My co-conspirator and I spent the weekend in Sonoma where we got a chance to visit some of Kendall-Jackson's boutique wineries in the area. KJ isn't a name that I usually associate with quality wine, but it turns out that the smaller wineries in their portfolio, which aren't sold under the KJ name, are quite capable of turning out a high-end product. In particular we spent time at Hartford Family Winery, Benziger Family Winery, and Stonestreet; I'll talk at length about each in a moment, but first I'd like make some general observations about the overall experience.
So, where to start? I've said in the past that I didn't think I could tell the difference between a $20 bottle and an $80 bottle of wine, but I'm fairly confident that's no longer the case. There's no magic in appreciating high-quality wine; you don't need to be a super-taster or anything like that. You really just need to be exposed to enough $20 wine and enough $80 wine to realize that there is a marked difference between the two. Going through the tours and tastings at the KJ wineries this weekend was, in large part, an excercise in understanding the differences in process between the two, and why those differences matter.
Kendall-Jackson, by their own admission, is heavily focused on what our guide referred to as a "sense of place". This goes beyond the typical talk of terroir; they're not just concerned about soil composition but also temperature and elevation and the orientation of the vineyards and so on, all the little bits that impart distinct character to a wine. Right now their "big thing", if they can be said to have a big thing, is mountain vineyards. The standard line that I heard repeated on a number of occassions is that vines at higher elevations are stressed by the relatively harsh conditions and produce a reduced yield of smaller berries. This, in turn, increases the skin-to-juice ratio, resulting in a more intense product.
Someone's certainly buying the propaganda. According to the folks at Stonestreet, fruit grown on the floor of the Alexander Valley retails for $3k - $4k a ton but the stuff grown in the surrounding mountains can go for as much as $14k/ton. So, even with a reduced yield, there's definitely money to be made growing grapes at elevation.
But location is really only the beginning. The actual process of growing the grapes and turning them into wine is a laborious process characterized by excess attention at every stage of production. The vines are absolutely pampered; they're given lots of space, hand-pruned, and hand-picked, all of which definitely increases the overall quality of the finished wine at the expense of drastically increased labor cost. Interestingly enough all of the wineries which we visited spent some time explaining their crushing and juicing setups. Everyone either had a manual sorting table or was in the process of putting one in, they all talked about how they eliminated "jacks" (tiny bits of stem) to reduce unwanted tannins and, in general, emphasized how gentle the process was for the grapes. And then there was the usual voodoo surrounding the fermentation and aging process that everyone has come to expect. The main takeaway from the experience is that if you only select the best grapes from the best vineyards and then coddle them through the entire process you're going to end up with a really great wine that costs an arm and a leg.
Its interesting to think about what makes Sonoma different from a wine region like, say, Walla Walla. I've noted previously that Walla Walla takes itself very seriously, and definitely produces some good wines, but there's a certain homogenaity across the wineries in the region. If I may be allowed some mildly-informed speculation I would say that this is, to a large degree, a result of the relative youth of the region. Walla Walla hasn't been doing wine for as long as Sonoma; there are a lot of new-ish wineries that are trying to establish a name for themselves. None of these wineries has quite the sense of self that places like Hartford or Stonestreet have. Their processes probably aren't as refined and, because such knowledge takes a number of growing seasons to accumulate, they likely don't understand their vineyards in the same depth either. When you're established, have refined your processes, know your vineyards in depth, etc. you're in a relatively secure position which provides the liberty to push the boundaries of wine production in search of quality as they're currently doing in Sonoma.
One other digression and then, I promise, I'll actually get to the wines/wineries. Right now I'd like to talk a little bit about water consumption. KJ has some sort of "green" initiative that its pursuing throughout its properties and several people spoke about the efforts that various wineries are making to reduce the amount of water they're using. In listening to these folks, however, I got the sense that KJ is pursuing the "green" strategy largely for its own sake rather than as a way of reducing costs. If California wants people to conserve water they should just stop subsidizing it so heavily. It's just stupid to make a resource artificially cheap and then hope that voluntary conservation efforts will prevent that resource from being overused. I'll get off my soapbox now; let's talk about the wineries and their wines.
