Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Sometimes it’s difficult not to see negative things around you, because sooner or later you find yourself in a situation that looks clearly negative, or as happened to me recently multiple situations that looked clearly negative. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life, not least because we are all born, age, get sick and die, process that are inherently more or less painful. Then there are the things and people we want but can’t have, no less the things and people we don’t want at all but have to put up with. The real problems begin when the idea that those “negative” things and people can be separated from the “positive” ones takes hold in your mind, and you imagine that if only you could do  this  everything would be hunky dory. And if that doesn’t work, then you try to at least keep the “negative” things and people at a distance where we feel that they won’t be able to harm us. That takes a great deal of energy, narrows or closes your heart and often doesn’t work either. The truth is, of course, that positive and negative, good and bad are all mixed up together and they always will be. I recently became more aware of how fear is the force driving the desire to avoid the negative: the fear of being hurt again. I am certainly not immune from any of these forms of thinking and often fall into them myself too. By the way, none of these thoughts are in any way new, in fact they’re as old as the world. Many other writers have said these things much better than I have, or will ever be able to. In spite of that I feel the need to communicate them to you today. Please take my advice and FEAR NOT!

That Nova Cadamatre has just made three 2015 FLX wines for the 240 Days brand certainly sounds like the kind of news that this blog is on the look out for, but it hardly sounds earth-shattering. That is, until you realize that the owner of 240 Days is Constellation Brands in Canandaigua, NY the world’s largest wine producer (think giant brands like Robert Mondavi, Clos du Bois, Kim Crawford, and, and, and). Nova Cadamatre is Constellation’s director of winemaking and is responsible for the making of more than 100 million bottles of wine per year. The roughly 8,000 bottles of the debut vintage of 240 Days may seem like a tiny drop in that ocean, but if you see this brand as a small new FLX winery then that quantity seems rather normal. The point of that analogy is that these wines taste as if they came from a small new FLX winery, not from a corporate giant. Given that the latter is the actual context  this is a major achievement. One of the secrets behind this is Nova’s ability to adapt to the special set of growing conditions in the FLX.

“After coming back from Napa I had to ask myself what will work here, and what won’t work here,” she explained, “I noticed that the size of the is much larger than in California.” For red wines that is of particular importance, because the color and the tannins are in the skins, so big berries means less color and tannin per unit volume of grape juice. Her simple solution to this problem was to, “to take the water out,” that is to remove 20% of the fermenting juice out of  the tank of fermenting 2015 Cabernet Franc to increase the skins to juice ratio. That 20% was then fermented separately to give the core of the 240 Days 2015 Dry Rosé. The latter is one of the new breed of fruit-driven – in this case mostly strawberry, but also watermelon and redcurrant – FLX dry rosés that have been taking the NYWC (New York Wine City) market by storm. The still slightly raw 2015 Cabernet Franc rted is a much more serious wine with a delicate touch of smoky oak, discrete herbal greenness rather than the full-throttle vegetal aromatics this grape is careful of, moderate acidity and quite elegant dry tannins. There are not many FLX Cabernet Francs that play in this league without getting what I call the Vanilla Pudding Problem, i.e. too much new oak leading to a vanilla aroma that smothers the wines’ fruit character. Some leading FLX winemakers need to get away from this if they want to persuade NYWC and the Big Wide Wine World that their Cab Francs deserve to be taken seriously!

Similarly successful, but in a dramatically contrasting style is the 240 Days 2015 Riesling, which is at the upper limit of the dry category. This has a very attractive nose of various fresh white fruits and a hint of citrus, and in the mouth has a spot on balance between juicy fruit, crisp acidity, and an uplifting spritz of carbon dioxide. Aging 10% of this wine in barriques used by the Robert Mondavi winery for six years before Nova got her hands on them has added some mid-palate texture without giving any hint of oak aroma. Both the alcohol and sweetness aren’t directly perceptible unless you’re a professional taster trained to look for those things. The price of $28 retail for the Riesling and $40 for the Cabernet Franc are statement’s of intent regarding the long-term position of the brand, and puts some pressure on Nova to push the quality even further during the coming years. It seems that Constellation are very serious about this project. “Rob said to me, “make the best possible wine you can!”” Rob is Robert Sands, the CEO.

