Richard Sanford and I spent the morning tasting and talking about the Santa Rita Hills and his fabled career. Lest you know him only for his Alma Rosa Pinot Noirs, particularly from his La Encantada Vineyard, his twin white Pinots — Gris and Blanc — with their natural crispness — are worthy of your attention. The latter is rich, the former sleek as a Brancusi swirl of steel. More on Richard at another time.

From there my friend Sao Anash whisked me up to Bien Nacido where four fabulous chefs — Matt and Jeff Nichols, Frank Ostini and Rick Manson — prepared a Santa Maria-style barbecue to put all previous barbecues I’ve even seen to utter shame. Bien Nacido’s Miller family were my hosts, and my gladness was diminished only by the absence of Nicholas, the “face” of Bien Nacido Vineyard and someone whose joy in life is infectious. After lunch it was back down to Los Olivos for a visit and tasting with a winery I’ve followed for a long time, owned by one of the premier wine families of the Santa Ynez Valley, Gainey. It is about this tasting I want to concentrate in today’s blog.

I’ve given quite high scores for many years to Gainey’s wines, and the barrel samples they offered me certainly didn’t disappoint and in fact raised the bar higher. We went through various samples of block-sourced 2009 Chardonnays that did and did not go through the malolactic fermentation. If you’ve never had that exercise, do so. Here’s a non-ML that’s so crisp and savory in fruit it makes your mouth water. Then there’s the ML version and, as I said, almost apologetically, “I know we’re not supposed to say the word ‘buttered popcorn’ but…”. They smiled. A touch of that movie theater treat is great; too much would be a disaster. But Gainey has seldom if ever been guilty of “too much” of anything, or “too little” either.

It was the 2009 Pinot Noir clonal tasting that excited me and, to be blunt, challenged me. Usually I grill winemakers. This time it was the other way around, courtesy of one of Gainey’s longtime winemakers, and a person I decided I liked way back when I first met him, Kirby Anderson. The four clones we went through were Pommard, Swan, 667 and 114. (Well, I guess technically the first two would be called “selections,” not clones.) Kirby made me explain my impressions of each. My spiel went something like this:
“From left to right [i.e., Pommard to 114], we went from fruitier and lighter to denser, more full-bodied and weightier.”

Kirby: “Right. What fruits did you find in the 114?”

Steve: “No fruit, in fact. I wrote: ‘tannic, beetroot, dry, sassafras.’”

Kirby: “Very good. The 114 is earthy.”

Steve: “That’s what I meant by ‘beetroot.’”

Kirby: “What else?”

Steve: “The Pommard was all cranberry-cherry. Also very spicy. The Swan reminds me of Russian River: cherries, cola, raspberry. The 667 is deeper black cherries, with greater structure.”

Kirby: “And overall?”

Steve: “None of them is complete in itself.”

Kirby: “Mix the Pommard with the 114.”

I did so, and said, “A more complete wine. Fuller, richer. But still, something missing.”

Kirby: “Add a splash of Swan.”

I did, and said, “The most complete wine yet. Very nice. But still, something missing.”

Kirby: “What’s missing?”

I thought. The middle was a little hollow, and the wine, good as it was, trailed off to a quick finish. I said so, and Kirby said, “Good. So what is it missing? How would you fix that?”

I thought. What’s he driving at? Does he mean it needs a splash of Swan? Or some other clone? My mind went blank. In such circumstances, with others around the table watching the wine critic suddenly being critiqued, there was dead silence. Of course, all you can do is be honest — transparent, in our current vernacular — and admit bafflement.

“I don’t know, Kirby,” I said. “You’re the winemaker. You tell me.”

“Oak!” Kirby beamed, triumphantly. He’s got great twinkly eyes and a dazzling smile but now his eyes were twinklier, his smile more dazzling than ever.

