A Moment in the Dirt

A result of the rapid and simultaneous conclusion of several DIRT SEARCH investigations at the Lab's Farewell to Los Angeles gala, we've had quite a bit to say about terroir recently.

So I thought it might be worth jotting down a few quick notes on the subject.

Terroir isn't like pornography. You don't always know it when you see it. It's not the minerality. It's not the earthy smell. At least, not always. And drinking different wines from the same and adjoining vineyards only solves a part of the mystery. Because you need to taste longitudinally too; you have to drink the same wine over a span of vintages to really understand that ethereal combination of grape, soil, weather and wine-maker.

You also have to drink other wines from the neighborhood. And wines from across town. Because to understand the specificity of a vineyard, you need to need a good handle on the generality of the grape as well.

If it were possible to produce a neutral example of Pinot Noir or Riesling or any grape, you could start with a "fruit baseline". Then you could compare your baseline to site specific wines. And the divergence would be vineyard, climate, viticulture (terroir) and... manipulation (not terroir). But there's no such mythical grape. So learning to recognize terroir requires a lot of experience. And Dirt Search experiments are a good way to gain it. So is drinking with people who have a lot of their own experience. So is drinking un-manipulated wines -- which helps you learn how to spot wines that are manipulated, as some call them: spoofulated.

But, in the end, why should terroir be this Holy Grail of booze consumption? Why should we work so hard to figure it out? And what do we get if we do?

All fair questions.

And the answer is further complicated by the fact that most people who talk about it don't actually know what it is.

So why should we bother with terroir?

For me, I guess I just love the idea of a moment in time trapped in a bottle. It's romantic, sure. And like all romantic ideas, it's a little bit silly. But the search for that mystical trinity of vineyard, climate and wine-maker, all captured in a single vintage and bottled for safe-keeping seems to me something worth looking for.

The Martini Shot

DIRT DINNER. Last Part.

In Hollywood, the Martini Shot is the last shot of the day. Legend has it this is because the next shot comes out of a glass.

And so out of glass, we chased the end of our farewell evening.

The wine from the Chateau d'Yquem is arguably the greatest Sauternes in the world. Though I don't know who you'd get to argue about this. The Chateau Raymond-Lafon is famous for being next door to the Chateau d'Yquem, and its wines are often marketed as such. The "shelf-talker" next to the bottle I bought said, "Next-door to Yquem for 1/3 the price!" (Maybe it was 1/8th... I don't remember exactly).

Raymond-Lafon is owned by Pierre Meslier and his family. Meslier was the long-time manager of Yquem. So there is more than just geographical proximity in play.

And yet, there is nothing similar about these wines. Except for the fact they are wines.

The Raymond-Lafon smelled like caramelized prunes and tastes of sweet apricot jam. There was nothing that suggested proximity to Yquem. No common thread. No shared Dirt.

The Yquem meanwhile was beguiling. A seductive enigma. An aromatic Siren. One amongst us said dreamily, "I just want to keep smelling this. Forever."

At a point in the evening when we were all half in the bag, this wine gently and unpretentiously claimed our full attention. It was a mind-spinning, ethereal swirl of apple and pear, quince, pineapple, fresh apricot, lime pith, honey, vanilla, firefly glow and white magic.

It simply stole the show.

The perfect wine to end a beautiful dinner with dear friends. To toast the Rational Denial Lab's illustrious tenure in Los Angeles and to christen our forthcoming Asian adventure.

So that, everybody, is a wrap.

Stay tuned.

Back to the Stone Corral

DIRT DINNER. Part Three.

I feel like Wyatt Earp on a wander back through old stomping grounds.

Been there. Done that. At this corral, anyway. The Stone Corral.

But for those of you lacking eiditic memory, a quick review.

In 2001, Brian Talley converted a 27-acre plot of grazing land into a vineyard planted with Pinot Noir. Two other winemakers, from Kynsi and Stephen Ross, shared the development costs in exchange for long-term access to the grapes grown. The 5 blocks of the resulting Stone Corral vineyard were each divided into thirds, each to be shared by the three participants.

And at our farewell dinner, we drank all three side by side.

