Tom's blog

A pinot noir legend passes on

Josh Jensen, founder of Calera, died June 11 at age 78.. Anyone who has tasted his extraordinary pinot noirs or who has benefited from his conversation understands the significance of his accomplishments.

Jensen graduated from Yale and then Oxford. During his time in England, he fell in love with French burgundy and even worked a harvest at Domaine de la Romanee-Contee. He returned to the States to find the same limestone soil as that of great burgundies. He found it on the slopes of Mt. Harlan and in 1974 he planted Jensen, Reed and Selleck vineyards. Those vineyards became synonymous with pinot noir wines that came as close as ever to burgundy.

Jensen sold his winery to Duckhorn (www.duckhorn.com) in 2017.

I’ve sampled these wines for decades and they never have failed to impress me. Their mineral quality makes them unique. May he rest in peace.

www.calerawine.com

Just can it

I was going through a lot of alcoholic beverages in the can — not on the toilet, silly! — and trying to understand the drift from bottles to aluminum. Since I’m not a millennial, there probably is no hope I will understand the pleasure of wrapping my lips around a can.

At first, the alternative to a bottle was a 3-liter box that seem to satisfy a party host. Then came the cans. Once a container for cheap wine, the can was slowly adopted by major producers who felt they were missing the younger crowd. I don’t think we’ll ever see Chateau Lafite-Rothschild in a can, mostly because millennials aren’t buying it. Decoy, on the other hand, is putting some decent wine in a can and they are part of the elite Duckhorn portfolio.

I did, however, cross over to hard seltzers after my millennial nephew came to my house looking for White Claw. . Also called spiked seltzer, these canned drinks add alcohol from fermented sugar cane or malted barley to flavored sparkling water. Consumers like them because they don’t have the same high carbs as beer, although the alcohol content (calories) is about the same.  They come in a rainbow of exotic flavors to keep you interested, but we find them to be a lot of bubbles but not much flavor. It reminded us of Bartles & Jaymes, those canned concoctions that rocked the market in the mid 1980s. When the feds raised excise taxes on alcohol, Gallo dropped the alcohol in Bartles & Jaymes and consumers lost interest. But, they are back on the market with fermented grape juice.

But they have tons of competition. Even Budweiser and Corona are making hard seltzers because they are seeing millennials moving from craft beers to seltzers.

I’ll be writing more about this in a future column. Tonight, though, my lips will be a GLASS of wine from a GLASS bottle.

Timing could have been worse for wineries

California wine producers are fortunate that the corona virus didn’t strike during harvest. Here in Florida, many farmers have let their crops go to waste because with restaurants closed there aren’t enough customers — including food banks. Fruit is perishable and has a very short shelf life. Same with grapes, which don’t ripen until fall.

Yesterday I was talking to Dana Epperson, a winemaker at Duckhorn’s chardonnay program that is made under it’s fabulous Migration label. She said her team is engaged in determining the blends for the 2020 wines. She and another winemaker take home beakers of various chardonnays, then taste them together virtually. Life goes on.

Epperson said it would have been far different if the crisis struck during harvest. Maybe they could have found enough pickers, but could they have processed the grapes without close contact? California was pretty restrictive in distancing.

Other wine growing regions — South Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand — aren’t so lucky as they head into their peak harvest season. Their governments have allowed them to remain open as an essential industry, but they have to restrict the number of personnel involved in vinifying the grapes.

Let’s hope this crisis is over by September.

Duckhorn's neighbors benefit too

I was perusing the wines of an upscale wine shop in my community and couldn't help but overhear a conversation a wholesale salesperson was having with the shop's wine buyer.  His mission was to sell a particular merlot, whose name I did not catch. While they both sipped the wine, the salesperson said, "It is made from property right next to Duckhorn's Three Palms vineyard. You know, the one that got Wine Spectator's number one wine of the year award?"

I was amused. Chances are he never pointed that out before the award was granted earlier this year. But, being a good salesperson, he was gong to use whatever trick he could to sell this merlot. And Duckhorn's newfound fame had coattails to ride.

Does proximity make a difference? If a particular vineyard makes a  great wine, does that mean the one adjacent to it do just as well? I mean, how different could the soil be?

It could be a lot different. One vineyard could be on a slope and the other at the bottom of a hill where the soil is very different. They could have different sun exposures and micro-climates. Even beyond the weather and soil, a  winemaker has great influence over a wine's character. The path from crush to bottle is often winding and how a winemaker uses the techniques available to him trumps terroir. 

For centuries, Bordeaux and Burgundy producers have tried to ride the fame of their prestigious neighbors, but wise buyers know there is more to making a good wine than having a good neighbor.