Trialto

Speaking Of Wine

  • Decanter Power List 2013 - "Ones to Watch"

    June 18, 2013

    THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCE WHAT IS IN YOUR GLASS TODAY

    Alejandro Vigil was selected as "Ones to Watch" alongside Antonio Galloni, Daniel Johnnes, Edouard Moueix and Patricio Tapia.

    "Alejandro Vigil: Pioneering chief winemaker at Medoza's Bodega Catena Zapata, restlessly exploring Argentina's most extreme winemaking regions.  He is one of the handful of South America's internationally renowned winemakers."      Decanter, July 2013

  • Grant Burge Wines 2010 Filsell "World's Greatest Shiraz"

    June 3, 2013

    Media Release - June 3, 2013

    A super-premium Barossa Shiraz sourced from 90 year old vines was named the best Shiraz in the World over the weekend.

    The Grant Burge Wines 2010 Filsell Shiraz, took the honours at Winestate Magazine’s World’s Greatest Shiraz Challenge VIII, beating over 700 international Shirazes from France, South Africa, New Zealand and every major region in Australia.

    “I couldn’t be prouder of our Filsell Shiraz,” Grant Burge said today as he celebrated in the Barossa. “From vintage to vintage it just keeps on winning.

    “We’ve now won 5 major trophies, 22 gold medals and 47 silver medals since Filsell’s release in 1992.”

    Grant attributed its success to the unique Barossa vineyard which gives the wine its name.

    “The Filsell Vineyard has a unique place in the history of the Barossa Valley and Grant Burge Wines,” he said. The vines are over 90 years old and make up one of the largest patches of historical varietal fruit in the Barossa.

    “This is a very special piece of Barossa history: an old vineyard, planted in the traditional style, and still bearing exceptional quality fruit. It is one of the few significant survivors of the vine pull scheme of the early 1980s and it crams character into each berry.”

    He described the 2010 Filsell Shiraz as having incredible depth of colour and a “rare purity of fruit” in the bouquet.

    “The 2010 vintage was a great year and it has all of those ripe blackberry and blackcurrant aromas infused with rich vanilla and milk chocolate notes,” Grant said. “The palate is beautifully weighted, with optimal balance between concentrated fruit flavours, sweet spices, tannins and acidity.”

    All wines entered in the Winestate Magazine World’s Greatest Shiraz Challenge VIII, were blind tasted by an experienced panel of MW’s and winemakers. The official results will be published in the September edition of Winestate Magazine.

  • Artadi Winemaker reflects on 2012 Vintage

    May 28, 2013

     Vinos Artadi, SPAIN

     

    Reflections and comments on the 2012 vintage                          Laguardia, May 2013

     

    Juan Carlos López de Lacalle

     

    Nowadays, organic farming and bio dynamics are something fashionable among avant-garde vine growers and winemakers.

     

    In what concern us, the respect for the environment, the fauna and flora that co-exist in our vineyards is our objective, even our obsession.

     

     In the past we have lived these experiences from a certain distance. However, it is true that we have considered them as part of our philosophy, supporting philosophically all the activities directed towards the preservation of the environment. We can put into words this perception by saying that before we felt all this “skin-deep”, that is to say, in a superficial manner. However, when someone discovers deeper the respectful viticulture, when you feel the need of preserving Nature and the natural resources of the vines, your commitment becomes much more intense. It is something similar to start a journey together; both vineyard and vine grower will share the growing cycle of the vine until the moment of obtaining its fruit and making the wine.

     

    The vine grower’s attitude under these premises of co-existence is not of fighting against the vineyard and the natural phenomena. On the contrary, the vine grower joins the vine helping it as a travelling companion and friend that provides support and understanding in adversity.

     

    From experience we can tell that it is possible to reach this close fusion between vineyard and vine grower through respect and understanding of Nature’s behaviour. We are sure that when you feel the vineyard it is easy to transfer this feeling to the wine.

     

    This might be our aim: to feel and follow the life of the vineyard and the authenticity of its wines under a base of balance and respect for Nature.

     

    Our aim: to feel and live the peace of the vineyard and the authenticity of its wines

     

    After this brief introduction, I would like to examine (dwell on) the weather conditions and the characteristics of the growing cycle that every year help us to define the new vintage.

     

    We have had three very dry years in a row and this year 2012 this situation has become even more dramatic. We have registered 407 l/m2 during this season; 80 of these litres were recorded during November 2011 and another 80 litres in October 2012. This data implies that 160 l/m2 were recorded practically outside the active growing cycle of the vineyard.

     

    Regarding temperatures and as compensation to the drought suffered, we would like to point out that the records of average temperatures was below the average in our region, that is to say, they were milder in winter and lower than the average during summer. However, nowadays and to be honest, we do not feel the controversy or goodness of a vintage influenced by the weather conditions in which the development of the growing cycle takes place. At the moment, we feel closer the character and personality which define a unique vineyard at a unique vintage.

     

    It seems obvious then that there are other factors apart from the climate which define the character of every vintage. The interaction between the macro and microcosm is obvious. We wonder why so often a vintage has such a different character from another if the weather conditions have been similar? Why our grandparents, based on traditions and observation, carried out the different field tasks (e.g. sowing,

    pruning, etc.) in one moment or another depending on the different phases of Moon and the stars? These are questions with no answers that lead us to accept the existence of forces out of our control showing different realities.

     

    Probably due to our human conditions, it is easier for us to consider physical parameters (temperature, rainfall, sugar levels, acidity, etc.) when we want to issue a judgement about a certain wine. Clearly, these parameters make it easier for us to understand and describe the peculiarities of a vintage but I know now that every vineyard and every vintage hide much deeper sensations.

     

    Only if we go into the environment we will discover values full of content within wine; values that are only to be discovered under respect and observation

     

    To sum up, I would like to define the 2012 vintage under these premises: We find limpid and transparent wines. They are wines full of direct messages and fresh aromas. They are translucent and let us feel the freshness of tender fruits with red and vibrant notes. In the mouth, these are wines which arrogantly generate open spaces and free movements. The tannins of these young wines tiptoe in the mouth.

