California Wines available in Ontario, Aug 20

I’m digressing here, from my usual topics concerning winemaking, to write a special post for winelovers in Ontario. Tomorrow, Aug 20, Vintages is doing a special release of wines from “The Other California” (i.e. NOT Napa and Sonoma). 12 wines are being released, the majority of which are from my current home, the Central Coast (the remainder are from Mendocino, north of Sonoma). Thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about some of the featured wines and wineries I’ve become familiar with in the past year.

First off, I have to represent for my AVA, Santa Rita Hills (or "Sta. Rita Hills" as it's officially written to avoid hatemail from Santa Rita Winery in Chile) established in 2001. The AVA is situated between Lompoc and Buellton in Santa Barbara County, and is a cool climate region. The reason it's so cool is the transverse valleys--running west-east from the coast, allowing cool breezes and fog to roll in, rather than the more usual north-south running valleys where the hills block the mists and breezes. 3 sets of hills are involved in the Santa Rita Hills AVA, all running east-west and more or less parallel to each other: the Purisima Hills to the north, the Santa Rosa Hills to the south and the Santa Rita Hills in between. Also running more or less parallel to the hills is the Santa Ynez River, a big factor in the microclimate. The marine layer (“sea smoke”) that rolls in every day follows the river’s path from the coast.

As well as both the north- and south-facing slopes of the Santa Ritas, the south-face of the Purisima Hills and the north face of the Santa Rosas are included in the AVA. There are only a  few wineries in the area, but lots of vineyards, with the grapes (specialties are Pinot and Chardonnay) being sold to wineries elsewhere in Santa Barbara and California. The wineries/vineyards are situated along 2 roads running east west and more or less parallel to each other: highway 246 runs between The Purisimas and Santa Ritas in the north and Santa Rosa road runs between the Santa Ritas and the Santa Rosas in the south. Got it? Here are a couple of pics to look at while the info percolates:




Taken from north side of Purisima Hills, looking south across hwy 246 at the Santa Rita Hills

 

 



I haven't drawn these AVAs perfectly, but this is close. Vandenburg AFB occupies the whole of the coast where we are. The city of Santa Barbara is just under an hour away from where I am in the westernmost part of Santa Rita Hills. And LA is another 1 1/2 hours beyond that. It takes about an hour to drive from one end of the Santa Ynez V. AVA to the other (including SRH and Happy Canyon.)

 

Taken from Seasmoke vineyard on the south face of the Santa Rita Hills, looking across Santa Rosa Road to the Sanford vineyards on the north face of the Santa Rosa Hills


 

 

The Pinots from along hwy 246 (where I am, at Babcock Winery) are generally a little lighter in style, with more perfume and minerality, whereas Pinots from the Santa Rosa Road are bigger with more intense fruit but less perfumed and minerally.

Whether they’re from north or south, Santa Rita Hills Pinot, in particular, is highly sought-after, and priced accordingly. Lafond Winery, situated on Santa Rosa Road, has a SRH Pinot in tomorrow’s release at a wallet-pleasing $26.95. This is their entry-level Pinot, from the estate. They also make several wonderful single vineyard wines that are, unfortunately, made in too small a quantity to ever be seen at the LCBO. The one on offer, though, the 2009 Estate Pinot Noir, is a good, solid wine and will give you an idea of what SRH Pinots are all about. It has a medium intensity with lots of upfront, ripe red fruit, and a slight spicy, floral hint. With medium minus tannin, medium body and medium plus alcohol, it’s a nice glass of wine.

Lafond also has their corresponding entry-level Chardonnay on the release. Also a deal, at $19.95, it has everything you expect from California Chard—oak, tropical fruit, rich gold colour—plus some nice minerality and welcome acid, due to the cooler climate. Both very good wines for the price, it seems Lafond knows what they’re doing. No surprise, since Pierre Lafond was the first to open a winery (Santa Barbara Winery) in Santa Barbara County back in 1962. Lafond’s vineyards on Santa Rosa Road were planted in 1971, and the winery opened in 2000.



