A Year in the US

It's now a year since I flew into the US. A lot has happened in that time: I've got married, gained my green card, and started working. I've tasted several hundred California wines and partially finished in San Francisco the WSET Diploma I started in Manchester. And day-to-day I've lived the American life that I'd only briefly witnessed on holidays and TV. Here are some cultural observations on the US, and maybe how the US has changed me.

view from the Mayacamas mountains towards San Francisco

tipping

Getting used to tipping no matter what the service - though it's usually good - took some getting used to. Buy a beer and tip a dollar, even if you've been waiting five minutes and the glass isn't full. Go to a restaurant and all of a sudden the expensive meal becomes very, very expensive when you add a gratuity - again, regardless of whether the food was good or arrived on time.

After a month or so, it became second nature to me, adding on the 20% without even thinking about it. And now I find myself complaining about not being tipped. I'm working in a tasting room, where I serve five pours of wine, talk extensively about wine and the weather, and look after each set of customers for around 45 minutes. And receive next to no tips. This has always been my problem with tipping culture: in certain situations you are supposed to tip (bars, restaurants, the hairdresser, taxis) and so you do; in others, there is no expectation to tip, and so you don't. Somehow I need to integrate the concept of automatic tipping into tasting room culture.

wine and regulations

Tasting rooms are unlike most found in Europe. They range in style - some are big and ostentatious, others are small and intimate, designed to reflect the ethos of the winery. Especially in the Napa Valley, tour buses and limousines pour into tasting rooms, depositing drunken groups of visitors eager to spend lots of money.

every winery has a dog

This is part of a very different wine culture. For a start, it's still young, to a certain degree recovering from Prohibition. Many drinkers like their wines sweet (even reds); others claim to abhor sweetness in their wines and complain about dry wines being sweet. Understanding of wine is very much varietal driven which results in a lot of resolute prejudice - "I don't like Chardonnay. It's too sweet."

Regulations are another hangover from Prohibition. A winery cannot serve food unless the customer buys wine with it: a concept I kind of like. Wine, such an integral part of the California economy, cannot be shipped to many other states because those states (Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennyslvania) don't want their people drinking too much booze. That's right, Louisiana, home of New Orleans, won't allow wine to be sent directly to people's homes.

driving

The US has one particular rule that makes driving a nightmare: you can both undertake and overtake cars. In theory, this opens up the road and makes passing slower cars easier. In practice, it leads to drivers hogging one lane because they're too scared to change lanes. And this often means four cars all lined up next to one another going the exact same speed. Roundabouts are scarce. Instead, there are stop signs at every junction at which every driver has to halt even if there isn't a car in sight. Outside a major city such as San Francisco, public transport is virtually non-existent. With this dependency on the car and rules which directly clog up traffic, driving in California is slow, often stop-start, even outside rush hour. It's the one negative aspect of living in this warm, sunny, wine-soaked state.

San Francisco

I've lived in some interesting cities - cocky Manchester, dirty Dublin, and mad Madrid - but my visits to San Francisco have revealed a city quite like no other. It's unforgettably beautiful, surrounded by water and mountains, rising on its own small peninsula. It's vibrant, each block revealing its own character, bars and restaurants driven by youthful enthusiasm. There are established, well-to-do areas and edgy quarters still emerging from industry and neglect. On one visit, a taxi driver described it to me as "beautiful but dysfunctional," which is very accurate. The city is full of roadworks and construction, trying and failing to keep pace with a constantly growing population, bringing traffic to a regular standstill. Rent prices are impossibly high, and commuters sit in rush hour traffic around the city for hours on end. For all its attractions, I'm not sure I could live in San Francisco.

the wine itself...

Napa Valley wine is uniformly expensive and uniformly Cabernet Sauvignon. There are some extremely good wineries in Napa, but I wish there were more variety and more affordable wines available. Land in Napa is so expensive, though, that it's difficult to make wine without having to charge high prices - which is why everyone sticks to Cabernet because that's what customers will pay money for.

The price of wine is not only a Napa problem. California wine is either dirt cheap or expensive. Far too few wines offer truly good value for money. Here in California, that doesn't matter too much as people are willing and able to pay, but if California is to compete on the global stage with Chile, Argentina, South Africa, or Australia it has to produce more competitively priced wines.

Outside Napa, there's wonderful variety. Name a grape and someone somewhere makes a varietal wine out of it. Sonoma produces everything from Pinot to Zinfandel, with obscure French and Italian varieties in between. Paso Robles has exceptional Rhône blends. Santa Barbara and around is known for Pinot and Chardonnay, but has perhaps the greatest potential in California for Syrah. And then there are the hippies in the Sierra foothills, sometimes - whether deliberately or accidentally - producing great wine at decent prices.