     

    Frankness, limpidity and carefree harmony

     

     

     

     

  • Poplar Grove Winery in BC Business Magazine

    May 16, 2013

    The Second Coming of B.C. Wineries

    John Schreiner | May 6, 2013

    From BC Business Magazine

    B.C.’s new generation of vintners are discovering that the wine business is not for the faint of heart. To be successful demands business smarts, a full-time commitment and a lot of cash—all before the first crush
     
    Tony Holler, the majority owner of Poplar Grove Winery, has a perception problem with friends who know he became wealthy in the pharmaceutical business. “A lot of my friends say that this is a pretty expensive hobby,” Holler says. “It isn’t a hobby. Let’s not kid ourselves; we’re building a serious business.”
     
    The B.C. wine industry is still dominated by a first generation of serious vintners who brought international credibility to Okanagan wines— wineries like Mission Hill, Jackson-Triggs, the Andrew Peller wineries, Quails’ Gate, Burrowing Owl, Tinhorn Creek and Gray Monk Estate Winery. But Holler is among a second generation that is building on the foundation laid by pioneers like Mission Hill’s Anthony Von Mandl, and who are expanding the province’s reputation worldwide.
     
    Just a quarter-century ago, there were only 13 wineries in B.C., none with recognition outside the province. Today, there are close to 240 wineries, a number of which are winning international awards and exporting wines. “Our wines are in Tokyo and Beijing,” says John Skinner, proprietor of Painted Rock Estate Winery and a contemporary of Holler’s. “It means something there if you are from the Okanagan.”
     
    Skinner is quick to acknowledge that all the upstart wineries wouldn’t be enjoying the success they are without the groundbreaking work of the pioneering generation that preceded them. “Painted Rock and the other little wineries that are out there banging the drum, we’re being accepted internationally on the backs of Quails’ Gate and Burrowing Owl and all those guys,” he notes. “They started to hit the quality marks early, giving the Okanagan some international profile.”
     
    Today the B.C. wine industry’s annual sales, including wines made from B.C. grapes as well as the cellared-in-Canada wines from imported bulk wine, total about $400 million. Wine has become a major driver of jobs and investment, including the money being spent on new wineries.
     
    Holler could offer himself as the poster child for the well-heeled newcomers who are shaking up the wine industry. They are passionate about wine and they can spend what it takes to produce world-class wines. But they also bring a hardened business sense to the enterprise, according to Geoff McIntyre, a Kelowna-based CA and business consultant with consulting firm MNP who specializes in the B.C. wine industry: “They like the idea of the lifestyle, but they don’t want to lose money.”
     
    “You are getting a new group of people coming into the wine business,” says Holler, who acquired control of Poplar Grove in 2007. “They are people who have been successful in other businesses. They typically are wine collectors and love drinking wine.” (Holler has 5,000 bottles in three personal wine cellars.) “We need people who say we are going to be a serious winery making serious wines. Probably the best trend that you are seeing is that the people who are coming into the wine business have the capital to be in that business.”
     
    In addition to Holler, the group making second careers in wine after being successful in business includes Laughing Stock’s David Enns, a former financial consultant; Noble Ridge’s Jim D’Andrea, still a high-powered Calgary lawyer; Tantalus Vineyards’ Eric Savics, still a senior stock broker in Vancouver; John Arthur Kenneth Meyer of Meyer Family Vineyards, a former broker (who goes by Jak); Painted Rock’s John Skinner, also a former stock broker; and Mick Luckhurst, a former building supply dealer and developer who owns Road 13 Vineyards.

    A New Generation
     
    It is perhaps no coincidence that the new generation of wine entrepreneurs is well represented by current and former members of Vancouver’s investment community who have built successful careers on recognizing market opportunities. “I was a wine collector and an enthusiast,” says Skinner. “But I am also a market-timing guy. I recognized an opportunity to invest in an industry in its infancy that was just starting to prove itself. I thought it was a golden opportunity if I could buy the best property to produce the best wines.” In 2002, Skinner—then 44—decided to retire from the investment business by 50 and start a winery. When he disclosed his plan to fellow broker Eric Savics, who had not yet acquired Tantalus Vineyards, Savics thought that “John was barking mad.” Now, both men have sunk millions into one of the world’s most seductive businesses.
      
    “I am an accidental wine tourist,” Savics concedes. “I had a friend call and say, ‘You should look at this property in the Okanagan.’ It turned out the wine was good, and that drew me in.”
     
    The flagship wine already was a widely acclaimed Old Vine Riesling (from vines planted in 1978). Savics hired professionals to reduce the vineyard’s eclectic assortment of varieties to plantings, mostly new, of Riesling, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The makeshift Pinot Reach building was replaced with a winery so modern and well equipped that there is even a charging station for electric cars.
     
    “The wine was good and got better,” Savics says. “That justified the additional capital.” Tantalus wines were soon listed by many top Vancouver restaurants. He does not disclose what he has invested, but it is a big number. “I don’t know that number because it has been done in stages. Of course, we have had some revenue to offset that, but it still needs to become a business that can take care of itself.” Tantalus currently produces 4,000 cases a year, with expansion planned as the estate’s grape production rises. “We have enough land and we have the facility that can handle 10,000 cases,” says Savics, who still maintains his investment business in Vancouver.
      
    “If we got to the level where Tantalus was recognized outside of B.C., it would be marvellous,” he says. “I would like to be in New York at Daniel restaurant. I would like to be in Napa and have The French Laundry take it. I would like to be at The Fat Duck Restaurant in London. It would be a wonderful thing to get wines into restaurants like that.”
     
    Road 13 Vineyards, south of Oliver, is another turnaround story. It opened in 1998 as Golden Mile Cellars, and was a struggling 1,000-case producer in a quaint replica castle when Mick and Pam Luckhurst bought it in 2003. Earlier that year, the Luckhursts had moved into an Osoyoos lakefront home after three years of developing real estate in Edmonton, where the winters got them down. “The vineyards are like waterfront,” Mick said after that summer. “They are serene. They are peaceful. They are just art for the eye. Then the romance of it takes you over.”
     
