Monthly Archives: September 2014

Santa Lucia Highlands – First Impressions

On the way down to the Wine Bloggers Conference in July, the 7th annual one of these, we decided to stop in the Santa Lucia Highlands (SLH) and do some wine tasting. In the past, every time we drove down the 101 highway we would drive by this area and say “Some day we need to visit this area.” We’ve tasted wines from this region at various events, or from wineries outside the region that buy grapes from the SLH region, but had never visited any of the wineries. Instead of “Shame on us,” it was now “Finally we stopped.”

The old windmill on the Pessagno Winery property harkens back to the agriculture history of the region.

The old windmill on the Pessagno Winery property harkens back to the agriculture history of the region.

SLH is in Monterey County, but inland, on the hillsides of the Santa Lucia mountain range overlooking the Salinas Valley. This valley runs essentially east-west, similar to the Santa Rita Hills (SRH) area in Santa Barbara County, and similar to the SRH AVA gets ocean breezes to keep the temperature down during the day. This area benefits from a long growing season, with early bud break and late harvests. Maybe a closer comparison would be to the Corralitos area at the southern end of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, which has very similar characteristics, and specializes in the same grapes: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

The tasting room at Pessagno Winery has a turntable with a nice collection of old LPs.

The tasting room at Pessagno Winery has a turntable with a nice collection of old LPs.

The first winery we visited was Pessagno Winery. In the photo above you see one of the reasons we’ll be returning: the turntable and the vinyl albums. Gerre (pronounced like “Jerry”), who was behind the tasting bar for us, is a huge Eric Clapton fan, and a Clapton greatest hits album was on. (Which brought up the question of the Derek and the Dominoes version of “Layla” versus the Clapton Unplugged version, but we hadn’t had enough wine yet to really get into that discussion.) We started tasting through the lineup of Pessagno wines, including Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs, which is what the SLH region is known for. At the end, there were a couple of Zinfandels, made from grapes purchased in the adjacent San Benito County. We really enjoyed the 2011 Zinfandel from Idyll Times Vineyard, and bought a couple of bottles.

View of the Salinas Valley from the Hahn Estate tasting room.

View of the Salinas Valley from the Hahn Estate tasting room.

The second winery we visited was Hahn Estates. This is a much bigger winery – around 300,000 cases per year versus 5,000 for Pessagno – with a few different labels that they make and distribute wine under. The tasting room is very nice, and they have a lot of the wines available for tasting. You can choose which ones to taste, 6 to a flight, with the fee waived upon purchase. With wines available starting at $14 each, it’s not hard to choose a bottle and waive the fee. Just like at Pessagno, the Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs were not our favorites. Instead, we left with a bottle of the 2012 Hahn Winery Chef’s Cuvée from Paso Robles, a blend of the white Rhone varietals Marsanne, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Viognier. While we really liked this wine, the best reason to visit Hahn is the view, which is spectacular. With a great deck and tables outside, think about bringing your lunch, grabbing a bottle and enjoying the day.

The terrace at the Hahn Estate tasting room is a great place to enjoy a glass of wine.

The terrace at the Hahn Estate tasting room is a great place to enjoy a glass of wine.

If you’re not bringing your lunch to Hahn or another winery, try El Camarón in Soledad for lunch. This Mexican restaurant specializes in seafood (camarón is shrimp in Spanish), and makes a few different versions of ceviche. I got a shrimp ceviche, Lori got a chicken tostada, and we both went away feeling very happy (and full).

L’Chaim,

Larry

Armida Harvest 2014 – I Worked The Sorting Table

A week ago Saturday, Armida Winery’s co-owner, Bruce Cousins, leaned over the sorting table and said to me “You’re getting some real winemaker excitement from these Petite Sirah grapes, aren’t you?”

I was drafted into helping at Armida’s harvest that day, since they had an intern out for a wedding or some such lame excuse. And the sorting table is where it starts when the grapes come in from the vineyard, and it’s an all hands on deck operation. Since I’m the same height as Winemaker B (Brandon Lapides), and was wearing a similar color shirt, Bruce thought he was making the comment to Brandon. (By the way, I’ve paraphrased liberally from Bruce’s actual words, which are best left to the crush pad.)

Winemaker B and Father working the Armida sorting table.

Winemaker B and Father working the Armida sorting table.

The grapes are picked and put into half-ton bins. Each bin is picked up by a forklift, and tilted over the sorting table. Grapes start coming through, and we’re supposed to pick out the clusters that have mold on them. The good clusters then go into the destemmer, with grape juice and skins dropping from there into an auger pump to go through hoses to the tank. Then the winemaking starts.