...and other drinks

I'd argue that California is still behind the rest of the States in its craft distilleries - although in Germain-Robin they have the original and best, producing brandies from cool, wild Mendocino as good as the greatest Cognacs. I am surrounded by great breweries, all producing very drinkable, hoppy IPAs as well as their own distinctive creations: Bear Republic in Healdsburg, Lagunitas in Petaluma, Sierra Nevada in Chico, and, best of all, Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, as well as a host of up-and-coming microbreweries. It's a good time for a beer drinker to be in California.

boo to the metric system

I've become so accustomed to fiercely dry, hoppy IPAs that on a brief trip back to the UK the malty bitters I'd been drinking all my life were quite a shock to the system. Other aspects of American life I've found more difficult to become accustomed to. The US is the only country I've ever visited which defiantly avoids the logical metric system: recipes call for cups and ounces; temperatures are only given in fahrenheit; the twenty-four hour clock is never used; and an American pint is smaller than a British pint, one unit of imperial measurement I am familiar with.

Californians talk about the weather a lot, even though every sunny, warm day is the same as the last. A life of sunshine and no rain - now that's something I've begun to take for granted.

Cabernet Franc

Cabernet Franc is one of the least understood of the major French grapes. It comes in a variety of styles - sparkling, rosé, light and young, serious and oaky - and is grown in both cool and  moderate climates. It takes on the green, herbaceous aromas that producers often don't like in the other, more famous Cabernet, Sauvignon. Its fruits are redder and generally lighter, and it's often used as a small part in a blend, which can make it easy to dismiss. Single-varietal versions appeal more to wine geeks who like to argue about how best to pronounce Bourgueil than to the general consumer who takes one look at the word Bourgueil and moves on. Nevertheless, its herbaceous expressiveness makes single-varietal examples remarkably distinctive and unpredictable.

where it's grown

Cabernet Franc's home is Bordeaux, where it's also called Bouchy and where at some point it mated with Sauvignon Blanc to produce Cabernet Sauvignon. There, Cabernet Franc is generally used as a blending grape (Cheval Blanc, one of the world's most prestigious wines, is a notable exception). In the wines of St-Emilion, Pomerol, and around, it replaces Cabernet Sauvignon as it's a more reliable ripener, giving aromas of red fruits, tannins, and pencil shavings to contrast Merlot's lush fruit. It's these wines that producers around the world try to emulate, rather than the more difficult, green wines of the Loire.

Under the instructions of Cardinal Richelieu in the seventeenth century, the variety was planted in the Loire (by an Abbé Breton, which is still a local synonym). It's grown in Anjou-Saumur and Touraine to make rosés, sparkling wines, and reds. The best rosés are Cabernet d'Anjou, medium sweet but with high acidity. Cabernet Franc is one of the grapes allowed in Crémant de Loire and is the main grape for Saumur's pink sparkling wines - again, the grape's naturally high acidity in the cool climate proves ideal.

cellars dug out of tuffeau

In Bourgueil and neighbouring St-Nicholas-de-Bourgeuil (the Loire has so many appellations it's hard to keep track of them), the red wines are medium bodied, perfumed with red fruits and gripping tannins; St-Nicholas wines are softer and more fragrant than the surprisingly tannic wines from the chalky, tuffeau soils of Bourgueil. These can be exceptionally beautiful wines, as concentrated as red wine can get in a climate as cool as the Loire's. Chinon is just to the south of these two appellations. Near the river, the sandy soils produce elegant, light-bodied wines similar to St-Nicholas, while on the limestone hills the wines are fuller bodied and longer lived. Anjou-Villages is another appellation for intense reds, while Saumur Rouge wines are lighter bodied and fruitier.

wines

Domaine du Bel Air Clos Nouveau Bourgueil 2009 ($40)

A very good example of Cabernet Franc as it matures, with a pleasingly dirty nose of game, leather, mushrooms, figs, and prunes. The wine is still fresh, however, with strawberries and firm, gripping tannins. ✪✪✪✪✪

Russiz Superiore Collio 2012 ($30)

French grapes are grown throughout northern Italy; Cabernet Franc is grown in Fruili near the Slovenian border where the wines, with cooling breezes from the Adriatic and the Alps, resemble the Loire. This wine is a good example of Cabernet Franc, but certainly exaggerates its green, underripe qualities. It's perfumed, floral, with red fruits (cranberry, redcurrant), and soft but gripping tannins. ✪✪✪✪

Pulenta Gran Cabernet Franc Mendoza (Luján de Cuyo) 2011 ($42)

From the heights of Luján de Cuyo (around 1,000m above sea level), this may be the greenest red wine I have ever tasted, and gives a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc a run for its money in its vegetal aromas: green beans, peas, and asparagus are aromas I generally associate with Sauvignon Blanc. Tasting a wine like this, it's no wonder that the two grapes got it on. The wine is like a cooked vegetable salad, not something I'm entirely sure I want in a wine. ✪✪✪

Lang & Reed Two-Fourteen Napa Valley 2012 ($48)

Once again, the most expensive wine on the list is from a Napa producer. It's a very well made wine: red fruit, floral, perfumed, and herbaceous. On the palate, there are firm, gripping tannins, rich and luscious. Very Napa. ✪✪✪✪

Easton Monarch Mine Vineyard Sierra Foothills 2012 ($23)

