CALIFORNIA

The Advance Party had been to the frontier twice and reported back. Zeren was talking with quivering voice about Sonoma Pinots. Unfortunately they were all crazy money. Our California shelves were bare.tension was mounting. Customers were baying for Chardonnay. We couldn't wait any longer, it was time to head West again.

We installed ourselves in Healdsburg. First stop was to see Steve Lorenzen in the Healdsburg Wine Shop. An hour later we walked out with several unknown new wines including Turjanis Buena Tierra Vineyard Russian River Valley Chardonnay and straight on the phone to fix an appointment.

 

HAFNER                                            BACK IN NOVEMBER

That night, we were in Ralph's Restaurant on the main square and spotted an Alexander Valley Chardonnay we'd never heard of - Hafner. Struck by its classic almost 80's type style, yet with restrained use of oak, that was another “priority” meeting.

Beautifully located in Alexander Valley, surrounded by their own meticulously kept vines, Scott and Parke Hafner have a different business model to most. They only sell to private clients, no retail. We were lucky to spot a bottle from the 5% they sell into restaurants in California. 

And how are the wines - Chardonnay, Reserve Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon? While their winery was being built, back in the early 80's, Parke Hafner did a stint at Comte Lafon in Meursault, influencing the style ever since. Imagine lovely ripe Alexander Valley fruit unobscured by oak. Their Cabernet is also fabulous, not overblown.

As for retail? We are proud to be the only retail outlet in the world to have Hafner wines!

 

 

WOODENHEAD                          BACK IN NOVEMBER

Spinetingling Pinots. Nick Stez and Zina Bower. Straight-up, no nonsense. We visited them one cold, foggy morning working out of the bankrupt Topolos Winery just outside Forestville. They were waiting for grapes for the morning's crush with their team of friends, one a fireman from San Francisco, another a local teacher, who had phoned-in sick.

Zina works in the office at Cult-Cabernet Winery Diamond Creek, Nick worked a few months a year at Williams-Selyem and the rest of the time in Construction. He must have been paying paying attention - he's making Pinots of the Gods!

The Anderson Valley Wiley Vineyard - fragrant and dense. The explosive Humboldt County Pinot, from Eel River where there are huge Redwoods and the pines cover the riverbed which Nick thinks affects the taste. And finally the Russian River Valley Pinot - ethereal and very very fine. We immediately reserved the remaining seven cases. Woodenhead - you can't even find them in San Francisco!

 

 

GREEN & RED

It was time to visit old friends too - Zinfandel specialist Jay Heminway of Green & Red, who showed us his first vintage of pure Syrah from his “Tip Top Vineyard”. He is just using his own fruit now and has stopped buying fruit from the valley floor, so there will be no more Village Zin (as we call it) or the Chiles Valley Zin. His 2002s were all classic Green+Red, ripe, focussed, muscular! Each time we visit, more of his past is revealed: trained as a sculptor, studied in Italy as a sculptor, taught sculpture, had a gallery in San Francisco. Became disenchanted, got divorced. Bought a place here in the Napa hills to get away from it all. A guy who was putting in a septic tank, when he saw the geology of his plot, said “you should put a few acres of vines in.” It wasn't long before Jay was off to Bordeaux do a season at Chateau Lascombes followed by a spell with NYC wine merchants Sherry Lehmann and Alexis Lichine. Planted the vines in 1972 and started selling his wines in 1977. Now joined by his second wife he has never looked back.and neither have we!

 

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	ZINFANDEL Chiles Mill Vineyard	Napa	2004	21.99
	SYRAH  Tip Top	Napa	2002	22.99
	ZINFANDEL Tip Top	Napa	2003	22.99

 

STARK

We met the young, goatie-bearded Christian Stark in the Oakville Grocery in Healdsburg Sonoma, where he works part-time. He makes this high-class, sleek Syrah with fruit from two vineyards in Dry Creek Valley just north of Healdsburg. Violets and cream!

 

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	SYRAH Teldeschi & Unti Vineyards, Dry Creek	Sonoma	2003	29.99

 

GOLDEN CELLARS                                       SOLD OUT

Julie Golden dropped into our shop a few months ago and gave us a couple of bottles of the wine her family makes in Mendocino, Northern California. “I'd love you to sell our wine, I only live round the corner in W9!” she told us. We tasted the wines, loved them, and here they are after a long transatlantic voyage. The Goldens have grown grapes for years and sell them to other wineries, but since 2001 decided to bottle a little themselves. “Coro”, designed to be a red blend with a nod to Chateauneuf-du-Pape, was set up by a group of winemakers dedicated to promoting Mendocino, a region which had its first vines planted in the 1850's, yet is still relatively unknown in the UK. Julie is back in Northern California now and keen to hear what you think!

 

 

WHITE ROCK                              BACK IN NOVEMBER

Then it was off to see Henry Vandendriesche of White Rock. His son Chris has been making the wine recently. Their amazing cellar dug out of the white rock, a compacted layer of volcanic ash, has one section at the back with they rent out for “custom crush” - which basically means many of Chris' mates make their own boutique wines there. One particularly fascinating one is Scholum Project, made by former philosophy professor and part-time web designer, Abe, who is fixated with minimal intervention. He allows his wines to ferment as long as they want, sometimes up to two-and-a-half years! He goes to religious lengths to avoid opening his barrels, and believes in totally starving his wines of oxygen (which does make them a little stinky at first). His tanks and handful of barrels are festooned with Japanese good luck charms. The wines are extreme and sell for $50-80 locally.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the cellar, Henry and Chris continue to make their beautifully-crafted Chardonnay and Bordeaux blends.