Nova also as her own brand that debits with the 2015 vintage, Trestle 31, together with her husband Brian who also works for Constellation Brands, but on the financial side. They own a 12 acre property on the eastern bank of Seneca Lake that is cleared ready for planting and the grapes for the 2015 vintage came from nearby Zugibe Vineyards. This wine is a complete stylistic contrast to the 240 Days Riesling, being bone-dry with a much less strident acidity and aromas of tart peach and ripe lime. By the way, Nova is also a talented writer with her own blog. Normally, I don’t recommend winemaker’s blogs, because they are often poorly written and/or too geeky and/or dull as dust. However, I strongly recommend this one to you:

www.novacadamatre.com

What does all this mean? Nova is undoubtedly one of the Rock Stars of Wine America! By the way, the third volume in my series of e-books under that name appears on Kindle on April 21st, and Nova also makes an appearance in it.

Why is there so little interest in mature wines like those pictured above? Most wine drinkers never have the chance to taste a particular wine from many vintages stretching back over 10 to 15 years, and those who lucky enough to have only done so generally only did that once or twice How can you actively desire something you’ve never experienced before? I think there’s also a difference between dabbling in a new experience and immersing yourself in it, because the former rarely leads to new habits being formed whereas the later does. The importance of habits in shaping our patterns of consumption and preferences whether in wine or other things is greatly underrated. The truth is that we are to a very large degree creatures of habit, but these habits can be changed. But enough philosophy for this afternoon, because this posting has a couple of concrete subjects.

The first of them is the vertical tasting of the dry Rieslings from the Sheldrake Point Estate Winery on Cayuga Lake yesterday afternoon that I was lucky to be invited to. I say “lucky”, because although I get to taste those 10 to 15 vintages of a particular wine quite often due to my profession, I very rarely get that chance in the FLX. Many producers who are making the best wines didn’t exist a decade or more ago, or if they did the quality took a big step up during that time. Then the comparison between wines of high quality current production with mediocre earlier production doesn’t real tell you anything apart from the simple fact that this producer got a lot better!

The most striking thing about the dry Rieslings from Sheldrake Point was the fact that the oldest  wines, the rich and weighty 2001 and the much lighter and much crisper 2002, both showed really well. The fact that regular quality wines produced in serious quantities can keep that well is a very positive sign. OK the 2003 had not aged so gracefully (it was drying out) and the 2004 was a bit too tart, but from the 2009 vintage onwards there was an impressive consistency of style and quality. This was also true of the rather more powerful and concentrated Riesling Reserve and even those wines from the unremarkable 2006 and very difficult 2009 vintages were seriously fresh and vivid. Probably the rich (apricot and tangerine aromas dominate) and beautifully balanced 2012 Riesling Reserve is the best white wine Sheldrake Point produced before the stunning 2014 that hasn’t been released yet. On which note, look out for the regular 2014 Dry Riesling due for release in just a couple of weeks. It is a steal!

 Then the concentration of the group of tasters was abruptly broken by a Facebook posting from Nathan Kendall, the winemaker of Bellangelo Winery on Seneca Lake for the 2014 and 2015 vintages (pictured right). It said:

For the last year and a half, I’ve had the great opportunity to make wines for Bellangelo Winery. Wishing them continued success. As of today I’m moving on to focus on the growth of my personal label, N. Kendall Wines. Also, stay tuned as I have some new exciting projects in the works as well!

That was a shocker had seen coming, and I had seen Nathan twice recently in NYC. The first time was at the first presentation that the winemaker group FLX Unfiltered & Unrefined in the Royal Seafood restaurant in Mott Street, Chinatown on the evening of Wednesday, March 2nd when he was showing the wines of his own label, and then the New York Drinks New York tasting on Tuesday, March 8th when he was showing the Bellangelo wines. The almost the off-dry 2014 Riesling he showed at the latter event was a striking wine that is just beginning to open up and (quite rightly) hasn’t been released yet. This situation didn’t suggest in any way that a big change was coming, rather it looked like Nathan would continue on this twin track career.