Cabernet Franc certainly encourages the winemaker to do their own thing. I really like the potential of Sierra Foothills, which is three hours' drive inland from Napa, as it has the altitude to create a cool enough climate in an otherwise very hot region. With winemakers' hippy-laden tendencies, it's also far removed from Napa. This wine goes a bit too far though, with a stinky nose of caramel and sweet coffee, followed by a palate of smoke, coffee, and caramel. ✪✪✪

Savage Grace Cabernet Franc Rattlesnake Hills 2014 ($22)

From Washington, a wine that has a Beaujolais feel that's also characteristic of Chinon: a green bubblegum nose that gives way to herbaceous aromas, with sweet spices, firm but light tannins, bananas and rhubarbs, and red fruits (strawberries, raspberries). It's almost like a white, red, and rosé combined. Deliberately underripe, young, and very Cabernet Franc: this may just get better in the bottle. Astonishing that this is 2014, a vintage only just passed. ✪✪✪✪✪✪

Owen Roe Rosa Mystica 2010 ($32)

A very different expression of Washington Cabernet Franc: richer, oakier, fruitier, and riper. This could feel too full, but the tannins are soft and forgiving and the acidity lifts the wine. ✪✪✪✪✪

Hermanuspietersfontein Swartskaap 2010 ($25)

With a name like that, this wine can only be South African. The winery is located in the cool coastal climate of Walker Bay. This proximity to the ocean produces a serious wine with drying tannins and restrained red fruits without being too green. ✪✪✪✪✪

One thing these wines have in common is price: all between $20 and $50, they represent good value for money. Many of them also demonstrate Cabernet Franc's green, herbaceous character, although not all of them do so successfully by integrating it with the red fruits and firm tannins. Perhaps this is why Cabernet Franc has generally formed part of blends - it takes real mastery of the grape to make balanced, high quality single-varietal versions. However, when the winemaker has that mastery, individual wines expressive of their place result.

Malbec

When I started drinking wine, I had a European sensibility: place names meant more to me than grape varieties. I didn't know which grapes went into Châteauneuf-du-Pape, St-Emilion, or Rioja, but I knew those wines. That was the 1990s and times have changed: now drinkers, including myself, want to know the precise percentage of each grape variety in a blend or buy wines solely on the variety.

Cahors

On a trip through south-west France several years ago, I passed through Cahors. It's a pretty, relaxed town situated next to the Lot river, with one of the most famous bridges in France. The land is rugged and off-beat, south of the Dordogne on the way to nowhere, quietly doing its own thing as much of France does. I was stuck for something to eat and dared to walk into a dingy bar that had a surprisingly good menu advertised outside. Asking to eat, the barman gestured me to the back past some beaded curtains. I warily stepped through them into an large, tastefully decorated restaurant. Satisfied that the meal was going to be as good as advertised outside the bar, I ordered a local wine and fell in love with it, determined always to drink Cahors whenever I found it in the future. The fruits were black, the oak grainy, the supple yet appealingly rustic texture inviting another sip.

I had no idea the wine was from Malbec, a grape I only heard of later in the context of Argentina. The wine spoke of its place - warm, rural, and timeless - not solely of its grape. Yet everyone now knows the name Malbec, and if anyone knows the place Cahors it is because of Malbec - even though in Cahors it's actually called Auxerrois.

Malbec in France

Malbec was little known until its sudden Argentinian emergence because it never succeeded in France outside of Cahors. It is a Bordeaux grape, but conditions in the moderate maritime climate are difficult: it's susceptible to spring frost and it ripens late and not always successfully. In 1956, spring frost killed off the Malbec vines in both Bordeaux and Cahors. Bordeaux growers simply did not bother replanting, Merlot replacing it as the preferred blending grape (and plantings of Malbec had long been in decline anyway). Now only the Côtes de Blaye consistently adds Malbec to blends. Cahors growers, however, decided to stick with Malbec and replanted it, rewarded with appellation status in 1970, still the only AC in France dedicated to the grape.

Malbec is also grown in the Loire Valley, where it's often called Côt. The wines in this cooler climate are much lighter, with more red fruits than black, and not dissimilar to the Gamay also grown in the region.

Malbec in Argentina

In the late 1980s, the Argentinian economy stabilised for the first time since before the Great Crash of 1929. Up to that point, the wine industry had been focused entirely on the cheap domestic market in a country that had record levels of consumption - 100 litres of wine per person a year in the 1970s. Such had been the neglect of quality grapes in Argentina, Malbec had been pulled up throughout the 1980s, reducing plantings from 50,000ha to 10,000ha (it's now back to over 20,000ha). With the recovery of the economy, more ambitious winemakers decided to focus on exports. Malbec, brought into Argentina by French winemakers fleeing the ravages of phylloxera in the mid to late nineteenth century, was the grape that defined the new era of Argentinian wine. 