    Behind the winery purchase, however, was the same market timing that motivated John Skinner. “My business instincts came to the forefront,” Mick says. “I thought there was a lot of growth in the industry and, thus, growth in your equity.” Since then, the Luckhursts have poured substantial sums into the business, adding a modern winery to the castle, buying additional vineyards and hiring a top winemaker to get production to 25,000 cases a year. “We are moving awfully fast, faster than we ever had originally in mind,” Mick says. “A lot of it is just my temperament; you push ahead.”
     
    At Hester Creek, proprietor Curt Garland, 76, has invested $25 million, including the $5,250,000 he paid in 2004 to buy the bankrupt winery. He is a remarkable example of how wine seduces people into the business. The owner of a major transportation services company in northern B.C., he was looking for a small Okanagan vineyard where he could make a little wine for the cellar in his new Prince George house. He chanced on the bankruptcy trustee’s advertisement in a Penticton newspaper for Hester Creek, which had a 28-hectare vineyard and a dilapidated winery. After outbidding another winery to buy Hester Creek, Garland turned it around by hiring experienced professionals and building a well-equipped 23,000-square-foot winery before the 2010 crush. In the same year, Hester Creek joined the ranks of the Okanagan’s premium producers by releasing The Judge, a $45 red blend. “We are operating in the black now, which I am very comfortable with,” Garland said in an interview early in 2012. “It probably exceeds my expectations by a year.”
     
    Tony Holler’s Poplar Grove originally opened as a garagiste boutique in 1997. When founders Ian and Gitta Sutherland divorced a decade later, Holler, who had collected Poplar Grove wines and who owned a small neighbouring vineyard since 2004, bought control of the winery and retained Ian as winemaker. The son of a Summerland apple grower, Holler is a former emergency room doctor and a co-founder and CEO of vaccine maker ID Biomedical Corp., which GlaxoSmithKline Inc. bought for $1.7 billion in 2005. Holler now has funnelled his energy and his resources into growing Poplar Grove and its associated Monster Vineyards label, into a producer of 20,000 to 25,000 cases of premium wines each year.
     
    “I wasn’t that interested in having a tiny boutique winery,” Holler says. “I wanted to really develop a winery that was a sustainable business and could become a family business that might go through generations of our family. In order to do that, you have to have a certain size.” He decided that would be about 25,000 cases a year, made with grapes from winery-owned vineyards so that the fruit quality could be assured. He spent about $7.5 million on about 40 hectares of land and another $2.5 million planting it. The vineyards, for tax purposes, are run as a separate business by his wife, Barbara. In the last two years, at least $8 million more has been spent on two new wineries—one a functional but modern processing facility and the other a glittering glass-and-steel showpiece on a hillside with a dramatic view over the Okanagan Valley.
     
    “My view of this business is that it is a long-term investment,” Holler says. “A lot of the things we have invested in last a long time. Listen, the land isn’t going to get cheaper in the Okanagan. It’s a beautiful place. The land will appreciate in value and, as we build our business, the business will appreciate in value.”

    John Skinner, Jim D’Andrea, Jak Meyer and David Enns all had the resources from previous careers to start wineries from scratch. In 2004, Skinner found a derelict apricot orchard on the east side of Skaha Lake where he contoured ideal growing slopes on about 20 hectares and planted 50,000 vines imported from French nurseries. Painted Rock’s first harvest in 2007 produced two wines that won Lieutenant Governor’s Awards for Excellence in B.C. Wines. The winery won two more from succeeding vintages, along with red wine of the year with a Syrah entered in a national competition. “Painted Rock was successful with quality wine right out of the gate and developed a following pretty quickly,” says Geoff McIntyre, a consultant at accounting firm MNP.
     
    Skinner pursued what he calls “a very aggressive mandate for quality. The vision is one where we are aspiring to quality of an international standard. I don’t look at the domestic market as our immediate competition.” He employs a top-notch Bordeaux consultant, Alain Sutre, who also advises Burrowing Owl, Poplar Grove and Osoyoos Larose. Since 2004, Skinner has invested more than $10 million in Painted Rock. In spite of that, the production is deliberately capped at 5,000 cases a year. “We don’t want to get bigger; we want to get better,” he says. “It’s about attention to detail. As I looked at all the ultra-premium players around the world, that 5,000-case number resonated.”
     
    Similarly, Noble Ridge Vineyard and Winery at Okanagan Falls is capping annual production at around 6,000 cases. “Our goal was to make premium-quality wine,” says Jim D’Andrea, the principal owner of the winery with his wife, Leslie. “We are not interested in making volume wine.” A lawyer with Bennett Jones LLP, a major national law firm, D’Andrea traces his winery decision to a family backpacking trip in Europe in 1998. “In France, we met a guy who owned Domaine de Villeneuve in Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” says D’Andrea. “He was an accountant who had sold his business and bought this little domaine. He just loved it. I got really quite excited.”
     

    Already a collector of French and California wines, he was “convinced that Canada also could make very good wines. When we were making our plan, the goal was to make the best wine in the country.” The winery is on a hilltop (hence, the Noble Ridge name) that Jim and Leslie bought in 2001 and planted with four hectares of vines. Five years later, they bought an adjoining three-hectare vineyard with a sturdy barn that housed a basic winery. With several millions already invested, they sold minority interests in the business to friends.
     
    “We had a 10-year plan in 2003 when we started making our wine and we are right on course,” Jim says. By 2012 the business was generating a profit. “Does it go as fast as you want it to go?” he asks. “No, of course not.” He continues to practice law, although in the growing season his clients are likely to find him on a cell phone while working the vineyard. “Once we can make a living here, then I will start to get out of the law business,” Jim says.
     
    Meyer Family Vineyards principals Jak Meyer and his wife Janice Stevens developed a taste for fine wines while Jak was working as an investment adviser, and that led to his career switch. In 2006, Meyer bought a 1.5-hectare vineyard in Naramata with 10-year-old Chardonnay vines. He retained winemaker Michael Bartier, who then worked at Road 13 Vineyards, to make the first several vintages there. “We looked at the small boutique winery model—just keep that vineyard and do 600 cases a year,” Meyer says. “And it would just be a hobby.” After releasing a $30 Chardonnay and a $65 Chardonnay early in 2008, Meyer quickly understood that the wine business is not a hobby. “We realized that we will never make money at 600 cases,” he says.
     
