Three Bubbles

A trio of bubbles. That's what we are now releasing at Troon Vineyard from the 2020 vintage. Each is distinct. An essential tenet of biodynamics is intentionality, and each of these méthode ancestrale wines was conceived with intention. 

While each of these wines are different styles, they are all pétillant naturel wines. As with everything we do at Troon, it all starts with farming. The foundation of the intentional winemaker. You have to visualize what you want to accomplish and then farm the vines with that vision in mind. 

We selected the blocks for these wines before bud break, and every choice made during the vintage was based on making sparkling wines. All of these wines were made from our older blocks, which suffer from the red blotch virus. This virus slows the ripening process, which not a bad thing when making sparkling wine. This enabled us to pick grapes with high acidity and lower sugar, but with rich flavors. All of these vines will soon be replaced as part of our replanting program, but everything we have learned in making wine from them will allow us to build and improve on our sparkling wines moving forward. In the future, what will they be made from? We'll let you know, but watch for sparkling wines made from grenache blanc, picpoul, and clairette blanche. 

Within hours of harvesting the fruit for the Piquette! and Pét tanNat are whole-cluster pressed into stainless steel tanks, while the grape bunches for the FIZZante are loaded into a stainless steel tank for whole-cluster fermentation. After that, the process is more or less the same for all three wines. The wines are slowly fermented with native yeasts. Then comes the tricky part — all happening during the mêlée of harvest. The sugar levels are checked daily; when making pétillant naturel wines, you have to bottle at precisely the right moment when there is just enough sugar left in the wine to finish fermentation in the bottle and produce just the right amount of sparkle. As the wines are actively fermenting, when the moment is right, you have to drop everything and get the wines in the bottle — non-stop — so that the first bottle has the same amount of sugar as the last bottle. Then they finish fermentation in bottles over the winter. 

While fun may have been the inspiration for these wines and is undoubtedly the reason to enjoy them, these light-hearted wines are a lot of work to make. Once the process begins, everything is in motion until the wines are bottled. Then these wines are all hand-bottled, a slow and physically demanding process. But when they are finished, and we open the first bottles, it is always a celebration — these are bubbles after all!

2020 Piquette!

We call this charming, fruity, yet dry sparkling wine “frugal farmer fizz” as it’s crafted from the pomace of our white and rosé wines. Those frugal farmers wasted nothing and used the juice and skins left after pressing the wines they would sell to make wine for themselves and their workers. Our piquette’s mélange of varieties changes vintage-to-vintage, but our vision for the style of this unpretentious naturally bottle-fermented wine never varies. After pressing our estate white and rosé wines, there is still substantial juice left in skins as we press very gently. To that, we add a touch of water, then let it macerate overnight in the press. The next day, we press that juice into a stainless steel tank, where begins a native yeast fermentation. The resulting sparkling wine is a delight. Fresh and fizzy with bright fruit flavors. Our 2020 Piquette! is not disgorged and has no added sulfur.

2020 Pét tanNat

Pét tanNat is a distinctive pét nat crafted exclusively from our Estate Tannat, this naturally bottle-fermented sparkling wine is made in the ultra-brut style — the driest of the dry. Richly flavored and complex with just that touch of rustic, authentic charm that defines pétillant natural. Tannat grown in our Applegate Valley vineyard has very low pH, which means high acidity — just what you want for sparkling wine. This was our second year making this wine, and we let it get a bit riper than last year as there was more than enough acidity, and we wanted a more richly flavored wine. When making the first vintage, we thought the wine would be pink, but as you see, the wine has the copper tinge of some blanc de noir Champagne. Unlike our other sparkling wines, we believe there is potential for development in the bottle over the next several years. Our 2020 Pét tanNat is disgorged and finished with a sulfur level below 15 ppm.

2020 FIZZante

For many years one of my favorite food and wine pairings has been Lambrusco Secco and pizza. We were inspired by those vivacious red sparkling wines of central Italy when we created FIZZante. FIZZante combines explosive dark red fruit flavors with a lifting effervescence to produce an exceptionally refreshing naturally bottle-fermented dry sparkling wine. For this wine, we chose a block of sangiovese and montepulciano, and whole-cluster fermented them together. This was our last vintage from these varieties, as that block will be replanted this month. While you may think we chose these varieties because of their Italian heritage, that was not the case. We chose these varieties for their acidity and freshness. We will continue making this wine in the future, but the varieties could be carignan, counoise, and cinsault as our first plantings of those varieties come into production this year. Try FIZZante with your favorite pizza to create a new life-long obsession. Our 2020 FIZZante is disgorged and finished with a sulfur level below 15 ppm.

Neutral Oak

The wine was a technical perfection. It was made with beautiful, ripe fruit by a talented, technically proficient winemaker. The color was gorgeous, but there was one big problem. I could not bear to drink it. 

The wine tasted like a big California pinot — not, as they said on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that. The problem was that this wine was from Burgundy. 

New oak and I have parted ways. The heavy use of new oak in this wine made it simply undrinkable — for me. I tried over three days, the whole weekend, returning to taste the wine each night, but the result was always the same, and the majority of the bottle ended up going down the drain. Everything I wanted to taste in this wine, the flavors I could tell were there, were now forever lost under a heavy layer of oak. Few things can destroy terroir more than new oak barrels. This was a wine that had lost any sense of place. 

I realize this falls under the “personal preference” category, but sometimes I wonder if that is true. When I Iooked up the winemaking information on this wine, I found they used 70% new oak on this pinot noir. Is that an authentic choice? Drinking a very oaky wine is like trying to listen to a conversation at a rock concert. You miss a lot of what is being said. 

The best wines let you look inside of them and have beautiful transparency. Once you succumb to the pleasures of more delicate wines, tasting wines with characteristics like prominent new oak flavors make you feel like these wines are screaming at you — perhaps a Screaming Eagle, if you will. 

My transition happened over the years, as, when we tasted through the barrels each vintage, my favorite wines were from older barrels. The wines in the new barrels were essentially undrinkable, and we would rationalize how they would add complexity to the final blend. All they added was overt oaky flavors that overwhelmed the elegant nuances of the wines in the older barrels. 

As you delve into the complexities of more delicately styled wines, you soon make a discovery — there is no such thing as “neutral oak”. 

Drinking wines without significant new oak used in their aging is kind of like going to a spa for a palate purge. Once your system is flushed out, everything feels different and, in this case, tastes different. Soon, as Steve Jobs said, you start to “think different.”

Once your palate is open to the experience, you soon understand the term “neutral oak” is a misnomer. Now, when you taste wines out of those three-year-old barrels you thought of as neutral, you can taste the oak flavors they still impart to the wine. The same goes for even older barrels. For white wines, their impact is even more pronounced. 

What do we want from barrels at Troon Vineyard? Obviously, not to leak, but most importantly that they do no harm. They must not overwhelm the flavors of the variety and the vineyard. Besides simply holding the wine, the role of a barrel is to provide a controlled rate of oxygen to the wine. This is why different shapes and sizes of barrels have come into use in various wine regions due to trial and error over the centuries. Those reasons were not always about wine quality, but for ease of transportation in regions like Bordeaux, where export markets were established long ago. From huge botti in Barolo to puncheons in Cornas to the slight differences between Bourguigone (228 l.) and Bordelaise (225 l.) barriques, there were many reasons these sizes were selected, but those reasons were always commercial, efficient storage and, although they might not have known it, for the controlled introduction of oxygen into the aging wine. The idea of heavy use of new oak is a very modern one, and in the past, even if they had liked the flavors of new oak, new barrels would have been an expensive luxury few could afford. 

The magic in barrels is that they let the wine breathe, but they are not alone as other very old wine storage methods also allow oxygen into the wine at ideal rates for developing young wines. We already have five amphorae and concrete tanks are also very exciting and both last a bit longer than your average barrel. Both are investments I am hoping to expand in the near future. 

The use of high percentages of new oak and the rise of cult wines are intertwined — the more dollars than sense school of winemaking and wine buying. Now the key to making a mediocre wine seem expensive to the average consumer is the heavy use of “oak alternatives”, which is simply adding wood chips to wines in stainless steel tanks to add the sweet flavors of oak to a wine. You get the flavor, but no oxygen, but no problem; they can just add that too. Winemaking is transformed into beverage alcohol production.

