Naturally Made Wine (19 May 2017)

Naturally Made Wine

May 19, 2017

Tuesday, the 16th of May, 2017, was a notably delicious day of tasting. It started with a second visit by J.C. (Jon Chaplin) of Brazos Wine Imports. J.C. and his partner Brian Ravitsky import wine from Chile and Argentina, two countries better known for their giant wine manufacturers (Concha y Toro and Trapiche come to mind). Brazos, however, has found small, often iconoclastic, artisan winegrowers who are making wine without chemicals but brimming with flavor and character. We tasted nine wines - my notes are full of adjectives like "plush," "fresh and juicy," "beautiful," "dazzling freshness," "shit, this is delicious" - you get the idea. If I had the space and cash I would have bought every one of them. Pretty much the same could be said of the wines our afternoon visitor, Jim Anderson (partner, Patricia Green Cellars, Oregon) brought us.

Jim Anderson and Patty Green have been working partners since 1995. Patricia Green Cellars started up in 2000. They make some twenty or so different expressions of Pinot Noir per vintage. Like the winegrowers Brazos has found in South America, Patricia Green Cellars eschews the use of chemicals. I tasted six wines, all 2015 vintage, all - while expressing subtle differences attributable to differences in terroir - delicious. We had a great chat about making wine that expresses a sense of place, and of vintage. Anderson and Green might take this concept to the extreme, with more than 20 different cuvées of Pinot Noir per vintage, but I appreciate the effort, and from my tasting, the results of all that work. Part of our conversation was about a story I told Jim about one of our long lost customers who stopped in last weekend.

Brad and Melissa were great patrons of our last shop, which we sold about 18 months ago. We hadn't seen them until they visited last Saturday. Melissa shared that during our hiatus, any wine that she bought from other stores gave her splitting headaches, something she'd never experienced drinking wine they'd purchased from us. I suggested that perhaps they were purchasing more mainstream wines from those other stores - "corporate" wines, to borrow Jim Anderson's term, made with chemicals. Melissa's story and my conversations on Tuesday with J.C. and Jim Anderson, caused a small epiphany. Never having been dogmatic about a particular style of winegrowing, I have always resisted labels to identify what makes our wine shop different. Part of it is the way I've always bought and sold wine - taste critically, choose carefully and ideally, know the people who are making the wine you are buying and selling. Now it is time to consider another aspect of what makes us different - a focus on naturally made wine.

New customers walking in RWC for the first time sometimes ask where the organic wines are located. I tell them that it's much simpler to point out the wines that are definitely not organic. Aside from a few inexpensive wines from the new world - California Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, Argentine Malbec - the wines we sell are made naturally, with as little intervention as possible.Organic, biodynamic, natural, sustainable - I've tasted good and bad examples under all of those labels, but I can also state unequivocally that the best wines I've tasted in my life have been made as naturally as the winegrower considered possible. The reason this is true is because of the rigor it takes to make wine naturally - it's a lot more work than the corporate method. Combine that work ethic with great grapes and good taste - a person who makes great wine is inevitably a great taster - and that person will make the best wine. 

Make no mistake, wine is a human endeavor - wine does not "make itself," as some winemakers claim (either because they are too modest, or because they're bullshitting), but it is true that great wine can't be made without great grapes. Using the term "winegrower" indicates a person who is involved in the entire process, from vineyard work, to harvest, through winemaking. These are the folks we want to know, and that we want you to know. These are the people who make the wine we sell. It's time to state (the obvious?) that Remington Wine's subtitle should be "Specializing in Naturally Made Wine."