Expensive Wine: Is It Worth It?

One of the most legendary wineries in the world is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, or DRC for short. That it's known through a TLA (three-letter abbreviation, yes I hate them too) shows just how iconic the winery is. They're the sole owner of La Romanée, one of Burgundy's most prestigious vineyards, and also make wines from other Grands Crus such as La Tâche, Richebourg, and Echézeaux. I had never tasted any of their wines before, which gives an idea of how hard they are to get hold of. They're only available on allocation or through auction to rich, passionate wine collectors, and the cheapest wine has an opening price of $600 a bottle. I've always wanted to taste some DRC in order to answer the simple question: is it worth it?

Dante and Carlo Mondavi

I went to a tasting showcasing a Sonoma winery, Raen. This winery is run by two brothers, Carlo and Dante, who just happen to be the grandsons of Robert Mondavi, the scion of Napa wine. Mondavi helped transform Napa wine (and fall out with his family at the same time) after visiting Bordeaux and Burgundy and being convinced of the importance of terroir - that the best wine must reflect where it comes from. In 2002, he took his family, including Carlo and Dante, back to Bordeaux and Burgundy, where the two of them fell in love with Pinot Noir after a day tasting Domaine Leflaive, DRC, and Domaine Dujac. I sometimes wish I had been born into that kind of family.

At the tasting, they generously poured a bottle of DRC and the perhaps less famous but equally prestigious Domaine Dujac. This wasn't just generous of them, but it was brave to pour two renowned Burgundy producers alongside their own wines. They poured one wine from their first vintage in 2013, as well as three wines from the more challenging dry, warm 2015 harvest. The Raen wines were of course very different from the Burgundy counterparts, riper, fuller, and softer - as they should be, because California has a warmer and more consistent climate than Burgundy. The severe frost currently ravaging much of France is never going to be an issue in California. These wines cost $60-80; expensive but par for the course for high-quality Sonoma Pinot Noir.

All of the wines had been made with a fair amount of whole cluster fermentation, a method of making wine which adds spice, body, and tannin. For this reason, there was a green stalkiness to some of the wines, and this was particularly evident in the DRC from the Echézeaux vineyard. The wine was quite tannic, almost aggressive, with a firm stucture and a fruitiness which certainly suggests the wine will age well for years to come. Was it worth $900? Of course not, but there are enough people, including the Mondavis, who are willing to pay that price.

DRC front left, Dujac front right, all the others Raen

As for the Domaine Dujac from Morey-St-Denis, that was simply one of the best wines I've tasted. Morey-St-Denis is my favourite village in the Côte de Nuits; less famous than its neighbours, it combines the power of Gevrey-Chambertin with the elegance of Chambolle-Musigny. This wine was wonderful: fine and lightly grainy tannins, rich fruits, spices, and a long, long finish which just wouldn't go away. The cost of this wine: around $100. This was a village wine and Dujac's Premier and Grand Cru wines go for much more. I can only imagine how good they must be, because I can't afford to buy them.

The co-owner of DRC, Aubert de Villaine, has been known to complain that the expense of his wines makes them unaffordable for all but the wealthiest collector. It might seem a strange complaint to make - why charge so much for them? - but the market sets the price of the wine much higher than he would like. And it is a shame because I would like to be able to drink these wines more often and share them with friends. I can't do that, but luckily there's plenty of wine out there just as good for a tenth of the price.

Washington v. The Rest of the World

I've blogged about the excellent wines being made in Washington a few times now, so it was refreshing to attend a tasting that approached the region in a different way. The tasting was located at Sunset Magazine's new headquarters in Oakland, led by a panel of leading Washington winemakers, Bob Betz of Betz Family Wines, David Rosenthal of Chateau Sainte Michelle, and Greg Harrington of Gramercy Cellars. They spoke passionately and enthusiastically about Washington's wines, and the geographical, topographical, and climatic characteristics of the state which make it different from other regions.

What made this tasting particularly enlightening was the way it was structured, with three flights of wines each featuring one of Washington's major grape varieties. In each flight, the first of the four wines was a named wine from Washington acting as a template for the other wines. The other three were tasted blind, examples of the same grape variety to act as a comparison without prejudice. This was a great way of focusing on the characteristics of Washington wine, learning about other regions, while really making us think about why each wine tastes like it does.