    By that summer, Meyer had hired a full-time winemaker and commissioned the design for a showpiece Naramata winery. Then he was able to snap up a 6.5-hectare Okanagan Falls vineyard with a bankrupt rudimentary winery for about $2 million. (The winery had not opened because the owner’s Arizona real estate business collapsed.) This accelerated Meyer’s business plan by a year and gave him the vineyard base to support a viable annual production of 4,000 to 5,000 cases. He shelved the planned Naramata winery, investing instead in the Okanagan Falls property. He estimates he has now invested $5.5 million—enough that he would consider adding a strategic partner to what is still a family business.
     
    Meyer stopped working as an investment consultant in 2007 and has no regrets, even if the winery still consumes capital. “Five to seven years is probably a reasonable time in which to expect a return,” he says. “Anyone who thinks it will happen sooner will be pretty surprised. It is not about the money for us. We have some personal assets to live off until this starts making money.” He has also fielded inquiries from investors about buying his business. “If somebody wrote us a cheque today, I’d start again tomorrow,” he says.
     
    At Laughing Stock Vineyards, David Enns earns a good enough living that for several years he kept a pricey European motorcycle in South America for his winter vacations. He credits bottom-line discipline to his wife, Cynthia, who has an MBA. “I am married to a spreadsheet queen,” he says with a laugh. “We are in a manufacturing business. We have a lot of passion around it, but you can’t forget it is still a business.”
     
    The couple previously owned a successful investment consulting company in White Rock and ran it from the Okanagan for four years after they moved there in 2003 to start the winery on an orchard they had bought. “That was the perfect storm of way too much work and pressure,” says David Enns, who was taking winemaking courses in California at the same time. The couple sold the consulting business in 2007 once Laughing Stock was established. “We now joke that we have the lifestyle that everybody thought we had 10 years ago,” he says.
     
    The winery, with production capped between 5,000 and 6,000 cases, is profitable because they got in in 2004-05 when land and constructions costs were much lower than today, and were able to self-finance the more than $5 million that has been invested in Laughing Stock. In June 2012, the winery was 159 on Profit magazine’s list of the 200 fastest-growing companies in Canada, with five-year revenue growth of 279 per cent. The winery has succeeded with premium wines, 40 per cent of which are sold to its wine club and 30 per cent to restaurants. The remainder is allocated to wine stores and a corporate gifting program built around business contacts the owners made in their previous career. The biggest surprise, David Enns says, is that the winery now has a cult status. “We had no idea there was any kind of fanfare in it,” he says.

  • Happy Birthday Mike Grgich

    April 2, 2013

    Napa Valley Icon Miljenko "Mike" Grgich Turns 90 Today

    Vintner Hall of Fame inductee celebrates 55 years of winemaking success


    RUTHERFORD, Calif., April 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- From a peasant upbringing in communist Yugoslavia, Miljenko "Mike" Grgich is the American Dream personified.  Grgich arrived in the Napa Valley in 1958 armed with one suitcase, a stack of wine textbooks, and $32.00 hidden in his shoes. Along with pioneering vintners such as Robert Mondavi , Brother Timothy from Christian Brothers , Lee Stewart from Souverain Winery and Andre Tchelistcheff from Beaulieu Vineyards, he played a significant role in transforming the Napa Valley into one of the greatest wine-producing regions of the world. At Chateau Montelena, he crafted the 1973 Chardonnay that outscored the best of France in the now-famous Judgment of Paris that revolutionized the world of wine.  That bottle is now displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History along with his famous beret, suitcase, and his textbooks.

    Born April 1, 1923, Grgich grew up in the village of Desne on Croatia's Dalmatian Coast, where generations of Grgich's family grew grapes and made wine. His dream of moving to the US was inspired by success stories of self-made Americans like Henry Ford , Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller .

    Grgich and business partner Austin Hills broke ground in Rutherford to build Grgich Hills Cellar in July 1977 (later changed to Grgich Hills Estate in 2006 after becoming entirely estate grown). The winery continues to receive international awards for its balanced, elegant wines and is recognized as a leader in sustainable vineyard practices.  Grgich Hills' entire acreage is certified organic and the winery has converted to solar power. 

    Grgich is grooming the next generation to lead Grgich Hills Estates. Daughter Violet Grgich is vice president of operations, and nephew Ivo Jeramaz is vice president of production and vineyards.  Well-known in Croatia for his many accomplishments, the family often hosts members of the Croatian government. His contributions to Roots for Peace, an organization dedicated to the conversion of former minefields into successful grape-growing areas, have helped demine areas in his former homeland. A Croatian TV documentary about Grgich's life, "Like the Old Vine," premiered at the Napa Valley Film Festival in November 2012.

    Violet Grgich adds, "He's been an inspiration to me and to countless others for as long as I can remember. We'd love for everyone to wish him a happy birthday by going to http://bit.ly/Mikes90th." His business and sales acumen sharp as ever, the elder Grgich adds with a smile, "You can see a bottle of the 1973 Chardonnay in our Tasting Room which is open every day."

    For more information about Grgich Hills Estates visit www.grgich.com.

     

  • Three Trialto California Wineries Chosen as Reference Points from California

    March 27, 2013

    A Playbook for the California Wine Fairs coming to Canada in April
    WineAlign Team, WineAlign

    California Wine Fairs will roll through six cities across Canada in April, with over 150 participating wineries at the largest events. WineAlign has decided to profile eighteen wineries that fair-goers should visit this year – an arbitrary number on the one hand, but a somewhat realistic number for any fair-goer to tackle in one evening. And undoubtedly others will grab your attention along the way, as they should.

    WineAlign critics Anthony Gismondi, John Szabo and David Lawrason have each chosen six. They had a chance to taste California in-depth during the recent five-day Vancouver International Wine Festival where California was the theme region (so there is no Vancouver fair in April). That exercise – which included several seminars and regional tastings – yielded new discoveries and rekindled some old relationships.

    The reasons for their selection are varied – from appreciation of the wine style, to the philosophy and outlook of the wineries, to those who are simply doing things very well. Each has also highlighted a wine or three that can be located through WineAlign. And most will also be poured at the California wine fairs. For a full list of wineries in each city, as well as ticket information use this link to the California Wine Fair 2013 website.