Since the first plantings in Argentina in the 1550s, the best sites have been identified in the Andean heights above Mendoza. These sites are particularly suited to Malbec because there is no spring frost. Furthermore, the high altitude, with hot days and cool nights, ensures a long growing season which retains the acidity in the grape but enables full ripening. Nowhere else does the ripening of Malbec's sugars and aromas happen so harmoniously - though I do think that Washington state with its day/night temperature variations has great potential.

wines

 

Buoncristiani Napa Valley Malbec 2012 (c.$60)

Malbec is grown a surprisingly great deal around Napa Valley, though usually as an ingredient in Bordeaux blends. My problem with Napa wines is that although they have varietal character, they all taste too similar: high alcohol, aggressive tannins, and intense fruit and oak aromas.

This wine, a rare single-varietal Napa Malbec, suffers from this problem. Even though the grapes are grown on hillside vineyards, the alcohol is too high (15%) and the acidity not quite high enough. The grapes have ripened fully - Malbec does not have the same problem in Napa that it does in Bordeaux - so there are lots of ripe blackberries and cherries. A great wine to go with steak, but it's impossible to justify the price. ✪✪✪✪

Maryhill Clifton Bluff Vineyard Wahluke Slope Malbec 2012 ($25)

A defining characteristic of Washington reds is their acidity: the cool nights throughout the growing season keep it refreshingly high. In this wine from Wahluke Slope, that acidity lifts the drying tannins and smoky oak. The hot days, meanwhile, produce fruity wines and there is plenty of ripe blackberry, blueberry, and mulberry - all typical of Malbec. ✪✪✪✪

Perdriel Colección Malbec 2009 ($20)

The best wine of the four, this shows why Mendoza does Malbec so well. Very good value, and with immediate, fun, yet complex aromas of roasted almonds and hazelnuts, cedar and smoke, and chocolate and coffee, with ripe tannins and high alcohol, held together by good acidity. ✪✪✪✪✪

Leval Malbec 2013 ($9.99) 

I couldn't find a Cahors wine at the last minute, so I had to settle for a Malbec from the Languedoc. This wine was so appalling it's best not to describe it: I've been reluctant to use it even as cooking wine. French wines like this one are not going to compete with Argentinian Malbec. ✪ 

*If I find a Cahors wine soon, I shall add it to the blog as a more meaningful comparison to Argentina.*

*Update 12 July 2015*

Château Haut-Monplaisir Cahors 2012 ($14.99)

Even in K&L, one of San Francisco's most international wine stores, there were only three wines from Cahors available. For the price, this is a very well integrated wine, with a nice intensity of ripe, almost jammy, black and blue fruits and a good structure from the dry, gripping tannins and high acidity. This wine is evidence that Cahors is responding to the international demand for fruity, forward Malbecs, while retaining a rustic, regional identity. It's certainly a pity that the wines aren't more readily available: if you're going to drink French Malbec, it really should come from Cahors. ✪✪✪✪

For all the romance of European place names, Malbec is successful because of single-varietal wines from Argentina. And this is where grape and place come together. Mendoza is so ideal for Malbec that the two are now synonymous. Just as Cahors expresses its remote rusticity through its Malbec wines, so too does Mendoza its sense of place: hot days and cold nights, high mountains, and beef steak, all in a bottle of wine.

Wine Writers Symposium

Last week I attended the Wine Writers Symposium, an annual event held in the luxurious settings of Meadowood hotel in Napa Valley. Featuring editors and established writers, including Jancis Robinson whom I was very excited to meet, the event aims to help writers improve their work and to open up avenues for publication. There was also plenty of great wine to taste, mostly from Napa. A hard life, I know, but I won't need to taste any Cabernet Sauvignon for a while. 

croquet lawn at Meadowood

The first day offered a series of seminars on how to better our writing, focusing particularly on finding a distinctive voice. The highlight of the day was the session featuring two of Napa's wine families. We saw Molly and daughter Carissa Chappellet interviewed by Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible, between them providing a familiar insight into the workings of a winery and the development of Napa's wine culture - Molly Chappellet recalled that when she and her husband moved to the Valley from Los Angeles with five children in tow (and a sixth to come) there wasn't a restaurant in the area. We also saw Dave McIntyre of The Washington Post interview Nils Venge of Saddleback Cellars and his son Kirk of Venge Vineyards. As they spoke, we tasted Saddleback's recently released 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon, a sophisticated, oaky wine, alongside another Cabernet from Venge Vineyards, much richer and more powerful if less subtle: very much a case of old and new Napa. 

just the three white wines...

 

From a wine tasting rather than writing perspective, the highlight of the week was a blind tasting of twelve Napa Cabernet Sauvignons with Jancis Robinson. Four wineries had donated three of their wines - one from the mid-1990s, a second from the mid-2000s, and a third from the unreleased 2013 vintage. The wines from the 90s were mostly holding up impressively well and maturing nicely; the 2000s were beginning to showcase their complexity and ageing potential; while the 2013s were just too young and tannic to assess properly. The next day I attended another tasting of nearly a hundred wines from 2003 to 2012. My conclusion is that, for understandable commercial imperatives, Napa Cabernets are released far too young: the 2012s have already been released, but it was only with the 2009s and older that the tannins, oak, and fruit of the wines were beginning to coalesce into a balanced, appealing structure. 