Riesling

The best wines from Riesling are made with little interference in the winery, and it's all about the variety and the vineyard or region the grapes come from. I'm still not as excited about Washington's Riesling as some local winemakers are, so it was interesting to taste a couple of wines in comparison to Australia and Germany. The template was Eroica ($22; ✪✪✪✪), a collaboration made since 1999 between Chateau Sainte Michelle, by far the state's largest producer, and Ernst Loosen, one of the iconic winemakers of Germany. It's a pleasant, good-value, medium-dry wine with citrus and stone fruit aromas, but one that seems aimed more at local rather than international tastes.

The three wines tasted blind alongside it were around the same price. The wine from Australia, Yalumba's Pewsey Vale ($20; ✪✪✪✪), is a classic representation of Eden Valley, one often used in educational tastings to demonstrate the intense lime and dry mineral characteristics of Australia's world-class Riesling. The German Riesling was from Mosel, a Kabinett whose sweetness and weight made it feel more like a Spätlese: there's a combination of elegance and richness to the best German wines that no other Riesling-producing region can match. Drink Christoffel's Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett ($27; ✪✪✪✪✪) with spicy food, and have a tongue-twisting competition saying the name.

The other Riesling was an outlier: again from Washington, made by the dramatically named EFESTĒ ($20; ✪✪✪✪✪) and again from Evergreen Vineyard in Ancient Lakes AVA where the Eroica mainly comes from. It was off-dry with an intense texture, which made most people in the room mistake it for Alsace. The wine made me reassess Washington Riesling - that it can compete with, and be mistaken for, Rieslings from around the world, and at a very good price.

Syrah

Greg Harrington, an MS turned winemaker, described Syrah as a wine for Pinot Noir lovers with sophisticated palates. This brought out a chuckle, but he was making a serious point. He continued that there are Syrah producers who make the wines to be like Cabernet Sauvignon, and there are others who make it like Pinot Noir. He firmly places himself in the latter category - not least because the northern Rhône, geographically and in terms of climate, is so close to Burgundy.

One of the wines we tasted underlined his point, albeit in a roundabout way. Wind Gap are an eclectic producer from California; their Nellessen Vineyard Syrah ($42; ✪✪✪✪), which we tasted blind, was from a cooler area of Sonoma. Fermented in whole clusters it smelt very carbonic, that's to say bubblegum and strawberries. If I hadn't known it was Syrah, I would have guessed the wine to have been from Beaujolais, a region which has the same granite soils as the northern Rhône and a similar climate - and I've read old nineteenth-century textbooks that group Beaujolais and the northern Rhône together. It may be that we should be thinking about the connections between Syrah and Gamay, or the northern Rhône and Beaujolais, much more - even if it takes US producers to point out those connections.

The Rocks District

The template wine was called Lagniappe and made by Gramercy ($55; ✪✪✪✪) from Red Willow, one of Washington's first and still leading vineyards. Another of the blind wines, The Psycheledic by Sleight of Hand ($60; ✪✪✪✪), was also from Washington, from the recently-established AVA, The Rocks District of Milton-Freeman, one of the many Washington regions which excels in Syrah. The two wines highlighted the differences that come from a winemaker's philosophy as well as Washington's terroir: Gramercy's wine was noticeably restrained in comparison to the smoky, meaty qualities of the other wine.

The final wine was the 2014 Côte-Rôtie by Saint-Cosme ($65; ✪✪✪✪✪), a tannic, dry, subdued wine which reminded me of just how French French wine is, showing how expressively Syrah reflects where it comes from.

Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon, Red Willow Vineyard

I often find it hard to write anything interesting about Cabernet Sauvignon, but this was a refreshing line-up. The template was the 2013 Père de Famille from Betz Family Estate ($75; ✪✪✪✪✪), which showed just how well Cabernet works in Washington. The wine has the tannic structure expected of Cabernet, with the ripe black fruits that come in a fairly warm New World climate - a combination which summarises Washington red wine. Another of the blind wines was again from Washington (that was the one predictable aspect of the tasting). The 2014 Cabernet from Abeja, an established producer, tasted like it was from Coonawarra in Australia, minty and herbal ($52; ✪✪✪✪). Napa was featured as a comparison too, the 2012 from Forman was dusty and massively tannic ($115; ✪✪✪✪) - Washington wines are much more approachable when young. Finally, there was a wine from Margaux. It's not often I get to taste expensive Bordeaux, and I certainly wasn't expecting to do so at a Washington tasting. The best Bordeaux needs to be tasted with some age, and the 2009 from Château Rauzan-Ségla ($155; ✪✪✪✪✪✪) was evolving wonderfully, with mature leather aromas, but with fresh acidity and black fruits.