Lafond's Pinot vineyard



Lafond Pinot clusters, Aug 12 '11, almost there!

The Santa Rita Hills AVA occupies the westernmost part of the much larger Santa Ynez Valley AVA. Being closest to the ocean, SRH is much cooler than points further east, and in fact, they say the temp goes up 1 degree (farenheit) for every mile you travel inland. I believe it. I’ve often gotten into my car in SRH, driven for 20 minutes, and gotten out in a different season—crazy! Within the easternmost part of the Santa Ynez Valley AVA is the brand new Happy Canyon AVA, less than one year old. Just as SRH is the coolest part of SYV, Happy Canyon is the hottest. Whereas it’s all Pinot and Chard at my end, over there, they specialize in Bordeaux varieties. A couple from Star Lane are on the release: the 06 Cabernet and the 05 Astral, the winery’s flagship Bordeaux blend. Since the 2 wines pre-date the new Happy Canyon AVA, they are labelled as Santa Ynez Valley. The 06 Cabernet Sauvignon is a deep ruby and is showing very little age on the nose and palate. Blackcurrant in spades, along with a welcome hint of green, some coffee, licorice and dried herbs. Medium plus body, medium plus alcohol and medium or better intensity on the palate. I think this will age quite nicely for another couple of years. $37.95 is a lot to ask for a California Cab without “Napa” on the label, but I think these Happy Canyon people may be on to something.

The 05 Astral is the first vintage for this wine made from vines planted in 1997. 99% Cab and 1%Petite Verdot, it was aged in 100% new oak for 2 years. Not surprisingly, it’s a monster. The aged bouquet is gorgeous: licorice, mint, surbois, dried fruit, coconut and marzipan. It’s very soft on the palate with only medium tannins but with a pronounced intensity of flavour, and long finish. Should continue to evolve for a few more years.

Star Lane's tasting room on Drum Canyon Rd off Hwy 246





Wes Hagen, winemaker at Clos Pepe in the Santa Rita Hills, remarks that SRH is for the Burgundian grapes, Happy Canyon for Bordeaux, and Rhone Varieties in between. Rhone varieties are certainly in abundance in the central part of the Santa Ynez AVA, but occasionally they wander into the western and eastern extremes of the AVA as well. Santa Rita Hills Syrah has a distinctly cool climate character to it—more northern Rhone than Barossa Shiraz. You can taste an example of this in the upcoming release, in the Ampelos Gamma Syrah. Ampelos winery is a small, (3,500 case/year) enterprise headed up by Peter and Rebecca Work. They planted their SRH vineyard in 2001 and had their first harvest in 04. Ampelos is the first U.S. winery to be certified organic, biodynamic and sustainable. The name, “Ampelos” means “vine” in Greek. The Works got married on a Greek island and opened a B & B there of the same name. In keeping with the theme, their wines all bear the names of Greek letters—for the Syrah, it’s Gamma. 06 was the second year for this wine. It’s deep ruby with a medium plus intensity on the nose of lifted, black fruit, some mineral, and a hint of perfume. It has surprising acidity, medium plus body, and intensity with spice, and a little dustiness on the palate. The tannins are beginning to soften, but otherwise there’s not much sign of age. This might continue to evolve until 2015 or later. As the climate dictates, Northern Rhone is what one is reminded of. This is right in line with Peter’s European roots (he’s Danish). Other interesting Ampelos facts: Peter and Rebecca’s son, Don Schroeder, is winemaker at cult Pinot winery, Sea Smoke, just down the street; for a Hollywood connection: actor, Kurt Russell, makes his wine at Ampelos.

