The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture (13 page)

Known as the “heartbreak grape,” Pinot Noir is a notoriously capricious variety. Burgundy, where it has reigned since the late fourteenth century, seemed to be the only place it was capable of flourishing, and even there it could be maddeningly hit-or-miss. A lot of Pinot has been planted in California, Oregon, and New Zealand, and some good wines have been made. Even so, Burgundy nuts like me were convinced that Pinot was truly at home only in the limestone-rich soils of east-central France and that New World renderings were forever destined to be also-rans. Rhys has cracked the code, however, turning out delicious Pinots that in their subtlety, elegance, and sense of place approach the very best red Burgundies. I think all they lack at this point is the same intensity and length of flavor, which will presumably come with vine age, and a demonstrated ability to gain complexity as they mature, and I am confident that will happen, too.

S
HOULD
T
HERE
B
E
F
ORMAL
C
LASSIFICATIONS
FOR
C
ALIFORNIA
W
INES?

A few years ago, Sea Smoke Cellars, which is located in Santa Barbara County, put the words
California Grand Cru
on the labels of all six of the wines that it made in 2009. It was a pretty bold claim, considering that California doesn't have a formal hierarchy of vineyards or wineries. The fact that Sea Smoke had been in existence for barely a decade, with a vineyard that in its previous incarnation had been a bean field, made it a particularly brash move.

The controversy kicked up by this act of self-aggrandizement raised anew the question of whether California should have an official pecking order—a ranking of wineries
à la
the 1855 Bordeaux classifications, or a ranking of vineyards
à la
the Burgundy
cru
system. My take? No way. For one thing, although wine has been produced in California since the mid-nineteenth century, the state has too short a viticultural history to contemplate that kind of codification. Sure, some California wines are clearly first-growth caliber—the Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon leaps to mind. But the Monte Bello is also an anomaly as California goes, in that it has been an outstanding wine for more than four decades. When two or three dozen California wines have shown that kind of sustained excellence, we can talk about classifying California wineries.

As for categorizing vineyards, that would be seriously misguided at this point. California is still trying to match the right grapes to the right soils and microclimates. With all due respect to Sea Smoke, it is a little premature to be handing out (or appropriating)
grand cru
honors. Many of California's most promising sites are fairly new and have only ever had one owner. The strength of the Burgundian model is that its top vineyards have demonstrated their worthiness over hundreds of years and in the hands of multiple growers. (With rare exception, ownership of vineyards in Burgundy is divided among numerous parties; one producer will own two rows of vines, another will have four, and so on. The twenty-acre Montrachet vineyard, for instance, source of Burgundy's most coveted white wines, currently has eighteen different owners.) There are certainly sites in California that have hinted at that sort of consistency; a number of producers have coaxed great wines out of the aforementioned Eisele Vineyard, for instance. But they are few in number.

Beyond all that, I just think the idea of binding wine classifications is somehow un-American. Whatever its merits, the 1855 ladder in Bordeaux created a viticultural caste system, and the
cru
mechanism had a similar effect in Burgundy. Obviously, a winemaker in Burgundy can improve his lot merely by acquiring land in a great vineyard, whereas in Bordeaux he would have to purchase an entire château. But the point stands. Sure, there are good vineyards, bad vineyards, and great vineyards; the same is true of wineries. Those distinctions exist irrespective of whether they are formally acknowledged. But we Americans don't do caste systems; we are all about upward mobility (or at least we used to be), and establishing official rankings strikes me as antithetical to that spirit. And yes, for any classification to be meaningful, it would necessarily have to be unchanging, or at least glacially slow to change. If the rankings were constantly being shuffled, they would quickly lose their credibility.

Also, the problems of the appellation system in France these days ought to serve as a cautionary tale. The Appellations d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC for short) system was established in 1935. The goal was to map out the boundaries in which certain wines, such as Hermitage, could be made, and to prevent those names from being used elsewhere. But the AOC setup was also meant to serve as a quality control mechanism: AOC status was supposed to be granted only to France's finest vineyards and, by extension, its finest wines.

However, starting in the 1970s, largely in response to political pressure—winemakers whose vineyards were not AOC-designated pushed to be included because they wanted to be able to claim greater prestige for their wines and charge higher prices for them—the number of appellations exploded. These days, more than 50 percent of France's vineyards enjoy AOC status. This has seriously undermined the credibility of the appellation system, as has the way that appellations are governed. Individual wine appellations are basically administered by the winemakers themselves, and this arrangement, plainly fraught with conflicts of interest, has had terrible consequences. In numerous appellations, the mediocre majority rules, and quality has consequently suffered. For a wine to be labeled AOC, for instance, it must pass a taste test, but in many appellations the taste test is a joke—almost every wine gets waved through.

Even crazier, though, is what has happened in places like the Loire Valley and Beaujolais, where some of the finest producers—Jean-Paul Brun, Jean Thévenet, Marcel Richaud—have had their wines rejected. While it can't be proven, it is widely assumed that these winemakers have been targeted by neighbors jealous of their success—a wine version of Gulliver and the Lilliputians. These are areas in which many vintners are struggling economically, and there is resentment of those who are prospering, resentment that appears to have found expression in the form of failed taste tests. I'm not suggesting that the codification of California wines would necessarily result in the same sort of problems that are found in France, but the French example is another reason I think we can get along just fine without having an official hierarchy of vineyards or wineries.