Can the best of Washington age as well as the best of Bordeaux and other established regions? Maybe that could be the subject for another tasting. 

The Tasting Room

Since moving to Napa nearly eighteen months ago, I have become closely acquainted with the tasting room. These can range in style from a casual lounge bar to cold sheds to a more formal, appointment-only setting. Nearly every winery has to have an area to greet customers, as on-site sales form an important part of their business. For the first few months I was here, I visited many tasting rooms, forming a view of California's wine culture through not just the wines themselves but the personalities and knowledge of those working in the tasting rooms. Then I got a job working in a tasting room, giving me a view from the other side. These are some of the things I've learnt about tasting rooms and American drinking habits.

the varietal

Americans use the word varietal interchangeably as adjective and noun - Chardonnay is a varietal, rather than a variety - and the varietal wine rules large. "I don't like blends" is a phrase often heard in the tasting room (the Californian rule for varietal wines is that it must be made from only 75% of that variety, meaning that many varietal wines are in actual fact blends). Those winemakers who wish to move away from varietal wines to more complex blends face an uphill struggle to convince customers that a wine isn't just about one grape variety (though one way to do that is to make a blend so expensive that customers will assume the wine is beyond criticism). The addiction to varietal wines also leads to set opinions that are hard to budge: "I don't like Chardonnay," is another frequent phrase heard (23% of wine sold in the US is single-varietal Chardonnay), followed by a refusal to taste anything made from Chardonnay.

sweetness

"Do you have any sweet wines?" is a question I am often asked, usually by someone from an older generation. I speculate that this continued fondness for sweet wines comes from the taste for underfermented wine developed during Prohibition. It's certainly remarkable how many drinkers don't like anything that isn't sweet, leading to the popularity of "port" (locally made fortified wine that doesn't care for any international naming rules) and White Zinfandel. Wines that are dry but have ripe fruit flavours are often mistaken for being sweet, and it's hard to explain that sweetness in a wine comes from sugar.

the bachelorette party

It used to be the stag group, but is there anything more horrific than a bachelorette party (a hen night in the UK)? A group of young women, all scantily clad with an obligatory large sun hat to protect the exposed skin, being driven around in a limousine, while drinking copious amounts of wine all day long. They're shrill, deafening, drunk, and often very rude: having to deal with them is not quite what I got into wine for.

the walk-ins

Both Napa and Sonoma each have nearly 500 wineries. The main reason people from across the country visit the two counties is to go to the tasting rooms and taste wine, yet there are people who come with no interest in wine whatsoever. They drive all the way to a winery, walk in and say they're just having a look; or they just want to buy some merchandise as a momento of their visit to wine country (branded coasters are very popular); or they may be a couple who have had an argument and realise they want to spend even less time together in public than they do in a car. "Do you want to taste some wine?" I ask. "Not today." It's rather like going to an art gallery and not wanting to look at the art.

the vines

autumn vines

In quieter moments, I look up from the tasting room and see Zinfandel vines planted in the 1940s. They're beautiful, with their thick trunks, bushy canopies, individually planted rather than on trellises. There are even a couple of rows planted in the 1880s. They speak of California's history, when it was still young and developing, and of the European immigrants who helped establish the wine industry. Here they still are, rather humbling, and a reminder of the intimate connection between wine and nature.

spitting

It doesn't happen. The wine is there to be drunk, not merely tasted. To spit or pour away the wine is a waste: "my father would turn in his grave if he saw me pouring good wine away."

the British accent

John Peel, the late British radio DJ, first made his name in the US in the early 1960s by exaggerating his Liverpool accent to take advantage of the British Invasion led by the Beatles. My British accent is likewise an advantage: Americans assume I am knowledgeable, erudite even, and to be trusted. It's a little embarrassing, but what can I do?

the locals

These are the people who have seen Napa and Sonoma change from small rural communities into internationally recognised wine regions. They remember jug wine, collecting it as children for their parents; they've ridden horses and seen funeral processions go through the vineyards; they recall the personalities who have shaped California wine, some of them famous, some of them unknown. They show how young, yet how rich, California's history is.

