I helped Chris Brockway of Broc Cellars bottle his 2008 Vine Starr today. Chris is a fellow ex-Nebraskan and lives in the Tenderlolin. He's a super-cool guy and I really like the winemaking that's going on here: spotaneous ferments, no new oak, low sulpher and sourcing from dry-farmed, organic, old-vine vineyards. Vine Starr is 70% Zinfandel, 28% Petite Sirah, 2% Carignan (Carignan has carbonic) but I think of Chris as more of a Rhone specialist. In fact, I can't think of another producer in California who's getting the results that Chris is getting from Grenache: white pepper, floral, meaty while keeping the wine very dry and balanced.
Bottling is pretty boring work so it's good to take a wine break now and then: 2005 Domaine de Belliviere Rouge-Gorge (Pinot d'Aunis) Coteaux du Loir (excellent), 2006 Kunin Syrah, + mystery Zinfandel.
In addition to the fine wines offered here atpériphérique | selections, I also source wine for the larger-scale (though not less discriminating) Wine Access. This impressive East Coast juggernaut of a wine retailer represents the new breed of our industry: it’s lean and mean and without a lot of overhead, which means amazing wines at great prices. If you’re not getting their offers, sign up for them now!
I ferried over to Oakland this morning to meet Michael Dashe of Dashe Cellars at his urban winery in search of a Zinfandel to offer on Wine Access. I haven’t tasted these since my Tra Vigne days, but wow are these good! It can be a challenge to find elegant, food-friendly Zinfandels, and most of the ones I’ve tasted recently have been so thick and sweet with fruit that I’m tempted to pour them over my eggos.
Michael poured his wonderful dry Riesling to start. It comes from a hillside vineyard in the Potter Valley AVA of Mendocino. This is a cool growing area with 1,000 acres planted with mainly white varietals. Michael added that there are “hills, rocks, and calcareous soil” in Potter Valley. It’s a Region II on the (silly) Winkler scale, which is possibly why the growers there have focused on white varietals. Regardless, it’s regions like these that almost always produce my favorite California reds.
Michael’s Riesling grower, Guinness McFadden, also grows a small parcel of Zinfandel planted at the top of his vineyard. Michael spotted it and offered to take the entire lot (Michael and I must think alike) and transformed it into the beautiful 2009 Les Enfants Terribles. It’s “totally wild,” as Michael put it, and reminded me more of cru Beaujolais than of jammy California Zinfandel. Michael said he “opened up the rollers [of his crusher-destemmer] for this one,” and he fermented it with about 10% whole berries. It’s super-pretty and very floral. I loved it, and so do a lot of other people because it’s all spoken for. Not surprisingly, it’s mostly sold to sommeliers in restaurants throughout the United States. This wine will be on our watch list for next year.
Michael and his wife, Anne, started their winery back in 1996 using 100% naturalfermentations (something we really like to see here at périphérique), but as the winery grew to its current size of 10,000 cases, tank space became scarce and Michael began inoculating with commercial yeasts for his fermentations. The reason for this was to get the wine dry as quickly as possible so he could “barrel it down” and move another wine into the tank. By 2007, Michael and Anne finally had enough tanks that they could “return to their roots” of 100% natural fermentation which, for me, means greater nuance and complexity. This might be the reason their flagship, 2007 Dashe Cellars Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley, has such wonderful layers of kirsch and black plum mixed with violets and sweet tobacco.
The subtlety of these wines might also have something to do with the absence of new American barriques. At Dashe Cellars, the wood is 100% French, and Michael is especially proud of his four 900-gallon oak foudres that are now in their third vintage. These large wooden vessels impart no oak flavor—just wonderful mouthfeel, texture, and vinosity. “The longer I do this,” says Michael, “the less I like the flavor of wood.”