    Joseph Phelps Vineyards (Freestone), Napa Valley, Sonoma Coast          (Anthony Gismondi pick)
    Joseph Phelps Vineyards, founded in 1973 has been around most of my wine drinking life. Founded by Joe Phelps at St. Helena in the Napa Valley, the winery now works with or owns some 375 acres of vines on eight estates in Napa Valley and in 1999 expanded that number with some ultra-cool chardonnay and pinot noir producing vines grown near the town of Freestone on the Sonoma Coast. There is no doubt the fame of Phelps is closely linked to its signature Napa Valley blend, Insignia, but there is little to suggest its Freestone estate on the western Sonoma Coast won’t become equally valued in the decades to come. The family is so pleased with the early wines it has already reworked the original Freestone winery labels adding the Joseph Phelps brand name and highlighting Freestone Vineyards as an estate designation. Joe Phelps was always a fan of the cooler weather that moderates the Sonoma Coast and he was sure that top –flight pinot noir and chardonnay could be made there. He was right. I just love the Freestone wines the electricity in the Joseph Phelps Chardonnay Freestone Vineyards 2010 is crazy good and a benchmark for the future. Similarly the red brother Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir Freestone Vineyards 2010 entices with its sleeker cooler leaner style.
    (Represented by Trialto Wine Group in Western & Atlantic Canada)

    Grgich Hills Estate, Napa Valley         (John Szabo pick)
    Miljenko “Mike” Grgich has some history in the business. He was the winemaker of the 1973 Château Montelena chardonnay that shocked the wine world by placing first in the famous “Judgment of Paris” tasting in 1976. Grgich Hills was established shortly after in 1977, and Mike was inducted in the Vintner’s Hall of Fame in 2008. For the last decade, all of Grgich Hills’ wines are made from 100% estate fruit, farmed organically and biodynamically. The complexity derived from wild yeast fermentations and the purity encouraged by gentle oak ageing are the hallmarks of these balanced and elegant Napa wines. Stop by and pass on your best wishes to Mike, who turns 90 on April 1st. (Grgich Hills Chardonnay 2009 and Grgich Hills Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2008).    (Represented by Trialto Wine Group in Western & Atlantic Canada as well as Quebec)


    Bonny Doon Vineyard, Santa Cruz      (John Szabo pick)
    Randall Grahm may have started out on his wine journey as an “insufferable wine fanatic” (his words) searching for the “Great American Pinot Noir”, but his path led him instead into a thicket of Rhône and Italian grapes. He purchased land in the quaintly named Bonny Doon area of the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1981, and has since gone on to create nothing short of an amazing array of wines that stretch both the palate and the mind. He is almost single-handedly responsible for the “Rhône Rangers” movement, proving that Mediterranean grapes are shockingly well suited to California, and he was recently awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Rhone Rangers organization. His philosophical musings are legendary in the wine community, and 350,000+ followers surely makes him the Ashton Kutcher of the wine twitterverse (sorry, Randall). Don’t forget to read the labels when you stop by the table to taste. The following will be at the California Wine Fair: 2010 Le Cigare Blanc Roussanne/Grenache Blanc Beeswax Vinyard; 2010 Contra Carignane/Syrah; 2009 Le Pousseur Syrah; and the 2008 Le Cigare Volant Grenache/Mourvedre/Syrah/Cinsault. (Bonny Doon Vineyard Le Cigare Volant 2006)
    (Represented by Trialto Wine Group in Quebec)

  • Bill Zacharkiw of Montreal Gazette on "wines with soul"

    February 28, 2013

    By Bill Zacharkiw, GAZETTE Wine CriticFebruary 27, 2013

    A few weeks back, I was speaking at a fundraiser, and toward the end of my speech, I asked people to do two things when shopping for wines: give special attention to wines made with grapes grown organically, and buy wines that come from “somewhere.”

    Pushing organics is easy. The wine industry uses far more pesticides, fungicides and herbicides than it has to. So while I maintain that there is a qualitative difference between grapes grown “well” organically and those raised on a diet of chemicals, from a purely environmental and vineyard worker’s health standpoint, organics make sense. I am aware that not every winery that grows organically puts that info on its label, but if more consumers demand it, maybe more will certify.

    My second point confused some people, and one person came up to me afterward and asked what I meant.

    “All wines come from somewhere, don’t they?” she asked.

    Of course they do. But some wines don’t reflect where they come from, or are simply blends of grapes taken from anywhere and made into a wine designed to please a certain palate rather than reflect where they come from. When you are talking to more than 100 people, many of whom are just getting into wine, I figured it best not to get too complicated. So making the beginner simply aware of appellation, or of “place,” is a good way to start.

    “So how do I know if a wine reflects a place?” was her next question.

    Okay, not so easy to answer this one. All I could come up with was that until she had tasted enough wines from a particular place, she had to trust those who have. Those of us who taste a lot of wine and travel to many of the world’s wine regions begin to have certain expectations about the wines of a particular place.

    For example, when I taste a Chablis, I look for steely freshness, minerality and just enough “fat” from the chardonnay grape to coat the mineral core. There must be a balance between the natural richness of the chardonnay grape and the acidity that one should find in a grape grown so far north.

    This quality in a wine, whether you call it “terroir driven” or “somewhereness,” a term coined by Wine Spectator’s Matt Kramer, happens when a wine shows a certain uniqueness, a certain accent that, even if you can’t place it, strikes you as being a texture, aroma or taste that you have never experienced before.

    But then I got hit with the inevitable questions, and the ones that are the most difficult to answer for anyone who recommends a wine.

    “So how do you decide which wines to recommend? Is it because some wines reflect a place more than others?”

    Uggh. My immediate response was that some wines seem more authentic or genuine than others. I could see by her expression that this wasn’t cutting it, and I was going to be asked what I meant by that. So I promised I would think about it and get back to her.

    So here is your answer, Miss: The wines I recommend and enjoy drinking are those that I deem to have “soul.” Now let me explain.

    Four years ago, I held a tasting of cru Beaujolais, where my panel blind-tasted wines from four appellations: Morgon, Fleurie, Moulin à Vent and Brouilly. Our goal was to define, if possible, the “somewhereness” in each of these Beaujolais appellations.