The Talley and the Kynsi wines were quite similar (not surprisingly). The Talley perhaps had a slightly defter touch wood-wise. You felt like you had better access to the fruit. But the Kynsi was energetic and slightly more complex with hints of sandalwood and cola. It's tough to know with any precision where the varietal profile stops and the specific vineyard starts, but both of these wines seemed to provide great transparency to the Dirt of the Stone Corral.

The Stephen Ross entry was an altogether different wine. It was bigger and concentrated. The dense cherry fruit mixed with plum and dark fruits, heaps of dry extract and too much mocha on the finish.

As with the New Zealand wines, the exercise was not about subjective judgements, but -- very subjectively -- I can't help but think the hyper-extraced wine makes a poorer window to the vineyard.

Three Pinots, One Guy Named Owen

DIRT DINNER. Part Two.

Three wines. Three winemakers. One vineyard (pictured topographically at right).

This experiment is not so much ours as it is theirs -- the "they" being, the generous souls at Felton Road Wines and their co-consipirators from Pyramid Valley Vineyards and Craggy Range. We at the Lab are just the gleeful beneficiaries of the results.

Here's the story as we know it. A fellow named Owen Calvert bought a vineyard. Owen is generally regarded as a really good guy. He and his wife spend most of their time in bleak places providing aid and assistance to people in need; they are UN relief workers. Their vineyard is just across the road from the Felton Road winery, so Owen asked if Felton Road might like to manage the vineyard and use the fruit.

They thought it would be a better idea for Gareth King (Felton Road's aces viticulturist) to manage the vineyard (bio-dynamically) and to let three different winemakers make a wine from fruit branded as coming from the Owen Calvert Vineyard. In that, the vineyard would become a known entity, and when Owen Calvert returned home from his long missions, he might have something of sustainable value at the end of his porch.

So each of the three parti-

cipating wineries gets an allocation of what is essentially the same fruit and from that they make their own expression of what the vineyard has provided.

What better window to Dirt could there be?

The 2006 is the first vintage of this collaboration. And we carefully cellared an example of each wine, patiently waiting for them to blossom.

Then we sold the Lab and decided to drink up.

The Pyramid Valley Vineyard pinot smells of rich cherry fruit and loamy soil. It is elegant, long and linear, revealing in turns cherry, plum and nectarine, then spice, and stones. It has a lithe, almost feminine quality. It caresses the tongue like velvet.

The Felton Road wine offers similar aromas, if with a slightly more pronounced rustic, earthy tone. The fruit seems brighter -- cherry, tart plum and nectarine (could this last orchard fruit be the clue to the vineyard?). This is less delicate, less linear and the cooperage is somewhat more obvious. But it is, like the first, sensuously delicious.

The Craggy Range is also very, very good. It is the least earthy and mineral of the three, but the most fruit forward. There is, alas, no nectarine here -- but I'm not giving up my theory without further tests!

The family resemblance between the three is unmistakable. These wines are like brothers. The Marx Brothers. One obvious and upfront. One a thoughtful crowd-pleaser. And one silent and brooding, taut with mystery.

Are we any closer to our elusive goal? Have we found Dirt? Perhaps. But it's not like terroir drops down from the ceiling and quacks like a duck with the secret word.

To be continued...

Dirt Bubbles

DIRT DINNER. Part One.

After my last post, a few of you called (the old switchboard at the Lab rings through to a service now) to complain.

It wasn't a quiz. At least, not intentionally so. I (wrongly) assumed the thematic context of the dinner would be obvious from the wines listed.

The experimental theme of the dinner was "Wines from the Same Dirt." In the case of the two Pinot Noir flights, all were wines from the exact same vineyard and vintage -- one in New Zealand; one on California's Central Coast. In the case of the Champagnes and the Sauternes, the wines were from adjoining, or adjacent, at least, nearby vineyards.

The Champagnes are from Vertus. A place I'm disappointed to admit, I have not been. But I have Champagnista par excellence Peter Liem to thank for a research note. Some time ago, on his abandoned blog, he wrote:

Not to be missed is Veuve Fourny’s Millésimé 2002 Blanc de Blancs, sourced exclusively from parcels in Les Barillées and Les Monts Ferrés in the heart of the slope (the same terroir, incidentally, as Larmandier-Bernier's outstanding Terre de Vertus).

