Finessed and Light: California Pinot Noirs With a Manifesto
HEALDSBURG, Calif.
AS the rain slanted down onto the vineyard around Copain Wine Cellars, just outside this town in northern Sonoma County, Wells Guthrie, the proprietor, poured a glass of one of his 2006 Pinot Noirs
The wine was fresh and light with aromas of flowers and red fruit. Even in the gray dimness of his tasting room I could see my fingers on the other side of the glass through the pale ruby wine.
It was vibrant and refreshing, nothing like the dark, plush, opulent wines that have made California pinot noir so popular. Mr. Guthrie used to make wines more along those heavier lines, but not anymore. After the vinous equivalent of a conversion experience, with his 2006 vintage he renounced the fruit-bomb style in favor of wines that emphasize freshness and delicacy.
“It got to the point where I didn’t want the wine to be fatter than the food,” he said. “Wine should make you think of what you want to eat.”
From Mendocino and Sonoma through the Santa Cruz Mountains and Arroyo Grande south to the rolling hills of Santa Barbara County, a rebellion is brewing. The dominant style of California pinot noir remains round, ripe and extravagant, with sweet flavors of dark fruit and alcohol levels approaching and sometimes surpassing 15 percent.
But on a recent trip through these leading pinot noir areas I was thrilled to find a small but growing number of producers pulling in the opposite direction.
Instead of power, they strive for finesse. Instead of a rich, mouth-coating impression of sweetness, they seek a dry vitality meant to whet the appetite rather than squelch it. Instead of weight, they prize lightness and an almost transparent intensity.
Some of these producers are fairly new to the pinot noir game, like Anthill Farms in Healdsburg, a partnership of three young men who share a taste for balanced, elegant wines, or Peay Vineyards on the northern Sonoma Coast, which makes spicy yet polished pinot noirs, or Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which after just five vintages is already producing brilliantly distinctive wines.
Others, like Ted Lemon of Littorai Wines, Josh Jensen of the Calera Wine Company and Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat, have been preaching the virtues of finesse for more than a few years now.
“I wish somebody could explain to me how picking grapes when they’re precisely in balance and making a wine in balance became unfashionable,” Mr. Clendenen said as we stood in the middle of his utilitarian winery, in the middle of the Bien Nacido Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley. On a big industrial stove Mr. Clendenen was preparing lunch, as he often does, for the winery staff and the occasional visitor. When it’s ready, work at Au Bon Climat stops as everybody sits at a long, indoor picnic table to eat and drink a glass or two of wine, a reminder to all of the place and intent for their beverage.
“The ultimate use for wine is pairing with food,” said Rick Longoria, who makes intense yet balanced pinot noirs in Santa Barbara County. “There is no greater experience than the beautiful synergy between wine and food that elevates both.”
Food and wine’s role at the table is seemingly what divides these stylistic camps. Is wine a supporting player at a meal, intended to harmonize with food? Or is it meant to be, figuratively speaking, a meal in itself, best consumed on its own?
The answers can sometimes seem paradoxical. Leslie Mead of Talley Vineyards in Arroyo Grande, north of Santa Barbara County, makes fresh, earthy pinot noirs that would do well on any table. Yet for herself, she appreciates the other approach.
“I think there’s a place for every style,” she said. “Sometimes I like water with dinner and wine on its own.”
I can respect that point of view, but I can’t understand it. For me, wine’s place is with food, and that’s why I had begun to despair of so many California pinot noirs. Their power and sense of sweetness were overwhelming at the table. But it turns out that more than a few California producers share my feeling, like Ehren Jordan of Failla and Thomas Brown of Rivers-Marie, Joe Davis of Arcadian and Alex Davis of Porter Creek. Almost to a person, they make no secret of being inspired by the wines of Burgundy.
“It’s not that we’re trying to make Burgundy in California,” said Adam Tolmach of the Ojai Vineyard, which makes lively, savory Central Coast pinot noirs. “But the world loves Burgundy because of its sense of style, that’s a style that we’d like to emulate, and it’s hard to do that at 17 percent alcohol.”
It’s fashionable among the makers of bigger, heavier pinot noirs to reject any comparison with Burgundy. We don’t make Gevrey-Chambertin, they will say. We make wines representative of the Russian River Valley, Santa Rita Hills or Santa Lucia Highlands — take your pick. This stance implies that California conditions dictate wines of extravagance and power. In fact, this style of wine is more often determined by winemakers’ decision-making. And no decision is more important to the ultimate style of a wine than when to harvest the grapes.
In Burgundy, a cooler climate prevails. Grapes historically struggle to ripen, and the dilemma is whether to play it safe and harvest before the autumn rains arrive or take a chance and wait a little bit longer to achieve proper ripeness. In California, with ample sun and warmth and little chance of autumn rains, growers can allow the grapes to hang for as long as they want.
As a result of this option, and with the help of improved vineyard techniques and new vine clones unburdened by viruses and other plant diseases, California growers in the last 10 or 15 years gained the ability to ripen grapes almost to the point of shriveling, well past what was once considered desirable. Where grapes 20 years ago were considered ripe if they achieved 23 or 24 on the Brix scale for measuring sugar content, producers of ripe pinot noirs today aim for a minimum of 28, 29 or even 30 Brix.
In fact, Mr. Guthrie of Copain doesn’t even use the grapes from the 13-acre vineyard around his Healdsburg winery because he feels the weather gets too warm and the fruit too ripe.