The FLX Unfiltered & Unrefined tasting demands some more serious comment. The one slightly questionable aspect of this group is the way they seem to be trying to position themselves as belonging within the broad (and increasingly confusing) circle of natural and alternative winemakers. Certainly, they can all claim to be makers of alternative wines, at least if that’s defined simply as wines with a non-mainstream taste. However, they certainly aren’t “natural” winemakers by any stretch of the imagination, or if they are then you have to make that category elastic to the point where it becomes meaningless.

This odd tasting in a Chinese restaurant was not only great fun, it was also my first chance to taste the wines from the Shaw and Wild Brute wineries. Shaw showed several mature wines, of which the muscular and tannic 2010 Pinot Noir was the most interesting. My only criticism of Wild Brute is given that name the wines were actually rather easy to drink, except for the 2013 Cabernet Franc, which is still a little bit wild and brutishly young in the positive sense. I really like the reds from Element winery that Master Sommelier Chris Bates founded, particularly the 2102 Cabernet Franc and the 2013 Lemberger. However, the most fitting description of this style is that I can come up with is that it is clearly inspired by certain traditional style French wines, but (thankfully) omits the hardcore funkiness often associated with them.

Nathan Kendall’s Rieslings are very striking, but if it’s bright fruity aromas that turn you on this is the wrong place to seek that tutti-frutti winogasm. However, if you like your dry Riesling to have some serious textural components then these wines – I’m thinking particularly of the dry 2012 and 2013 – could well excite you. The problem is that Kris Matthewsen of Bellwether Wines (pictured left) is also in the group, and he also makes dry Rieslings that are medium-bodied but have a lot textural complexity. As alternative as Kris’s wines undeniably are, they are also rather aromatic and I find them more interesting and satisfying than Nathan’s. I’m thinking particularly about the recently released Bellwether 2014 Dry Riesling from the Sawmill Creek Vineyard with it’s white peach, apple and lemon notes and a great balance for a high acidity dry white with just 11% alcohol. Hats off Kris!

What I’ve done here is simply to report on Nathan’s step sideways out of Bellangelo and off  completely in his own direction. Whether this is a positive step or not is another matter. You could say that it was a sign of the increasing dynamism of the FLX, or you could regard it as a petulant act of an ambitious and talented young winemaker. Time will tell us which it was better than I can with the facts currently at my disposal. Of course, it creates a problem for Bellangelo’s owner Chris Missick, but there’s plenty of time until the 2016 harevest and I’m sure that he can solve it well before then.

The Finger Lakes, increasingly well known under the acronym FLX, is a dynamic wine region that keeps drawing me back to it, but many people in New York Wine City, or NYWC as I call it, continue to look down their noses at the region’s wines. The inhabitants of NYWC are now split down the middle into FLX fans – mostly newly enthusiastic on the basis of the best wines from the last few vintages – and those who remain deeply skeptical. Just as Bordeaux – let’s stick with the goddamn acronyms and call it BDX – long benefited from being regarded by conservative wine drinkers as the wine region of France, Europe, the world and the universe, so in the eyes of arch-conservative citizens of NYWC the FLX will be forever the wrong wine region. Although the Great God of Wine is seldom evoked when such drastic judgements are made, it often strikes me that people act as if one or another gad had made that decision and all they are doing is following his will. I’m sure you can tell just how much scorn I have for this way of seeing Planet Wine, or for that matter anything else. The reason I’m so radical in rejecting this god-given determinism is that it strikes me that nothing in this world except for the hard facts of birth, aging, sickness and (eventual) death is ever fixed or forever certain.

Bruce Murray of Boundary Breaks Vineyard in the FLX, pictured above on the construction site of his new winery building, is the perfect proof of this. Although it is entirely functional it is also in the Greek Revival style that was so popular in this part of New York State when it was first settled by white European-Americans in the early 19th century. That is already quite a statement, and it fits Bruce’s ambitious plans for his still very young and still rather small winery.

