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.

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara

With summer-loving students on their skateboards, surfers riding the waves that roll up to sandy beaches, and the main street lined with tall palm trees, Santa Barbara is as Californian as it gets. The culture is laid-back, self-confident, and independent, keen to assert its differences from the rest of the state even if to the outsider it seems quintessentially Californian.

the area

Santa Barbara is a coastal town about 150km north of Los Angeles and is as far south as quality winemaking gets in California. Santa Ynez Valley AVA is 30 minutes inland and within it is Santa Rita Hills AVA, which is the coolest AVA in California. Winds and fog come from the Pacific Ocean, cooling pocketed microclimates that are ideal for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Further north, about an hour and a half from Santa Barbara, is the large Santa Maria Valley AVA which is also cooled by coastal fog and which became famous for its Pinot Noirs in the 1980s. There are lots of vineyards here, but most wineries prefer to base themselves within the more attractive area of Santa Ynez.

Santa Ynez Valley

the towns

Solvang

I stayed in Solvang, a small tourist town in Santa Ynez Valley and one of the strangest places I've visited. It was founded by Danish settlers over a hundred years ago and now functions as a model Denmark village. There are pizza-selling windmills rising around the town, gift shops pushing Danish embroidery, quasi-Danish pubs and restaurants, and Danish flags blowing in the breeze besides American ones. Danish is not spoken. It's a busy town full of tourists from all over the world; clearly, this Danish-American hybrid holds some fascination that draws people in.

Further south along the coast, Santa Barbara is a university surfing town. The main street is State Street, a long boulevard lined with shops, restaurants, and palm trees, leading to the ocean. Further away from the centre is Isla Vista, the university area known for its party scene, populated with tanned students on skateboards wearing back-to-front baseball hats. I only got to spend a couple of hours in Santa Barbara, but I liked the relaxed, easy, seaside way of life.

the wines

view from Au Bon Climat

The AVAs are renowned for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay - Santa Barbara was made famous by Sideways nearly ten years ago. (The Hitching Post, a small, nondescript wooden restaurant featured in the film, is near Solvang.) The Pinots are fruity and oaky, yet with depth, structure, and subtlety. The use of oak in the Chardonnays varies, but they are marked by tropical fruits. Riesling, unusually for California, can also be successful because of Santa Rita Hills's cool climate. Rhône grapes also do well: Syrah is peppery in Santa Rita Hills and fuller and fruitier in the rest of Santa Ynez Valley. The two wineries which define the area are Au Bon Climat and Qupé: the former specialise in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, while Qupé are known for their Rhône varieties - their single-varietal Roussanne and Marsanne are unique, ageworthy wines that develop for years in the bottle.

Au Bon Climat

The purpose of my visit to Santa Barbara was for a wedding, but that enabled me to meet Jim Clendenen at his Au Bon Climat winery in Santa Maria Valley - not only that, but to share a lunch cooked by Clendenen himself. 

Clendenen's lunch

Clendenen is a maverick: something of a hippy who since his first vintage in 1982 has built a 70,000-case winery; a brash, up-front individual who makes wine of individual character appreciated in the finest restaurants around the world; passionate about wine and the industry and wonderfully dismissive of big names (off the record of course); and a loving father with two ex-wives.

Au Bon Climat make almost exclusively Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The major exception is Hildegard, a wine that demonstrates Clendenen's willingness to challenge preconceived truths. The blend is Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, and Aligoté, the three grapes that were planted on Corton-Charlemagne, before Burgundy changed the rules to allow only Chardonnay in the Grands Crus. Clendenen wished to name the wine C. Charlemagne, but was advised that was not a good idea, so called it after Charlemagne's wife instead. An historic, world-class tribute to a style of wine that Burgundy refuses to make any more, the Hildegard is one of my favourite wines and I got to try the 2012 and 2006 side by side. The 2006 proved just how ageworthy this elegant but bold wine is, retaining its rich creaminess and acidity while gaining mature nutty notes.

For non-Burgundy wines, Clendenen uses the Clendenen Family Vineyards label. The 2008 Syrah-Viognier is a fruity wine that has a classy, concentrated structure: I was lucky to take an open bottle back with me and it was still drinking wonderfully well two days later. The 2012 Sauvignon Blanc is outstanding too, fermented and aged in a small amount of new oak: the grape is taken seriously instead of being a New Zealand wannabe.

