Corison in NYC (Parts I, II, III and Coda)

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Sharon Bowman

Sharon Bowman
Imagine the thrill to receive an email from esteemed wine shop Flatiron Wines that Napa Valley winemaker Cathy Corison is coming to town, that there will be a tasting with her of back vintages at wine distributor Skurnik's offices for a small group of people—and that we could reply and be part of this wondrous event. I did, by return mail (well, email; we don't all have footmen, as Kirk Wallace does).

I was invited to join.

Yesterday at 6:30pm some eighteen people or so met around a large rectangular table in a room with large windows in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, and Cathy Corison was there seated on a side of the rectangle, and glasses of her wines were before us. (And a sideboard with saucisson sec and cheese and such, which one and all were welcomed to taste, but I didn't sample, so cannot opine.)

We all talked for a hair shy of two hours, and it was most illuminating. As were the wines. Well, luminous, too.

Corison got her start and made wine at Chappellet through the '80s where, in her description, she sought a balance between power and elegance.* Later, she branched out on her own. Her soil of predilection was Benchland, between Rutherford and St. Helena in the Napa Valley, with alluvial soils that were sandy and gravelly but had clay that kept the moisture. This was the hottest part of the valley, but fog came up, and the clay soils were an asset.

I was drawn into her story, to her methods.

I asked many questions, because I haven't delved much (truth: at all) into what is done there, what is Napa. Her answers were illuminating.

She vinifies 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Why? Because in that part of the world, CS ripens and doesn't need the added fruit of earlier ripening Merlot or the darker tint of Petit Verdot. Other growers/winemakers privilege a Bordeaux blend, but in her view, that wasn't necessary or even desirable in Napa.

Her thought was that when properly ripe, there was an amazing complexity of flavors in the wine from that region, a statement I found borne out in the wines. I was tickled and persuaded by the idea that CS could stand alone.

I have so much more to say, but I will cut the details short and dole them out later—because isn't that how any good serial goes?

We tasted a first series of wines, her Napa cabernets (100% Cabernet Sauvignon) from four vineyards whose grapes she had been purchasing and blending since beginning her winemaking. (The other being Kronos, a separate vineyard and bottling.)

2001
2004
2006
2010
2013

[to be continued]

*See part III, inf., Chappellet.
 
originally posted by Marc D:
I have fond memories of a bottle of that 2001.
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She described 2001 as a "sleeper" vintage that wasn't heralded at the time, but which has come to be her favorite vintage ever.
 
Ages ago I found a bin of dusty Corison '95s, '96s (regular and Kronos) and '98s at some low closeout pricing. I hadn't heard of her prior but took a flier on a single bottle of '98, which, at $32, was a splurge for me at the time. It was certainly a wow moment, enough to go back and buy up the remaining stock. I would have loved to have heard her speak in such an intimate setting and I'm looking forward to your next installment.
 
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"Ne recommence pas..."
"Je ne recommence pas, je continue !"

-Une femme est une femme, J.-L. Godard (1961)

So, we were set to taste five vintages of Corison Cabernet Sauvignon, a cuvée sourced from four vineyards in the Napa Valley.

2001 - This was delicious, and surprisingly young, to me. As noted above, Cathy Corison called it a "sleeper" vintage and went on to say that it was her favorite vintage ever, despite the fact that it was "pretty big." It was zipping along in barely second gear at present; it could do with a lot of aging, but as we discussed later on: what you prefer is a matter of palate; some people like things crunching with youth, and others want a gentle tisane. I might fall on the wizeneder side of the spectrum, so, adjust as necessary.

2004 - I found this wine a little bit hard, as it was currently showing. CC [henceforth in this post designating Cathy Corison, rather than the traditional WD CC who sometimes graces us, etc.] described the vintage as "an outlier," with a small crop one half the size of a normal crop.

2006 - This was lighter-bodied than the previous, and I liked its sea air. CC described it as a favorite at the winery and said that 2006 was the longest, coolest season in memory; it was cool all season, and she picked in November.

2010 - Oh, so very primary. It was a smallish crop, somewhere between 2004 and 2006, and this is where CC showed her hand: she had chosen for this tasting vintages that were cool and lean, because those were the ones she liked best. Well, no one is arguing. Nicely done. The wine, with air, was fruity but had a stony minerality and perceptible leanness.

2013 - This I tasted oak in, which immediately jarred me in that I hadn't in the others. More on that in a sec. Apparently, the press is crazy about this vintage, a bit riper than the others we tasted.

Before we moved on to taste the Kronos bottling we had in our glass (which I could smell even when leaning back in my chair, zow), we conversed a great bit.

CC was very interested to hear people's impressions and preferred wines, and to discuss same. It was cool to hear.

Then we barraged her with questions.

The first vintage of her wine was 1987. She purchased the Kronos vineyard later and 1995 was its first vintage. It has always been bottled separately.

The domaine bottling comes from four different vineyards of which she purchases the grapes.

She does not use sulfur at crush but does inoculate some—one quarter of the yeast is cultured; she finds that wild yeast never "finishes clean." She does not like the flavors of indigenous yeasts in an unsulfured fermentation.

Other than that, she does not add anything.

She raises her wines in all French oak, 50% new, the rest 2-year. Wines spend 22 months in 60-gallon barrels (making my metric head do somersault times tables). She doesn't like the dill flavor of American oak and eschews it, though she does think that Ridge Monte Bello is one of the best US wines and is also a fan of traditional Rioja (yes, I asked a lot of questions).

Importantly (to me), she stressed that she likes her wines to be seamless. They should flow from cabernet to oak and you shouldn't taste the oak. And it made me think of the wines I'd just tasted—which I had found young, but all but the 2013 had not given an "oaky" feel.

She has a style in her head that she would like to taste in the wines, and she finds that when there is "appropriate" ripeness, CS develops an amazing range of flavors. It is ripe, but there is snappy acidity. The hot days and cold nights help. She finds that the wines age well, that the perfume evolves. On that score, I can say that my favorite of the evening was the 2001, and that I now will look to find older vintages to taste some with more age.

The quality of the tannins from her sites struck her; they were very tannic, yet velvety. And (as comrade Florida Jim notes above) she says that the a.b.v. is always under 14%.

She also stressed the importance of the seeds being lignified.

This ended our barrage of questions (others included which vintages were the best and when wines would be at peak, but see back to the "personal preferences" category, though she did refer to 2006 to present as "a string of lights" of great vintages, with the lean 2011 also getting a mention).

Then I asked about purchased vs. estate grapes, and a bomb hit:

The big (spoiler alert) reveal is that her favorite of the four vineyards she had sourced from... she has bought! It's called Sunbasket and was planted by André Tchelistcheff, the "dean of American winemakers."

It is planted to Cabernet Sauvignon but also Cabernet Franc (which she used to release under a different label, Helios) and a white grape I didn't write down and can't recall because I was thunderstruck.

The 2014 vintage will be the first release of a separate Corison Sunbasket Cabernet Sauvignon. She will only separately bottle a part of those grapes so that the rest can still be part of the traditional Corison blend.

But she has also vinified a 2014 Corison Sunbasket Cabernet Franc, which will be a first.

[more in a bit]
 
originally posted by Bill Buitenhuys:
Oh, great info, particularly about the Sunbasket release.
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Thanks! Glad to get (and share) the scoop.

She did a gewurtz under the Corazon label but don't recall a Helios white.
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Hmm... wish I'd noted it down. I'll just delete that part, as it's incomplete.
 
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