the (mis)education of scott reiner

scottreiner

scottreiner

scott reiner
i am traveling the napa valley for the next week to discover why people drink california wine. i have been concentrating on the state for a few months now and have found some interesting stuff, mostly at the In Search Of Balance tasting last month. (lots more ambient yeast fermentations than i would have guessed...)

drunk at the first night in bouchon in yountville eating dinner at the bar:

pliny the elder - (beer) excellent. pretty damned hoppy, but perfectly balanced. impressive, but like most (even excellent) beers, i wouldn't want to drink too many...

diatom miya 10 - santa rita hills chardonnay. great minerality and balance, really developed in the glass. lovely acidity. som wasn't sure whether or not it was inoculated. very nice. big problem, too easy to beat from europe at the price...

alban vineyards patrina syrah 09 - edna valley. too much oak, but holds its 14.9 very well. overall very tasty and i see why people will like it. not just a fruit bomb, there are interesting things going on here. question is, in time will the oak resolve itself?
 
The people who make Pliny the elder also make a range of various sour beers (which I love very much). If you see anything from them with the -ation suffix (like Supplication, Beatification, Consecration...) def try one. I so wish they were available in Chicago (without having to order them or carry them back from CA).
 
If you have time for a side trip to Healdsburg, I suggest a visit to Ryme and Arnot-Roberts. Also, there is a tasting room just off the square called Downtown Wines, 132 Plaza Street - some very unusual stuff in there, including a skin fermented chenin.
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Nick Bumstead:
Steve Matthiasson is also well worth a visit - no tasting room, but call or email and he'll take care of you.
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spent yesterday morning with steve and jill. lovely people, loved the rose. they are doing the right things and the wines (especially the white and red blends) are very nice. Good acid, balance, nice fruit. but, i feel they may be simply to pricey...
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
If you have time for a side trip to Healdsburg, I suggest a visit to Ryme and Arnot-Roberts. Also, there is a tasting room just off the square called Downtown Wines, 132 Plaza Street - some very unusual stuff in there, including a skin fermented chenin.
Best, Jim
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unfortunately, this trip will provide no time for sonoma. i do desperately want to try your wines, though! anywhere you know in napa i can find them?
 
early evening round 2 at bouchon (a really nice place to stop by early in the evening in yountville, an otherwise douchy town in the extreme).

zeitgeist trousseau gris 11 - russian river valley. pleasant enough. acid seemed somewhat out of whack, but it was fun with early evening charcuterie and cheese. som said that trousseau gris was somehow related to trousseau, anyone know the connection?

drunk last night at dinner at ad hoc. fried chicken night. maybe the best fried chicken i've ever had.

stoney hill gewurztraminer 09 - napa. very prim and proper, but no real joy. went pretty well with the fried chicken.

scholium project babylon tenbrink vineyards 05 - petit syrah. this is truly terrible, objectionable wine. oddly, i did find some balance to it. every aspect of it -- tannin, acid, extraction, alcohol -- is so overdone, they could almost be called in balance. try this only if you're into sadomasochism and want to punish yourself for indulging in too much muscadet.
 
originally posted by scottreiner:
originally posted by Nick Bumstead:
Steve Matthiasson is also well worth a visit - no tasting room, but call or email and he'll take care of you.
Click to expand...

spent yesterday morning with steve and jill. lovely people, loved the rose. they are doing the right things and the wines (especially the white and red blends) are very nice. Good acid, balance, nice fruit. but, i feel they may be simply to pricey...
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Agreed on the slightly pricey -- I actually really like their "passion wines" that they don't sell. The ribolla gialla is fantastic.
 
originally posted by scottreiner:
anywhere you know in napa i can find them?
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Nope.
The closest is San Francisco at Arlequin Wine Merchants in Hayes Valley.
St. Helena Wine used to carry the pinots but I think they have sold out.
Best, Jim
 
In all ways worse. Starting with the people. Most folks in the Sta. Rita Hills place winemaking ahead of lifestyle, at least for the time being. The fanciest wineries down there would look like Quonset huts if you dropped them in Napa. If you want a steak down in the Buellton and Lompoc neighborhood you go to The Hitching Post II or, better yet, Jocko's. In Napa you go to Press. Case closed. St. Helena would be a nice place to peddle Botox and the winemaking equivalents, though.
 