Other wines on the release hail from further north in Paso Robles. Of all Central Coast wine regions, Paso definitely has the best marketing. There are events and festivals there all the time, and it seems all the wineries are gung ho when it comes to getting the word out about themselves and their neighbours. For me, Peachy Canyon was the first Paso Robles winery that came up on my radar. They specialize in Zinfandel, but it’s the 07 Petite Sirah that Ontarians will be enjoying after tomorrow. With a deep, dark hue, nice lifted nose, some smoke, and lots of black fruit, $19.95 is a good price. I was there this past spring during the Zinfandel Festival. It was a lively day in the tasting room there, and I'd met winemaker, Josh, before. He and his brother Jake, make and market (respectively) the wines of Peachy Canyon, started by their Dad.

These days, the sons have their own venture, also in Paso Robles, where I first met them. Chronic Cellars is not your average winery. They cater to a specific demographic. The day I visited, back in February, the folks in the tasting room--both staff and patrons--were quite a bit more mohawked, tattooed and pierced than what one generally sees at a winery. The tasting room and labels are garishly coloured and adorned with skeletons. The wines have names like "Sofa King Suite". If that doesn't seem too "out there" as a wine name for you, try saying it out loud--to your Grandma.

Peachy Canyon tasting room

Vineyard along Peachy Canyon Rd in early spring

Also on the Zin weekend, I visited Eberle (EH-bur-lee). Gary Eberle has been around since the early 70s and planted the first Syrah in California way back when. His Chapoutier clone is widely used still. He's a lovely big bear of a guy, and so enthusiastic about his wines. He poure several at the California Wine Fair which made its way through Ontario this spring, but what’s on release tomorrow is the 09 Estate Chardonnay. I won’t lie to you about this wine. Paso is hot (no transverse valleys here), and the Chard is a buxom, oaky, mouthful, full of spice and vanilla.

  

patio and vineyard at Eberle



Sadly, no Babcock wines on the roster. In fact, they are few and far between anywhere in Ontario—though that may change soon, fingers crossed. In the meantime, here are a few places you can at least try our White Syrah (a rose), called Identity Crisis:

Ottawa: Brookstreet Hotel; Hy’s Steakhouse

Toronto: Cosmopolitan Hotel; Quinns Steakhouse

Lindsay: Pane Vino Wine Bar

Richmond Hill: Marlowe Wine Bar





Full of It: Topping Up

Grapes want nothing more in their life than to be vinegar. That is their final destination. The job of the winemaker is to halt the process midway and keep it at the wine stage. Sanitation is the key to this, and a big part of keeping out the nasty bugs that will make our wine vinegar (or spoil it in other ways) is to keep every container  absolutely full to the brim so there's no room for the nasties to move in and set up shop.  To do this you need a large selection of different sized containers. We're never sure exactly how much of a particular wine we're going to have. We may have a 1500 gallon tank we're planning to fill with this year's Merlot, but we may intially have 1623 and a half gallons. So we'll need our tank, plus 2 60-gallon barrels, plus a 3-gallon glass carboy and a few 1-litre bottles. The selection of available containers at Babcock is as follows: besides our various tank sizes from several thousand gallons down to 120 gallons, we have: 60-gallon (225litre) barrels, 15.5- and 13.5- gallon kegs, 6- and 3-gallon glass carboys, 1-gallon jars, and 1-litre, 750ml and 375 ml bottles (with screwcaps).   60 gallon barrels, then (l-r) 3-gal carboy; 6-gal cb; 375ml btl; 3-gal cb; 13.5gal keg; 1 gal jar; 1-litre btl; 750ml btl; 15.5-gal keg So, once we have all of our vessels topped up to the brim, it would seem we could just leave them to mature until bottling, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. The volume of the wine fluctuates for various reasons, and wooden barrels are the worst culprits. The wood is naturally porous, so air passes through, and the maturing wine soaks into the wood. This is an integral part of the process and the reason wood barrels are used in the first place. With this process, however, you get evaporation, and a portion of the wine just disappears into thin air. Known as "the angel's share," the losses of barrel-matured wine can amount to about 1 litre/week per 60-gal (225litre) barrel. So if we have a 9-barrel lot of Cabernet, for example, we may be anticipating about 225 cases, total. But, after 18 months of aging, over 40 cases will go to the angels (with all that free wine, you'd think the angels might be more motivated to help out with the weather or grape prices or something else within their jurisdiction!). And those numbers don't include the losses we incur through racking (see last post, "Rack 'n' Roll") or other processes, like filtering. All in all, for any particular lot of wine, we may lose up to 1/4 or even 1/3 of the initial volume, by the time it makes it to bottle. Sad as it may be to wave "bye-bye" to the angel's share, the task at hand is to keep those barrels--and other vessels--topped up. Most wineries have a schedule for topping up the barrels. Anywhere from once/week to once/month is common. At Babcock, we try to top barrels every second week. At that frequency, when we go to top them, the barrels will often look like this: with the wine level down about 3/4 of an inch. Ideally, after topping, it will be up into the bunghole so that when the bung is put back in, it will make contact with the wine, leaving no airspace. As well as the porousness of the wooden barrels, other issues come into play with other vessels: Temperature is huge. Wine actually takes up more space when it's warm than when it's cold. When it comes to our large tanks of our more everyday wines, we constantly have to monitor where the fill level is and adjust accordingly. If we're cold-stabilizing, for example, (refrigerated jackets on the tank cool the wine down to almost freezing for about 2 weeks), the wine is going to shrink up, leaving a big headspace in the tank, which we'll have to top up. Following this, we may heat the wine (to over 60 degrees F), using the jackets, in preparation for bottling. Now, we have to deal with the wine expanding and maybe overflowing from the top of the tank. If we're not using artificial heating or cooling, we have to deal with this same issue due to weather conditions. At the height of summer, tanks may regularly overflow, no matter how many gallons you take out to try to even things out. Several days ago, we racked a tank that had been cold stabilizing (refrigerated) and put it in a tank outside to warm up before bottling later this week. As always, we filled the tank to the brim. A couple days later, it was burbling out through the top. We know it's going to increase in volume, but we don't know how much, so, out of the 5,000 gallon tank, we removed about 10 gallons, hoping that would be enough. A few days later, it was spouting out the top again, so we had some losses there.  As disheartening as it is to see over-rambunctious wine spilling out from the top of the tank, it's truly heartbreaking to see the glass carboys succumb to the weather. The outside tanks have to deal with the elements as best they can, but within the barrel room, we hope for better. For the most part, the room stays at a nice cool temperature, and the barrels, being wood, are not so susceptible to temperature fluctuations. The glass carboys are a different story. Like everything else, we want to keep them topped right up. A rubber bung goes into the top and we keep it tight, tight so no air can get in, but still, the volume can fluctuate. At best,  the seal between carboy and bung will look like this: with the wine level right up to the bottom of the bung. If the carboy cools down a bit, it may look like this: You can just see daylight between the wine level and the bung. If we see this, we'll want to top it up. Sometimes, on a hot day, our nicely topped up and tightly sealed carboys will get too warm and break because of the pressure of the expanding wine. That's a real heartbreaker when you hear that "crack!" from out on the crush pad and rush in to see the wine puddling out from around the crumpled carboy, like a gunshot victim. Often it's one of our best wines that may sell for $50/bottle. It's sad to see a 6-gallon carboy go down like that, when there's nothing you can do but watch $1500 go, literally, down the drain in a matter of minutes. Most winemakers, I think, very wisely refrain from thinking of the wine as a saleable "product" until it's actually in the bottle. Otherwise, between the angel's share, racking and filtering losses and the vagaries of the weather, they may have cause to weep on a daily basis. Much better to think of it as just the cost of doing business. Joke of the day: a winejob website had a listing written by someone for whom English is not their first language. They were looking for a winemaker without a "pre Madonna attitude." LOL. So, no Elvis impersonators, I guess?