Building relationships takes effort

The events surrounding Premiere Napa Valley were quite impressive. The Napa Valley Vintners and individual AVA associations know how to throw a party. The whole PNV week is basically a big party celebrating all things Napa. It doesn't hurt that NVV has a multi-million dollar budget to work with and they were wooing the world's top wine media (present company excluded) and trade members itching to spend tens of thousands of dollars, but that shouldn't stop emerging regions like Colorado from learning how to host similarly successful events.

Six Further Thoughts on Premiere Napa Valley

I want to write about a few specific thoughts on Premiere Napa Valley in a bit more detail than my initial post.

1. Vintage matters. Tasting through a dozen producers' 2008, 2009 and 2010 cabernet sauvignon during the Vintage Perspective Tasting made this abundantly clear. After tasting 36 wines with only knowing the vintage, variety and that they were from Napa Valley, I concluded that 2008 is a great vintage. For almost every producer, I preferred the 2008 to the 2009 or 2010. Of the three vintages, 2008 had earliest bud break, a long, dry, hot growing season and the longest harvest period. Both 2009 and 2010 were cooler and wetter vintages. The 2008 wines were collectively the most complex and balanced wines in the room. The best offered a wonderful array of intense fruit, floral and earthy aromas and flavors complemented by smooth tannins. Wines from 2009 were a bit more varied in quality, and were generally lighter and with more floral characteristics. A few were unfortunately under-ripe, and the acidity was quite noticeable. The even cooler, shorter and wetter 2010 season was quite apparent in the wines as well. Most 2010s were marred with green tobacco aromas and rough tannins. Despite being greener, the 2010s still managed a bit bigger structure than the 2009s and few that achieved ripeness approached the 2008s in quality. The auction wines were mostly from the 2011 vintage which was even shorter, cooler and wetter than 2010. I think the detailed selection process that went into these unique wines may have provided a skewed view into the vintage as a whole, but many were thin and green. Others that managed to achieve proper ripeness were stellar, but many still were lacking much depth and hidden by massive tannins. For my favorites, see Tuesday's post.

2. Location matters. With the Premiere lot wines being mostly from the difficult, cool 2011 vintage, vineyard location was quite important. For me, wines from hills above the valley floor fared the best. The extra sun and lack of fog proved to be beneficial in this challenging year. From the variety of hillside locations, wines from Pritchard Hill were among the best. Both the Continuum and BRAND 2011s were two of my favorite wines the entire weekend. Other wines with Pritchard Hill grapes (Chappellet, Gandona, Krupp Brothers, Larkin, Montagna, Moone-Tsai and Purlieu) were nearly as wonderful. Howell Mountain (O'Shaughnessy and Derenoncourt California) and the hillside vineyards just south of Pritchard Hill (Oakville East Exposure) also yielded some of the better wines. Superior benchland sites on the west side of the valley (Vine Hill Ranch in Oakville and Corison's Kronos Vineyard in St. Helena) also made some exceptional wine. The best locations proved to make the best wines. Not really surprising when you think about it.

3. Winemaker matters. So many vintners will say that wine is made in the vineyard, but a masterful winemaker can really take great grapes and make exceptional wine. Bidders at the auction really were focused on name recognition. Philippe Melka had his name attached to more lots than any other winemaker and combined his 55 cases sold for $225,000, or just over $340 per bottle on average (Gandona at $28k, Vineyard 29 at $27k, BRAND at $26k, Gemstone at $26k, Roy Estate at $24k, Cliff Lede at $20k, Adamvs at $20k, Lail at $19K, Entre Nous at $18k and Moone-Tsai at $17k). I guess that is why he is the hottest name in California winemaking right now. Not only was name recognition important, but perhaps the most elegant, and my personal favorite, lot was made by a winemaker that is known doing more with cool vintages. Cathy Corison makes what many call a throwback style of Napa cabernet due to her lower alcohol, gentle extraction and delicate use of oak. While her wines are almost always very good, her wines' finesse and elegance are at their peak in challenging vintages such as 2011. I was wish I had an extra $15,000 laying around so I could have outbid the Houston company that was successful with a mere $14,000 bid.

4. The new kid on the block is ready to play ball. Thumbing through the catalog I was surprised to see so many wines list Coombsville AVA as a source for their grapes. I quickly counted at least 16 different wines with Coombsville fruit. That's pretty amazing given that Coombsville has only been an AVA for only about a year. Fruit from this small region just east of the town of Napa has been going into big name wines for years, but now this area is ready to take its rightful place as one of the premier districts in California. One of my favorite wines, though not an auction wine, was the interestingly named Inherit the Sheep. I'll definitely be looking into adding some of that to my cellar. Key an eye out for labels with Coombsville on them. Oh, and I much prefer the name Coombsville to the original name of Tulocay AVA; it just rolls of the tongue much more easily.