Sensing opportunity, I promptly located a bottle of the wines from each producer. I would have preferred to match vintages as well. But it's not a perfect world, and I was happy just to find examples of both wines. Believe me. It wasn't easy. The Veuve Fourny was from 2000. The Larmandier-Bernier a 2004 (although labeled NV).

Both wines were beautiful. The Larmandier-Bernier a steely, tensile expression of Chardonnay with floral aromas and a salty minerality. The Veuve Fourny was more expansive and opulent wine. Would be hard to pick a favorite, which, thankfully, was not the exercise.

Discovering something about the underlying terroir was the point. In this pair, it remained elusive. The commonalities seemed to have more to do with the properties of Chardonnay than shared earth. Terroir is an elusive little bugger. And not so easily revealed.

Especially when, as we did, you hurry through the tasting, anxious to get to the next flight of wines... Stay tuned.

Au Revoir Los Angeles

I've been procrastinating this report. A surface scratch of the cover of any pop psychology manual will tell you why. But I'm knuckling down. The wine culture in Hong Kong is rich and interesting and deserves its reportage. However, before I can properly commence our work here in Asia, I must formally conclude the all-important California chapter of the Lab's illustrious history.

As we packed up our gear and shipped much of the Lab's cellars overseas, I did manage to strategically conclude a few key experiments before turning over control to our new Far East ownership.

The Lab's final farewell was a deep search for DIRT. Surely, our favorite experimental past-time.

Brothers Stork, the elder being the General Manager of the Patina Restaurant Group, organized a sensational dinner that we paired with a number of DIRT THEMED wines (list below). We were joined by a few kindred spirits, ex-officio Lab contributors, and even Lou Amdur of Lou (on Vine).

It was an evening of much celebration and some small sadness. Parting is indeed difficult. We don't all get a send-off like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar after all.

So I will tease you with a list. And in subsequent days offer a few, tear-stained notes on the wines.

Champagne

Larmandier-Bernier Brut (non dose) Terre de Vertus 1er Cru, 2004,

and from an adjacent parcel in the same vineyard block on a hillside in Vertus,

Veuve Fourny & Fils Brut Vertus 1er Cru Blanc de Blanc, 2000.

First Course

All from the same vineyard/vintage.

2006 Craggy Range Calvert Vineyard Pinot Noir

2006 Felton Road Calvert Vineyard Pinot Noir

2006 Pyramid Valley Vineyards Calvert Vineyard Pinot Noir

Second Course

All from the same -- though different -- vineyard vintage.

2006 Talley Vineyards Stone Corral Vineyard Pinot Noir

2006 Kynsi Stone Corral Vineyard Pinot Noir

2006 Stephen Ross Stone Corral Vineyard Pinot Noir

Dessert

2003 Chateau d'Yquem

And from (allegedly) the winery across the road,

2003 Chateau Raymond-Lafon

À bientôt mes amis. À bientôt.

Support for a Theory

The 2005 vintage of the Confuron-Cotetidot Vosne-Romanee smelled of woodsmoke and plum skins. It also had an odd, meaty note that I don't usually associate with Pinot. In the mouth, it was tart cherry fruit and peppery spice with a big, green-tinged tannic bite on the finish.

Given the growing conditions of the vintage, I expected ripe, maybe even over-ripe, fruit. I read somewhere that the high tannin levels in the 05s might be an issue. This bottle suggests that's true.

But it was remarkable to drink this next to the 2001. It was so clearly a younger relation. The wines had nearly identical structure, similar linear elements, common aromas and flavors.

Surely there's a big clue about terroir in those shared traits.

And in the differences.

Moby Dirt

Dirt Searching can be expensive. It only stands to reason that the best places to look for terroir, in those wines made from single-vineyards where producers intentionally restrict fruit yields and pick by hand, are going to be costly.

But in our quest for this muddy White Whale, we recently stumbled upon an interesting experimental pair that won't set you back a small fortune.

Two wines from Castoro Cellars. Yes, the provider of vast gallons of wine for Trader Joe's also has a serious side. These wines are from the same all-organic Whale Rock vineyard in Paso Robles. One a Zinfandel, the other a Primitivo. At the Lab, we know from super wine scientist Carol Meredith's extensive DNA analysis that Zin and Primitivo are, in fact, the same grape. So we assume this bit of marketing implies some deep cellar tomfoolery aimed at making a more rustic red for the Primitvo bottling.