After planting his first vines in 2008 Bruce released his first wine just under four years ago and with his 2014 vintage Rieslings he moved into the first league of FLX producers with a style that is at once ripe and aromatic, but also elegant and polished. His 2014 Dry Riesling 239 has already been named by this one of my  Riesling Revelations of 2015, and this wine is a steal at a shade under $20 direct from the winery! This quality and stylistic innovation is the result not only of the vision of Bruce the ex-market researcher, but also very much to his talented vineyard manager Kees Stapel and to the winemaking skills of Kelby Russell of Red Newt Cellars (with which wines they are not to be confused!) where the three main 2014 Rieslings of Boundary Breaks were made. I tasted them again this afternoon and cannot recommend them too highly to all the dyed-in-the-wool FLX wine skeptics in NYWC, because these wines have exactly what they think the wines of this region cannot ever have: finesse, sophistication and the ability to stand in the company of the world’s best (in this case Rieslings from the Mosel and Nahe in Germany would be the logical comparison).

With the first phase of construction of the new winery under way (I’d expect the new tasting room to be ready for the beginning of the tourist season),  the first red wine in barrel (at the cellar of Sheldrake Point), and plans for further planting in the air Boundary Breaks isn’t sitting still, rather Bruce is upping the stakes in the Great FLX Wine Game. And Bruce isn’t the only one with serious ambitions and the determination to turn a vision into wines that wow consumers out there in the Big Wine Wine World. No less than his switched on colleagues in the region, he knows that there is no way to achieve this but by breaking the supposed boundaries of what this region can do. Oh, and then you have to sell these new wines along with the idea that they are not just remarkable FLX wines, but remarkable wines period. As Bruce said to me, “in this market that’s overcrowded with many, many, many, many fine wines the way you market yourself has a disproportionate effect on how successful you are.” He’s working on that challenge too!

I was never asked by anybody why I write this blog, perhaps because by the time it really got rolling blogging had become so well established that it was widely assumed to be as natural as breathing or having sex. Nobody asks why someone might want to do those things. By the way my advice is don’t forget to breathe (thanks Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer and Tool for those immortal words). The fact is thought that blogging isn’t like breathing or having sex, even if it is extremely habit-forming and addictive so that it can feel as natural as those things to a long-term blogger like me. So “why blog?” is a very good question to ask, and I do so now.

I’ve been thing about this a lot lately, because I haven’t been either healthy or happy. I’m going to keep the reason for that to myself, because it involves someone who’s identity I want to protect, and their identity is also irrelevant to what I’m trying to say today. The point is that while I have been depressed writing has given me, and continues to gives me, a reason to live and be positive. It actively pulls me along through the difficult days, distracting me from the pain. The open-ended nature of my blog makes it particularly good at this. What I mean by that is, although I keep coming back to certain themes here I could write about almost any subject. I always find a story that I want to tell without much trouble, because storytelling comes as naturally to me as wanting to love and be loved. That isn’t quite on the same basic level as bodily functions, but, as I say, it’s connected to the fundamental emotions. The only problem with storytelling on a blog is that there’s a maximum length to a blog posting which the regular readership will accept. That’s why I sometimes break a story up into a number of episodes. This is a minor practical detail though. Basically, a free flow of storytelling is possible here and that’s what excites me about this medium.

Although my blog does have guest authors (particularly in the German-language section) it has been suggested to me that this location in cyberspace is far too narrowly devoted to my experiences, thoughts, ideas and prejudices. The argument goes that the interactive social media are now the model for everything, and just as there is crowd funding, crowd sourcing so there should be crowd writing. I’m in favor of all those things being done, but not here and now. The reason for placing this limit is not just my ego, rather it comes down to the fact that a crowd can only tell a coherent story if they all share the experiences the basis for the story, or at least know the outline of the story they are jointly telling.

Beyond this, a story can only touch you if it has an emotional truth – believable characters acting in a believable way with whom you identify positively or negatively – and an emotional logic – a beginning, a middle and end, each leading to the next –  to accentuate that truth. There’s no way you can throw together a bunch of people who write in widely contrasting styles and have them jointly tell a story that does this, because each time there was a change of author there would be an abrupt break in the storytelling. In fact, the story could easily get lost completely. So the answer is that everyone can join in the storytelling, but the best way is for each to tell their own story as well as possible. The whole point of my blog is that it is the place where I can tell my stories my way, and that is what your blog can give you too. Do it!