There is nothing wrong with liking heavily oaked wines. If you like that flavor, go for it; there is no arguing taste. But you are giving up something as those wines taste more-or-less the same, no matter where the grapes were grown. To handle all that new oak, you have to harvest super-mature grapes, and overripe fruit loses not only its unique taste of place, but the very nature of the variety itself. Suddenly pinot noir starts to taste more like hollow syrah. To make matters worse, you’ll end up paying more as all that oak is costly, and those that make these massive wines in massive bottles also have massive egos, which demand massive prices. 

Quantity should not be confused with quality. The restaurants with the biggest portions do not have the best food. Wine quality should not be defined by the amount of flavor, but by the quality of the experience. To have that experience, you have to taste the wine itself, not the aging vessel. Even with the best speakers, if you turn the volume up enough, the music will be distorted. 

When buying wine you should get what you paid for — wine. 

Vineyard Venom

When I first arrived at Troon Vineyard, the then vineyard manager reviewed the previous year’s vineyard applications. Other than the usual nastiness like Roundup, one product immediately grabbed my eye - Venom. I was not familiar with this product, but, with a name like Venom, I did not expect anything good. 

A trip to the manufacture’s website confirmed my worst fears. Venom proved just as nasty as it sounded, “This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistence of residues and potential residual toxicity of dinotefuran in nectar and pollen suggest the possibility of chronic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual instability of the hive.” for the complete manufacturer information sheet click here

That’s right, it kills honey bees. All of them.

There was no more Venom or anything like that used at Troon from then on. Today, now that we have converted to biodynamic agriculture, we use products with much gentler names and impacts on the environment. For example, now we use products with names like Regalia, an organically certified biofungicide that works by strengthening the plants own defenses rather than poisoning anything and everything whether good or bad. It does not seem to be a coincidence that conventional chemical agricultural products often have scary names as, indeed, they are dangerous to everything - people as well as bees.

Products like Regalia not only sound less threatening but are less dangerous in the long-term as conventional chemicals tend to create fungicide-resistant strains that then require even more powerful chemical applications to combat them. Organic products like Regalia are based on bacteria that are already in the environment, which trigger the plant's natural defense system. In other words, we are only encouraging the plant to does what it does naturally

“When treated with Regalia, a plant’s natural defense systems are activated to protect against attacking diseases. Research shows that plants treated with Regalia produce and accumulate elevated levels of specialized proteins and other compounds known to inhibit fungal and bacterial diseases. Regalia induces a plant to produce phytoalexins, cell strengtheners, antioxidants, phenolics and PR proteins, which are all known inhibitors of plant pathogens. Regalia provides synergistic properties between a plant’s natural ability to protect itself and the effectiveness of antifungal and antibacterial protection.“ Marrone Bio-Innovations

Humans consider themselves smarter than plants, but we’re not. When it comes to producing grapes, the vine understands more about producing beautiful ripe grapes than we’ll ever know. It is arrogant on our part to believe we can do better. That arrogance has led to the use of chemicals that destroy the vines natural ability to feed and defend itself and to weaker plants addicted to fertilizers and chemicals. A weak plant does not produce the kinds of grapes that produce great wines. The single most important thing for quality wine is a strong, healthy grapevine. Our job as winegrowers is to help the vine do its work, not to do its work for it. When it comes to growing grapes, we are the apprentice and the vine is the master craftsman. This is a good thing to remember in this era of cult wines and winemakers. It is the vine and the soil that create memorable wines, not people. People are quite capable of producing commercially successful beverage wine products, but only vines and vineyards can give you sublime, individual wines. In a well-farmed vineyard with healthy vines and good soils, the winemaker's role is more as a shepherd than artist or technician. If you are not humbled by nature you are not connected to it, don’t understand it and can’t transform that power into wines that are anything other than industrial.

Biodynamics finally clicks in your brain when you realize as a farmer you are not a general in charge of a battlefield, but just another cog in the gear that makes nature work. Arrogance and chemical interventions have led to disaster. Farmers who realize their place in nature produce better and healthier foods and wines. This is a mindset that can be achieved by farmers large and small. 

Now at Troon, instead of destroying honey bees we are building three aviaries with accompanying pollinator habitats. The bees deserve this respect as we are just two of the myriad of intertwined pieces that make a farm a whole. We owe them something for the past sins of our predecessors. It will be an honor to welcome them back home.

Winemakers (and Vineyards) Need to take Probiotics Daily

Your microbiome is suddenly fashionable. The bugs in our gut are chic. We can’t get enough of probiotics and fermented foods. This is a very good thing and a trend that will certainly lead to healthier people. The bugs love us and now, finally, we love them. Good thing, because we would not exist without them.

However, the microbiome is not just in your gut. It’s everywhere - literally. It’s part of everything you touch, breathe, eat and drink. Yes drink. That includes wine. Bugs in wine? Not so much really because alcohol and bugs do not get along well. But before fermentation wages its war on bacteria (sometimes more successfully than others) there are grapes in a vineyard and the key to a healthy vineyard and great wines is the microbiome of the vineyard itself. Just like us, for vineyards there are good bugs and bad bugs and the key to good health is maximizing the good ones and minimizing the bad ones.

Conventional farming has destroyed the microbiome built up by Mother Nature over the millennium. The resulting soils are dead requiring mainlined injections of petrochemicals to grow anything at all. Soon, like any addict, the plants require stronger and stronger doses to survive. A vicious dead-end cycle that ends up the same for the plant or the drug addict.

Just like we need to take probiotics to repair the damage we’ve inflicted on our microbiome, a vineyard needs the same remedy. Unfortunately, for a vineyard it’s a bit more complicated than simply taking a pill. However, there is a proven cure - biodynamics .

First let’s make one thing clear - I believe and revere science and scientists. I know that climate change is real. I know that astrology is ridiculous and that relativity is not. So how does someone who believes these things also believe in biodynamics? That’s a good question and in a very real sense many aspects of biodynamics and science are in total conflict. Yet, I think with deeper thought and research the gap between them is not a chasm, but is in fact semantics. Clearly there are aspects of biodynamics that are absurd to any educated person, but there is a major problem here because, very simply, biodynamics works. Biodynamics not only works, but works dramatically well. The list of wineries using biodynamic agriculture is a who’s who of exceptional winemaking. The results speak for themselves.

Often it is argued by anti-biodynamic crusaders that it is not biodynamic practices that improve a vineyard, but the simple fact that the owner must spend more time in the vineyard. Without a doubt there is an element of truth here for as they say, “the best fertilizer for a vineyard is the owner’s boots.” Yet there are many dedicated viticulturists who spend endless hours in vineyards that produce flavorless wines from dead soils that have had the soul ripped out of them by chemicals. Time spent in the vineyard alone cannot be the answer.

However, if you strip the voodoo out of Steiner’s biodynamic program (and Steiner was loaded with voodoo ideas) what you get is a discipline dedicated to putting the bugs Mother Nature intended to be there back into your vineyard. Burying horns filled with manure, hanging stuffed animal organs in trees then spreading their contents over your vineyard is very simply creating a probiotic for your vineyard. Almost all of the numbered biodynamic preparations are focused on composting. It’s in the area of composting that biodynamics meets science as there is hard data showing that compost treated by biodynamic methods is more active microbiologically than untreated compost. I believe this extremely proactive composting program is the heart and soul of what makes biodynamics effective. You are simply creating a giant probiotics therapy program for your vineyard. It is here that science and biodynamics reconcile. Any plant scientist will tell you that a healthy microbiome is key to a plant taking nutrition from the soil. Kill nature’s bugs and your vines will slowly starve to death. It is at this point that biodynamics goes beyond simple organic farming, which tells you what not to use, but biodynamics goes a step farther by telling you what to put back in. The goal of biodynamics is not simply sustainable agriculture, but to restoring and building the microbiome of your vineyard.

There is an obvious conflict between science, facts and biodynamics. I have no doubt that there are parts of biodynamics that are total hooey. The problem is that we don’t know which parts work and those that are a total waste of time. That means for now a winegrower committed to both a natural sustainable vineyard and great wine must take the bad with the good of biodynamics until science and biodynamics catch up with each other. Until they do and we fully understand how and why biodynamics works I do not intend to take a risk that would mean wines that are not all they can be.

Starting in 2018 we are launching our program at Troon Vineyard to achieve biodynamic certification. We do this fully understanding that some of the things we’ll have to do will seem absurd, but we know that others will create miracles in the vineyards that will take our wines to greater and greater heights. To achieve that, I am more than happy to practice a little voodoo.

