2017 - The Year in Wine (3 January 2018)

2017 - The Year in Wine

January 3, 2018

Spending nearly all of 2016 out of the wine business, it was great to get back in the game in 2017. Wine at its essence is timeless - an ancient product of agriculture. It provided some comfort during a year of particularly violent upheaval. But the business of wine is more divided than ever, with conglomerates on one side and mostly small independent operations on the other. The big guys push brands, often chemically constructed beverages produced for focus groups. The little guys are still farmers first, making wine that tastes like it comes from a particular place. Our wine shop is for the little guys, and 2017 was a good year for many of them.

The subjects that follow were some of the compelling wine stories for us in 2017.

Wine Country Fires

This is a story about people - thousands of whom lost their homes and most of their personal belongings. For less well-off folks, many winery workers among them, the question going forward is whether or not they will be able to afford to continue living near their workplaces. Napa and Sonoma Counties, especially, have become dependent on wine tourism, which was nonexistent for at least two months. Restaurant and hotel workers were left not only homeless, but without income. A couple of dozen wineries sustained severe damage, along with some vineyards, but overall the impact is going to be felt much more among the wine-industry supporting population. Wild fires are likely to occur more frequently, with more destructive intensity. Will Sonoma County, especially, support low-middle income housing development? Will houses in the hills between Sonoma and Napa be rebuilt, and if so, will they be insurable?

Natural Wine

The four accepted tenets of natural wine: Grapes grown without use of chemicals; hand-harvesting; native yeast fermentation; no fining or filtration - in other words, most of the wine I've been selling for the past twenty years. Perhaps my time has come - what was nearly impossibly quirky in 1998 is pretty cool now - at least for many folks here in Remington (and visitors from New York and Paris). Of course, those four tenets of natural wine making are not new - many of the greatest wine estates in the world have been practicing natural wineries for decades, if not centuries. Using chemicals in winegrowing - whether fertilizer, herbicide or pesticide - is barely 50 years old; two generations, a flash in time for centuries-old wine estates.

It is ironic that wine labels are not required to list ingredients. Wine is, along with all other alcoholic beverages, a "controlled substance," therefore, in the eyes of the US Government, not an agricultural product. Organic and biodynamic winegrowers, who are making wine in the most traditional method, are compelled to seek (expensive and time-consuming) certification for their methods, yet corporate conglomerates can use up to 60 different additives to "craft" their products, with zero disclosure. Perhaps the growth of interest in natural wine will lead to a reckoning with the absurd state of our nation's legal treatment of winegrowing and wine sales. 

No Added Sulfur

Is it possible to make fine wine without adding sulfur? Sulfur is a natural byproduct of fermentation, so there is usually a trace amount in every wine, but the fact is that some brave, and talented, winegrowers are proving that it might not be necessary to add sulfur after all.

In 2009 I visited with Matthieu Lapierre in Morgon. Among the wines we tasted was a sans souf (no added sulfur) cuvée. It was delicious, and utterly stable, but it wasn't for sale in the U.S., only in Europe. Earlier this year Thorsten Melsheimer visited the store to taste with us. He mentioned making a no-added sulfur cuvée of Riesling for a particular retail client in Germany, but also admitted that all of his wines were stable enough to be bottled without adding sulfur. Still, I can understand why Lapierre and Melsheimer would be reluctant to ship no-added sulfur wines to the U.S. We have, consumers, retailers, restaurateurs, distributors, importers, been led to believe no-added sulfur wines are too risky and/or too funky. Indeed, personal experience with sans souf wine over many years has been mixed. What I have come to realize, however, is that as with all methods and techniques of winemaking, bad wine as well as good is made. 