Either way, same grapes, same vineyard, perhaps a slightly different vinification/maturation... perfect territory for a dirt search. So we tasted the 2005 Primitivo Reserve ($22) and the 2005 Whale Rock Zinfandel ($30) side by side.

The Zinfandel has a nose of cherry and oak, and, perhaps, too much alcohol. But I'm surprised by the restraint of the fruit on the palate, this isn't nearly as obvious as the nose suggested. A complex mix of black cherry, fig and blue fruits, with a youthful, vegetal greenness and drying tannins (or is this an oak effect?). The finish has a slightly bitter, Robitussin quality.

The Primitivo is sweet cherry and plum backed by dusty clay. This is the more fruit-forward of the two with rich flavors of plum and cherry confiture. Spicier too, with black pepper and espresso.

Both of these wines stuck me as being more about the fruit and the winemaking than the dirt. And yet, there was a common hallmark. Although it's hard to say if it's the result of shared varietal characteristics or born of common ground... literally.

You Need a Tangerine

This is Part 2. Part 1 is here. But to review briefly, the Lab compared two wines from the same vintage and the same vineyard to see if we might discover something about their shared terroir.

But what we discovered is this: If you want to compare oranges to oranges, you need a point of reference. You need a tangerine.

We also, perhaps a little hastily, dismissed an employee. An employee who left the Lab with our tangerine in his bag. Today, he's back at work, and we're tasting the tangerine. But it's not really a tangerine (that's just a metaphor). It's a bottle of 2005 Stephen Ross Edna Valley Pinot Noir. The Stone Corral Vineyard that produced the two wines we tasted in Part 1 is also in the Edna Valley. And Steve Dooley, the winemaker of Stephen Ross, is the third participant in the Stone Corral vineyard. So the grapes that went into this wine (the tangerine) are certainly close cousins (of our oranges).

The Stephen Ross has a straightforward cherry fruit nose with some talc and hints of cedar. Very fruit-forward, mostly cherry with some jammy plum. Ripe, but not overly so. Dry tannins. Pencil lead on the finish.

This is ready to drink. It's very good, though not likely to get much better with age. It has some distinct elements, but isn't particularly distinctive.

But where it really succeeds is as a tangerine.

With this frame of reference, all of a sudden the Stone Corral terroir becomes obvious. What connects the Talley and Kynsi Pinots to that single Central Coast vineyard is palpable against the more generic fruit of the Stephen Ross wine.

I really wish that kid had found the Stephen Ross Stone Corral Pinot. Would have made for a more complete experiment. Something to look forward to with the 2006 vintage, I guess.

And I'd consider doing this one at home with the '06s. It's highly instructive.


(tangerine: © Milosluz | Dreamstime.com)

Shootout at the Stone Corral

In 2001, Brian Talley converted a 27-acre plot of grazing land into a vineyard planted with Pinot Noir. Two other winemakers, from Kynsi and Stephen Ross, shared the development costs in exchange for long-term access to the grapes grown. The 5 blocks of the resulting Stone Corral vineyard were each divided into thirds, each to be shared by the three participants.

The innovative business arrangements that gave rise to these shared vines provide rich territory for our ongoing search for dirt. Three distinct wines all from the same mud.

I drove from the Lab in Los Angeles to the Talley Vineyards' Tasting Room to find their 2005 vintage of the Stone Corral Pinot Noir. Then I criss-crossed back and forth across the Central Coast until finally locating a bottle of the Kynsi Estate Stone Corral Vineyard Pinot Noir from the same vintage at a grower's cooperative in San Luis Obispo.

Upon my return, a certain former employee went down to the wine shop on the corner. Instead of coming back with the single item on his shopping list, he came back with an Edna Valley Pinot Noir from Stephen Ross. He said he was pretty sure the wine was made from the Stone Corral vineyard. I told him I was pretty sure he was going to spend the afternoon working on his resume.

But we pressed on with our two-thirds worth of experiment.