The lunch was predictably epic, with risotto, chicken stew, vegetables, bread, and salad to choose from, accompanied by 15 wines. The rich Chardonnays worked less well with the heavy food than the Sauvignon Blanc and Qupé's 2011 Roussanne, both of whose light acidity balanced the food. Of the several different Pinots, the Isabelle - named after Jim's daughter - was my favourite with its dark fruits, smoky intensity, and gripping tannins.

view from Riverbench winery, Santa Maria Valley

The AVAs of Santa Barbara are young, with quality wine dating back only to the 1980s. In that time, they have quickly established themselves as producers of world-class Chardonnay and Pinot Noir - though the Rhône grapes deserve more recognition too. It's quite a different area from Napa for instance, cooler in climate but also in sensibility. The producers are quietly learning their trade, aware of their inexperience but unpretentiously and rightly confident in the quality of their wines.

Pinot Noir Around the World

For a grape that's notoriously difficult to grow, Pinot Noir is produced in most major wine-producing countries. Although it's at its best in cool or moderate regions, Pinot Noir can be found in Spain, Portugal, South Africa, and Australia, to name just a few warmer climates. The most famous classical regions for the grape are Burgundy and Champagne, but it's also found in other European cool areas such as Alsace, Germany, and even England. Elsewhere in the world, Oregon and Central Otago are the most strongly associated with Pinot Noir but other areas are producing exceptional Pinot Noir, such as Yarra Yarra and Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia, and Santa Barbara and Sonoma in California. Styles vary according to climate and winemaker's preferences, making Pinot Noir a harder grape to pin down than its reputation suggests.

I recently attended a tasting of Pinot Noir wines at Back Room Wines, which was followed by a blind tasting with my Diploma Study Group. Here are the areas I tasted wines from.

Burgundy, France

With its moderate climate, Burgundy is the northernmost limit for the production of quality red wine in Europe. (Pinot Noir is also important for the production of Champagne, which is further north but does not make red wine.) Some of the most famous and expensive red wines come from the Côte de Nuits, a series of villages including Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, and Vosne-Romanée. The wines are expensive because making red wine here is seriously difficult, because it's made in small quantities, and because there are people out there willing to spend too much money on wine.

Marsannay

Marsannay is the furthest north village in the Côte de Nuits, producing, uniquely for Burgundy, rosé from Pinot Noir. It also produces light, fruity, and attractive red wines, which can be extremely good value given the village's lack of fame.

Charles Audoin Les Longeroires 2011 ($38)

This wine didn't feel that light - there's a dark undertone to Burgundy's wines which can surprise. The wine had a nice, involved complexity, although it lacked subtlety: smoky raspberries, with black liquorice and a meaty, bacon nose, and a good, round mouthfeel. Substantial but slightly out of balance. ✪✪✪✪

Vosne-Romanée

Home to one of the most exclusive wineries in the world, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and six Grand Cru vineyards, wines from Vosne-Romanée are regarded as some of, if not, the finest Pinot Noir in the world.

Domaine Michel Gros Vosne-Romanée Clos de la Fontaine 1995

This was quite a treat, brought along to our blind tasting by a member of my Diploma Study Group. The garnet colour immediately gave its age away, followed by extremely mature aromas on the nose of game, mushrooms, leather, earth, and dirt, with dried strawberries and cherries. The acidity on the palate was remarkably fresh, with pepper and liquorice spices still tingly, even if the primary red fruit aromas had faded. An outstanding wine come to the end of its life - so a great time to be able to taste it. ✪✪✪✪✪✪

Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

The northernmost part of Italy is one of its most interesting. North of Lake Garda is Trentino-Alto Adige; the latter is mainly German-speaking, while Trentino is Italian. Many of the best wines come from high-altitude vineyards. Both Alto Adige and Trentino have a high proportion of DOC wines - 70% of Trentino's wines are labelled DOC.

Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige Trentino Pinot Nero 2011 ($33)

This interesting, slightly unpredictable wine comes from an agricultural and vinicultural college. A nice smoky, fruity nose, with raspberries and red cherries. The tannins on the palate are quite firm, with a good, full, spicy mouthfeel. The wine is pleasingly rustic and just about in balance, with the fruits at the beginning and end of the mouthfeel and the acidity and tannins in the middle. ✪✪✪✪

Central Otago, New Zealand

The most southerly vineyards in the world are grown in New Zealand's only continental climate where daily and seasonal temperature variation add to the intensity of the wines. 75% of Central Otago's vines are Pinot Noir, which was only first planted in the 1980s. In such a short period, the area has gained quite a reputation for fruity, lush, deep-flavoured Pinot Noir.

Wild Earth Pinot Noir 2010 ($31)

A fruity, perfumed, upfront nose that's also gamey and meaty, even a bit stinky. On the palate, there is very good acidity, but the tannins dissipate too quickly. ✪✪✪

Casablanca, Chile

Chile's climate is generally warm, but at altitude and under the influence of the Humboldt Current from the Atlantic Ocean there is the potential for white grapes and cooler climate black grapes. Morning fog is a particularly cooling influence in the Casablanca Valley, the only area of Chile where more white grapes are planted than black.

Kingston Estate Alazan Pinot Noir 2011 ($33)

On ungrafted roots and granite hillside slopes, this was an interesting if rather big Pinot. The nose was fruity, meaty, and rather obvious, but the palate was more integrated and subtle, with pleasing acidity and gripping tannins. ✪✪✪

Oregon, USA

The history of winemaking in Oregon is recent. When David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards moved to Oregon in 1965 to pursue his dream of making Burgundy-style wines, he was told by his university professors at UC Davis that it was impossible to grow grapes there. Fifteen years later, it was his 1975 Pinot Noir that brought the world's attention to the state's wines. Now Pinot Noir dominates production to the extent that it accounts for over 60% of plantings, mostly in cool, damp Willamette Valley south of Portland.

J. Christopher Lumière Eola-Amity Hills Pinot Noir 2012 ($41)

The shallow, rocky, volcanic soils of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA in Willamette Valley result in small berries and concentrated wines. Cooling ocean breezes also prolong the growing season. From one of Oregon's leading producers, this wine has beautiful red fruits on the nose, with a subtle but enticing earthiness and smokiness. On the palate, the tannins are grainy and involved, with subtle spices and some meatiness. ✪✪✪✪✪

Adelsheim Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2012 ($32)

Adelsheim are one of my favourite Oregon producers, but I was a bit disappointed with this wine, finding it too upfront and warm. Ripe strawberries and raspberries dominate, with a creamy, chocolate element, given some depth with pepper and liquorice. Just too fruity, with the oak not sufficiently integrated. ✪✪✪

Santa Barbara, USA

A semi-tropical climate two hours north of Los Angeles may not seem the best place to make Pinot Noir, but that's what Santa Barbara and its surrounding AVAs have been doing since its emergence in the 1980s. The Pacific Ocean has a cooling influence, bringing fog into the hills. Santa Rita Hills is the coolest AVA in California; here, wind can be a problem and the best sites are those that are sheltered.

Au Bon Climat Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir 2013 ($22)

The entry-level Pinot from Santa Barbara's most famous winery, this is a good-value wine with a nice, if not particularly deep, character. A quite oaky nose at first, with smoke, toast, vanilla, and cloves, is given some grace with cherry blossoms and strawberry and raspberry aromas. Likewise on the palate, with extra flavours of cola, pepper, and liquorice. ✪✪✪✪

Fiddlehead Fiddlestix - 728 Santa Rita Hills 2010 ($38)

A very inviting wine, with ripe, round strawberries. Full-bodied for a Pinot Noir, its ripe red fruit flavours, oak, and tannins are nevertheless well-balanced and integrated. ✪✪✪✪

One thing in common all these Pinots had was price: it's very hard to get a quality Pinot Noir for less than $30. There are other shared characteristics, such as red fruits and a certain meatiness. However, there was a great variety of styles showing one of the reasons why Pinot Noir is so popular with producers - it reflects terroir, expressing the nature of the land, climate, and winemaker. From light and subtle to full and fruity, there are many faces to Pinot Noir.