Pursue Your Passion

This article first appeared in the Dracaena Wines blog series"Pursue Your Passion""the story of one person in the wine industry, as told by them"

It all started with Watergate. How topical is that? That scandal hit just as I started college. Armed with no passion except football at that time in my life I suddenly saw a bigger world and signed on to my college newspaper. I was going to be Woodward and Bernstein.

I packed on the history hours eventually spending a semester in Europe "studying" (Nixon resigned during my flight back). While I was graduated as journalist, just four years later I was part of a start up wine importer and distributor. Now instead of reading All the Presidents Men I was immersed in Lichine, Penning-Rowsell and Bespaloff.

What happened? On that trip to Europe I was introduced to wine and food. Having grown up in a land were food and drink were eptiomized by Pabst, Manhattans and friday night fish fries the experience was a revelation. A chain reaction was started. This growing transition from news to wine was fueled by my friend Don Clemens, who had landed job with Almaden Imports, who in those days (the late 70s) had a cutting edge portfolio. My mouth still waters today as I remember drinking Chapoutier Tavel with ribs at Don's apartment. There was no going back.

In 1978, with zero experience, I talked my way out of journalism and into wine with a new job as the midwest rep of Peartree Imports, whose main brand was the Burgundian négociant Patriarche, but the portfolio was rounded out with a range of spirits guaranteed not to sell in 1978. I hit the books for my first sales calls - work-withs - with the sales team of Union Liquor Company in Chicago. I memorized each vineyard and the precise details of each spirit. On my first day I jumped into the salesman's car and we headed into Chicago's war zone. The main brand of these salesmen was Richard's Wild Irish Rose in pints. We'd get let in the back door of a fortified "liquor store" that consisted of several revolving bulletproof windows where customers would place their cash and, after spinning the window around, would get their pint of Richards. The salesman (there were no women in those days) would get his order for 100 cases of Richards, get paid in cash for the last order, then I had a few minutes to pitch my brands to the owner. I was not very successful. Then the owner would take his shotgun and walk us back to the car so no one would steal the wad of cash we'd just received. Even with this dose of intense realism I was not deterred.

The dismal state of the wine industry in those days ended up being an amazing opportunity. In 1979 I joined Sam Leavitt as a partner in the newly formed Direct Import Wine Company and over the next twenty years we built the first mid-west wine company focused on imported and then domestic estate wine. First came Becky Wasserman in Burgundy, Christopher Cannan in Bordeaux (and then Spain), Neil and Maria Empson in Italy then new upstarts from California like Calera, Spottswoode, Shafer, Corison, Iron Horse Soter and Sanford. Not far behind were Northwest wineries like Leonetti, Domaine Serene and Panther Creek. The first big break we got was selling the 1982 Bordeaux futures to the famed (but long gone) Sam's Wines. I literally got paid for these future deals with bags of cash often holding $20,000 or more. Chicago was the wild west of the wine business and, yes, [he too had a gun.]

This was a very special time for me. It was a great privilege to work with people of such integrity and creativity. They all inspire me to this day.

Then my partner wanted out and I did not have the money to buy him out so we were acquired by The Terlato Wine Group. I had a five year contract to stay, but those were some of the darkest years of my life in wine. Instead of integrity I was tossed into the world of simply moving "boxes". When my sentence was up I escaped to Italy for three years and due to the graciousness of extraordinary winemakers like Luca Currado (Vietti), Manuel Marchetti (Marcarini), Tina Colla (Poderi Colla) and Andrea Sottimano in Barbaresco I dug deeper into the spirit of what makes a wine great. Many hours in the cellar and vineyards with them brought me back to the world of wine I loved.

Refreshed and inspired I returned the the United States and now have spent almost 15 years divided between the vineyards of Napa and Oregon. During these years I have drawn on the knowledge and inspiration of all of the great winemakers I have known over more than three decades in wine. I will freely admit my winemaking heart now firmly resides in Oregon. There is a fresh spirit here. You just know the best wines are yet to come and I relish being a part of that energy.

In the end there is no final satisfaction in winemaking, because there is no such thing as perfection. The concept of a 100 point wine is simply absurd. However, while you may never be totally satisfied with any wine you make, you can be totally satisfied by experience of making them. There is a deep satisfaction at the completion of each vintage, be it great or difficult, that is not only deeply rewarding, but addictive. You have to come back for more.

I think we should start flowering in the Applegate Valley next week. Only in agriculture are you reborn every year.

Big Wines, Small Names

For decades I’ve been enjoying wines from Cahors, Madiran, Sardegna, Corsica, the Languedoc, Provence, Puglia, Romagna, Sicilia, Marche, Campania, Calabria, Basilicata and on and on. Delicious wines crafted to bring pleasure to your life - to make it better. Now I’m making wine in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon and it feels good to be part of that club.

So many winemaking regions aspire to be Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne - and now Napa because that’s where the big money and points are, but, as famous and expensive as they are, they are not where the soul of wine is to be found. Just a few decades ago you were not likely to find the wines from Cahors and the other regions I mentioned above, and their many cousins, outside of the regions where they were produced, but today they’re almost everywhere. I'm aspiring to join them.

There are certain pleasures and freedoms in making wine in a no-name appellation from varieties never likely to become fighting varietals. First among those freedoms is the privilege of taking real risks that have the potential to make your wines better. First among those pleasures is being able to sell your wines at a moderate price - in making wines people can afford to drink.

When you have no star power there are no multi-million dollar auctions with celebrities, no obsessed collectors willing to pay (or actually hoping to pay) outrageous sums for the privilege to possess a few bottles. There are only people looking to enjoy your wines with friends and family. To pull a cork from a bottle of your wine with anything from a Wednesday night cheeseburger to a special birthday party with friends. There is no ceremony when your corks are pulled as everyone is just having too good of a time with each other.

There is something that really feels good about making wine for, well, people.

As pretentious and high-profile as expensive wine imbibing can be, most of the world’s wines are industrial plonk, nothing more than beverage alcohol. Our big wine stores are full of these wines. You go to a grocery store and there is row upon row of chardonnays (or cabernet or merlot or pinot noir), but in reality, they are all more-or-less the same wine. In fact, sometimes they literally are the same wine despite sporting different labels. The truth is in the world of wines the ones that offer the most pleasure, individuality and affordability are the bottles from places you may not have heard of, not from the names that are famous for being powerful brands or for being objects of desire for those with unlimited funds.

In-between the plonk and the pretense is real wine. I am not talking about cheap wine here. These are wines the sell from about $15 to about $50. They are expensive wines for the majority of wine drinkers and they have a right to expect something made with integrity and passion. These are unknown emotions in industrial wines and surprisingly rare in expensive ones. It’s not about funny labels or big points, it’s about bringing pleasure into people’s lives.

Now the Applegate Valley is not Madiran or Sardegna or places like that that have had decades, if not centuries, to understand their soils and varieties. These places know who they are and we are still learning. However, these older regions are now making far better wines than they did a few decades ago due to advances in viticulture and enology. We’re very lucky as they had to wait for generations to take advantage of this knowledge and we get to use it all right now. We can improve our wines more quickly as we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Why are we focused on varieties like vermentino, tannat and malbec? It’s simple. These are the right varieties for our soils and climate and they make better wines than easier to sell choices like pinot or cabernet. You have to make a choice. To me, it’s an easy one. If you want to bring real pleasure to peoples lives your wines have to have personalities as interesting as the people that drink them.

What makes a wine great? New oak, power, price, big bottles, wood cases and fame? Not anymore. Maybe thirty years ago there was a wide gap between a few famous place names and the rest of the wines produced, which were often no more than rustic country wines for locals. This is no longer true. The gap has not only closed, but today those once rustic country wines can actually surpass the old guard in quality.

It’s a new world of wine. I’m glad to be part of it. In-between the plonk and the pretense is real wine - real wine, real life, real pleasure.

Drink it up.

Troon, Tannat, Temptation

This is exciting. This is what wine growing should be about. We’re planting more Tannat - a temptation I can’t resist. Yes, Tannat, nothing could be more refreshing than being out of the “fighting varietal” business.

I believe Tannat is a variety that can define the Applegate Valley. Tannat in southern France is famed for its tannic rage, but our granitic soils take off just enough of that edge to reveal a distinctive Southern Oregon personality - all without taming its wilder side. All of our Tannat is grown on our estate vineyard on the higher, second bench of the Applegate River Valley.