    We tasted wines over a number of different vintages, from the same producers, to see if we could find commonalities between wines of the same appellation. Some of these winemakers used conventional farming and wine-making techniques, while others were from the school of what are referred to as “natural” winemakers, those who use little sulphites and indigenous yeasts. In short, as few additives and manipulations as possible.

    The most striking result was that the winemaker became far more apparent than the appellation. And as I marked down my preferred wines from each flight, they tended to be from the same people, those who worked more naturally.

    They were not always the “most perfect” wines. Some showed a number of small degrees of “faults,” which was a turnoff for a few of the panel members. But those wines I happily gulped back, though challenging at times, showed that uniqueness and energy I look for in a wine.

    So do these more naturally made wines better reflect the land that they were grown in because they were less manipulated? Logic tells me yes, but maybe what I look for in a wine has more to do with winemaking practices and grape-growing. Maybe by doing less, and allowing for the grapes of a place to make a wine that reflects all that is both good and bad about the vintage and the land, wine comes across as more genuine and authentic.

    I’ve said many times that “la beauté, c’est dans le défaut” — that true beauty is found in imperfection, and not how close it comes to being perfect. That is as much a statement about people as it is about wine. If what separates wine from other beverages is that it is a reflection of a culture, of a place, of a time, it should as well reflect all the imperfections that can be found in each.

    I remember tasting wines with Maurice Barthelmé, of Domaine Albert Mann in Alsace, and asking him how that winery always seems able to make an interesting wine, even in tough vintages. His response was “if you are honest and listen, the land will always tell you what the wine will be.” Not all terroirs are created equal. Not all places, every year, can produce wines of pure fruit and perfectly ripe tannins. Sometimes the wines have notes of green or rough tannins that require age to iron out. Sometimes, when you allow grape juice to become a wine, the results are not exactly what you want or expect.

    It is not easy quantifying “like,” which is why this is such a difficult question to answer. In a recent article, Matt Kramer wrote that great wine is a product of winemakers who are willing to pursue ambiguity, to seek to make two plus two equal five. That striving for perfection through manipulation and control can only get you so far. And while he doesn’t answer where that “extra one” comes from, I would say that maybe what separates the great from the good might be allowing the innate imperfections of a time and place, which is maybe the “soul,” to have its rightful place in the final wine.

    gazettewine@gmail.com

    Twitter:@BillZacharkiw

    facebook.com/billzacharkiwwine

     

  • Rapid Fire Q&A With Peter Yealands

    January 16, 2013

    From Drinks Business Magazine

    13th December, 2012 by Lucy Shaw

    Peter Yealands is the founder and owner of Yealands Estate in the Awatere Valley in Marlborough, New Zealand – one of the first properties to introduce varieties like Gruner Veltliner and Viognier to the region. The estate is one of a handful in the world to have its winery certified as carbon neutral.

    What is your idea of perfect happiness?
    A healthy, loving family.
    What is your greatest fear?
    Someone close to me getting ill.
    Who do you most admire?
    My father – 91 years young and still going strong.
    What is your greatest extravagance?
    Fish and chips on a Friday night.
    What is your current state of mind?
    Healthy, happy and positive.
    Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
    Let’s give it a crack, I’d rather be first and wrong than second.
    What or who is the greatest love of your life?
    My wife Vai.
    When and where were you happiest?
    When newly married.
    Which talent would you most like to have?
    To be able to play a classical instrument beautifully.
    If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
    I wouldn’t mind being skinnier.
    What do you consider your greatest achievement?
    Staying alive!
    Where would you most like to live?
    Right where I am on my farm in Marlborough.
    What is your most treasured possession?
    My memory.
    What is your most marked characteristic?
    My Long hair and bushy beard.
    Who are your favorite writers?
    Jean M Auel and Wilber Smith.
    Who is your hero of fiction?
    Davy Crockett.
    What is it that you most dislike?
    Sour rhubarb.
    What is your greatest regret?
    I don’t have any.
    What is your motto?
    Think boldly, tread lightly, and never say it can’t be done.

     

     

  • A Different Douro: Bright new wines from centuries of battling the schist

    December 13, 2012

    A Different Douro Bright new wines from centuries of battling the schist
    By Joshua Greene, Wine & Spirits Magazine (on-line Dec 2012)
    
    “A grower once told me, ‘Here we make wine with no help from God.’
    And sometimes it feels like that.” —Christian Seeley, managing director of Quinta do Noval

    At the turn of the century, the Port Wine Institute hosted a tasting of fortified Douro wines from the last 100 years. It was a demonstration that time is part of the making of great Port, a necessary condition to tame the power of the Douro’s heat and schist. Among the most memorable wines of the day was the 1970 Graham’s, the first vintage made by James Symington after his family purchased the historic brand and its vineyard, the Quinta dos Malvedos.
        That prime riverside estate, just upstream from the town of Pinhão, has been Graham’s headquarters since 1890, still at the heart of its vintage wines today. And the heart of the 1970 was going strong when I drank a bottle this past fall with James Symington’s son, Rupert. He’d come to San Francisco to meet with his importer, Peter Scott, and the three of us had decamped to Scott’s favorite Tenderloin Thai restaurant, Lers Ros. After a bottle of Quincy off the list, and one of the reds the Symingtons make with Bruno Prats (originally of Cos d’Estournel), Scott opened a 1970 Graham’s from his cellar.
        We eventually found ourselves pouring the last bits of sediment when the bottle was spent. The flavors had matured to a graceful murmur of Douro schist and the gentle red glow of fresh fruit. And it completely transcended any residual Thai or San Francisco Tenderloin spice.
        Since their acquisition of Graham’s, the Symington family has continued to buy vineyard land, including the Quinta do Vesuvio and Cockburn’s properties, so they now own more Douro vineyards than anyone else. But these days, Rupert Symington’s brow is more often furrowed, rarely as relaxed as it was that evening at Lers Ros. The Douro is in the midst of one of its cyclical crises, when all the regulations and legislation imposed on this vast river canyon seem to be working at cross purposes.