If I need more space that this blog can provide, because a story is big and complex, than that material goes into an e-book for Kindle. I am currently working on ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #3 about the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York and publication should be some time the first days of April. Writing that book gives my life purpose just as writing for this blog does, and that has saved me from the worst effects of depression during these last difficult weeks. That may make it sound as if blog-writing is a form of therapy, but I would counter that by saying that this is what storytelling of all kinds is therapeutic for the storyteller and the readers/listeners. A blog is just one rather particular way of telling stories, and it’s one that I found suits me, although I didn’t believe it would when I started.

By the way, if you want to submit a story you are very welcome to do so. You may also comment at length on things I have written and be critical. The only rule is that because I earn no revenue through this blog, neither can you. We are all equal!

This photograph of winemaker Eric Texier reminds me somewhat of that I took a week earlier of Abe Schoener of the Scholium Project in California, and there are number of important similarities although Eric is working on the other side of Planet Wine to Abe in the Northern Rhône Valley of France. Both are true originals who came from outside the industry and saw winemaking possibilities that the insiders hadn’t. Both have mastered the technique of making attractive and highly individual wines with a minimum of added sulfites. As regular readers know, I have a healthy skepticism about that winemaking path, because sulfites are not only an antioxidant, they are also an antiseptic and without their help unwanted microbes would spoil vast quantities of wine. They make it work real well!

I’d encountered the Texier wines many times before (thank you Alice Feiring for my first introduction about 3 years ago), but I finally met Eric yesterday at The Big Glou alternative wine festival in the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg yesterday, where I took the above photograph. I found his entire approach fascinating, beginning with his principal that in the Northern Rhône mono-varietal wines work best, (in contrast to the Southern Rhône Valley where he believes blends work best), and continuing with both his short red wine fermentations in order not to extract too much from the grapes, and his use of concrete tanks. He always worked with organic grapes, even before he had any vines of his own.

Acquiring his own vineyards in 2009 was a decisive step for Eric and the wines he showed all came from two forgotten areas of the Northern Rhône, Brézème on the left bank of the river with its limestone soil and St. Julien-en-St.-Alban on the right bank with a granite soil. The latter enabled him to make the 2014 Adele, a pure Clairette that has a floral touch and a lemony acidity I never encountered in this grape before. It is also the location of a rare Grenache vineyard for this part of the region and Eric christened the wines from those old vines Chat Fou, or mad cat. The 2013 had bright red berry aromas, was sleek and had a startling liveliness at the finish. Grenache is usually a rather broad, warm and soft red! These are totally original wines with great clarity of flavor, and not a hint of microbial funk. Best of all, they are joyful wines and I think that makes Eric as true a Rhône Ranger as Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon in California (scroll down for the two recent postings about him).

Most exciting of all for me were Eric’s two Syrah reds, the 2104 St. Julien-en-St. Alban had very pure wild blackberry aroma and hints of both green and black pepper, tasting crisp and elegant with a real northerly freshness. More fleshy and powerful the 2013 Brézème had a stack of dry tannins, but they were very well integrated and the aftertaste was seriously spicy. Just a few days before I’d tasted the 2010 Hermitage Le Greal from Marc Sorrel, a bottle that will set you back well over $100 if you can find that sought-after vintage at all, and as impressive as it was this 14.5% alcohol behemoth was too much for me. At this stage in its life it’s a wine to admire from a safe distance, but not to actually drink. Eric’s wines are all about drinking rather than impressing people, and I’m completely on his side! No wonder that these are widely imitate wines and have also inspired many winemakers in the so-called “natural” wine field.

A lot of people in New York Wine City (NYWC) and in the wine scenes of other cities and  around Planet Wine regard Abe Schoener of the Scholium Project as one of the leading producer of “natural wine” in California and/or the figurehead of the New California Wine. I certainly don’t mean to take him down a notch or deny that he’s seriously alternative by making this observation, but the truth is, although there’s plenty evidence to support those claims, Abe Schoener is a unique winemaker who defies all the conventional categories. That’s what made it so fascinating to meet him, hear him speak and taste his wines at Red Hook Winery late yesterday afternoon, where I also took the above photo.