US Poet Laureate (2001-03) Billy Collins addressed the Symposium on the opening day, giving a witty speech about the nature of writing. He also set us a writing challenge - to write an over-the-top review of either a very bad or an exceptionally good wine. My naturally cynical nature found it easier to write the former; it didn't win the challenge but here is my review of Tesco's Valpolicella, which remains the worst wine I have ever tasted:

As the concept of hell becomes unfashionable even in the Catholic Church, it is reassuring to be occasionally reminded by major wine producers that hell does exist, and it's here with us in a wine bottle. Pouring a putrid purple, like the blood of a sorry anaemic, the wine sags sadly in the glass. I nervously sniff: and it smells like the winemaker has attempted to douse the flames of hell with sulphur. A reluctant slurp in the mouth - the tannins are the cold tickle of a dying man. The lethargic imitation of fruit persists, the rasping phlegm of someone condemned never to die. This is not wine, but Satan's bloody piss, available in a major supermarket near you.

The conclusion I drew from the Symposium: writing is hard but it can, and should, be fun.

The Terroir of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon

Napa Valley made its name on the back of Cabernet Sauvignon and now every winery makes Cabernet the star of the show, even if it's not their best wine. Napa Cabernet Sauvignon is an expression of the different soil types found in, and within, the different AVAs. Wineries proudly show their different single-vineyard or single-AVA Cabernets next to each other to highlight Napa's many terroirs - once a dirty French word in California.

I've tasted a number of Cabernet Sauvignons over the last two weeks and I have been surprised by the variety of style, though the quality has generally been high. This variety comes from the vineyard, the winemaker, but also the vintage - 2010 had an intensely hot period of 4-5 days which led to rapid maturation of the grapes, 2011 was a cool year, while 2012 and 2013 have been near perfect. 

Cabernet Sauvignon is expensive here, due to the price of land, the renown of wineries, and the customers' pockets. The cheapest wine I've tried is Laura Michael's 2006 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($47.50), the most expensive Corison's 2008 Kronos Vineyard ($210), with everything in between. Wines that expensive can have the effect of undermining the more reasonable, affordable wines, especially from Chardonnay, Zinfandel, and Merlot - but there's no point going to Napa for inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon.

the grape

 

Cabernet Sauvigon's home is Bordeaux, where it is the dominant grape in famous Left Bank appellations such as Médoc, Pauillac, St-Julien, and Château Margaux. In these appellations, however, it is always blended with Merlot and/or Cabernet Franc. In its New World guises, it is often sold as a single-varietal wine, which has led to the grape becoming the most planted in the world. Many New World regulations allow a wine to be labelled as single varietal as long as there is at least 85% (75% in California) of the varietal in the wine. This allows blending with other grapes, and I believe Cabernet Sauvignon is at its most expressive and complex in the company of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, as well as other Bordeaux grapes, Petit Verdot and Malbec, and also sometimes Syrah/Shiraz.

The grape has a very distinct character, which is easily recognisable after a few tastings. Blackcurrants are the most apparent fruit flavour, and the wine can be quite herbaceous with menthol or capsicum aromas. The grape's berries are blue, small, and thick-skinned, which create a deeply-coloured wine and heavy tannins. Cabernet Sauvignon, on its own or in a blend, is often aged in oak, which is where the complexity of the grape really develops. The oak lends aromas of cedar, pencil shavings, smoke, and tobacco, all of which become more mature and complex as the wine ages in bottle.

Besides Bordeaux and Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon excels in Coonawarra and Margaret River in Australia, the latter producing wines particularly similar to Bordeaux. Bolgheri in Italy, like Bordeaux and Margaret River by the sea, is home to some of the world's most renowned wines - Sassicaia, Ornellaia, and Tignanello, all Cabernet Sauvignon heavy wines.

Other areas which produce Cabernet Sauvignon wines worth looking out for, and which don't command the prices of Bordeaux or Napa, are Washington, Argentina's Mendoza, Provence in the south of France, and Hawke's Bay on New Zealand's North Island.

The AVAs

from winefolly.com

There are now 16 AVAs in the valley, plus the all-encompassing Napa Valley AVA, all expressing the different microclimates of the area. The valley is surrounded by the Mayacamas mountains to the west, which bring in the morning fog from the Pacific, and the Vacas to the east, which provide protection from the searing inland heat. The Napa River winds through the valley. Despite huge drought issues throughout California, Napa is coping due to underground streams that have provided natural irrigation over the years and allowed wineries to hold stores of water. 

As the river heads northwards, the valley gets hotter, from Carneros at the southern end, where much of the region's Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are grown, to Calistoga at the north. The most famous AVAs are in the centre of the valley, Stags Leap, Oakville, Rutherford, and St. Helena. The soils vary dramatically and the microclimates subtly within these AVAs, which is where certain winemakers really focus on single-vineyard expressions of the grape. The mountain AVAs on both sides of the valley are cooler, allowing for a longer ripening season.