I love it when another language crops up on your everyday Wine Disorder. Do they wear tiger bones in their noses in that Napa Valley?
 
originally posted by JSchwartze:
Fer Sure Fer SureIn all ways worse. Starting with the people. Most folks in the Sta. Rita Hills place winemaking ahead of lifestyle, at least for the time being. The fanciest wineries down there would look like Quonset huts if you dropped them in Napa. If you want a steak down in the Buellton and Lompoc neighborhood you go to The Hitching Post II or, better yet, Jocko's. In Napa you go to Press. Case closed. St. Helena would be a nice place to peddle Botox and the winemaking equivalents, though.
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So are you talking about balance in wine, or balance in lifestyle? If the former, I'm not sure that I can agree with your thesis. There are still some Napa wineries making interesting and, yes, balanced wines. Corison and Stony Hill are two long-term exemplars. Likewise, I can think of one or two in the SRH that would qualify, but it doesn't seem to be a markedly different fraction of the total population.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by JSchwartze:
Fer Sure Fer SureIn all ways worse. Starting with the people. Most folks in the Sta. Rita Hills place winemaking ahead of lifestyle, at least for the time being. The fanciest wineries down there would look like Quonset huts if you dropped them in Napa. If you want a steak down in the Buellton and Lompoc neighborhood you go to The Hitching Post II or, better yet, Jocko's. In Napa you go to Press. Case closed. St. Helena would be a nice place to peddle Botox and the winemaking equivalents, though.
Click to expand...

So are you talking about balance in wine, or balance in lifestyle? If the former, I'm not sure that I can agree with your thesis. There are still some Napa wineries making interesting and, yes, balanced wines. Corison and Stony Hill are two long-term exemplars. Likewise, I can think of one or two in the SRH that would qualify, but it doesn't seem to be a markedly different fraction of the total population.

Mark Lipton
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Why bother in trying to educate some people Mark, they are self pronounced experts usually because they have spent a few days in the wine country. After living here for twenty years Napa is like the rest of the world in general. A cross section of all kinds of people positive and negative. But overall the experience of living here I wouldn't have traded for anything. I've been truly fortunate.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by JSchwartze:
Fer Sure Fer SureIn all ways worse. Starting with the people. Most folks in the Sta. Rita Hills place winemaking ahead of lifestyle, at least for the time being. The fanciest wineries down there would look like Quonset huts if you dropped them in Napa. If you want a steak down in the Buellton and Lompoc neighborhood you go to The Hitching Post II or, better yet, Jocko's. In Napa you go to Press. Case closed. St. Helena would be a nice place to peddle Botox and the winemaking equivalents, though.
Click to expand...

So are you talking about balance in wine, or balance in lifestyle? If the former, I'm not sure that I can agree with your thesis. There are still some Napa wineries making interesting and, yes, balanced wines. Corison and Stony Hill are two long-term exemplars. Likewise, I can think of one or two in the SRH that would qualify, but it doesn't seem to be a markedly different fraction of the total population.

Mark Lipton
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...Sandhi, Palmina, Flying Goat, Ampelos, Evening Land, Tyler, Arcadian, Kathy Joseph, Alma Rosa, Cold Heaven, Zotovich, Dragonette, Clos Pepe, Ojai(purchased grapes), Piedrasassi, Hilliard-Bruce, Longoria, Samsara - even Melville and Diatom, hell, Brewer-Clifton are models of relative restraint in the Napa context. Might want to check out those fractions, especially compared to Napa and the sheer number of producers there cranking out Big Juice. People like Loring and Sea Smoke are the exception down there.
 
originally posted by JSchwartze:

...Sandhi, Palmina, Flying Goat, Ampelos, Evening Land, Tyler, Arcadian, Kathy Joseph, Alma Rosa, Cold Heaven, Zotovich, Dragonette, Clos Pepe, Ojai(purchased grapes), Piedrasassi, Hilliard-Bruce, Longoria, Samsara - even Melville and Diatom, hell, Brewer-Clifton are models of relative restraint in the Napa context. Might want to check out those fractions, especially compared to Napa and the sheer number of producers there cranking out Big Juice. People like Loring and Sea Smoke are the exception down there.
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OK, I've only had the wines of a handful of the producers you've named. Ojai might be a model of restraint now, but even Adam Tolmach concedes that his earlier efforts were not. I'm a long-term fan of Richard Sanford, but on my visit to Alma Rosa a year ago I found a mixed bag, with some wines restrained and others showing alcoholic and hot (granted, most were from '07). Are you sure that you're not being misled by the apples and oranges comparison of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa with Pinot Noir and Syrah in the SRH? I've had plenty of goopy, overextracted, overoaked, overly alcoholic Syrahs from there, I can assure you. And Brewer-Clifton: are you joking?

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by JSchwartze:

...Sandhi, Palmina, Flying Goat, Ampelos, Evening Land, Tyler, Arcadian, Kathy Joseph, Alma Rosa, Cold Heaven, Zotovich, Dragonette, Clos Pepe, Ojai(purchased grapes), Piedrasassi, Hilliard-Bruce, Longoria, Samsara - even Melville and Diatom, hell, Brewer-Clifton are models of relative restraint in the Napa context. Might want to check out those fractions, especially compared to Napa and the sheer number of producers there cranking out Big Juice. People like Loring and Sea Smoke are the exception down there.
Click to expand...

OK, I've only had the wines of a handful of the producers you've named. Ojai might be a model of restraint now, but even Adam Tolmach concedes that his earlier efforts were not. I'm a long-term fan of Richard Sanford, but on my visit to Alma Rosa a year ago I found a mixed bag, with some wines restrained and others showing alcoholic and hot (granted, most were from '07). Are you sure that you're not being misled by the apples and oranges comparison of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa with Pinot Noir and Syrah in the SRH? I've had plenty of goopy, overextracted, overoaked, overly alcoholic Syrahs from there, I can assure you. And Brewer-Clifton: are you joking?

Mark Lipton
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When I saw the Brewer-Clifton bit I knew this thread had nowhere to go.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by JSchwartze:

...Sandhi, Palmina, Flying Goat, Ampelos, Evening Land, Tyler, Arcadian, Kathy Joseph, Alma Rosa, Cold Heaven, Zotovich, Dragonette, Clos Pepe, Ojai(purchased grapes), Piedrasassi, Hilliard-Bruce, Longoria, Samsara - even Melville and Diatom, hell, Brewer-Clifton are models of relative restraint in the Napa context. Might want to check out those fractions, especially compared to Napa and the sheer number of producers there cranking out Big Juice. People like Loring and Sea Smoke are the exception down there.
Click to expand...

OK, I've only had the wines of a handful of the producers you've named. Ojai might be a model of restraint now, but even Adam Tolmach concedes that his earlier efforts were not. I'm a long-term fan of Richard Sanford, but on my visit to Alma Rosa a year ago I found a mixed bag, with some wines restrained and others showing alcoholic and hot (granted, most were from '07). Are you sure that you're not being misled by the apples and oranges comparison of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa with Pinot Noir and Syrah in the SRH? I've had plenty of goopy, overextracted, overoaked, overly alcoholic Syrahs from there, I can assure you. And Brewer-Clifton: are you joking?

Mark Lipton
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Which ones? The weather there doesn't really allow for that style. This is a Region I growing area, whch is as cold as it gets in California. Are you thinking of places further inland? Santa Maria Valley? Santa Ynez? Edna Valley? San Luis Obispo? There's not much syrah planted in the Sta. Rita Hills in the first place and the people who make it are definitely not going for the Paso Robles model - they can't.
 
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