That Saturday was a big day for Armida, their single largest day for grapes. Around 18 tons were harvested, some of it Zinfandel from Maple Vineyards (Armida received 90+ scores on its Maple Vineyards Zin for both the 2011 and 2012 vintages), and the rest being the Zinfandel and aforementioned beautiful Petite Sirah from the Armida estate vineyards. This estate Zin and Petite Sirah were processed together, as they become the Il Campo field blend that Armida puts out. If I had kept track of the number of bins of each varietal I could probably estimate the relative percentage of one versus the other, however, after nearly 5 hours on my feet at the sorting table it was all I could do to stumble back to my car.

(I’m not asking for sympathy, rather, I’m in awe of Winemaker B and crew, who had been at the winery for at least 6 hours before I showed up, and had another 2+ hours of clean up after I left. I knew, in an academic sort of way, that winemaking was hard work, and harvest means about 9 weeks without a day off, with days running as long as 15 hours, but actually working there made it real. Winemaking really is hard work!)

(As another aside, while 18 tons is the largest day for Armida, of course larger wineries can handle much more with more automated equipment and more people. When Winemaker B was supervising the graveyard shift at Montana Vineyards in New Zealand, his top shift was over 90 tons of Sauvignon Blanc.)

From a quality and quantity perspective, it looks like a good harvest for Armida. The drought did not have too much effect on quantities, as many of the vineyards they source for grapes dry-farm the vines, including Maple Vineyards. The vines there are old enough, more than 75 years, that the roots have certainly found ground water by now. For the other vineyards, while water usage has been cut, there was still enough to get good growth for the vines. Some growers were extra careful about pruning off the second growth clusters (clusters that start growing typically 2-4 weeks after the main clusters, and therefore won’t ripen in time anyway) to make sure the primary clusters got their needed water. The weather has been good for the growing season, consistently warm days and cool nights, without spikes in either direction. So at this point, 2014 is looking pretty darn good.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Enkidu and Café Esin

When bringing a bottle of wine to a restaurant, what wine should you choose? We recently went to dinner with some friends of ours and wanted to bring a bottle of wine. To choose the bottle, we considered

– how much our friends appreciate and drink wine
– did we have a bottle with a story behind it
– what is the cuisine at the restaurant

Enkidu 2006 Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Tina Marie vineyards; in the decanter at Cafe Esin.

Enkidu 2006 Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Tina Marie vineyards; in the decanter at Cafe Esin.

For the first, our friends are not big wine drinkers, but they do appreciate a nice bottle. For the second question, most of the bottles in our cellar have some sort of story behind them. And for the third, we were going to Café Esin, near to us in Danville, and their style is Mediterranean. Given that information, a Pinot Noir seemed like the right choice, so we pulled out a 2006 Enkidu Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Tina Marie Vineyard.

We also checked that the restaurant didn’t have this wine on its wine list.

Pinot Noir is nice because it will match well with almost anything except the lightest fish and heavy steaks. In this case, two of us did get fish, and the other two ordered chicken. One of the fish dishes was salmon, which is a classical pairing for Pinot Noir. The other fish dish was yellowtail, a member of the tuna family, but not nearly as big as Ahi in flavor. However, the dish on this night was served with vegetables and chanterelle mushrooms in a broth, and the Pinot Noir went great with that. In this case, the fish was there for texture, with the vegetable-chanterelle broth providing the flavor. (Delicious, in case you were curious.)

Yellowtail with green peas, chanterelles and more at Cafe Esin.

Yellowtail with green peas, chanterelles and more at Cafe Esin.

The story behind the wine: In 2008, at the inaugural Wine Bloggers Conference, we met Phillip Staehle, Enkidu winemaker and owner, at a Syrah tasting held at Kick Ranch Vineyard. In a clearing in the vineyard were around 10 tables, one for each winery that made Syrah from Kick Ranch grapes. It was a great way to understand what the individual winemakers were doing with quite similar grapes. The Enkidu Kick Ranch Syrah was one of our top two wines at that event. So a year later, while wine tasting with some friends, we took them to the then newly opened Enkidu tasting room in Kenwood in Sonoma Valley. We enjoyed the wines again, enjoyed their tasting room, and came away from the tasting with some of their “Humbaba” Rhone blend, as well as the Pinot Noir. Now we’ve drunk the last bottle in the wine cellar; time to go back! Of course, the other part of the story is the name of the winery, “Enkidu”. A memorable name, especially once you’ve read the story behind the name. I can’t really do it justice, but I suggest going and reading up starting on the Enkidu website.

L’Chaim,

Larry