The wines

Laura Michael

2008 Calistoga Cabernet Sauvignon Barlow Vineyards ($52)

This is the best value Cabernet Sauvignon I have tasted, even though it's still an expensive wine. Nearly six years old this has mature notes of dried fruits (raisins, sultanas) and tobacco, but still has fresh menthol, blackcurrant, plum, and vanilla aromas. The tannins are still high but in check, giving a dry finish but with a juicy fruitness sweetening the wine. Despite its age, the wine has lots of potential yet, with a developing complexity. 

Gustavo

Gustavo Brambila began working at Chateau Montelena in 1975, moving his way up the industry until he set up his own winery in 1996 with Thrace Bomberger; the two parted ways a couple of years ago, leaving Gustavo to begin rebranding the project from his small office winery just outside Napa. A shy, serious Mexican, Gustavo makes wines quite different from himself: big, bold, and expressive.

2009 Coombsville Cabernet Sauvignon ($75)

From an AVA I hadn't previously known about to the east of Napa below the Vacas mountains, a cool climate area where the grapes are small and thick-skinned, with fresh, deep blackberry sensations. On the nose, the wine has ripe black fruits, cassis, oak, and vanilla; on the palate, I gulped back the wine and gasped, "Tannins." Gustavo nodded with a small smile, "I enjoy my tannins," before adding that the wine has to be "balanced around" them. And indeed, beyond those tannins lies an engaging, complex, oaky, and ageworthy wine reminiscent of a Spanish red.

Chateau Montelena

Chateau Montelena are at the centre of Napa, and by extension California, wine history, for their Chardonnay was the top white at the 1976 Judgement of Paris. However, it is the Cabernet Sauvignons they have always wanted to be judged by - the 1973 Chardonnay was only released while they waited for the Cabernet vines to mature.

Chateau Montelena

2006 Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon ($165)

The vines are grown above the historic estate north of Calistoga, the hottest part of Napa Valley. The days in the mountains are extremely hot, but the nights cool dramatically, conditions which lead to a longer ripening period and a greater intensity of flavours. Tasted alongside the savoury 2005 and still young 2010, the 2006 had pleasingly aggressive fruity flavours, with sharp tannins, a balanced spicy oakiness, and a long finish. A very good wine, but at a hard to justify price.

Nickel & Nickel

12 (twelve) single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons are made here, a dedication to terroir that our enthusiastic guide, ex-surfer Walt, described as Burgundian. This dedication goes as far as having a barn full of stainless steel fermenting vats, one for each vineyard, with another underground cellar with rows and rows of Bordeaux barriques lined up vineyard by vineyard.

12 Napa soils

2011 Hayne Vineyard ($100)

The four single-vineyard, wholly Cabernet wines were all exceptional, perhaps too much so: there was a cleanness to them which cut out any rough edges, for example in this cooler vintage any herbaceous greenness. Nevertheless, each wine had distinctly different characteristics to them, again demonstrating a real dedication to the terroir of each vineyard. The Hayne Vineyard, from St Helena, was perhaps my favourite of the four, with fresh black cherries, blackberries, and boysenberries on the nose, fruits which were quite sharp on the palate, overlaid with some dustiness, with an oaky finish giving way to a spiciness which became more complex with each tasting.

 

Saddleback Cellars

Nils Venge has been making wine since studying at University of California, Davis in the late 1960s, working at some of Napa's most prestigious wineries, including Groth, whose 1985 Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was the first Californian wine to score 100 points from Robert Parker. Saddleback began as a side-project whose first vintage was 1983, producing around 6,000 cases a year.

Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 ($68)

Most of the grapes for the Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon are grown around the large shed that serves as a winery in Oakville, but some also come from Rutherford and Carneros. Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot are also blended in, at 7% each. At nearly five years old, this is a young wine that still needs plenty of time, full of gripping and chewy tannins that are relieved by a juicy acidity. It's complex and engaging, with cassis, menthol, violets, and figs; a big, full wine that meets a lot of the Napa stereotypes but which, with its heavy tannins and green, minty aroma, is quite Bordeauxesque.

Quintessa

An astonishing amount of work goes into making Quintessa's one wine, which costs around $150. On their Rutherford ranch, there are 280 acres (of which 92 are forest to maintain a viable ecosystem), 26 vineyards, seven different soils, five hills, five different microclimates, and two lakes. Within the large, concrete winery, a visually stunning design built into the hillside, there are nearly 1,600 square metres given over to oak barrels, of which there are around 3,000 at any given time. Five grapes varieties are grown - Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Carmènere.

Quintessa: 75% of the winery is within the hillside

From all this, Quintessa produce one wine, a blend of all the various grapes, vineyards, and barrels, which varies each year to reflect the vintage. Having bemoaned the emphasis in Napa on single varietal wines, it is exciting to see a winery so focused on representing the character of a vintage in all its forms rather than making a wine that reflects the nature of the grape. The two vintages I tried were very different, involved expressions of their vintage, as well as the dusty Rutherford terroir.