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.

Bonfires Green: Napa in Bloom

Driving around the Napa and Sonoma Valleys in this balmy March, I've been noticing the different stages of the vines as they slowly begin to enter the growing season. As we have barely had a winter - a day or two of rain here and there and the nights get chilly - some of the vines are still autumnal, unpruned, with flowers wildly growing among them. Others were pruned some time ago and already they are beginning to flower. It's fascinating seeing the differences at this time of the year, down to a winemaker's or grape-grower's choices, the fertility of the soil, exposure to the sun, age of the vines, and the trellising system.

This vineyard is right on the edge of the Napa city itself, where the vines are already beginning to blossom. Even though Napa is cooler than the rest of the valley, there's more direct exposure to the sun in these flat vineyards and the nights don't get as cold or foggy.

Slightly further up the Silverado Trail, Black Stallion's vines are well into the flowering process. These vines are probably Chardonnay, which is beginning to flower across Napa and Sonoma.

The next two vineyards are right next to each other on the Silverado Trail, yet in a completely different state. One is pruned and already beginning to show flowers, while the other is unpruned with wild cover crop, looking like it's in total disarray. Minimal pruning such as this originated in Australia, where it's widely practised. In warm climates, it increases yields without affecting quality. I don't know if this vineyard is deliberately following the Australian practice, or if it's simply because they've been waiting all winter for winter to actually happen. A month ago I visited Kelly Fleming Wines in Calistoga, where they hadn't pruned the vines yet. The reason was simple: they were waiting for it to rain before pruning, otherwise there was a chance any rain would spread fungal diseases in the vines. It still hasn't rained since.

At nearby Baldacci Family Vineyards in Stag's Leap, the vineyard workers were busy pruning the Cabernet Sauvignon vines, with still a bit of work to do. Here, the vines have been kept tidy with two canes left growing on the vine before being completely pruned this weekend. Winter pruning keeps the vine healthy, but also reduces vigour. Baldacci have likely been trying to keep a balance between healthy and vigorous vines over the dry, warm winter.

In Oakville, two of Napa's most prestigious and expensive wineries are taking similar but different approaches to tending their vines. Groth are letting the grass grow long between vines, which have been minimally pruned but then tidied by hand. Those at Plumpjack have the same trellis system and long grass between the rows, but the vines have been fully pruned.

At nearby Saddleback, the carefully pruned Pinot Blanc vines are just beginning to blossom.

Besides the thick older vines above, there are lots of plantings of young vines around Napa. They're stick thin, carefully trained and pruned to aid their development. Mustard flowers grow in between their vines, which has been a characteristic sight over the last two months.




Back towards Sonoma in the Carneros AVA, the Chardonnay vines are really beginning to bloom - what D. H. Lawrence called the "the bonfires green" of spring. Back in England, spring was one of my favourite seasons, when the bleakness of winter passes and the land livens up in colour. Here it's different, because the winter's as warm as an English summer, but seeing the vines come to life is still beautiful and invigorating, making me look forward to seeing the vines progress over the summer months.

Play the Sonoma Pinot

It's easy to stereotype California, which makes it so exciting to be confounded by those stereotypes. 'California is hot and uniform; its Pinot Noirs are as a result big, jammy, and shouldn't be made.' Although there's still much Pinot Noir being made which is too fruity and unsubtle, it's clear that California is increasingly capable of producing Pinots that can compete on an international level. This is because California is certainly not hot and uniform, but consists of a series of microclimates that winemakers are seriously exploring with exciting results.

where?

To give an example of the different climates of California that don't conform to geography, my one favourite area for Pinot Noir has long been around Santa Barbara - less than two hours north of Los Angeles. Here the coastal AVAs of Santa Ynez and Santa Rita are cooled dramatically by coastal fogs to the point that Santa Rita is the coolest AVA in California. I haven't visited Santa Barbara yet, something I hope to rectify.