Europe is full of regions like Madiran and Cahors, places Tannat has traditionally called home. Many appellations like these that almost died a few decades ago are now reborn and vital due to better winemaking and viticulture - and enlightened consumers. Happily the wine energy today seems to be shifting away from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa and so on to new regions and new varieties. As Leonard Cohen sang, “Hallelujah”. These wines are not new to me. In the early 80s I was introduced to the hedonistic pleasures of less than famous place names by Christopher Cannan in France and Spain and by Neil Empson in Italy. At Direct Import Wine Company in Chicago I aggressively imported wines from Madiran, Languedoc-Roussillon, Bandol, Le Marche, Puglia, Priorat and others. They were not easy to sell even at ridiculously low prices, but they were very easy to fall in love with. Of course, I was importing a small cadre of visionary, elite producers that were, in those days, leading the way for their appellations. Today there are many famed producers from these regions and most of the wines I first imported are now, rightfully, famous and not cheap.

Some of you may have tasted previous vintages of Tannat from Troon Vineyard, but those wines are related to these wines in name only. Starting with the 2014 vintage we moved to a natural wine growing and winemaking philosophy. Prior vintages were produced with conventional methods and it shows. These new Tannat releases are from grapes harvested from LIVE and Salmon Safe certified vineyards. The pickers are the same hands that worked in the rows for the entire vintage. Upon harvest the bins are treaded by foot for skin contact and to encourage the native yeast populations. After a day or two, they are de-stemmed into small fermenters for native yeast fermentation and hand punch downs. There are no acids, sugar, enzymes or sulfur added to the fermenters. After fermentation is complete the wine is pressed into used French Oak barrels. No new oak is used. The wines are bottled after 18 months in barrel.

The new releases:

2014 Troon Blue Label Estate Tannat, Applegate Valley $35

100% Tannat from our estate vineyard. This is unrestrained pure Applegate Valley Tannat. Deeply colored with intense dark fruit flavors and mouth-coating tannins, an in-your-face Oregon wine, yet it can seem restrained compared with many California wines. Despite the strength of this wine, I believe is not for long aging, but should be enjoyed over the next five years as it's better to revel in its youthful power rather than wait for a refinement that may or may not arrive. 169 cases produced.

2014 Troon Black Label MT, Applegate Valley $50

This is a co-ferment, not a blend, and that makes all the difference. Blending can enhance and lift the character of a wine, but a co-ferment creates a new wine all together. The unique chemistry of a co-ferment releases whole new ranges of flavors, aromas and textures that would never exist in a blend. We feel we've found the right balance with this vintage using 60% Tannat and 40% Malbec. The Malbec gives a round warmth that envelops the power of the Tannat to make a more complete and complex wine. The Tannat is from our estate vineyard and the malbec is from the Full Quiver Vineyard, which is contiguous with our estate. 240 cases produced.

As much as I like these wines, they are just a beginning point for us - a launching pad. These wines are delicious, but the upcoming vintages still in the cellar - 2015 and 2016 - have gained in complexity and depth as we learn more with each vintage. It’s a thrilling voyage.

Not All Half-Bottles are Equal

A half-bottle for dinner is just about right for me. Sure, sometimes I may yearn for just a half-glass more, but more often than not memories of what that's meant the next day encourage restraint.

I can enjoy a half-bottle (almost always meaning half of a full bottle) and feel fine the next day - sometimes. I've learned it's not just the amount of wine you drink, but which wine you drink. Or perhaps I should say where the wine comes from. Drink a half-bottle of Beaujolais and I feel great in the morning, when it's a half-bottle of Napa Cabernet not so much.

More and more the wines I enjoy the most are gentle on the soul - and the body. That means wines of naturally moderate alcohol levels. Wines that push seriously north of 14% are different beasts than those 13.5% and down. They not only taste different, they do different things to your body. If you like to enjoy wine as a daily beverage with your dinner the difference is significant. A half-bottle of wine at 13% is a whole different thing than one at 15% - and don't kid yourselves with what's printed on a label. A Napa Cab labeled 14.5% is more often than not over 15% and it's not unusual to find them actually approaching 16%. Remember Corison is the exception, not the rule.

When you give up 1% in alcohol you don't need to give up a percentage of flavor. Interestingly enough you also tend to spend more than 1% less money. There is a glorious range of wines to discover with moderate alcohol levels. France is full of them as are areas of Italy, Oregon, New Zealand and Germany. Even sunny California has its examples (try Dirty & Rowdy or Two Shepherds for examples). In general you'll find cool wines like these come from cool places.

Over the years my own cooking seems to have become lighter and lighter. Large pieces of meat have gradually disappeared as fish, chicken, pasta, grains and salads are on our dinner table. There was no plan it just evolved over the years as my tastes slowly changed. As my cooking changed my wine selections became lighter and lighter to match the meals I prepared. Eventually the big wines and bigger steaks I liked in my younger days slowly lost their appeal. Heaviness and deliciousness no longer intersected.

Life is pretty dull without a splurge once in awhile and great, powerful wines are indeed very splurge-worthy. Great meals, special dinners at home and just rewarding yourself are occasions when alcohol levels are something to be ignored. All that's important is how much you love that wine. There's nothing inherently evil about higher alcohol wines. However, daily enjoyment with simpler meals calls for lower octane wines. There is nothing in the world I love more than a great Barolo or Barbaresco and they easily hit the 14.5% range, but as much as I love them they are not everyday wines (although if I win the lottery I may change my mind).
 Fortunately for me it’s easy for me to gravitate towards lower alcohol wines as I learned to love wine in the late 70s and early 80s and wines over 14% were the exception to the rule - even in California. I understand it may be harder for younger wine drinkers whose palates have been deadened by years of high alcohol wines combined with the residual sugar that tends to go along for the ride. However, like so many things in life, once your palate is awakened to the elegant, refined and restrained flavors of these lower alcohol wines you'll find that many wines you used to love clumsy and one dimensional.

Acidity and freshness are hallmarks of most wines with naturally moderate alcohol. I can hardly think of two things I treasure more in wine. As feeling fresh in the morning is something I also treasure it seems I've lucked out.

I think I'll have another glass.

Listening, Wine and Bach

My wife is out-of-town, visiting her sister. That means I can crank up the tunes. I was rockin' out tonight during dinner. My Sonos was shaking the house with - Glenn Gould's 1981 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

What's fascinating about loud Bach is that you feel much the same as if you were listening to The Beatles or the Stones (yes, I'm old). The passion and beat makes you tap your toes. One of the compelling aspects of this recording (listened to loud!) is that you hear Gould's humming and grunts as he plays Bach with the same emotional intensity that B.B. King plucked Lucille on The Thrill is Gone.

Said Gould, "I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." Can you think of a better description of a great wine?

This is the why a point scale can never hope to define, or explain, much less quantify the experience of wine. It is too complicated to boil down this complex interaction of humans and nature over literally thousands of years to a decimal point.

Dinner tonight was pressure cooker wine-braised pork short-ribs (90 minutes) with a reduction made from the broth and for the wine 2010 Donkey & Goat "Five Thirteen" El Dorado, Red Wine Blend (47% grenache, 21% syrah, 16% mourvèdre, 10% counoise, 6% cinsault). Like Gould, this wine hummed and grunted in the background during its performance with a whiff of volatile acidity and a little funk, but like Gould it delivered. Exciting and fun it lifted the dinner to a new height. How many points? Don't insult it.

As Bach proved and Gould restated, there is real power in refinement, elegance and discipline. Power itself is not something to be revered. Powerful wines get high points because, as Gould said, they deliver "a momentary ejection of adrenalin." I think in winemaking a little reflection on Gould's thoughts on the justification and purpose of art can be applied to our craft. All to often we pursue the external, not the internal, or nature's purpose for wine.

To repurpose the Gould quote, the purpose of wine is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity. Powerful wines may give that injection of adrenalin on the first sip, but they do not deliver a sense of wonder and serenity instead becoming trophies to hoard.

It takes courage to let your own personal vision and passion show through in your work. You'll be hard pressed to find wine brands that roll off your tongue that have even a bit of courage.

When you first hear the humming on Glenn Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations (both the 1955 and 1981 versions) you think something is wrong with the recording. Then, with repeated listening and a little homework on your part you understand that you are hearing something personal and truly expressive. With compelling, memorable wines the experience and requirements are the same.

It's not how loud it is, it's how well you're listening.

Barrel Roll

You need a license to drive a car. Permits for hunting and fishing are required. In general if it’s dangerous you need to prove you’re competent to get a permit. Perhaps winemakers should have to get a permit before they're allowed to use new oak barrels.

