featured Pellegrini Family Wines a few different times over the last 6 months. It started with the Olivet Lane Pinot Noir, then we had a 25 case love affair with Cloverdale Ranch Cabernet. A short dance with the Carignane from their Mendocino Vineyards was in the middle somewhere. This visit was a hands-on behind-the-scenes kind of trip. We met with Cellar Master Bill and proceeded to tour their modest but state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Russian River:
Bill took us through the famous Pinot Noir vineyards where they sell most of the grapes to Merry Edwards -- one of the foremost producers of California Pinot, and a frequent 95+ point rating from the big critics. Pellegrini knows how good its juice is -- they just feel more comfortable in that $20-$30 price range (not the $70+ range for Merry Edward's wines for the same juice). Here's Steph & Bill standing next to some newly acquired Zinfandel vines from the DeLoach sale:
and, the famous pre-Phylloxera Martini-clone Pinot Noir plantings:
We proceeded back into the cask room (hey, that sounds familiar!) and were able to enjoy barrel samples of their 2005 Merlot and 2005 Cabernet (both fantastic, and dare I say better than the stellar '04!). I know that we try to not repeat with our menu selections, but I might just have to bring back the Cloverdale Cab next year when the 2005 is on the market. You see, even though the wine is going into bottle this weekend, Pellegrini will hold the bottles back in the 59 degree barrel room until next January or so. Not everybody will keep wine in the barrel for 18 months, and then keep it off the market for another 8 months while flavors steep in the bottle. After tasting the samples, Steph found a bag of new corks on the way out of the barrel room:
We spent a good 2 /12 hours with Bill at Pellegrini and gained even more love for the family & the winery than what we already had. Thanks, Bill!
We drove through the Russian River Valley and made our way to Healdsburg -- our camp for the trip. This turn-of-the-century town is replete with old Victorians and a quaint city square, framed by unique restaurants, remote winery tasting rooms, and retail operations. The drive into Healdsburg from the south takes you over the Russian River itself -- which winds pretty much east to west as it finally deposits into the Pacific Ocean:
The next morning we met with Matt Weese, Cellar Master for Mauritson Wines. I had tasted one of their Zin's down here in San Diego and was enthusiastic enough that I thought a visit to see their vineyards and the rest of their lineup was in order. Clay Mauritson grew up one of four brothers in a farming family. The family has sold all of their Dry Creek grapes to other vintners for most of their existence. That is, until Clay, a former Oregon Duck football player, convinced his parents to let him make some wine. It was a wise decision, because his first Zin scored 93 points from Wine Enthusiast. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll tell the full story when we bring in the killer Rockpile Zins. Here's a picture of Matt Weese using a "wine thief" to let us taste the unreleased Bordeaux blend. It was incredible and it will definitely find a place on the menu here when it's released.
Matt was a great tour guide -- explaining to us how they built a great crush facility and decided to contract it out to help pay for its construction. It was then that we saw the tiny Thumbprint Cellars bottling their 2004 Cabernet. 200 cases, all bottled by the winemaker & 4 of his closest friends, along with a laptop & desk speakers blasting some iTunes, and some food from Costco. This really puts things into perspective: 200 cases isn't that much. Here's winemaker Scott Lindstrom-Dake (pouring) leading the bottling (or is he leading the sampling)?
On the way out of Mauritson we heard from Matt that one of the cute gals (Nicole) running the tasting room is the daughter of John Bacigalupi -- one of the preeminent growers & pioneers of Pinot Noir in the Russian River Valley. We didn't get to visit them on the trip, but rest assured -- a connection was made and we'll likely be scoring some of their killer Pinot for pouring here at The Cask Room!
We then left for the beautiful drive down to Garry Farrell. Gary is one of the pioneering winemakers in Russian River. He spent his formative years at Davis Bynum crafting Pinots that America had never seen before. He worked with the Rochiolis in getting some of the oldest and best clones of Pinot available in the country. This was an educational visit, and it didn't dissapoint. Danny Rodriguez led us on a great tour of the state-of-the-art gravity flow winery. It was the first time we saw the pneumatic punch-down mechanisms for the open top fermenters. Danny did a great job in explaining some of the milestones that Gary had made -- he really was one of the reasons that California finally got recognized for producing Pinot on par with the best of Burgundy, France. We particularly fell in love with the Rochioli/Allen Vineyard Pinot Noir from Gary Farrell. A bit too pricey for us here at the bar, but a worthy candidate for your collection nonetheless.