The Kynsi has a tight, slightly herbaceous, nose of black cherry fruit. This is an elegant wine with a complex mix of red and blue fruits, oak traces, and a subtle mineral element. And very young. Sharp tannins with more bite than heft.

The Talley wine has a beautiful, complex nose of turned earth, smoke, cherry and plum. The palate is dense cherry fruit, with subtle hints of cedar and green tannins. With air, the wine's tannins grew lush and velvety but some of the complexities also seemed to fade against the swell of ripe, jammy fruit.

These are both beautiful expressions of Pinot, and there is no doubt the experiment would well be worth revisiting after these have enjoyed a few years of bottle age. But what can we say about them now? And more importantly, about their shared terroir?

The Talley seems to me a more site specific wine. But perhaps I've been fooled into this belief by the earthy qualities of the wine? The two definitely share characteristics. Their black cherry was like fruit from the same tree (not at all that surprising, given the wines were, in fact, made from fruit grown in adjoining rows). But getting past common clones and divergent cooperage, to delve deeper into shared elements of dirt proved to be difficult.

Perhaps to really understand the commonalities -- to really identify the unique elements of their shared site -- it would help to compare them to something they're not...

Hey! Someone chase down that kid we just fired. Get him and that Stephen Ross Edna Valley Pinot back in the Lab.

While we wait, you might want to use the time to catch up on the previous chapters in our quest for that strange grail of terroir.

It Takes a Village

Our mad quest for mud resumes.

If you're a newcomer to our work at the Lab, you can brush up on our Dirt Search Mission Statment here.

Today, we'll be searching for that elusive terroir in the Champagne village of Aÿ. With a tiny population of just over 4000, Aÿ is located at the base of the southern slope of the Montagne de Reims just Northeast of Epernay.

Aÿ is renowned for Pinot Noir. Its red wines were said to be the favorite of the French King, Henri IV. So why then, you may soon be wondering, are we drinking a Chardonnay from Aÿ in the Lab today, a Blanc de Blanc from Gaston Chiquet?

Because Peter Liem, in his truly outstanding Champagne blog, recently wrote that he, "found that this Chardonnay helps me to understand Aÿ’s Pinots better, through a commonality of character and personality." He cites fabled importer Terry Thiese as noting, Chiquet's Blanc de Blanc, "isn’t so much a variant on Chardonnay as it is another dialect of Aÿ.”

So we thought it might be illuminating to drink Chiquet's Blanc de Blanc d'Aÿ, NV, alongside a Pinot Noir from the same village. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find still red wine from Champagne in the U.S. But not impossible. There is an odd (some might argue "novelty") wine from Bollinger, La Côte aux Enfants, Coteaux Champenois (1999), that occasionally appears on local shelves. La Côte aux Enfants is produced from a single vineyard in Aÿ, planted exclusively with Pinot. The wine is only produced in what some Frenchie deems an "exceptional year."

This Chiquet is one of my favorite non-vintage Champagnes. This bottle has a yeasty, slightly sourdough, nose mixed with almond butter and lemon verbena. Beautifully complex and linear. A nervy, citric acid highlights the attack, then cherry-apple fruit swirls around a serious mineral core. This finish is beautiful, crisp and chalky. (Disgorged 5/1/07).

As I'm actually one of those who would argue the Bollinger is a novelty wine, I was surprised by how good it was. A nose of plum and cherries and a beguiling earthy quality. On the palate, the fruit was forward, but not over-powering. Plum, black cherry and mineral water. With peppery tannins and a gentle, chalky mineralité. Although the overall impression was that of feminine delicacy, the various elements seemed bound together by an energetic, almost forceful, tension.

Did we find our Grail in these two wines from Aÿ?

Tough to say with any precision. It was hard to avoid discovering some commonality in the mineral aspects of the two wines. Both had an almost sensual, cherry chalkiness to them. Both seemed to possess that alchemical suggestion of a specific place and time.

But were those neighboring places really there?

Or mere projections...

Dirt Search #1: The Battle in Nouy

This is rare opportunity. Two wines. Two winemakers. Same dirt. And celebrated dirt at that. The Clos Baudoin (clos, by the way, means the vineyard is surrounded by a wall) is an ancient vineyard in the Nouy Valley in Vouvray, and widely regarded as one of the best terroirs in the Loire. Until recently, the vineyard was owned by the descendants of Polish royalty. But in 2002, François Chidaine, a young and brilliant winemaker from across the valley in Montlouis, took over maintenance of the vineyards and production of the wines from Prince Poniatowski. In 2007, Chidaine took over the Clos Baudoin completely.