Admittedly new oak barrels are not dangerous to people, but they can be very dangerous to wine. Today's wines rarely taste of basic mistakes in the cellar. Cultured yeasts, enzymes and cutting edge machines that can take out almost anything have seen to that. But the neutral ripe black-fruited wines produced by these techniques are, to say the least, boring. So new oak flavors sing a siren's song that few winemakers can resist. If new barrels are not an option, no problem. There are inner-staves, chips, powders and many other products made out of oak to bring those flavors to your wine.

There’s the problem isn’t it? The whole idea of “bringing flavors” to a wine should be controversial. After all, wine critics look down their nose at Retsina, spiced wines or any wine that has something added to alter its flavors. Yet when it come to new oak, they’re suckered in with an almost religious fever that anoints these oak flavored wines with big points.

The concept of terroir is dear to wine lovers around the world. Yet can you think of a bigger enemy of terroir than the pronounced flavors of new oak? If you mostly taste the oak, you are not tasting the wine.

That is not to say these flavors can’t have their place. Certainly cabernet sauvignon and other Bordeaux varieties can be lifted to new heights with the judicious use of new oak. However, there are so few varieties and appellations that use or benefit by the use of new oak that perhaps more winemakers should step back and reconsider its use. Just because new oak flavors are associated with the two of the most famous wine regions should not be in itself a reason for a winemaker to equate those flavors with quality. The worldwide success of cabernet sauvignon and the exalted status of Bordeaux, and now the Napa Valley, has established the taste of new oak itself, instead of the flavors of the land and variety, as the goal to be coveted by many winemakers and sought out by consumers.

This, of course, is much more a New World than an Old World problem. Most of the other European regions that flirted with new oak in the 80s and 90s have backed off and returned to their more traditional methods. It was sad to see some Italian producers destroy the character of classic, individualistic wines in Piemonte and Toscana during this era. Fortunately, almost all of those producers have either severely reduced their use of new oak or abandoned it all together and returned to making wines true to their regions and varieties. As it turns out, it's good business to be different in the world of wine instead of tasting like you could come from anywhere. In fact, now Barolo has almost become the new "Burgundy" with rare single crus, high prices and allocated wines.

Then there are “oak products” like inner-staves, chips and powders that are added to a wine simply to add that oak flavor. These producers are doing the same thing ancient winemakers did when they created wines like Retsina. The pine flavors covered up other faults, which is exactly the reason “oak products” are used in winemaking today. The most important purpose of a wine barrel is to allow controlled amounts of oxygen to interact with the wine, not to add flavor to it. Obviously these oak products don't have anything to do with the amount of oxygen the wine is exposed to as they only add flavor. They create the modern version of Retsina.

There is using new oak as part of your basic manipulation winemaking recipe, or there is using new barrels like a great chef uses herbs and spices. A soupçon here and there brings a dish to life, too much and you become TGIF. Wine with too much oak makes me think of pizza. On one end of the spectrum you have Pizza Napoletana with its thin, crisp crust graced by light touches of the finest ingredients. Then you have Chicago deep dish pizza where a single slice has more gooey cheese than two, maybe three, whole pizzas in Naples. In Italy one person can eat a whole pie, while two slices of Chicago deep dish is a gut buster. I grew up loving Chicago style, but once I tasted pizza in Italy I could never go back. This is the choice a winemaker has with new oak. What kind of pizza do you want to make?

The use of new barrels is very much a decision that should be made by variety and region. For example, here in the Applegate Valley it has become very clear to me that new oak barrels are just not a good idea. The wines here are too graceful and refined with naturally silky tannins and layering new wood flavors and tannins on top of them buries the character that makes this place a special wine growing region. There are more regions like this in the world of wine than there are those like Bordeaux and Napa.

Like most fashions, even the use of new oak in winemaking has reached its logical extreme. For some, even 100% new barrels was not enough and now there are wines with 200% new oak. How is that possible? Simple, after its first year in a new barrel you transfer a wine into yet another brand new barrel for another year or more. The resulting wine is, of course, 100% devoid of terroir and 400% more expensive. Such is the new math of wine.

While we won't be issuing new barrel permits to new winemakers, perhaps we could at least consider learner's permits? No new oak barrels for five years? Certainly learning how to make good wines without the crutch of new oak, from either barrels or oak products, would make for better, more thoughtful winemakers.

In the meantime, it's in my interest that winemakers retain their addiction to new oak. Every year I can buy beautiful French Oak barrels thoughtfully broken in for me by other winemakers. I can buy these one, two, three and four year old barrels at a tiny fraction of what they cost new and then have the pleasure of using them for years to come.

Come to think of it forget the permits idea, I hope they keep using them.

Punched Down

Punching down Troon Tempranillo in the rain under our old oak tree.

There are thirty one-ton fermenters spread out before me under the oak tree behind the winery. They all need punch downs and I'm the only one there to do them. It’s raining and at this moment there is nothing romantic about winemaking, fortunately I know that once these wines are in the bottle there will be more than enough romance to make me face this line up of fermenters tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow…

Now it's night and most of me hurts and I'm exhausted, but tomorrow I will be up and ready to go as I know that my life with these wines will make the effort more than worthwhile.

But why is there just me a 63 year old available for punch downs this morning? Welcome to the Applegate Valley where there's not an intern in sight. Welcome to winemaking on the frontier. The Applegate Valley is an exciting, but emerging fine wine region and the niceties of established regions like the Willamette Valley or Napa Valley just don’t exist.

As tiring and challenging as it is, the lack of accoutrements is also liberating. You are forced into choices that make you rediscover how natural the winemaking process truly is and that so many of the interventions used almost without thought in more established regions are unnecessary.

You soon come to understand that these interventions are not only unnecessary, but detrimental as they strip wines of real character leaving pretty, fruity wines with indistinguishable personalities. When I first saw an optical sorter in the Napa Valley I was blown away. Out of one end came perfect grapes, looking exactly like blueberries, and on the side it discharged everything deemed less than perfect. My initial excitement slowly dissolved as I tasted the wines in barrel then bottle. What I thought was perfect fruit yielded wines that were one-dimensional. Those perfect grape blueberries ended up making a wine that tasted a lot like it actually came from blueberries. The strange thing about those perfect grapes is that they only look perfect. If they were truly perfect winemakers would not be forced to add acids, water and use enzymes and other additions to put back in what the optical sorter took out.

At Troon there are no optical sorters in sight, nor in all of Southern Oregon as far as I know. All of our sorting is done during the pick in the vineyard. Instead of making wine with blueberries, we make wine with the grapes that nature gives us. That means along with those perfect grapes some are a little more ripe and some a little less. In the fermenter, together with the indigenous yeasts of the Applegate Valley, this varied fruit creates wine that is anything but one-dimensional. The grapes that are a little less ripe contribute vivacious natural acidity and those a shade overripe contribute body and richness - no additions required. Oh yes, and often we include stems in the ferment. In the tank it may not be pretty, but together they make wines that are alive.

Wines that live make me feel more alive.

Feeling Connected

There's not much to it. You pick the grapes, crush them by foot, de-stem if needed and dump them in a fermenter. The fermenter, a one-ton macro-bin sits under the old oak tree behind the winery. After a few days the fermentation begins. Just like that.

It seems so simple, so natural as we use no yeast, sulfur or acid additions as was the norm at wineries in my past. These interventions are not required by Mother Nature. Then it's hands-on punch downs every day and soon your hands are stained burgundy red. There is something different about this kind of winemaking. You are mentally and physically part of the wine. This is not a process, it's a philosophy, a way of life. You and the wine are connected.

At Troon the same crew, the same people, tend the vines, harvest the grapes and make the wines. No sorting table is needed at harvest because the pickers are the same people that farmed each vine throughout the vintage. They only pick the perfect bunches, because these grapes are their grapes. They are harvesting a full year of work with each bunch cut from the vine.

After years in the Napa Valley I was shocked at the deliberate pace of the pickers during harvest here at Troon in the Applegate Valley. In Napa the picking crews are well-oiled machines and picking is at super-human speeds, which makes the pickers seem more mechanical than human as they surgically remove fruit from vine. Here in Oregon the picking pace is slower, but not any less work. Yet by dialing back the speed of picking the harvest seems to be the work of people, not machines. A picker that knows each row and vine treats the fruits of their year long labors with the respect that only sweat equity can understand. Their work needs no second guessing on a sorting table.