We left the beautiful hilltop estate of Gary Farrell and lamented the loss of the day. Are you serious? Only two wineries in one day (technically three -- as we did stop at Mossocco first)? We had planned to hit five! Well, the good news was that we had great recommendations so the day wasn't lost. We were pointed to Moshin for Pinot and it delivered when we ordered it with dinner. We were referred to Russian Hill and didn't get the chance to taste it, but we met the owners and have a sample coming down to San Diego.
We made our way back to Healdsburg and scored a feast of a dinner at Barn Diva. We kept ordering food as we saw more & more interesting dishes pass us enroute to other diners. The deep fried goat cheese was amazing -- in a Del Mar Fair kinda way!
The next morning we awoke to an 11 a.m. tasting/tour at J Winery. We've carried the J Sparkling before, and I honestly forgot how good & how different it is. We met Genny Wright-Haley who did an amazing job with our private tour and food & wine pairing. I didn't know they aged the sparkling wine for 4 years in the bottle before the final riddling. Nobody else does that! What does this longer age do for it? More bubbles! And the best kind -- tiny! Here's a picture of their automated riddling system:
Riddling is the process of turning the bottles a quarter turn to get the sediment (dead yeasts) to settle in the top. Check out these bottles and all the gunk in the old school riddling rack:
It turns out that J makes some incredible single vineyard Pinot Noir that doesn't see distribution. The Nicole's vineyard was quite wonderful. Too bad we can't get it for the bar! You can join their wine club for it, though! We'll have the vintage sparkling in here as soon as it's released!
We left J and has some time to kill before our next appointment. I saw Foppiano nearby which makes one of my favorite larger production Petite Sirahs. We were just about in the lot when I saw the street sign for Limerick Lane. Score! We ran out of time the day before to hit the tiny Limerick Lane Winery which I had received a tip to visit based on their Zin reputation and their Syrah. Well, we did get the chance to visit and had some quality time with Richard Oberlin & winemaker Ross Battersby. They were happy to hear about our quest for some great small production wines and these did not dissapoint. The Zins were sublime, but it was the Syrah that most impressed me. We had a short tour of the facility, including a peek at the wine bottle pool behind the barrel room:
A quick stop for lunch at Oakville Grocery, and then we met up with one of the owners of Longboard Vineyards, Robert Watkins. Robert and his two partners had all helped take J Winery from a small producer to the leader that they are. In fact, winemaker Oded Shakked was the winemaker at J -- having crafted most of what is currently on the market. They started out making the Longboard wines part-time at the J facility until it became too big to do that. They all split from J and went head first into the wave of making their part-time venture a full-time one.
We tasted some great Syrah's -- their wonderful Russian River syrah will find its way down here at some point.
We said goodbye to Robert & Oded and made our way down to Paul Hobbs Winery. Paul is one of the "it" winemakers now. Everything he touches seemingly turns to gold (or red, actually). His winery is private and is a ways off the nearest street. It's set up kind of like a Dr. Evil lair. Very futuristic house/winery, with all of the latest gadgets for making wine (including gravity-flow design & the pneumatic punch down mechanism). We met Bill Wiebalk, their sales & marketing guy, who let us taste some of the current offerings as well as barrel samples of the '05 Cabernets from the Beckstoffer Vineyard in Napa & Hyde Vineyard in Carneros. Truly wonderful stuff, but nothing we'd be able to bring in here ($200+ a bottle). Here's me getting a barrel sample of the 2005 Beckstoffer Cab:
We finished our evening & trip with a relaxing bottle of sparkling rose from France outside the Farmhouse Inn & Restaurant. As we reflected on our trip, I was amazed at the diversity but pretty overwhelming quality of the wines from Russian River. The Pinot Noir's were outstanding, the Zins ranged from average to great, the Cab's from Russian River were pretty damned good too -- surprisingly, as the area is known for that cooling ocean fog in the evening/morning. The trip was a great success. It yielded us a good handful of new wines from tiny producers to bring in here. And, you won't be seeing them anywhere down here because they're simply not distributed.
/Mike