This is my first blog to feature ratings using my new ✪ to ✪✪✪✪✪✪✪ system, explained here.

Grüner Veltliner

Austrian wine is now synonymous with quality, but has for some time existed in its own niche. It's a rich country, with a wealthy domestic market able to buy the best wines meaning that the rest of the world only has limited access to what Austria has to offer. The country was also beset by a huge scandal in the mid-1980s, when it was discovered that a number of producers were adding an illegal additive to wines to make them fuller bodied and, where (in)appropriate, sweeter. The discovery caused a huge commercial setback for the wine industry, but also led to a concerted and successful determination to raise the standards, and therefore the quality, of Austrian wine.

Although Austria produces fine red wine from grapes such as Blaufrankisch, its international reputation has been raised by its white wine, in particular from the Grüner Veltliner grape. It's become quite fashionable, seen often on good wine lists and in good wine shops, though plantings outside Austria are still very small. New Zealand has perhaps experimented most successfully with the grape, but there are still only small plantings in Gisbourne on the North Island and Central Otago on the South. In Austria itself, it accounts for around a third of all plantings, at its best in the Wachau, Kamptal, and Kremstal regions just north of Vienna.

the grape

The consistency of quality of wines made from Grüner Veltliner is remarkably high, but as the tasting below demonstrated there is quite a variety of styles. The grape is late ripening, so needs a relatively warm climate - which is why the grape is grown in Austria, but not cooler Germany. It is marked by a peppery character and can be quite full-bodied with some ageing potential, although it is very rarely aged in oak.

tasting

Back Room Wines in Napa holds a weekly evening sampling wines from a single grape variety. This week was Grüner Veltliner; here are the wines which were on offer, all of them available at the shop.

Tatomer Meeresboden 2013, Santa Barbara, California ($25)

A young winery from a Californian winemaker who has spent time learning his trade with the awesome Weingut Knoll in Wachau. Production at the small winery (1,100 cases a year) focuses on Riesling, but there are also two Grüner Veltliner vineyards. The Meeresboden, meaning "ocean soil," vineyard is sandy and there is a saline quality to the wine which marks it from its Austrian counterparts. The aromas are citrus, with some mineral spice on the finish: a good, though not overly complex, wine.

Tegernseerhof Frauenweingarten Federspiel 2013, Wachau ($25)

One of those confusingly Germanic wine labels: Tegernseerhof is the winery, Frauenweingarten is the vineyard made up of sand and gravel soils, while Federspiel is a term for white wines from Wachau that have an alcohol content of between 11 and 12.5%. On flatter land than many vineyards in Wachau, leading to a warmer microclimate, this is a fuller-bodied wine than the last one despite the lower alcohol. Stone fruits, almonds, with an oily, resinous finish: balanced and complex.

Glatzer Dornenvogel 2011, Carnuntum ($20)

A very interesting nose that feels immediately like a Sauvignon Blanc with green, capsicum flavours but develops into more like a Sémillon with a waxy, nutty, rich creaminess. The palate lets the nose down somewhat, its acidity not quite high enough leaving the wine a bit flabby. Now three years old, I would have liked to have tried this wine a year ago. 

Schloss Gobelsburg Steinsetz 2012, Kamptal ($34)

The pick of the bunch, this is a light, subtle, yet surprisingly intense wine, especially on the palate. Its nose has a delicate lime zest, biscuity profile, but it's on the palate that the wine comes alive with spicy biscuit flavours, and apples and cinnamon. It's a zippy, balanced, deep and complex wine that may benefit from some further ageing but drinks wonderfully now.

F.X. Pichler Urgestein Terrassen Smaragd 2012, Wachau ($49)

Smaragd is a term which refers to the finest white wines of Wachau, made from the ripest grapes from the best vineyards, and with great ageing potential. This wine, from steep terraced vineyards, was disappointing, however, with a resinous, citrus nose and an odd, sticky palate with lingering sour flavours almost like fermenting grapefruit juice. These odd flavours may work well with an oily fish dish, but on its own the wine just tasted plain weird.

This was my first intensive tasting of Grüner Veltliner, demonstrating a grape capable of producing quite different wines but of a consistently high quality: fine, balanced, textured, with long finishes.