The simple elegance of the process and the personal hands-on experience of growing and making wine this way cannot help but make you feel more connected. You are connected to the land, the vines, the wines, the people who make them and to the people who will drink them. Feeling this connection is the most rewarding feeling I've ever had in thirty-five years in the wine business.

Wine should be a connection. It should connect the drinker with the land and people that brought the vineyard to life in a bottle of wine. This harvest I'm feeling very connected.

Eat a Peach

I did not want to hear what I knew would be bad news. But she delivered the feared message anyway. The lady at the farmers market from whom I'd been buying perfect peaches from for the last month nonchalantly announced that this would be her last market for the season. No more perfect peaches until next year. Sad news indeed.

These peaches were so juicy and sweet that I had to eat them over the sink. I would savor every morsel down to the pit then wash my sticky hands as I contemplated eating another. With each luscious bite of these delicate wonders I thought with pity about all the pastry chefs in the world. It must be hard on them to realize that with all their years of training and talent that nothing they can conjure up can surpass the pleasure of an unadorned perfectly ripe peach. Any addition would actually be a subtraction distracting from the purity and lush layered flavors of my simple peach.

When Mother Nature delivers perfection to you, you should leave it well enough alone. When something is perfect any additions only take away from that perfection. We don't add movements to Beethoven's Fifth, add another chapter to Moby Dick or splash some more paint on a Jackson Pollock. Yet when it comes to food and wine we can't seem to resist. More is not always better.

In 1984 my tastebuds received enlightenment, but it was not from a wine, it was a peach. In that year I had been invited by Neil and Maria Empson to join them on a tour of all the wineries in their Italian portfolio. This experience was a culinary and vinous voyage of discovery. I was immersed in amazing wines, foods and people for the better part of a month in an unparalleled educational opportunity. Yet among all of those incredible taste experiences the one that sticks to me the most is a single perfect peach. We were having one of those idyllic Italian lunches on a gorgeous day in Piemonte with Bepe and Tino Colla. In the Italian way, fruit was served instead of dessert. I don't know if it was the peach or the growing enlightenment of my tasting ability, but this beautiful white Italian peach seemed to just explode on my palate. My mouth still waters just writing about it over thirty years later. Each time I have a peach, my mind goes back to that table. I am always trying to return to that experience of a single unadorned peach.

Now it's September in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon and it has been literally a picture perfect growing season. While harvest is coming to an end in California and well underway in the Willamette Valley, we are just getting started in our Siskiyou mountain vineyards and only the first fruit destined for rosé has arrived at the winery. The fruit on the vines looks perfect. What should you do with perfect fruit? Simply as little as possible.

At Troon Vineyard the bins of fruit come in and we tread them by foot - red, white and rosé. Then we let the native yeasts start the natural process of fermentation in well used French Oak barrels. Anything we try to add will only take away as nature is only asking us to be stewards of the wine in its voyage from the vine to the bottle. In winemaking we should always be asking ourselves not what we can do, but only what we absolutely have to do.

As I roll my last perfect peach of the season in my hands it is clear to me that the sublime is to be found only in purity. Simplicity is not the same as simple. The true complexities of experience can only be relished when the extraneous distractions of the world are either removed, or perhaps, more portantly, never added. For me this is the real definition of "natural winemaking".

Tonight after dinner I will savor one last perfect peach. I can't think of a better preparation for harvest 2016.

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The Meaning of Life

Lisette Oropesa as Susanna in Nozze di Figaro at the San Francisco Opera

A lone, elegant women stands on the stage facing over 3,000 people in a majestic old concert hall. From her rises a voice so pure and strong that each of the thousands listening can hear every note and word with no amplification. Here in front of us is the perfection that can only be achieved when great craft and skill combine with extraordinary passion to become something sublime - great art. 

The singer was the sensational young soprano Lisette Oropesa performing the role of Susanna in Nozze di Figaro at the San Francisco Opera. Her performance was a study in complexity as she wove tone of voice with nuances of movements and facial expressions that brought layer after layer of experience to your senses. The ability to bring all of these things together are what makes something rise above a simple performance and transforms it into great art. 

As with most experiences in life that move me, this extraordinary performance made me contemplate the process and meaning of winemaking. Experiencing such a complete, fulfilling and elevating experience is what I am seeking in a wine and it is the combination of those things that makes a wine great. 

I am not seeking profundity in every song I hear or wine I drink. I think life is better with both the emotional impact of ”Deh! vieni non tardar” in Nozze de Figaro (which was stunningly performed by Lisette in San Francisco) and the pure fun of The Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. In their own way I enjoy them with equal pleasure. 

These define the way I perceive making meaningful wines. You’re either reaching for the emotional intensity of ”Deh! vieni non tardar”or you’re making a wine that wants to hold your hand - and make you simply happy. As proven here by both Mozart and The Beatles, if you are truly successful at making something meaningful at either end of the spectrum your art will live on from generation to generation. By the way, it’s worth noting that Mozart penned more than a few “I Want to Hold Your Hand” pieces and The Beatles also achieved the heights of ”Deh! vieni non tardar”.

In Leap First, Seth Godin says, “ Meaningful work is changing something for the better.” Indeed this is the definition of making meaningful wines. A profound aria or a fun pop song can change something for the better. Something profound may change our lives, but something fun can change our day. The combination of the two makes us better people.

Great opera and great wine should be enjoyed with reckless abandon. Sensational pop music and delicious everyday wines should get their due respect. It’s the combination of these experiences that elevate our lives. Drinking only great wines or experiencing only profound art actually dulls our ability to experience their true greatness. The reverse is true with popular art, without experiencing profound art you don’t comprehend the unrestrained joy of simpler pleasures.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if those with the means to only experience the profound spent a little more time with everyday pleasures and that if those denied access to profound art due to economics could have that world opened to them. A ticket to a great opera or the cost of a great bottle of wine can easily run several hundred dollars. In a better world, everyone would get at least an occasional taste of both.

Wine offers an amazing range of experience, but one end without the other seems to me empty and boring. That experience does not include the “beverage alcohol” industrial wines produced by people with the same passion that Budweiser makes beer or industrial music produced by formula by people like Rihanna. There is a difference between art and industrial production that is not connected to price. 

It is worth the effort to discover things produced with passion instead of a formula. These things are not always rare and more often than not, not expensive. It’s more than rewarding to take the little extra time required to seek them out. Putting the best art, the most creative things you can afford, into your life changes your experience of life. You may not be able to afford the opera, but you can listen to it free online. You might not be able to afford Grand Cru Burgundy, but, if you want, you can find wines made with similar passion at a fraction of the cost.

It takes great effort and dedication to make meaningful wines no matter the price they command in the market. To enjoy compelling wines and art instead of industrial plonk requires only a little effort, not more money, on the part of the consumer. It is more than worth this small effort.

Not everyone may appreciate the sublime beauty of Lisette Oropesa singing ”Deh! vieni non tardar” the way I did. She literally brought tears to my eyes. Yet, I believe that experience made me a more complete person. In the same way, falling in love with The Beatles I Want to Hold Your Hand in 1963 has done the same thing. Greatness can be found in the big and small, but with effort you can find it everywhere. There is no excuse to settle for mediocrity in today’s totally connected world. It is worth noting there is a lot of very expensive, mediocre formula wine produced. Price and popularity is not related to quality or pleasure. 

To fully engage with life we must be mindfully open to big and small experiences. All we need to ask of them is that they add to our lives instead of dulling our experience of it. Industrial products dull us to life, artisan products open our minds to life. While price can often be an issue, in today’s world every day it is easier to find art, food and wine that can add to our quality of life without breaking our budget. 

Experiencing Lisette Oropesa brought a moment of beauty into my life. What I love about wine is the small moments of beauty it brings into my life. For me, these things are something that is more than worthwhile - they’re meaningful.

Monty Python brilliantly showed us the absurdities of seeking The Meaning of Life, but the simple answer is in the search for beautiful moments, be they great or small.

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Production Winemaking

Winemaking is often referred to in the trade as production. That's just the right word for it as the vast majority of the world's wine is a product. An industrial product - beverage alcohol as they call it.

Big wineries are stuck with reproducing a replica of the same wine every year as that's what the mass market wants. They are the equivalent of national restaurant chains whose customers want a dish to be exactly the same no matter what city they are in. Small wineries can make wines that reflect vineyard, vintage and variety, which means that they will be different every year. Obviously this is not always good, but in the hands of a skilled winemaker is always interesting. The choice is between consistency or individuality.