H
OW
D
ID THE
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RENCH
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ET TO
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G
OOD AT
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INE?

Having spent several paragraphs talking about the problems of the French appellation system, let me now shower some praise on the French. Why, historically, have the French been so good at wine? One reason is that they've been making it a lot longer than the rest of us. But like many oenophiles, I'm convinced that it's also a function of the philosophy that guides their efforts. At the heart of the French viticultural system is the concept of
terroir
: the idea that wine is chiefly a product of the physical environment (the soil, the microclimate) in which the grapes are grown, that matching the right grape to the right soil is the essential first step to making fine wine, and that a wine should not just taste good but exude a sense of place. This notion took root in France during the Middle Ages and remains the organizing principle of French winemaking. But many New World producers, explicitly and implicitly, have shown contempt for it. They have allowed commercial considerations to dictate which grapes they plant, paying little regard to whether those grapes are really suited to the sites in question, and they have demonstrated a proclivity to make wines that emphasize fruit, alcohol, and new oak over any expression of
terroir
. Their wines exude an unmistakable sense of place, but it's the wrong place—the cellar rather than the vineyard.

Not surprisingly, these wines often seem indistinguishable from one another, and I think this sameness goes a long way to explaining why so many oenophiles are ultimately drawn to France.
Terroir
is a somewhat elusive concept, and the extent to which the vineyard really influences the taste of a wine is something we may never know. But the finest vintners in places such as Burgundy and the Loire continue to produce wines that convey a sense of “somewhereness,” to use Matt Kramer's felicitous phrase, and that on balance show more nuance and individuality than most of what emerges from Napa or Barossa. When it comes to crafting interesting, multidimensional wines that will improve with age, France still leads the way. But California has exceptional
terroir
, too, and with the advent of this movement toward greater balance and site expression, it is slowly catching up. I think we are on the cusp of a very special era for California winemaking, a truly great leap forward, and as big a blow as the Judgment of Paris was for the French, it was nothing compared to what's probably coming.

T
HE
N
EW
C
ALIFORNIA—
N
AMES
W
ORTH
K
NOWING

• Rhys Vineyards (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah)

• Copain Wines (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah)

• Wind Gap Wines (Syrah, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay)

• Dashe Cellars (Zinfandel, Riesling)

• Lioco Winery (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, blends)

• Sandhi Wines (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay)

• Tyler Winery (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay)

• Kutch Wines (Pinot Noir)

• Arnot-Roberts (Syrah, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay)

• Donkey and Goat Winery (Syrah, Grenache, Grenache Blanc, Chardonnay, blends)

• Failla Wines (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah)

T
HE
B
EST OF
C
ALIFORNIA'S
O
LD
G
UARD

• Ridge Vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Zinfandel)

• Chateau Montelena (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Riesling, Zinfandel)

• Mayacamas Vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay)

• Dominus (Cabernet Sauvignon)

• Stony Hill Vineyard (Chardonnay)

• Nalle Winery (Zinfandel)

• Smith-Madrone Vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Riesling)

• Hanzell Vineyards (Chardonnay)

• Au Bon Climat Winery (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay)

• Calera Wine (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay)

7

The Beaune Supremacy:
The Triumph of Burgundy

L
OOKING FOR
a quick means of establishing your wine-geek bona fides? Here's one easy and surefire way: declare your passion for Burgundy and simultaneously announce that you have sworn off Bordeaux, and you will instantaneously acquire all the street cred you could possibly want. Burgundy ascendant, Bordeaux passé? Yep, and it's arguably the biggest wine story of the past decade. For the better part of two centuries, Bordeaux was the most important and influential wine region and source of the most coveted wines. Now, though, its longtime rival to the north, Burgundy, has largely supplanted Bordeaux as the wine world's lodestar. What accounts for this historic change? I think it speaks to a growing preference for Pinot Noir, Burgundy's red grape, over Cabernet Sauvignon, which is Bordeaux's mainstay. But more than that, I believe it reflects a certain romanticism on the part of wine enthusiasts—a preference for the artisanal over the industrial, an emotional disposition that small is indeed beautiful.

Burgundy is a relatively tiny region located in east-central France. Almost all its wines are made from a single grape—Pinot Noir for the reds, Chardonnay for the whites (there is another white grape, Aligoté, but it is made in minute quantities). Bordeaux, located in southwestern France, specializes in blended wines. Bordeaux is divided into two parts, known as the left bank and the right bank (they are divided by the Gironde River). Cabernet Sauvignon is king on the left bank, Merlot on the right, but neither grape is used exclusively. A typical left bank wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, with Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot possibly thrown in. A typical right bank wine is predominately Merlot, with Cabernet Franc and possibly also Cabernet Sauvignon added. In Burgundy, the vineyard is king; the region's wines are classified by vineyard (
grand cru, premier cru, villages
, and so on), and a winery's standing is wholly dependent on the vineyards that it owns. In Bordeaux, by contrast, the château is king; wines are classified by château (first growth, second growth, and the like), and if Château Lafite, a first growth, acquires a vineyard that previously belonged to a third growth, that vineyard will, by dint of association, suddenly be producing first-growth fruit.