Now Sonoma, north of San Francisco, is attracting attention for its Pinots, as well as its Chardonnays. Sonoma folk make a big play on how cool a climate Sonoma County has, in order to emphasise the area's suitability for the classic Burgundy grapes. Compared to Napa, it is cooler - the ocean fog isn't interrupted by mountains - but it has still reached more than 30ºC when I've visited in recent weeks. However, the temperature drops sharply at night, and the fog lingers in the morning - and the land by the ocean is particularly cool.

Sonoma is divided into several AVAs, which can be confusing. Sonoma Coast AVA is the source for great Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, including for Napa producers, but it extends much further inland than it should. Russian River Valley AVA has also been extended so that it flows into the Sonoma Coast AVA as well as encompassing the small Green Valley AVA. Further to the north are Dry Creek Valley AVA, where some great, intense Zinfandel is made. Beyond Sonoma county to the north are Anderson Valley AVA, home of some of the best vineyards for Pinot Noir, and Mendocino, a diverse area with some particularly cool spots for Pinot.

Many of the best producers are located in Russian River Valley, even if they source some of their grapes from other AVAs, often from Anderson Valley in Mendocino County to the north. It's a beautiful, secluded area, with roughly laid, winding roads tracking through forests and fields. The major city is Santa Rosa; smaller towns, with tasting rooms and inviting restaurants, are hippyish Sebastopol and self-consciously well-to-do Healdsburg.

producers

Joseph Swan

Joseph Swan, established in the late 1960s, is one of California's great maverick wineries. The GPS takes you elsewhere and if you do manage to find the winery it's likely to be in a state of pleasing confusion. The wines, now made by Swan's son-in-law Rod Berglund, manage to be both weird, funky, and slightly oxidised yet hypnotic, enticing, and unforgettable.

There are several single-vineyard Pinot Noirs made, all exceptional and, despite the purpose of this blog to highlight the characteristics of Sonoma Pinot Noir, completely individual and like nothing else. Saralee's 2011 ($39) is a dark, intense wine that powers its red fruits through with peppery spices and savoury notes. The Great Oak 2010 ($36) is more floral and perfumed and less spicy, its fruits more curranty. The Trenton View 2011 ($38) is more of a classic Pinot, with strawberry aromas; intense but nuanced, with a dry, peppery finish. The Cuvée de Trois 2011 ($30) is a combination of these three styles: intense, weighty, slightly difficult, but full of delicious berries.

Littorai

Littorai have recently been receiving a lot of attention as the leading light of the "New California," although winemaker Ted Lemon has been making wine since the 1980s. He studied at the University of Dijon, where he gained an interest in wine; by his early 20s, he was Burgundy's first ever American winemaker. He returned to the US to work in Napa, where he became disillusioned with conventional winemaking practices which led to an interest in biodynamics. With his wife, he started looking for the perfect site to make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay; although they began making their own wine in 1993, it wasn't until 2003 that they bought their own property.

Littorai are biodynamic in all but name, with flowers, plants, and beehives to maintain a flourishing ecosystem; so particular is the set-up that the bees are a specific pollinating only, non-stinging, and non-honey producing species. Production is small and hands-on - when I visited, the first grapes were coming in from the harvest, overseen personally by Ted Lemon.

Most of the Pinot Noirs are single-vineyard, but the Sonoma Coast 2013 (c.$40), which has just been bottled, is a combination of their vineyards from the second pressing of the grapes. It's a friendly, forward Pinot, with tart raspberries and cherries and a slight savoury feel. The Savoy Vineyard 2012 ($65) is from Anderson Valley; smoky, toasty, with soft, ripe, red fruits, and white pepper and sage on the savoury finish. Haven Vineyard on Sonoma Coast was the couple's first purchase in 2001; the 2012 ($90) is earthier and gamier, with more gripping tannins, spicier with a lightly chewy finish. My favourite of the wines I tasted was from Hirsch Vineyard, which has become one of the leading vineyards in Russian River Valley for Pinot Noir. Littorai were the first to bottle from the vineyard in 1994, leading to a longstanding relationship. The 2012 ($70) has an interesting combination of smoke and earth with rose petals. The tannins are bigger and chewier: this is quite a big, aggressive wine for a Pinot Noir, but well structured and firm.