Hartford
Mr. Hartford is an especially gregarious chap and clearly wants his guests to have a good time. So as soon as we were off the bus we were greeted with glasses of
Four Hearts Chardonnay, presumably the 2006 vintage. We didn't do a structured tasting of this one on account of the fact that we were all milling around eating hors d'ouvers and chatting, but I can confidently say that it was very good. While we were enjoying the Four Hearts Mr. Hartford took us on a tour of the facilities and spoke about the Hartford approach to winemaking. They, perhaps moreso than other wineries we visited, emphasize the importance of treating the grapes and wine gently at all stages of production. Rather than receiving their grapes in two-ton containers they get them instead in forty gallon (I believe that was the measure) crates, which Mr. Hartford claims reduces mangling of the fruit and promotes a superior product. Their crushing facility is oriented towards small batch sizes, they have a manual sorting table, etc., a setup which appears to be
de rigeur for serious winemaking in Sonomoa.
But they take additional steps during fermentation and aging which appear to be unique to Hartford. They make it a point to harvest the fruit at low temperatures and, rather than initiating fermentation right away, the grape skins and juice go through a "cold soak" for a few days to extract color and flavor. Fermentation temperature is tightly controlled and procedures such as breaking up the cap are all done manually. But the most interesting bit about Hartford was their aging facility. The barrels aren't packed tightly together on racks like they are in the other wineries we visited. Rather, Hartford has a multi-story structure similar to a library stack that holds a single layer of barrels on each level and has walkways between every two rows. The benefits of this arrangement, says Mr. Hartford, are that each barrel is immediately accessible, making it easy to taste the wine as it ages, and that the barrels generally only have to be moved at the beginning and end of the aging process, which is gentler on the wine.
So, does handling the wine with kid gloves result in a better product? I can truthfully say that I enjoyed the Hartford wines the most out of all the ones that we sampled, though part of this may be an artifact of the circumstances surrounding the acutal tasting of the wines. One of the problems inherent in wine tasting is that, after you've visited two or three wineries, everything starts to become a blur. So it was to Hartford's advantage that, rather than being just another whistle stop on the tour, we had a long, sit down dinner which provided an appropriate amount of time to sit and think about the wines. Apart from that, however, I do believe that the Hartford wines were the best of what we were offered during the tour.
So here's the rundown of what was on offer:
- 2007 Hartford Court, Stone Cote Chardonnay: A really good, dry Chardonnay. Light, inoffensive nose with a vaguely floral character. Color like light/diluted honey, slightly hazy because Hartford doesn't clarify their wines. Mild alcohol heat with an agreeable oak character and a crisp, quick finish.
- Hartford specializes in Pinot Noirs and we were offered two exceptional examples with dinner. These wines were definitely the highlight of the evening as well as the entire trip.
- 2007 Hartford Court, Fod Dance Pinot Noir: A dark, opaque purple wine which smelled like berries and raisins. It was intense, almost like a port.
- 2005 Hartford Court, Hailey's Block Pinot Noir: This wine is named after Mr. Hartford's daughter1 and was the best of all the wines I tasted during my time in Sonoma. I ended up buying a bottle which, at $55, represents the most I've ever spent on a wine. It's has a ruby color, is bright and peppery, and has an unusually rich mouthfeel.
Both pinot's were very good, but the Hailey's Block was definitely the winner.
- 2007 Hartford, Hartford Vineyard Russian River Valley Zinfandel: By this point in the evening I'd had at least six glasses of wine already, so my palette was, shall we say, "unreliable". Nevertheless, the zin was very good as well, possessing a lovely bouquet with hints of tobacco.
I should also mention that the dinner was exceptional as well, far better than I've generally come to expect from a catered function. After dinner Mr. Hartford brought the chef out to talk about the process of creating a dish around a particular wine. The chef was rhapsodic about the entire thing, going on at length about the qualities of the wine and how they were matched to specific ingredients. While I was listening to his spiel I couldn't help but wonder how much of what he was saying was performance and how much he actually believed. Regardless, the audience was sucking it up with a straw; he could have said just about anything and the people listening would have nodded and felt like they were ingesting fundamental truths. It kind of makes you wonder, when we spend so much time discussing food and wine and the mystical interplay between the two, whether we're just engaging in a kind of mutual or mass delusion? When the chef says that he picked out the scallops to highlight the "oyster-shell minerality" of the Chardonnay is he just making shit up or is he actually describing the process that he follows? And does it really matter?