I had thought he was asking me how to fatten and length the barrel sample through the addition of other samples, but of course he was entirely right. The wine needs the 8 or 10 months of partially new oak barrel aging that will complete it. I just hadn’t been thinking “outside the envelope” or, as it were, beyond the table. I asked Kirby to tell me 4 things that oak barrel aging does to Pinot Noir to make it better. Kirby gave me five:

- texture
- richness
- structure
- weight
- length

I’ll say one more thing about the Gainey tasting. They know that, with rare exceptions, I have never liked Santa Barbara Cabernet Sauvignon from anyone (although I’ve been praising Gainey’s Merlot since the 1990s; Merlot doesn’t need as warm a temperature to ripen as Cabernet). But this time they had a bunch of barrel samples of Cab and they also had assembled their entire Cab team around the table: John Engelskirger (the longtime Napa vet who consults for them), viticulturalist Jeff Newton, and their Cabernet winemaker, young Jeff Lebard. And, of course, Dan Gainey was there. Hmm, I thought, this could be ugly. If I have to complain about the Santa Barbara veggies, it will be embarrassing to everybody.

Well, I didn’t. The clone 337 and clone 15 Cabernets were very fruity and rich, not a trace of veg. Then they gave me a barrel sample of a blend of ‘09 Cab and Petite Verdot. I swirled, sniffed, tasted, repeated, repeated a third time, and looked up. All eyes were upon me.

“This is, quite simply, the best Santa Barbara Bordeaux-style red wine I’ve ever had,” I said. They told me it will be even better when they’re finished with it, after probably adding Merlot (a no-brainer) and maybe some Cabernet Franc, then aging it for 16-18 months in 50% new oak.

Lots of things can happen between cup and lip, so we’ll see. But the 2009 Gainey, which will probably have a proprietary name, is a wine I hope I’m going to be able to review someday.

But then it was on to dinner, another barbecue, this time up at Fess Parker with two of my favorite Santa Barbara people, Eli and Ashley Parker, who had another trio of chefs — Joanne and Eddie Plemmons and Kevin Hyland — pile on an incredible, amazing, unbelievable table of grilled chicken, tri-tip, you name it. I’ll be writing all about Santa Maria-style barbecue in an upcoming issue of Wine Enthusiast.

I leave today for a week on the road. First it’s to Shell Beach, on the beautiful San Luis Obispo Central Coast, for the World of Pinot Noir event, which Wine Enthusiast co-sponsors, and to which I’ve I’ve gone every year since the start, except for once when I was sick. To me, WOPN represents how to do a wine event at a high level of quality and efficiency. Granted, it’s not for everyone: it’s expensive and rather small; in other words, it’s not a ZAP tasting at Fort Mason! But for a working writer like me, it’s manna from heaven. You get to go to incredibly informative seminars, led by brilliant people who know what they’re talking about. You taste as much wine as you could possibly want. You meet old friends, make new ones, and catch up on all the latest news and gossip. Best of all, once the valet at The Cliffs Resort takes your car upon arrival, there’s no more driving until you go home, three days later! Yay! As someone who absolutely, positively does not drink and drive, that’s a godsend.

After WOPN, I continue south, to Santa Barbara County and specifically to the lovely little town of Santa Ynez. I’ll be there for a few days, working through a big, blind Chardonnay tasting. I love big blind tastings, but only when they’ve been very carefully planned out in advance, and include related wines about which something is known (variety or type and region being most important). This is called tasting in context. Only when you are comparing apples to apples can you truly determine a wine’s qualities. Only then, also, can you hope to make terroir generalizations. I’ll be tasting through the Chardonnays from all Santa Barbara’s regions (Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Rita Hills, Santa Maria Valley, Happy Canyon [if there are any Chardonnays from there, which I don't think there are] and the non-appellated areas), and hopefully regional distinctions will appear. But this isn’t as easy as it might once have been. Winemaking styles are so similar (malolactic fermentation, ripe grapes, new oak, acidification, sur lies aging and battonage) that terroir nuances tend to disappear under all that intervention. I’ve never been entirely comfortable making sweeping pronouncements about different AVAs anyway, the way some critics do. There are too many variables that prove the opposite. Still, reaching regional conclusions has its place and is valid, up to a point. The consumer likes reading about regional character, and it makes for interesting, everlasting thinking and conversation. But even if I don’t find clear regional distinctions in Santa Barbara, I’ll be happy, because I love Chardonnay, and they have many fine ones down there.