Instead he gets grapes from cooler sites, largely in the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County. He sells the Healdsburg fruit to producers like Kosta Browne, who have won widespread plaudits for their dark, plush, opulent Russian River Valley wines.
Such extravagantly ripe — some would say overripe — grapes have their own set of problems. Sugar in fruit accumulates at the cost of acidity, which balances out sweetness with a zingy liveliness. This is especially true of the pinot noir grape. When all that sugar ferments into alcohol, little zing is left.
“With pinot noir, at a higher alcohol level, you don’t get the acidity that you do with, say, zinfandel,” said Mr. Jordan of Failla, who, in his day job as winemaker at Turley Wine Cellars, has ample experience making big zinfandels.
To compensate, many producers of big pinot noirs will add tartaric acid to their wine, which is permitted, and also add water to cut down on the alcohol, which is a murkier legal area that producers rationalize as simply adding back water lost as the grapes began to dehydrate in the final stage of ripening on the vine.
Yet when the pieces are assembled, what results is not necessarily a seamlessly integrated wine. “To me, pinot noir is a house of cards, and each manipulation adds more cards,” said Joe Davis of Arcadian, a steadfast believer in early picking. His wines are slow to develop but are meant to age. While many producers are about to release their 2007s, his graceful, fresh 2005s have only recently hit the market.
Before Mr. Guthrie saw the light, he said, he, too, was adding water and acid to his wines. When he sampled those wines after several years, all he could taste was the water and acid.
“In 2006, I made the decision to pick earlier to retain freshness and vibrancy rather than play the game of picking ripe and adding water and acidity later on,” he said. “It was the first year I made pinot where I didn’t have to add acid or water, and it felt good.”
The differences in well-made examples of early picked and late picked pinot noirs are striking. The earlier picked wines smell of flowers and red fruits rather than black fruits and jam. They are vivacious rather than dense and concentrated. They are dry, not cloying, and offer nuance rather than impact.
“I do not like pruney wines,” said Kathleen Inman of Inman Family Wines, which makes small amounts of lively yet delicate pinot noirs in the Russian River Valley. “I’m kind of the bellwether. People say, ‘Kathleen’s picking — that means harvest is in two weeks.’ ”
Well, honestly, nobody is going to ’fess up to liking pruney wines. Nonetheless, these ultra-ripe pinot noirs are highly popular. Partly that’s because they’ve received such critical acclaim. In the current issue of Wine Spectator, the highest-scoring pinot noir from California is described as “superrich, bordering on syrupy.” Those are apparently compliments.
Now, I haven’t tried that wine, but I can’t say those qualities are what I desire in a pinot noir. I prefer words like elegant and energetic, which I used to describe Anthill Farms’ 2007 pinot noir from the Comptche Ridge Vineyard in Mendocino County, or restrained and mineral, as in the 2007 Rivers-Marie Summa Vineyard pinot noir from the Sonoma Coast.
Clearly, not everybody agrees with me. Of course, wines that soar for one person thud to the ground for the next. Accounting for divergences in taste can be a thorny subject, especially for those who on some level may feel they haven’t received proper respect for their achievements.
“I think it’s been whacked into a naïve public’s head that these big wines are the wines that people are supposed to like,” said Lane Tanner, who has been issuing pinot noirs under her own name from Santa Barbara County since 1989. Her wines are light-bodied, fragrant and floral — “feminine,” she calls them, in contrast to the hulking masculine wines that some critics favor.
It takes determination to stick to a style that is less popular.
“There is a lot of pressure in California to make wines in that other style, and you can understand why,” said Alex Davis, whose 2006 Porter Creek Fiona Hill pinot noir from the Russian River Valley has a freshness that will wake up the most tired palate. “People have a lot of bills to pay.”
Still, none of these producers is suffering, and many are encouraged by the growing demand for their wines.
“The palate in Europe, like the wines, has had a thousand years to develop,” said Ted Lemon of Littorai, whose wines beautifully combine structure and intensity with restraint. “We’re only starting.”
On the Lighter Side
The following are among the California pinot noirs made in a lighter style, emphasizing finesse over power. Some wines are widely available; others are sold by mailing list. Prices can range from around $20 for entry-level bottles up to about $75 for some single-vineyard wines.
ANTHILL FARMS Sonoma/Mendocino; lovely, fresh and floral.
ARCADIAN South Central Coast; lively, pure and age-worthy.
AU BON CLIMAT Santa Barbara; well-balanced and complex.
CALERA WINE COMPANY Mount Harlan; intense single-vineyard wines.
COPAIN Mendocino; delicate and nuanced.
FAILLA Sonoma Coast; elegant and focused.
INMAN FAMILY WINES Russian River Valley; bright and pretty.
JOSEPH SWAN VINEYARDS Russian River Valley; restrained and delicate.
LANE TANNER Santa Barbara; light-bodied and fragrant.
LITTORAI Mendocino/Sonoma Coast; structured and energetic.
LONGORIA Santa Barbara; earthy and intense.
THE OJAI VINEYARD Santa Barbara; light and savory.
PEAY VINEYARDS Sonoma Coast; spicy and polished.
PORTER CREEK VINEYARDS Russian River Valley; fresh and elegant.
RHYS VINEYARDS Santa Cruz Mountains; graceful and complex.
RIVERS-MARIE Sonoma Coast; intense, lively and balanced.
TALLEY VINEYARDS Arroyo Grande; earthy yet fresh.