2011
The wine has only been in bottle for three months and will be released around October. As already mentioned, 2011 is seen as a difficult year but this is a wonderfully elegant expression of a vintage others found challenging. A young, inky nose with violets, oak, vanilla, and cloves, as well as the usual cassis notes. On the palate, the oak is grainy and toasty, with young tannins and high acidity; there's also a welcome greenness in the form of green bell pepper, from the cooler vintage. At first, the youth of the wine is apparent, taking time to open up and reveal its subtle complexity. The wine slowly unwinds and the oak and black fruits grow more structured, integrated, and dense: this is a serious, intense, yet expressive and elegant, wine.

2010
A much bigger wine right from the nose. The fruits are richer, riper, and darker, with vanilla, liquorice, and chocolate, and an intense pepper spiciness. There's a bitter black chocolate finish, which underlines the more aggressive, less elegant nature compared to the 2011. These two different wines will appeal to different palates, emphasising that Quintessa make wine to reflect the vintage not to target a certain taste in wine.

Trefethen

Trefethen are based in an impressive nineteenth-century farmhouse, surrounded by 440 acres of vines. Initially established as a grape-growing farm, high-quality Chardonnay and Cabernet have been made since the mid- to late-1970s. As with all of the Trefethen wines, the Cabernets were supremely balanced and controlled wines - and which benefitted from a little blending with other Bordeaux grapes.

2011 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($100)

75% of the grapes come from Hillspring, a vineyard the other side of the estate across Highway 29 which provides the water for the rest of the estate. Blended with Malbec and Petit Verdot, this is a floral, perfumed wine with notes of roses and violets. On the palate, it's intense but balanced, the fruits, oak, and tannins all integrated to give a structured wine with a long finish. 

Cabernet grapes dropping before harvest at Trefethen

2007 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($160)

A great opportunity to taste an older example of the previous wine, but one you have to pay an extra $60 for - buy your wines early for better value. The wine has matured beautifully, with immediate aromas of leather, game, and mushroom. The acidity, tannins, and fruits are still highly expressive, but underpinned with a leathery, oaky spiciness. 

2009 HaLo ($200, not yet released)

Rich, ripe black fruits on the nose, which are distinctly chewier on the palate; herbal, floral, and highly perfumed, due to the bay leaves on the Hillspring property; tannins gripping, but smooth from the long ageing before release (the wine isn't available until October); oaky and spicy: despite these big, complex flavours, this is a balanced, integrated wine with a long, lingering finish. 

Corison

One of the few wineries owned by a woman, Corison was established in the mid-1990s by Cathy Corison who had been working in Napa since graduating in the late 1970s. Situated on St Helena Highway near some of Napa's grandest wineries, Corison is little more than a large barn full of barrels with a couple of small tasting tables. Despite the humble surroundings, the wines are expensive but, without hestitation, worth the price: it is a pity, though, that only a select few can afford them.

2010 Corison Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($80)

Despite the Napa Valley assignation, this is a single vineyard wine from one that straddles the Rutherford and St Helena borders. The nose is immediate, with up-front black fruits that are not too ripe with a little greenness, and a full Cabernet nose. The palate has good, gripping tannins washed up by balanced, ripe black fruits with a long juicy finish and an oaky backbone.

2006 Corison Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($95)

A perfumed nose with still vivid cassis, but with dried fruits such as currants coming through; a light, developing earthiness/gameiness, with tobacco leaves. Greener on the palate, tannins still gripping, fruits gently fading into dried fruits, backed up by an oaky spiciness. Long, gripping finish, full of lingering spices.

2011 Corison Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($80, not yet released)

From this supposedly difficult vintage comes this wine with huge ageworthy potential. Aged for even longer than the usual 22-24 months to compensate for the closed, difficult nature of the wine, the 2011 has immediate menthol and cassis aromas, but it's on the palate that it becomes extremely interesting: lots of oak and spice, a young wine full of its potential and ready to mature. The tannins are big and chewy, the fruits juicy, with a long finish.

2008 Corison Kronos Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($210)

From vines grown around the winery and planted in 1971, this is a stunning, unforgettable wine. A velvety, floral, perfumed nose of violets, iris, and lavender, with chocolate and deep black and blue fruits: it's the perfume of the nose that makes it's special. On the palate, the tannins are ripe and gripping at the same time, with light, caressing spices on the tongue. The oak is beautifully integrated, to give the fruit a round structure. The acidity is high, lightening and freshening the complexity. The finish is long, gorgeous, and all in balance.

Kronos vineyard, old vines

The latter wine is one of the greatest I have ever tasted, just when I was wondering whether the price of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon could be justified. At the levels I've been tasting, it's difficult to correlate quality and price: is a wine ever worth $200? Or, many might ask, $50? But when tasting these wines, there are so many things to factor in: the cost of the land, the sustainable farming many wineries are committed to, the investment needed to run a winery, as well as the rarity factor of some of the wines. My conclusion is that once Napa Cabernet Sauvignon falls below $60, it's less likely to have the qualities and characteristics that make the wines so memorable. These prices may not seem very democratic, but it's been amazing and wonderful to see how excited American visitors to Napa are to taste and to experience the wines the area has to offer.