 

TURJANIS                                        SOLD OUT

Karen Bower answered, children in full scream in the background. Karen, who is Turjanis (Turjanis is her car mechanic husband's name), has worked widely as winemaker in Napa and Sonoma. Now, juggling her responsibilities as mother and winemaker, she's cut back everything apart from her own wines and Cloud View, a cult Cabernet from Pritchard Hill.

She makes two wines in paltry quantities - her Russian River Chardonnay, with notes of tangerine oil and honey in the nose, and her dark, broody Pinot Noir from Steiner Vineyard in a saddle on Sonoma Mountain. Quantities are so paltry, her wine is in just three States, California, Missouri and Georgia - and now England!

 

WILD HOG

We were sitting on the verandah at Flowers Winery on the Sonoma Coast admiring their $30million all-singing, all-dancing estate. New oak, new tanks from Italy, new winery, new everything - apart from some old vines, of course. Our next meeting was at Wild Hog. We asked for directions. Daniel lives over that hill there, about three and a half miles as the eagle flies. He’s quite a character, back to nature, really sweet. Directions were faxed. An hour later we had gone cross-country. Forded streams, looked for marks on trees where tracks diverged, been up and down several narrow hillside tracks, through dark woods, thick (we imagined) with men with guns fleeing the authorities. Finally we descended into another valley and there was Daniel Schoenfeld, his pick-up truck and two dogs asleep in the sun. Daniel’s set-up is the exact opposite to Flowers’. A small barn he built himself, rammed with barrels, a small kitchen which doubles as his lab and some gorgeous wines.

“I moved out here with my wife almost 30 years ago - back to nature, self-sufficiency, looking for another way. I was a hippy at that time.” He started making wine at college in demi-johns as a hobby. Then some years later, now settled in the woods, he planted a few vines and started making a little for family consumption. They would then bring wine round to friends for dinner who all said - why not sell it? So Wild Hog was born.

Daniel makes just 4,000 cases a year - 1,000 more than he wants to! He tries not to mess with the grapes much, producing natural wines with distinctive characters. Unfussy, but not unsophisticated. Brambley, savoury Zinfandel and a bright dense Carignan, rarely seen as a single varietal bottling in California.

 

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	BARBERA Talmage Vineyard	Mendocino	2003	18.99
	CARIGNANE Saini Farms, Dry Creek Valley	Sonoma	2003	19.99
	PETITE SIRAH Dunnigan Hills	Lake County	2004	21.99

 

GIRARD

There was another trip up onto Pritchard Hill to see Girard's new home. Pat Roney, who also owns the Dean + Deluca Deli chain, had planned to build on one of their plots of Sauv Blanc, just as you come out St Helena. Then he heard that the Fisher Winery was selling up and switched plans. We were met by new Winery Manager Steve Boss, an ex-CIA agent, but I can't tell you that, and if I do I'll have to kill you (so you didn't hear it from us!). The wines, as always, are sleek and polished. A revelation was their new dessert wine, a Late Harvest Zinfandel, the result of a happy accident when their irrigation broke down and “all hell broke loose and the sugars went through the roof”. Shouldn't have told you that - I'll have to kill you now.

 

sweet
	ZINFANDEL Late Harvest HALVES	Napa	2004	22.99

 

DAVIS FAMILY VINEYARDS               ARRIVING NOVEMBER

Then there was Guy Davis of Davis Family Vineyards on the outskirts of Healdsburg. We have met Guy before - known for his pricey Napa Red - who never seems to have any wine too sell and this time was no different! We hadn't realised he also makes an amazingly intense Chardonnay from Dutton Ranch fruit with a splash of nutty oak. “Over the years I've been jockeying for position in the Dutton Vineyard, which is divided into very spread-out parcels. I now get the fruit from the far West side, near Occidental and it's way cooler there.”

He also makes an impressive Russian River Pinot, full of ferny, autumnal, raspberry notes, from 15% Dutton Ranch and 85% from his own vines.

Needless to say. he had nothing left to sell, and assures us we'll be first in line for the next release. We have held him to that!

 

RABBIT RIDGE

We visited the new Rabbit Ridge winery outside Paso Robles at the beginning of the 2003 harvest. It was still very much a building site, the fermentation tanks had only been delivered a few days earlier and were being connected as the first crush arrived! Erich and his wife Linda are crazy about things Italian, so the new facility is a rhapsody on an Italian theme - a palazzo on the desert’s edge. Many of you have already tasted his Barbera, the Super-Tuscan “Montepiano” and his Sangiovese (in our opinion, the best version of the Chianti varietal to come out of California). Although Rabbit Ridge has expanded rapidly over the past five years, it is still very much a family concern - both Linda’s sisters are now on board and Erich’s brother-in-law is now helping with the winemaking. The Paso Robles palazzo is surrounded by vines, part of Erich’s masterplan to increasingly rely on his own fruit and to experiment more with lesser-known varietals such as Primitivo and Carignan. Olive oil is also part of the plan!

 

white
	CHARDONNAY Barrel Cuvée	California	2005	10.99
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	MERLOT	California	2003	10.99
	CABERNET SAUVIGNON	California	2005	10.99

 

BACIO DIVINO

Claus Janzen also works for Caymus. This is his own wine, Bacio Divino, Divine Kiss, getting incredible reviews.

 

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	BACIO DIVINO Cabernet Sauvignon/Sangiovese/Petite Sirah	Napa	1995	59.99