Ant Hill Farms

Located on a converted dry fruits factory site in Dry Creek Valley, Ant Hill have been going for over ten years. It's just three friends who work in the wine industry, together making single-vineyard Pinot Noirs and some (excellent) Syrah. Like all makers of Pinot Noir, everything they do is very particular - hand-picked and -processed grapes, vineyards fermented separately, grapes cold soaked before fermentation to extract flavours, 40% of the grapes fermented in whole clusters - a figure which has gone up, to get different tannins from the stems - with a slow, steady MLF after pressing which doesn't finish until spring.

Comptche Ridge 2012 ($50) comes from a northerly vineyard in Mendocino, just six miles inland. This is cool climate without a doubt, and it's reflected in the wine: austere, earthy, medicinal, and mineral, a drying finish offset only by a high acidity. The fruits are very reserved. Peters Vineyard reflects the confusing nature of Sonoma's vineyards. Just southwest of Sebastopol, it's at the intersection of Russian River Valley, Green Valley, and Sonoma Coast; it's also part of Sebastopol Hills and in the Petaluma Gap, through which cooling winds blow - both of these are potential future AVAs. Again, this is cool climate, for it was once thought too cold to grow grapes; instead, the land was used for dairy and apples. The vineyard is near Littorai, where the Gold Ridge soils are light, fine-grained, fluffy, and porous. The wine ($55) itself is more forgiving than the Comptche Ridge, with more apparent red fruits, a savoury Pinot smell, and nice spices on the palate. Tina Marie Vineyard is in Russian River Valley and on my visit some of the grapes from this vintage were already undergoing cold soak in the unglamorous plastic bins. This is a friendlier climate, producing smokier wines; the wine ($55) is chewier and jammier, with more candied fruits.

As with many of Sonoma's Pinots, all of Ant Hill Farm's wines are food-friendly; I was given a bottle of the Demuth Vineyard 2012 ($50), from Anderson Valley, whose spicy, floral, gamey aromas complemented perfectly the duck cassoulet at Grace's Table in Napa a couple of weeks later.

Cartograph

A brief visit to their tasting room in Healdsburg introduced me to this winery's superb Pinot Noirs. Once again, there is a concentration on the characters of different vineyards. Perli Vineyard is 600m high in Mendocino Ridge AVA, where the vineyards have to be above 300m, above the fog line and with plenty of exposure to the sun on the steep slopes. A light, upfront wine at first, the 2011 ($48) has a surprising grainy, gripping, bitter mouth: a good introduction to the winery's approach to creating wines that are delicate and full of depth and complexity at the same time. In contrast, the Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($38), from two vineyards, Leonardo Julio and Floodgate, is exposed to fog, creating an earthy, almost stinky wine, with rose petals and raspberries and a dusty, dry finish. The Floodgate Pinot Noir 2011 ($40) is much darker and denser, with blackberries and blueberries as well as strawberries; producing what the previous wine was hinting at, with subtly gripping tannins, a smoky, barnyard feel, and a lightly spicy finish.

Senses

A winery that's just three years old and still very much finding its way: there's only a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir currently produced. Like Ant Hill Farms, coincidentally, Senses are three friends making wines on the side from their day jobs. Again, it's a hands-on job, though they've been helped by one of the three's family owning a farm with a disused vineyard, which they now get their Pinot Noir from. They've also received quite a bit of help from neighbouring wineries Red Car and Dutton Goldfield - Sonoma is a definitely an area with a strong community feel. The 2012 Pinot (c.$40) is a clear indication that the winery has lots of promise: red fruits that are developing a darker texture as the wine ages, with a long, spicy finish. The enthusiasm that the Senses team express for their Pinot Noir in particular is both justified and characteristic of every winemaker in Sonoma: the wines are still unknown, full of promise, and at the start of an exciting future.

For all that Sonoma and its various AVAs are producing great Pinot Noir, each winery - and each wine - has its own distinct character, expressive of philosophy, vineyard, and vintage. This makes the area difficult to define and pin down, but that's how it should be; already Pinot aficionados - who are a picky, geeky bunch - are seeking out their favourite vineyards and wineries. This is an area that's going to get more and more interesting and is one to follow.

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.