    That crisis is as complex and layered as any great Douro wine. The small, elite trade in special categories of Port—particularly age-designated Tawnies and Late Bottled Vintage—is booming, while the volume side of the business is withering away. Brandy prices nearly doubled this past year, due to the general grape shortages in Europe. Demand for less-expensive Port has been trending down for decades, with Europe’s chain buyers looking for wine at ever-lower prices. Labor is in short supply, so the cost of producing grapes in the Douro’s extreme conditions has made farming a fool’s errand for anyone who doesn’t have a prime site. But whether or not farmers have prime sites, they have their beneficio, the authorization to sell a certain portion of their grapes for Port production—a factor that makes Port wine grapes the most expensive in the Iberian peninsula.
        It’s a bit of a perfect storm, with the thunder of politics and the winds of the market pushing Douro’s wines toward an uncertain future. Rupert Symington had proposed a solution, a change in the laws to allow for the voluntary sale and permanent transfer of the right to sell Port wine grapes (the beneficio) by lesser-rated sites so that top-rated vineyards could make more of their grapes into Port. But, he says, it was scuttled by a large producer of table wine, who might see grape prices rise under that scenario. (From the perspective of the major Port shippers, the price of table wine grapes is artificially low, subsidized by the right to sell Port wine grapes whether they are worthy or not.) Whatever change does come, Symington suggests, will be slow and incremental.
        And if current trends continue, it may well evolve out of the quality table wine business that has begun to thrive in the Douro after decades in the shadow of Port.

    “In the Old World, the problem has always been that the top wine is great and everything else is just garbage,” David Guimaraens admits. As the director of wine­making for The Fladgate Partnership, Guimaraens oversees production of some of the Douro’s most coveted wines, including the Vintage releases of Taylor, Fonseca and Croft. Since returning from studies in Australia in 1990, he has also focused the team on building the middle range of their wines. “The big kick in the bum that the New World gave to the Old World is that wine has got to be good at all levels,” he says.
        The lessons he learned in Australia have helped as the firm shifted their emphasis toward aged Tawnies and strengthening their LBVs. While their vintage wines are all estate bottled, they now work with a smaller number of farmers with output sizable enough that they can influence the viticultural work. Without changing the traditions for Vintage Port, he’s also experimented with more affordable and effective ways to make these other categories—like developing robotic lagars to take the place of human feet for treading the grapes.
        While Guimaraens has been busy pumping up the mid-range of Port, others have been looking to fill the hole in the mid-range with table wine. There’s always been cheap Douro table wine, made from the surpluses left after a grower sells his grapes authorized for Port. And there are the table wines that masquerade as Port in their power and intensity, which can be great, but tend to be limited in production.
        Most table wines fell into these two categories—either cheap and cheerful or as expensive as Vintage Port—until the 2008 vintage shed a different light on the region’s terroir. The long, cool 2008 season was an unusual one in Douro, not bad for Port, but, as managed by savvy growers, one of the best for table wine in recent memory. In fact, it may prove to be an historic vintage as it may have opened an alternate path for Douro wines.
        Antonio Agrellos, the technical director at Quinta do Noval, makes both table wines and Port. As caretaker of the Nacional vineyard, six acres of vines planted on their Portuguese roots (without foreign rootstocks), he is as committed to tradition in the Douro as any of his neighbors. But on a recent visit, he made it clear that table wine holds a fascination for him. His Quinta do Noval 2008 Douro is as pure in its Douro expression as any great Noval Port, and quite different. It’s a limited production wine, but a stylistic departure from the past.
        Dirk Niepoort and his team are also equally committed to table wines and Port. He was, in fact, the first vintner I recall who was genuinely excited about the 2008 vintage. “It was more or less the only year we could pick the vineyards purely by maturity,” he recalls, “since we had all the time in the world to decide when to pick.” Usually he harvests the high, cool vineyards at the same time as the riper grapes, then ferments them together—“to get the balance right. In 2008, that wasn’t necessary.” Niepoort’s passion might have been expected, coming as it did from a notorious iconoclast. And though it was supported by the most ethereal and evocative young wine I have ever tasted from the Douro, Niepoort’s 2008 Charme, the evidence was thin, again based on a wine so extremely limited in production.
        But the evidence is mounting, as more recent releases of 2008s have uncovered other remarkable reds. This past summer, I tasted Niepoort’s 2008 Robustus with Luis Seabra, who’s in charge of table wine production for the firm.
        Like Charme (and like traditional Vintage Port), Robustus is vinified with the stems of the grapes, Niepoort and Seabra believing that the stem tannins lighten the expression of the wine. This wine included 70 percent of the stems, with 50 days of skin contact and four years of aging in large wooden vats. From the name, and from previous vintages, you might expect the wine to be as big as a Vintage Port, and yet it is anything but: As they do in great Burgundy, the stems give the wine its sexiness. The stem tannins also give the wine a numinous structure, the fruit glowing through it like moonlight and vespers through stained glass.
        What’s significant about wines like these 2008s is the influence their style has had on subsequent vintages. Consider several wines from 2010, when the conditions were completely different: A wet winter, abundant yields, a scorchingly hot August, which, in effect, delayed sugar production in the grapes and pushed harvest into October.
        Rather than wait, Seabra harvested his 2010 Bastardo early, then vinified it with all the stems and 15 days of skin contact. “With bastardo, you can’t do more,” he says of the maceration. “The wine would be too rustic, too funky to try.” Seabra describes it as a “vin de soif;” it’s bright, spicy and lively, nothing heavy about it. He had brought it to a tasting with other Douro winemakers, when everyone shared their top 2010 reds, and says most everyone thought it was the worst wine of the day. “They said, ‘What is this rosé wine here?’ Only one winemaker, Manuel Vieira [of Sogrape], thought it was great.”
        The 2010 Twisted is the first vintage of the wine that turned my head. It tastes like a Lapierre Beaujolais grown in the Douro—in this case, from the granitic highlands of the Douro, an area around Mêda not known for red wines. “That’s where the reds get this thinner character,” Seabra says, comparing the tannic structure to a St-Joseph. Whatever it is we’re both reaching to describe, it is not a traditional Douro style.
        I tasted another wine from Mêda, the Muxagat 2011 Tinta Barroca, with Mateus Nicolau de Almeida. It didn’t occur to me that both wines were from Mêda until I checked my notes; what tied them together for me was that they both tasted like Morgon, with vibrant raspberry and rose scents. “We associate Douro Superior with high ripeness, but in Douro Superior, there are some very high altitudes,” Nicolau de Almeida explains, pointing to the restrained ripeness in the wine.