What a contest! In one corner, Chidaine, who makes brilliant wines. I've never had a bad one. And some -- like the off-dry 2005 Montlouis Les Tuffeaux -- verge on sublime. And by the 2006 vintage, Chidaine had fully converted the Clos Baudoin to biodynamic viticulture and resurrected the vineyard from a state of disrepair. Unfortunately, in the other corner, the Prince's 2001, was a product of that disrepair. Chidaine found himself in a position to take over the Clos Baudoin in some measure because the Prince was 80 years old, but also because his last vineyard manager had been unimpressive and the vines were diminished. The wines from the late 90s up to the final vintage, the 2001, are generally regarded as sub-par. So it isn't really a fair fight. But that doesn't matter, because we are looking past the wine-making, past the vine-pruning and seeking out the deeper mysteries of Clos Baudoin terroir that surely lurk in these two bottles.

First in the ring: The Prince. Straw colored. On the nose, quince, dry grass and an oddly pleasant petro-chemical smell that seemed to rise and fade and return over time. In the mouth, this drinks like a wine with interesting parts that never really come together. Crisp, if indifferent, pear, an odd spice note (cumin?) and then the acid seems to throw in the towel and flee before a watery, mineral finish. Like gravel juice if there were such a thing.

Then Chidaine. Same straw color. Much bigger, brighter nose. Honey, clover, pear skins and marzipan. Fresh on the attack, with pear and white pepper, followed by a sweet, limestone finish. A little more residual sugar in this, but still dry. Beautifully integrated for a young Chenin. Be nice to have a cellar full of this one.

Very different wines, but quite clearly cousins. There is an unmistakable common character to them, but I would have trouble articulating the relationship with any specificity. Both do seem to have that same dilutive, gravel juice pause before the finish. Though in the Chidaine it is much shallower. And there does seem to be something of the Prince's petro-chemical aroma (as a child, I loved the smell of gasoline, which explains much) in the mineral finish of Chidaine's wine. Gravel juice and gasoline? Are these the characters that make this patch of dirt so famous? I doubt it. I know from reviews that the chemical smell was cited as indication of the Prince's decline, and so, also, of Chidaine's rise in Vouvray.

So where is the terroir? Surely it's there in that shared, cousinly character. But it isn't something obvious. Nor is it something precise and specific. Like Einstein's childhood fascination with a compass, always turning to the polar North, "Something deeply hidden has to be behind things."

Chidaine's 2006 Clos Baudoin was $26. The Prince's 2001 Clos Baudoin was $19. I got them both at K&L Wines in Hollywood.

A Search for Dirt

A definition (from the website www.terroir-france.com):

A " terroir " is a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and wine making savoir-faire, which contribute to give its specific personality to the wine.

So that wonderfully ephemeral and elusive component of wine, that particular expression of a precise time (vintage) and place (vineyard) that wine-geeks seek, that magic combination of grape, sun, soil and rain, that thing called terroir, could be boiled down to this simple observation: "My mud tastes better than your mud."

Or so it seems to me. And I'm no cynic. I believe in terroir. I've seen it with my own eyes. I can't say I can always find it, even when it's there. But I believe. Terroir is a vague and mysterious thing and I possess only a vague and mysterious idea of what it is exactly. But I believe.

My very dear friend Mike Weersing (shown here in his own particular mud with his own particular pig in a photo I have unabashedly stolen from his winery's website), first explained the magic of terroir to me while we sat before 5 or 6 unlabeled wines in a gite near Beaune in Burgundy. I had no idea at the time that the education imparted to me on that evening would be so valuable. I also had no idea at the time that I wouldn't get to taste that many great Pinots at one time ever again. But we drank them, and Mike told me about the vineyards where they came from and what I should be looking for in the glass. And in this way, I was initiated into this strange culte à mystère.

I have in mind more than a few experiments designed to suss out this magic mud. And the first will be Friday's feature, an old-fashioned mud-wrestle: The Prince versus The Genius.