A couple of my favorite wines of 2017 - Chapuis & Chapuis La Bulle 2014, and La Derniére Goutte Sang Neuf 2015 - were made with no added sulfur. Both wines are imported by Jeff Snow (Glou-Glou Wines), a local who went to France a couple of years ago to study winemaking in Burgundy. He ended up stumbling on a network of winegrowers who happened to be making wine without adding sulfur - not that this was his intention when he first set out for France, but he kept tasting delicious, relatively inexpensive wine made without the addition of sulfur, by folks who'd never thought of selling their wine in the U.S.. Our go-to "value" Champagne of the holiday season, Lelarge-Pugeot Tradition Extra Brut, is made by a family who made their first zero-dosage, zero added-sulfur wine in 2014. We haven't had it yet, but we will be working on getting it here. 

Patricia "Patty" Green, and Patricia Green Cellars

(Willamette Valley, Oregon)

I never got to meet Patty Green - she died this past November at the very young age of 62 - but 2017 was the year I tasted my first Patricia Green Cellars Pinot Noir(s). Her longtime partner in wine, Jim Anderson, brought six (out of 23 that vintage) 2015 vintage Pinot Noirs for me to taste. Since Jim and Patty purchased their 52 acre vineyard in 2000, they made wine from one varietal, Pinot Noir. We purchased two of the six wines - a pretty good ratio of success in a shop with only a couple hundred labels from around the world, and which had only one other Oregon Pinot Noir on the shelf at the time. While each of the six wines had distinct personalities, I tasted a consistent approach - it seemed, and in fact was, entirely natural. I found them all delicious in their own way, and considering the high quality across the board, remarkable values. We have since moved from 2015 to 2016 Reserve Pinot Noir - the '16 is even better - and I hope and expect to have a long-lasting relationship with this place. Haven't been to Willamette Valley since 1980 or so - it's way past time to consider a return visit.

Rory Williams, Calder Wine Company and Carignane 

Rory Williams had quite a year in 2017. He and his longtime girlfriend Molly were married in April - at the Baltimore Museum of Art. They met as students at St. John's College in Annapolis and have been together ever since. Rory works for his dad John Williams at Frog's Leap Vineyards, and also makes wine under the Calder (his middle name) Wine Company label. He makes two whites - Riesling and Chenin Blanc - from two small parcels on Frog's Leap's home vineyard. The Riesling is from a tiny parcel of very old vines; the Chenin comes from a small parcel of Merlot recently grafted over to Chenin. His red wines, Charbono and Carignan, are made from fruit he purchases from longtime growers in Calistoga (Charbono) and Mendocino County (Carignan).

Every Calder Wine Company wine we had on the shelf in 2017 - Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Charbono and Carignan - was terrific. Two of his wines, the 2016 Chenin Blanc and 2015 Carignan, were among my favorite drinks of the year. I told Rory I thought that a the 2016 Chenin was a huge improvement over a very good 2015. He agreed, saying the difference was mostly time and patience - leaving the Chenin on it lees several months longer than last year. Of course, time and patience is not free - every month wine is stored and not sold has a financial cost. We just got into the 2015 Carignane a couple of weeks ago. This could be the best red wine he's made. It certainly has the most beautiful fragrance I've encountered in a Carignane. Thanks to Rory; and to Diego Roig (Populis) and Alex Davis (Porter Creek Vineyards), at least a few great parcels of old vine Carignane that flourish in Mendocino County are safe from being torn out and planted with more economically practical varietals.

Carignane (aka Carignan, Cariñena, Mazuelo, Samsó) vines, planted in the right place by the right hands, preferably allowed to grow to old age, can produce fruit that is exceptionally savory (it is rarely as beautiful as Rory's 2016). Ridge Vineyards has made terrific Carignane from Sonoma County fruit (especially Buchignani). In France, Sylvain Fadat (Domaine d'Aupilhac) and Marjorie Gallet (Le Roc des Anges) make examples worth searching out. In Priorat, Cariñena is, with Garnacha, one of the original vines of this ancient region near Barcelona. This is a good time of year to taste - ok, drink - Carignan. Happy New Year!