Large production winemakers are very technically skilled. It is not easy to make thousands, if not millions, of cases of wine that, vintage in and vintage out, is indistinguishable to their customers. Consistency is to be valued more than anything once you have a winning formula. When producing beverage alcohol be that wine, vodka, gin or whatever the last thing you want is for anyone to be able to discern any difference from batch to batch. To be able to accomplish this takes amazing technical skill and can't be done by just anybody. These winemakers are true professionals.

On the other end of the spectrum are the small artisan winemakers. Their craft more resembles a fine woodworker making one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture. While these pieces may not be perfect, as they let the natural grain of the wood define the character of the piece, they have more natural beauty and individuality than furniture turned out in a factory. It's because of their individuality that these artisan products sell at higher prices than those rolling off of the assembly line.

Artisan winemaking is expressed in the same way. When you taste a vintage you are tasting something that can never be repeated. Each vintage for an artisan winery is a unique expression of what Mother Nature has created. Each is an experience and an expression never to be repeated. But that's the beauty of it isn't it?

However, faults are still faults. While production wines become boring due to their palate dulling consistency, all too often consumers shy away from artisan wines due to the jarring faults apparent in too many of them. Winemaking faults are not terroir. Small wineries have something to learn from the technical proficiency of their big brothers. A fine woodworker possesses amazing technical proficiency with the tools and raw materials of his trade. The same should be true of artisan winemakers.

If your goal as an artisan winemaker is to treasure terroir and Mother Nature you need to be committed acquiring the technical skills necessary to make natural wines. It is a great challenge to make wines using indigenous yeasts and forsaking the chemicals and technology employed by the big wineries to make their standardized products. The risks are high and there is more pressure than ever on the winemaker's skills as there is no "magic pill" to be used if things go wrong - and go wrong they will.

A fine wood craftsman will consign a piece she is working on to the junk pile behind her workshop if she makes a mistake beyond repair. Too many artisan winemakers bottle up their mistakes and sell them citing their natural winemaking practices as reason enough to buy them as if the word natural itself is justification to forgive all.

The artisan winemaker is revered in Europe. Some of our greatest importers have made a career out of bringing their wines to American consumers. The lists of these importers are filled with amazing values from such producers. It's easy to find wonderful, naturally made wines from Europe in the under $30 price category. Rarely do I find winemaking faults in these wines. The same is not true for such wines produced in the New World. Not only are they more expensive, but they are often not as well made.

Young American sommeliers seeking naturally produced wines are often criticized for their Euro-centric wine lists. However, I can empathize with their position. When the customer doesn't like a wine it's the sommelier that's face-to-face with them, not the winemaker. They need reliable wines at affordable price points to meet today's more casual, bistro-style of dining.

We need to stop selling the winemaking and start selling the wine inside the bottle. I want to be inspired by the wine, not the winemaking.

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Personal Hygiene

It was so clean. The color was not just healthy, but a brilliant, radiant garnet. I was struck by its purity.

I'd spent most of the last several weeks drinking wines from west coast wine rebels. These are winemakers that distain convention and I admire their dedication to making natural wines. These winemakers see the over-oaked, over extracted wines of most New World winemakers as brutish bores. I agree with them.

Yet there is something to be said for purity, brilliance and, yes, simple personal wine hygiene. By hygiene I don't mean making wines sterile, boring carbon copies of the accepted commercial norm of industrial wine beverages. Certainly there is no need for any more of those. What I value is purity.

The wine mentioned above was a 2013 Domaine Bernard Baudry Chinon imported by Kermit Lynch. This is a wine stunning in its clarity and focus. After the wines from trendy California producers that I'd been drinking I was immediately struck by its brilliant, clean color. There was no browning, no haziness, just a perfectly clear and beautiful garnet wine.

What is important to note here is that Baudry is also a winemaker in the natural winemaking vein. This is a Kermit Lynch selection and Baudry uses natural yeasts and does not fine or filter. So why are his wines so brilliant and pure while so many wines from our winemakers following the same winemaking concepts are cloudy and brown? Beyond appearance there was the rest of the wine - a lively, complex clear expression of cabernet franc. A charming wine full of clarity of purpose and personality.

The winemaking techniques used to make a wine are not in themselves a justification for liking a wine. The commitment of the winemaker to natural techniques is a heavy burden to bear as it is not easy to make wines in this way. However, as much as that commitment is to be respected it does not free the producer from making wines that purely speak of the vineyards and varieties that they sprang from. Wines full of faults including excessive brett, V.A., protein hazes (and others) and oxidation hide terroir and varietal character every bit as effectively as the bag of tricks used by companies like Enologix. In both cases it is the winemaking not the vineyard that defines the wine.

We always seem to be caught up on extremes. On one end of the spectrum are the 100 point wine fanatics easily suckered in by the manipulations of Enologix and others. On the other are the natural wine terrorists who value doing nothing to a wine more than they value how it actually tastes. As usual the sweet spot is in-between these two extremes. That’s where wines like the Baudry Chinon come in as it’s a wine made naturally, but also professionally with great competence and care. It is a pure expression of that variety and that vineyard in that vintage. For me, nothing is more exciting in a wine.

I don’t like to drink spoofulated wines, but I also don’t enjoy muddy, faulted wines, which are the exact opposites. Spoofulated has long described manipulated wines, perhaps we need a new term for under-manipulated wines. Any ideas?

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The Hoax

The Napa Valley is well into bud break for cabernet, yes late breaking cabernet, early varieties like chardonnay and pinot burst weeks ago. Even in the north Willamette Valley bud break is on with chardonnay. There is a new "normal" now when it comes to bud break on the west coast. In the Napa Valley, this year is a bit later than last year, even though it’s weeks ahead of years past hardly anyone notices as it just doesn’t seem so late anymore.

It's a good thing this climate change is a hoax, otherwise California might really have something to worry about. After all, harvesting cabernet before the end of September is much more convenient for the winery crew as they can trick and treat with their kids unlike earlier generations of winemakers who were just too busy at the end of October.

Anyone who grows things knows for a fact that the climate is changing. Perhaps if we actually do something about it now, in the future, winemakers will be missing Halloween with their kids once again. That's too bad for the kids, but very good for our planet and for our wines.

Dancing With Wine

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"Wine Dance" by artist Janet Ekholm www.janetekholm.com

I love these "new California" wines. Many a night they grace my table and make my meal and my life better. Yet as full of pleasure as they are, they seem rarely profound. The same goes for many so called "natural" wines coming out of Europe these days. Delicious, full of pleasure, exciting, but not profound. Their experience is more in their juicy fresh flavors than their soaring soul. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Perhaps it was because my palate was hammered on the anvil of the classics that I cannot find profundity here. One of the advantages of being a certain age is that when I was young and just getting into wine in the 1970s, great wines were just minor extravagances no more dear than the price of a dinner at a good restaurant; Lafite, Gaja and Lafon were all under $50. They've put on a few zeros since then.

Today's anvil, that everyone is pounding on, is confusingly called "natural wine". It's an odd phrase as wine, if left totally to its own devices, is just a stopping point on the way to becoming vinegar. While in the past bigger was better, now it seems that being different is, on that merit alone, now better. As usual we replace one oversimplification with another.

For example, much has been said about indigenous yeast fermentation although the science these days points toward the idea that such a concept isn't really possible. Obviously there is still much we do not know about how nature gives us wine. Yet, common sense tells me there must be some difference in regions where indigenous fermentation existed for hundreds of years before yeast were even discovered, much less produced industrially. In these areas natural selection would have refined the yeast population as it is clear from recent research that although we like to think of indigenous ferments as benefiting from a myriad of yeasts to build complexity, in the end one strain wins out and runs the show anyway. But what about the new world where densely packed wineries have been using aggressive commercial yeast strains for decades? It's fair to assume that those strains are now dominate in so called indigenous populations of compact areas like the Napa Valley. 

However, this does not preclude that in many cases an indigenous fermentation may produce a more interesting wine than one from cultured yeast. It is also clear that the opposite can produce the same results. In other words anyone who says they know the answer is full of something or other. You can only do what you as a winemaker believe will craft wine to your own taste. Your vision and palate is all you should rely on as it is well proven that no matter the road you choose, if you have skill, great fruit, passion, focus and dedication to what you believe, you will make wines that will turn heads. Maybe not the heads of critics, but those of people who love wine. 