5. Cabernet Sauvignon may be King, but... Franc is the Knight in Shining Armor and a few other varieties excel in Napa. Many of the wines that I found most appealing had a heavy dose of cabernet franc. I think 100% cabernet sauvignon is often boring and greatly benefits from some blending with other varieties. BRAND (~50% cab franc) and Continuum (~30% cab franc) provide powerful evidence that more cab franc in the blend is a good thing. Oakville East Exposure's and Detert's 100% cabernet francs were also some of the standouts. And in a bit of a twist, O'Shaughnessy's 100% petit verdot was killer juice. Very rarely do you see varietal wines from petit verdot. Maybe next year they'll make a varietal St. Macaire! There were also a few random white wines in the lineup and Arietta's blend of 65% semillon and 35% sauvignon blanc stood out as a refreshing alternative to all the massive cabernet sauvignon based wines.

6. Winemakers and winery owners are real people. Sure, they may be rock stars in this little industry, but they are people just like you and me. They watched anxiously as people tasted their wines and were sincerely gracious when complemented on their product. I stood in the back of the room for much of the auction watching nervous vintners anxiously hold their breath when their wines were up for sale only to let out a sigh of relief when the bidding was over. I sat next to Tim Mondavi for about an hour and we chatted like he didn't have one of the biggest names in the wine world. At no time did I feel like the peon I am in the wine world. Sure, there is a lot of money and big egos in Napa, but isn't there everywhere? Most of the vintners I met were real, sincere people like you and I (except for you, and you know who you are...). I am already looking forward to next year (assuming I'm invited back) and working on convincing my wife to accompany me.

Quick note on Premiere Napa Valley

The weather in Napa last week was almost perfect and the results from the 17th annual Premiere Napa Valley wine auction fell just shy of last year's record. Sixty seven bidders spent almost three hours purchasing 211 different lots of wine for a total of $3.04 million. The most expensive lot was a 120-bottle lot collaboration from Bevan Cellars and Chateau Boswell Winery that brought in $75,000. Shafer Vineyards' 2011 Sunspot Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon was the highest per bottle price with just 60 bottles selling for $50,000.

My trip was jammed packed with tastings. Friday started with a blind Vintage Perspective Tasting of 2008, 2009, and 2010 cabernets (I skipped the chardonnay portion). My quick takeaway from that tasting was that 2008 is in a good place right now. Almost across the board, 2008 yielded fantastic wines. Wines from the 2009 vintage were a bit lighter and more floral, but with rougher tannins and shorter finishes than 2008. The 2010 wines were spotty, with many showing green aromas and flavors. I had private appointments with Lou Kapcsándy and Stephane Derenoncourt as well as attended preview receptions at Ovid (Pritchard Hill Wineries), Shafer Vineyards, Far Niente (Oakville Winegrowers Association), Silverado Vineyards (Family Owned Wineries) and Corison Winery. Friday finally ended with a Vegas meets Disney World meets Napa party at Raymond Vineyards, palate fatigue and a black mouth.

Saturday was the main event. The barrel tasting portion of the auction showcased lots mostly from the 2011 vintage. I found the vintage to be quite varied in quality. Many of the Premiere wines were under ripe, some were overly massive, but just a few were really spectacular. Granted, the wines were not finished products, but with wines that will retail for $100 to $1,000 per bottle I wanted to be wowed at every turn and I was not. My favorites wines of the week included BRAND PNV Lot 162, Continuum PNV Lot 199, Corison PNV Lot 118, Derenoncourt 2009 Red Hills Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Inherit the Sheep 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, Kapcsándy PNV Lot167, O'Shaughnessy PNV Lot 116, Oakville East Exposure PNV Lot 148 and Revana PNV Lot 92. I also enjoyed meeting Alder Yarrow, Roy Piper, Doug Wilder and Adam Lechmere for the first time.

On another, and hopefully a final note on this subject, I was congratulated by more than a handful of writers, winery owners and other industry members for my post from two weeks ago. I had no idea that so many people would would actually care (and support me) that I called out Steve Heimoff for censoring his website. I was hoping to meet Steve, but the opportunity never appeared. It is too bad more of those people don't feel comfortable speaking out publicly, but I guess that is the problem with such an insular industry.

Let's get vertical, vertical...

Cheers to Olivia Newton John and my apologies to any who is now picturing their favorite wine pundit dancing around in a leotard and matching sweatbands.