At their very best, Napa Cabernet Sauvignons are evocative reflections of the area's many microclimates and soils; as much as any region I've visited the wines of Napa are a vivid expression of that very French concept, terroir.

California: First Impressions

For the next two months or so, much of this blog is going to be focused on California, whose wineries and regions I'll be visiting. I've been here exactly a week now, and here are some brief highlights before I get round to visiting some renowned wineries in the next few days.

climate

I'm staying in Napa where, no surprises, it's hot. Temperatures have regularly hit the mid-30s during the day, the sun intense and unfiltered by cloud. This is mitigated by the morning fog, which makes the beginning of the day disconcertingly cool. The fog, which rolls in from the Pacific Ocean across the Mayacamas mountains, is famous for allowing Napa Valley to make wines of world renown; what's actually more surprising is the diversity of climates in this part of California. Calistoga, 20 miles north of Napa, is even more blisteringly hot, yet winemakers often source their grapes from just across the mountains in Dry Creek Valley and Russian River Valley, where temperatures are several degrees cooler. These AVAs are in Sonoma County, the other side of the Mayacamas from Napa Valley, but much more exposed to the cooling ocean winds and fogs. I've tasted Cabernet Sauvignons and Zinfandels from Dry Creek Valley far less intense and more varied than their Napa equivalents, as well as cool, restrained Sonoma Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. A weekend trip to the Sonoma coast, just over an hour's drive from Napa, made it evident why the region is capable of producing such classic styles of those grapes: the ocean coastline was constantly shrouded in fog and temperatures didn't rise above 20 degrees.

no vineyards here, but plenty of coastal fog

wines

August Briggs Leveroni Vineyard Chardonnay 2011 ($32*)

Calistoga is a sleepy, hot town straight from the wild west of the nineteenth century. The last thing I expected on stepping into a tasting room off the main street was a such a balanced, refined Chardonnay - which is because the grapes are from the Sonoma side of the Carneros AVA. Aged in 30% new French oak, with 50% malolactic fermentation, this is an understated Chardonnay yet one full of expressive flavour: stone and tropical fruits, particularly apricot and pineapple, with a creamy vanilla character, emphasised on the finish with cinnamon.

August Briggs is a winemaker who used to be a consultant elsewhere in California, as well as Oregon, before setting up his own winery in 1995. He sold the winery three years ago to three former employees, including his nephew, with the intention of retaining Briggs's principles. I also tasted three Pinot Noirs, all single-vineyard and completely different styles, as well as a Syrah from the Page Nord vineyard in Yountville and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Dry Creek Valley. Despite being based in Calistoga, none of the grapes was actually sourced from the area, instead from elsewhere in Napa and across the mountains in Sonoma. Without doubt, those from the cooler Sonoma AVAs were of greater interest.

Laura Michael Dry Creek Old Vines Mayo Family Vineyards Zinfandel 2010 ($35)

 

Laura Michael Oat Hill Estate Zinfandel 2011 ($45)

 

zinfandel in veraison at Laura Michael

Just a couple of minutes north of Calistoga, Laura Michael Wines is another winery that sources its grapes from all over Napa and Sonoma, though the best wine by far came from a vineyard just a few metres from the tasting room. There's a Chardonnay and a rosé (one of the few wineries I've visited that have any rosé left to taste), but the focus is on Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon. The latter were all good, especially the Calistoga Barlow Vineyards ($52), but it was the two Zinfandels that shone.

I've always found it too easy to dismiss Zinfandel as too fruity, jammy, and alcoholic. Although the alcohol is still an issue (these two wines were 15% and 14.5% respectively), I've tasted some serious examples of Zinfandel over the last few months which have changed my mind about the grape. The Dry Creek had lots of immediate ripe fruits, as one would expect from a wine made from Zinfandel, but more red fruits than I was expecting (strawberry, cherry, plum, raspberry), and it was very spicy on the palate, with further oak-influenced vanilla and cream. As pleasing and surprising as this wine was, the Oat Hill Estate, from grapes grown at the winery, was stunning: a more sophisticated wine, perfumed and floral, with subtle but evident spices on the palate; fruits still ripe, but backed up with dry, gripping tannins. This has been aged in American oak (both new and old) for 19 months, giving real structure to the wine. From the hottest AVA of Napa, yet with a just about manageable alcohol.

Laura Michael is, and isn't, a person. The winery was until fairly recently called Zahtila Vineyards - established in 1999 by Laura and her husband. The couple later split, Laura keeping the winery. The name change came when she remarried her first husband, Michael, who now plays a major role in the day-to-day running of the winery. The wines are only sold at the winery or to wine club members: a real shame, for these are wines that deserve to be known.

every winery should have a dog

*California, like most other US states, lists prices before sales tax, meaning the advertised price is never the one you end up paying.