One item worth mentioning: I have been getting lots and lots of wines sent to me for review that I previously reviewed, in some cases more than a year ago. At Wine Enthusiast, we don’t re-review previously reviewed wines, except under very limited circumstances. So why are so many people resending previously sent wines? The fact that they are shows me that they’ve been unable to sell those wines. If you have to resend the same wine a year after it was first released, you must have piles of it gathering dust. More proof of this is offered by the fact that, in many instances, the wines sent the second time around are priced 10%-30% lower than the first time around. There’s a bloodbath out there, and I don’t see it getting better before this summer, at least.

Every time I start thinking that Paso Robles has turned the corner on red wine, along comes a bunch that makes me think the bad old days never went away.

First, the good news. I talk up Paso Robles all the time, especially in Napa Valley. You’d be surprised at some of the “names” to whom I say, “They’re doing some fiercely good stuff down there.” Many of them — Napa vintners — are freaked out by the collapse following the third quarter of 2008. For the first time ever, they’re looking over their shoulders; even Paso Robles, for all they know, might be a contender. So they listen. It reminds me of when the French Rhônistes came over here, in the early 1990s. They weren’t exactly worried about the Californians, but they’d heard distant rumblings…maybe they should find out for themselves what was going on.

Napans would do well to pay attention to Paso Robles. We are in game-changing times. Napa Cabernet is not immune to a market turnaround. A Toyota moment always threatens, or threatens to threaten; the current recession may already have dealt a serious blow to über-Cabernets. There’s a lot of Southern California money invested in Paso, the way that Silicon Valley goes to Napa. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Paso Robles — young, aggressive, ambitious — Napa’s smart winemakers want to learn it.

There’s plenty of evidence on the Paso side. At their best, Paso reds are juicy-good and balanced, and if that means they spent a little time inside a spinning cone, so what. Saxum is a good example of how delicious these wines can be, but, as Saxum is so rare and expensive, perhaps a better example is Vina Robles. To  name just one, I reviewed their Signature red blend (Petite Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah) last Fall, gave it 93 points, and might have gone higher, I suppose, had I let it play with the air in the glass; but at some point in reviewing, you have to close each chapter and get on with the next.

So that’s the good news, but then come those awful Paso Robles reds, and once again I despair. No names, please. This blog is not the place for that (you can look up my reviews in Wine Enthusiast’s database, and it won’t cost you a penny). There are wine companies down there that charge $30, $40 and more for red wines that are so terrible, I think of quitting my day job and becoming a coal miner. What goes wrong in Paso Robles?

a. Overripe grapes. There is nothing more disgusting than inhaling a wine and getting a lungful of raw, harsh port.
b. Thinness of fruit due, I suppose, to overcropping. I have nothing against 15% alcohol, in and of itself, but when there’s not enough fat on those bones, the wine is hot and disagreeable.
c. Bizarre acidity. I imagine some winemakers add stuff out of a bag because the wines are too soft. Nothing like unnatural tartness to make the palate gag.
d. Residual sugar. A longtime bugaboo of mine.
e. Uneven ripening. Sometimes you get asparagus. Not pleasant.
f. Uneven tannins. This probably comes from inferior viticulture or from problems at the sorting table (if there is one).

Why do these things happen in Paso Robles but seldom in Napa Valley? I put the question up on my Facebook page and got some interesting comments. Matt Garretson, who used to make wines in Paso, said, “The issue isn’t so much with the raw materials (which are every bit as good, if not better), but has more to do with the intentions/talent of the grower/winemaker. Far too many posers there, IMHO.” Another commenter, John Danby, noted, “Part of the reason you get some less-than-stellar wines in Paso is that it’s still relatively affordable for the dreamers (gotta love ‘em), making their own wine and finding their way along. In Napa, if you can afford to be here, you can afford the consulting winemakers, etc.” I agree with both statements.

Paso has its work cut out, but they’ve shown enough critical mass of intelligence and fortitude that I retain hope. Anything can happen.