Most wine blogs and glossies focus their efforts on tasting and reviewing current releases of wine. Furthermore, said publications tend to focus on mainstream wines. When prognostications of the ageability and drinking window of young wines are made, they tend to be based (I hope) on prior experience with how previous vintages fared. But very rarely do you see published vertical tastings of wine. Sure, Robert Parker, Jr. famously has stepped aside from the current California beat to do retrospective tastings of California. Almost always vertical tastings are solely in the realm of top producers. James Suckling recently posted a series of videos documenting his experience tasting three centuries of Chateau Latour. Richard Jennings recently tasted through aged Kistler pinot noirs and found that he did not agree with the top critics' early prognostications. Occasionally the wine gods smile on off the beaten path producers. Super-blogger Joe Roberts got in on the action and posted about his experience of tasting a vertical of Peconic Bay merlot from Long Island, New York. To my knowledge, there have been no published vertical tastings of Colorado wine. Until now.

I received a few samples of Canyon Wind Cellars cabernet and had a few bottles in my meager cellar, so I decided that I must open all five vintages at one time in order to compare them and put Colorado in the same light as first-growth Bordeaux and cult Cali pinot. I invited a few friends over to help me taste through the lineup that nearly spanned the history of the winery. I opened and double decanted all the wines an hour before being consumed. The wines were all in good shape, though the corks in the two oldest bottles broke. The five bottles were bagged, numbered and poured blind. No one knew which wine was which and the only thing that our guests knew was that the bottles were all the same variety. As we were tasting, I suspected that somehow the wines got put back in order and we were drinking them from oldest to youngest. In fact we were, with the two youngest bottles being transposed. The secondary and tertiary flavors and aromas brought out by bottle aging was quite apparent, though the youngest of the bunch was a bit of an aberration to even me. Overall, everyone was quite impressed with the quality of all the wines. Though one common theme amongst my casual wine drinking friends was the unanimous surprise that all the wine was the same grape and from the same producer but tasted vastly different. My notes (I was the only one to take notes) along with the group rankings are below:


1997 Canyon Wind Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grand Valley AVA, Colorado

The first wine in the lineup is dark red in color with a little bit of bricking at the rim. Aromas of cherry and black currants are balanced by lovely tobacco and cedar. Smooth on the palate, smooth red and black fruits are complemented with lovely secondary flavors of tobacco and tea leaf. This wine is well balanced and complex and could easily pass as a fourth or fifth growth Bordeaux. It is ready to go and should probably be consumed in the next few years before the fruit starts to fade. My favorite wine of the flight, but the group's #2. 13.8% abv Sample $50. Very Good/Excellent (tasted 7/8/11)



2000 Canyon Wind Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grand Valley AVA, Colorado

The second wine is clearly younger than the previous wine. Dark red with no bricking, this wine is much fruitier. Sweet cherries and raspberries and dark chocolate dominate the nose. It shows a spiciness that wine #1 did not have. Jammy blackberries, black cherries, bittersweet chocolate, pencil lead and some glycerol make this wine much more Californian in style than the previous one. The alcohol is noticeable, but not off-putting. Young but still enjoyable, I think this one has enough fruit to age a few more years. My and the group's #3 wine of the night.14.2% abv Purchased $24. Good/Very Good (tasted 7/8/11)



2003 Canyon Wind Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grand Valley AVA, Colorado

Wine #3 was very similar to wine #2, but with one exception. Blackberries, cassis and cigar box on the nose screamed cabernet. The dark raspberries, currants, and smokey tobacco were enjoyable on the palate, but the mouth-puckering tannins and short finish kept this one from being as enjoyable as the others. This one is built to age and should be given time or a generous amount of time in a decanter. Did not impress too many of us, especially compared to the top 2 wines. This one was my and the group's #4 of the night.13.5% abv Purchased $24. Good (tasted 7/8/11)


 
2005 Canyon Wind Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grand Valley AVA, Colorado

Jumping ahead to the last wine of the night, this one was a stark contrast to the first wine. This wine is extremely dark purple. Aromas of black fruits, mocha, graphite and cedar fill the glass. Good fruit flavors of currants, raspberries and plums are met with hints of cedar and tobacco along with a good dollop of vanilla. Smooth, yet with assertive tannins, I think that this wine could be a good ringer in a flight of more expensive Napa cabs. My #2 of the night (by a hair), but the group's wine of the night.13.3% abv Sample $26. Very Good (tasted 7/8/11)



 
2006 Canyon Wind Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grand Valley AVA, Colorado

A bit of an aberration from the others, this wine was poured just before the 2005. Beautiful bright red/purple colors in the glass, this wine is all fruit. Cherries and strawberries and a bit of heat on the nose, this smells quite similar to a red Jolly rancher. Just as fruity on the palate, if I had no idea what this wine was I would peg it as an Australian grenache. This wine may not have the structure to age, but the bright fruits make this good to drink right now.13.9% abv Sample $26. Good (tasted 7/8/11)