The reason that the tasting was staged at Red Hook Winery is that Abe is one of the three winemaker team at that operation based in a renovated 19th century red brick warehouse right on the water’s edge. Of course, the sound of gently-lapping waves and seagullscould be considered appropriate for a tasting of “natural wines”, but that’s a term Abe didn’t use once to describe his wines, and he assiduously avoided “orange wines” too, although he showed several examples of what the world calls that. All words are labels and although it is the context that loads them with meaning, clearly certain contexts can overload particular words with meaning and associations, and I think it was this that Abe was trying to avoid. His goal seemed to be that, as far as possible everyone in the considerable crowd that gathered at Red Hook Winery should taste each wine for itself without a big pile of preconceptions. Both his wines from West Coast and from the East Coast were worthy of that openness and attention.

The tasting began with a huge surprise for the “natural wine” freaks in the audience, because the carbon dioxide in the  Scholium Project’s slightly funky and outrageously fruity frizzante 2015 “Blowout” was added from a cylinder prior to bottling and the wine also had a rather conventional sulfite content. Also, although this blend of Verdelho, Grüner Veltliner and Roero grapes tasted light it actually had close to 15% alcohol. Those are not the things Abe is supposed to stand for.

“Most of what we talk about in winemaking is about the role of oxygen in the process,” he observed, “we protect this wine from oxygen right through the production, unlike many of our other wines.” In fact, it was only with the fourth wine that we got into the territory that most of his fans associate with Abe: white wines fermented on the skins. As we tasted the 2015 Rhododactylos, a pale but powerful and slightly funky white from the red Cinsault grape he pointed out, “the big question isn’t whether the wine was made from red fruit or white fruit, the fundamental distinction is between wines fermented on the skins and those fermented with no skins.” For his skin-fermented whites and reds Abe works with very low sulfite additions, because this style is more resistant to oxidation than the wines fermented without the skins. Although most of his wines are shaped by techniques that transform the fruit he begins with, rather than seeking to simply preserving it, Abe is a winemaking pragmatist.

I enjoyed that wine a lot, but I have to say that I was even more excited by the 2010 Die Welt des Mondes, or the world of the moon, a partially skin-fermented Sauvignon Blanc from Red Hook Winery that was waxy and honeyed in aroma, and richly textural in spite of the crisp acidity. This was introduced by Abe’s fellow winemaker at Red Hook Christopher Nicolson, who said of the Macari family from who’s vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island the grapes originated, “I can taste the rage, the sadness and the passion they pour into their vineyard.” The 2013 The Prince in his Cave (yes, the wine really is called that!) from the Scholium project took skin-fermented SB a lot further and the aroma reminded me of chutney. This wine’s tannins are quite chunky and either you’ll like that or you won’t! “Some of the color of this and other skin-fermented white wines comes from the grape seeds, with which the wine has extended contact due to the technique,” Abe observed. That was news to me, like so much else he said.

Although pink in color and made from Zinfandel like the zombie wine (yesterday’s mega-fashion wine is still undead in the marketplace) White Zin Scholium’s 2015 Il Ciliego is about as far away from that sweet and kitschy quaffing wine as you can get. The bouquet was discrete, but the flavors reminded me of the maraschino cherries, dried cranberries and candied citrus. In spite of having some serious body (and almost 15% alcohol) it was very clean and dry. Here the path of low sulfites had helped give the wine a unique personality unlike any other rosé I can remember tasting.

The 2007 and 2013 vintages of Scholium’s Babylon made from the Petite Sirah grape (called Durif in it’s homeland in Southern France) were monster reds, but also unlike anything else I ever experienced in that category. They both had a slight whiff of vinegar (technical terms: acetic acid, volatile acidity), but in both wines this was unobtrusive, rather than being a problem as it is in some California Cult Cabernets or many rustic reds from around Planet Wine. Abe claims that this actually adds some freshness to wines of this kind, and is a legitimate winemaking tool as long as it isn’t pushed too far. In the still unreleased 2013 – it tastes like a great Hendrix guitar solo sounds! – I could see what he was talking about. I’m still chewing on this and a bunch of other things this category-defying winemaker active on both coasts of the US said, and I may need to devote a second posting to this subject. You have been warned!