Diversity is to be celebrated, but not for the fact that just being different is enough. As exciting as it may be to find an old vineyard in California from lesser known varieties like barbera or fruliano we must remember we do not drink in a vacuum. Yes that juicy barbera from Lodi may be tasty, but it's good to remember that in Italy old barbera vineyards are not a rarity.  Forced to pick between a "new California " barbera or an old vine Barbera d'Asti, I know where I'll put my money. Some of this rush towards the obscure is driven by writers who always need something new to write about so diversity in itself becomes glorified as writers also have to find a way to stand out from the pack.

There is also the dirty little secret of many of these "new" wines everywhere in the world. Too many are marred by winemaking faults, which some confuse with terroir. The most common problem I run into is reduction, but the list is long. While not obsessed with squeaky clean wines, I just can't tolerate faults that obliterate sense of place and variety.

That being said I am an unabashed fan of many of these new wines, but that does not preclude loving the classics and once in awhile finding that wine that goes beyond delicious into profundity. Not every variety planted can be profound, but many can be delicious, which come to think of it, is a pretty good thing.

Winemaking is often called art, but to me it is more artisan. Like a fine piece of furniture crafted by a master craftsman or a master chef turning out a classic meal, these are things we live with and that make our lives better.  For me this is the most wonderful part of wine. It has a unique ability to bring us together, to slow us down and make us smile. These are the highest callings a wine can aspire to achieve.  Anything beyond that is too subjective to quantify. 

Is it a wine's job to be profound or to bring pleasure, happiness and health to us? A simply delicious wine with friends, family and food is one the great synergies of existence. Perhaps profound is for museums (aka three star restaurants) and simply delicious is for living. 

Delicious wine makes me happy. I can live with that.

The One Per Cent

It took forty-seven percent to make a difference for Mitt Romney. For us it's the one percent. No, we're not joining Boycott Wall Street. Percentages for us are all about blending and every percent matters.

​Winemaker Jeff Keene and I show what a percent can mean at Premier Napa Valley Auction 2013

Jeff Keene and I were working on our final blends for our 2011 reds a few weeks ago and it never ceases to amaze the nuance and complexity that can be gained by the smallest changes. It is on the blending table that the soul of the wine comes together. It requires intense concentration and attention to the smallest detail to bring a wine to the perfect point.

There are many ways to blend: different varieties and different vineyards, same variety different vineyards and every permutation you can think of. Yet it's not how you blend, but why you blend that's the most important thing. Different varieties react very differently to blending. Take varieties like pinot noir and nebbiolo and blend them with other varieties you quickly lose their distinctive character. The only real blending choice is to make a single vineyard or multi-vineyard wine. Then there is cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc, varieties with assertive character that relish the flourishes added by blending their three spirits.

You don’t start off from scratch, you have a general idea where the wines will take you when you put the first rough blends together. Then you begin to work the permutations. A little more of that; a little less of that and the wine edges closer and closer to what you envision for the wines of this harvest. Finally you’re almost there, but there seems to be something missing. It’s tough to describe or put your finger on, but you know there is more to find, more for the wine to give. It is at this point you discover how important just one percent can be as suddenly the wine comes totally alive from just that small touch of the right variety or vineyard.

This time it was our 2011 Cornerstone Cellars Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon, but it happens with every wine. We were so close with a blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot, but Jeff and I just felt something was missing. This time the one percent truly made the difference and when we added a tiny dollop of cabernet franc the wine suddenly became brighter, more lifted and, frankly, perfect. It’s our willingness to reach for our vision of perfection that makes the wines of Cornerstone Cellars something truly special. There are many wonderful wines in the world, but sometimes by reaching for just one percent more moves you from wonderful to something memorable. 

Cheating On Your Wife

I had lied to my wife. Every guy in the room had. This was not the kind of thing you could safely share with a spouse. We gathered in the room with an exaggerated good-old-boy bachelor party kind of conviviality. The level of anticipation was high, perhaps too high. It was still afternoon and it felt a bit strange to be doing this in the light of day.

Everyone finally arrived and one-by-one we passed our wad of cash to the host with a sense of excitement and a tinge of guilt for the pleasures to come. After all, wasn't this money supposed to be going into the college fund or buying that new dresser? This was more money than I could easily afford on my rookie reporter's salary at the newspaper and I could only hope my wife would never find out. Our host took the cash and disappeared into another room.  A second later, radiating sensuality, they swept into the room and were even more beautiful than we had hoped for in our dreams the night before. There were eight of them, one more exotic than the next. Each was wrapped in a skin tight sheath of aluminum foil just begging to be torn off and marked with a letter so each of us could choose their favorite. An electric energy coursed through me as I unpacked the toys I had brought for the festivities: eight glasses and a notebook. Once again I thought of my wife and how ticked off she we going to be if she found out I had spent our hard earned money on, of all things, wine.

This group of liars was cheating on their wives with our mistress - wine. She was stealing our money and time with our spouses, but we could not resist her charms. We had long passed the flirting stage and this was to be our most amorous liaison yet as we were going to taste Grand Cru Burgundy. None of us had ever spent that much money on wine before. We were at the stage where we had learned more about wine from books than with our tongues and were easily influenced by reputation and label. More than once I had convinced myself to like a wine because someone famous said I should. With this innocence and ignorance we began tasting the eight bottles of Burgundy that our host had tightly wrapped in gleaming aluminum foil as we were doing a “blind” tasting. However, this was not really “blind” as we knew that each wine was an expensive and famous Burgundy. We were prepared to be seduced. Each of the tasters had eight glasses and the table was a crowed forest of stemware. After each of the wines had been poured silence settled on the once boisterous group. Each of us focused our entire concentration each wine as we sipped, swirled, spat and furiously took notes. For the next hour the only sound was the occasional moan or sigh when our mistress hit just the right spot.

I can still remember some of my notes now, which went something like this:

A. Light color, weedy earthy aromas...

B. Light color, earthy, dried leather and cheese...

C. Light color, vegital, smoked bacon. plastic...

So it went for the next hour. When everyone finished it was time to compare notes and come up with a group rationalization for why these wines were not the other-worldly experience we had anticipated. They were strange and not very satisfying. We soon came to the conclusion that problem could not be these famous wines, but that it must be us. Our palates were not well honed enough to understand the complexities of these great and famous wines. Those odd aromas and flavors must be that magical ingredient terroir that the French use to describe the unique personalities of each vineyard that make each single-vineyard wine distinct. Those leather, cheese and bacon smells had to be terroir. Now it was our duty to keep learning and tasting until we could come to understand and appreciate them.

As I look back on this event over thirty years ago, I have learned to understand and appreciate the true glories of Burgundy, none of which could be described as weedy, cheesy or sweaty. I have also learned that those wines that made me feel inadequate in that tasting three decades ago would have better been poured down the drain. Those wines were faulted - full of brett and VA. We were just too young and too intimated by the names and prices of those wines to know the difference. Fortunately I soon learned the difference between terroir and wine faults. Wine faults are a major concern of mine as time and time again I run into wines that are loaded with faults that go undetected in many large tastings. All to often I lift a glass to my nose from an almost empty bottle to find it severely faulted with TCA (corkiness), brett or a range of other faults. At the recent Wine Bloggers Conference there was a lot of debate about ethics, but none about knowledge and tasting technique. If wine bloggers want to be taken seriously, it's far more important that they can spot brett and other faults than if they take samples from producers for free or not.

These memories were jogged by a bottle of 2004 Thomas Dundee Hills Pinot Noir that I pulled from my cellar to share with my good friend, winemaker Donald Patz. Always looking to bring something that he probably hasn't tasted (no easy task) I grabbed a bottle of this hard to get Oregon cult wine. Upon pulling the cork we were treated to a perfect example of brett. Needless to say, it was a great disappointment and we left the bottle, still mostly full, on the table when we left the restaurant. Thirty years ago we may have forced ourselves to accept such wines, but today there are no excuses. Winemakers have the finest laboratories available to them and far more knowledge than the winemakers of the past. Brett needs to be recognized and recognized for what it is - a fault that obliterates varietal character and terroir - which are the two most important things for me in a wine.

Not long after that tasting of three decades ago I entered the wine business. We were importing the Italian wines of Neil Empson and doing tasting event after tasting event. Neil and I would open hundreds of bottles over several days. Every time Neil found a corky bottle, which was often in those days, he'd shove the wine and the cork under my nose. Soon I got it and ever since have been hyper-aware of that musty TCA smell. We should all do what Neil did and every time we find a faulted bottle we need to shove it under someone’s nose. While winemakers have no business making faulted wines, we (especially wine writers) have no business missing those faults.