    “The Douro has a unique character,” Fran­cisco Olazabal says. “It marks all the wines.” He should know, as his family has been battling the Douro for centuries. Olazabal is the son of Vito Olazabal, once the president of Ferreira; he purchased Quinta do Vale Meão from his cousins. He’s the grandson of Fernando Nicolau de Almeida, who had based his now legendary Ferreira Barca-Velha on Vale Meão. And he’s the great-great-great-grandson of Dona Antónia de Ferreira, the Douro’s answer to Queen Victoria, who extended the family’s empire of vines deep upriver, commanding quintas from Vallado on the Rio Corgo to Vale Meão close to Foz Coa. Olazabal, or Xito as he is known, is as rooted here as any bastardo vine.
        “My grandfather didn’t like the way Douro wines aged,” Olazabal explains, regarding Fernando’s experiments that led to Barca-Velha. “He had tasted 10-, 15-, 20-year-old wines from the Douro made like Port wines. They were immense and very tannic at the beginning, but they dried out quickly.” Speaking as one of the Douro Boys, a group of friends who promote their table wines together, he adds, “That’s the character my colleagues and I want to fight.”
        One way to fight it is to make wines that are more accessible when young—and even recent releases of Vintage Port have followed this path. Another way is to find the terroirs in the Douro that offer distinctive expressions for table wine, in a completely different style than Port, creating drinkable wines that warrant a higher price and begin to fill in the middle of the market. These are not the icon wines; they are the Twisteds and the bastardos, many now coming from the high-altitude sites where farmers really should not be growing grapes for Port.
        Twisted, in fact, is the first such wine to gain significant traction in the market, with production now reaching 65,000 cases a year. Others are starting to follow, with wines that don’t mimic Port, but present a brighter variation on Douro terroir.

  • Rioja's third way by Victor de la Serna

    December 10, 2012

    The first estate wines, 30 years ago, resurrected the interest in different, well-defined, higher quality terroirs. And with them came the new winemakers who wished to make more assertive wines, with riper grapes and more maceration in fermentations, plus sometimes more new oak, which would reflect the soil of Rioja more precisely than the traditional wines – or so the theory went.

    Juan Carlos López de Lacalle at Artadi, his former winemaker Benjamín Romeo, Fernando Remírez de Ganuza, Telmo Rodríguez (who would later change tack and focus his attention much more on the land than on the winemaking), Miguel Ángel de Gregorio at Allende, Marcos Eguren at Sierra Cantabria (and also Señorío de San Vicente and Viñedos de Páganos now) were the driving forces behind the modernist renewal.

    Their wines were sometimes criticized as "too international", aged in French rather than American oak with higher percentages of new barrels, but at their best they showed a savory, 'umami' style borne of the limestone land, with a dense, structured but suave load of red-berry-like tempranillo fruit, that could only impress.

    At any rate, both styles coexist peacefully, despite some ill-informed complaints outside of Spain that the traditional one is dying out. And, as elsewhere, in the finer wines winemaking differences tend to diminish as they age in bottle. A Contino from 1982 is today remarkably similar, in a classic Rioja style, to a CVNE Viña Real Gran Reserva from the same vintage.

    RiojaMeanwhile, the change in international tastes after 2000, toward more elegant, drinkable and subtle wines helped the likes of López de Heredia to regain their erstwhile notoriety and some newcomers, such as Luis Valentín and Carmen Enciso of Valenciso, to be successful with entirely traditional Riojas.

    But that's not the end of the story. Over the past decade a third way has slowly gained some momentum: that of terroir over and above tradition or innovation.

    A few growers who actually drove their tractors and pruned their vines had started making and bottling their own wines a few years earlier, and one of them, Abel Mendoza Monge (with the invaluable help of his enologist wife, Maite), was beginning to make headlines.

    The trend was reinforced with the return home of two prodigal sons – Álvaro Palacios, who returned home to Alfaro from his Priorat and Bierzo ventures (which he has not abandoned) to take the reins of Palacios Remondo, the family winery in Rioja Baja, and Telmo Rodríguez, who in 2010 was in control again at Remelluri after a successful decade of winemaking throughout Spain, having solved his well-publicized differences with his father.

    Both charismatic winemakers, as others throughout Spain in an underpublicized back-to-the-land movement, had become progressively disenchanted with the "New World" credo – new oak with much extraction and high alcohol – and more attuned to terroir differences. Their wines have increasingly reflected this evolution since 2000.

    Today, Palacios defends a larger role for garnacha in the warmer, drier Rioja Baja, and his blends reflect this, giving the Palacios Remondo wines a much more floral, subtle character, while Rodríguez has innovated with his 'village appellation' wines at Remelluri.

    These are wines made with bought-in grapes from each of the two villages adjoining the estate, Labastida and San Vicente de la Sonsierra. The grapes used to be blended into Remelluri, but Rodríguez now is only using his own estate-grown grapes for that. He offered his long-time contract suppliers to make two separate cuvées with their grapes, and they accepted.

    "The difference between the more delicate Labastida village wine and the more assertive San Vicente one is remarkable," Rodríguez enthuses.

    Tellingly, the Rioja council allowed him, willy-nilly, to put the village names on the labels, but refused to officially recognize village sub-appellations, something the Priorat council has already enacted. The three Rioja sub-zones (Alta, Alavesa, Baja) will continue to reflect only the location of the winery, not of the vineyards. Blends and 'house styles' are still much preferred by the Rioja authorities, who value their appellation as a brand that should not become submerged in a set of terroir-based sub-appellations.

    But diversity is here to stay. Several modernist winemakers of note, led by López de Lacalle, De Gregorio and Romeo, have increasingly favored vineyard-designated wines that truly reflect diverse terroirs. Viña El Pisón, Calvario, Viña de Andrés Romeo are real vineyards, not just memories of old vineyards turned into mere brand names such as Monte Real or Viña Zaco.

    Top 10 traditional-style producers

    Top 10 modern-style producers

    Top 10 terroir-oriented producers