Benziger
Benziger is notable for being the only winery in Sonoma certified as "biodynamic" by
Demeter. They use an intensive, whole-ecosystem approach in the care of their vineyards which seems similar in many respects to the holistic farming methodology made popular by
Polyface Farms. There's definitely something to the idea of treating a vineyard in this manner; Benziger doesn't use herbicides or pesticides, but even a layman could tell that their vines are ridiculously healthy. Every once in awhile, however, one of the staff would say something about biodynamic farming that seemed... ummm... less than empiric. Consider this blurb from the tasting notes for the 2005 Oonapais:
The four Aristotelian elements: earth, water, air and fire believe by ancient civilizations (and supported by today's science [Ed. note: O'rly?]) to make up all objects in the universe are the icons and benchmarks of this wine. We believe that every place on earth has a different combination of earch (soil), water (bonds a plant to its environment), air (light) and fire (warmth). When these elements are united in ideal ratios, the fifth element (spirit) appears - the ultimate expressions of our connection to the land.
In isolation this might be dismissed as marketing mumbo-jumbo, but then there's things like the "biodynamic pyramid" which make me think that the Benziger folks may be drinking deeply of the kool-aid. When I saw that I told my co-conspirator that human sacrifice was the next logical step for Benziger to consider as a way to further improve its vineyards.
Moving on... Benziger presented two wines for us to taste, the Signaterra San Jacomo Chardonnay (a new release, doesn't look like they have a link on the website for it yet) and the 2005 Oonapais. The Chardonnay was pretty good: pale yellow with the slightest greenish tinge, a subtle aroma of tropical fruit and melon, and a citrus-y taste without a whole lot of oak character. But the Oonapais was somewhat disappointing. It had a great color, a very deep red, with a nose like raisins and green bell pepper with maybe a hint of flint. But it didn't taste like much of anything; it was all alcohol heat and tannins. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one; I suspect it might have benefitted from decanting. But they definintely weren't putting their best foot forward; after the formal tasting we went to their wine shop and had a couple of really good pinots. I expect that Benziger wanted to show off the Oonapais because its Demeter-certified as a biodynamic wine, but honestly I don't care about that if the wine's no good.
Stonestreet
There's something about Stonestreet which appeals to the scientist in me. These guys have spared no expense in their efforts to squeeze every last bit of ethereal goodness out of their vineyards; their stated goal is to produce the best wine in the world. Each row in every vineyard has a bar code which allows them to track that row's fruit through the entire production process. Based on some things that the tour guide said it sounds like they test each individual cluster of fruit before its harvested. Either that, or they're doing a tremendous number of spot checks throughout the harvesting processs. The OCD really comes to the surface in their barrel room. Apparently most coopers make 3 or 4 different barrel profiles, but Stonestreet has worked with World Cooperage to produce forty (yup, 40) different barrel profiles to best complement each of its wines. What you're dealing with here is a frighteningly rigorous application of the scientific method.
So does this approach make better wine? I can't say. On one hand you've got people willing to pay $100 a bottle for Christopher's Cabernet Sauvignon but, on the other hand, the wines that we tasted at Stonestree were frankly mediocre. We were presented with three wines over lunch, the 2007 Alexander Valley Chardonnay, the 2006 Alexander Mountain Estate Fifth Ridge, and the 2005 Alexander Mountain Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, none of which were all that distinguished2. Between that tasting and my experience at Benziger I spent the first half of the day thinking that I'd just screwed up my palette due to overindulgence the night before. Talking with other people on the tour afterwards it became clear that they'd had the same reaction; the wines really just weren't that good.
We had the same problem here that we had at Benziger; for whatever reason they weren't putting their best product on display. That strikes me as a failure on the part of both Benziger and Stonestreet. I can understand not wanting to waste the "good stuff" on the hoi polloi, but some of the people on this trip were money. I saw them drop hundreds of dollars at Hartford without even blinking, and they certainly would have done the same at Stonestreet and Benziger given the opportunity. Meh... sales fail, not my problem.
1 Who, incidentally, was present at the dinner, and should be commended for her decorum and demeanor in the face of a bunch of strangers who wanted to talk to her.
2 One of the other people on the trip went so far as to call them "mediocre".