After dinner last night we had a “post-prandial” tasting of older Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. As this was not a formal tasting, I made only token notes, and confined myself pretty much to a single consideration: How’s it drinking? Is it too old, still young, or just right? My findings didn’t surprise me: in general, Napa Cab is best drunk young — say, below 8 years.

Here are the wines, with quick comments:

Oakville Ranch 1998: too old
Juslyn 1999: hard, dur; may not be ready.
Truchard 1999: overripe, pruny
Corison 2000: lovely. We had this wine last month in NYC and it was really good.
Keenan 1994 Hillside Estate: on the down side
Peju 1999 Reserve: too old, leathery
Dalla Valle 1995: extraordinary. Near perfect. Still plenty of time.
Jones 1997: old-fashioned, dry. A puzzle. Could develop.
Farella-Park 1995: raisiny, tannic
Trefethen 1981: dried out
Duckhorn 1991: dried out, raisiny
Spring Mountain 1987: old, dry, tannic

Also there was the 1WineDude himself, Joe Roberts. We were talking about how so many people think that, just because a Cabernet comes from Napa Valley and is old, it’s got to be good. Not!

A few notes, after the first day of the WWS: Ran into Alder Yarrow at check-in and sat with him at dinner. It was nice to see Eric Asimov looking hale and hearty. The seminar’s director, Jim Gordon, is my editor from the old days, and it’s always a pleasure to see him. Saw a few other familiar faces, but most of the people were newcomers to me.

“What’s the word? That’s the mystery.” Thus spake Frances Mayes (”Under the Tuscan Sun”), the keynote speaker, describing how to describe a 30-year old Barolo. Finding the right word is the wine writer’s challenge, obligation and joy. Ms. Mayes correctly reminded us how hard that can be, and that the writer must not rest until he knows his copy cannot be improved.

Several panel members pointed to the analogy between the “sense of place” the writer tries to create, and the “sense of place” of a wine, i.e. terroir. I’ve never been as convinced as some that a single vineyard is necessary for a great wine. I think a great wine can be blended from different places. That’s just me. I know lots of others disagree.

Today we are off to the Culinary Institute of America for a bunch of workshops, including one led by my old buddy and former Wine Enthusiast colleague, Jeff Morgan, and one by Karen MacNeil, who was kind enough to write a dust jacket recco for my first book, A Wine Journey along the Russian River. Also speaking will be Michael Bauer, the S.F. Chronicle’s Food and Wine Editor and restaurant reviewer; he will, I trust, be out of disguise. My own panels are on Thursday; I’ll report on them on Friday morning.

First, I apologize to readers. This site was down most of yesterday, due to issues at my web hosting company.

* * *

It’s already been widely reported that California’s 2009 grape harvest was the second largest ever — 4.9 million tons, more than any other harvest except 2005, which “crushed” all previous records. (To put this number into context, that is 44% more grapes than were crushed in 1988.) Conventional analysis suggests that high-end wineries will take a hit, since “[I]n the coastal areas, there really is too much [product] at this point,” according to the well-known grape broker, Bill Turrentine, who added, “high end wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties suffer [from] a glut of fine wines almost no one thinks they can afford to buy.”

This is not particularly good news for “cult” wines or those just below cult status that aspire to super-ultrapremium prices. For the last 1-1/2 years (which is to say, since the economy collapsed), I’ve been astounded by the quantity of $50 and above wines that continue to pour in to me for review. “Who are all these people, and how are they staying in business?” I asked myself. Now, there’s additional pressure on them: the grape and wine glut from 2009.

What wine and region comes to mind when someone is predicting difficulties for “high end wineries?” Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is the correct answer (those of you who guessed right win a free lifetime subscription to this blog). So let’s drill down and see just how much trouble N.V.C.S. is in.

Statewide, the ‘09 Cabernet crush (441,563 tons) was up 35% over 2008, which was not a small crop by historical measures. Of that, 55,000 tons, or about 12.5%, was grown in District 4, which is Napa County — more than any California region except for District 11 (the northern San Joaquin Valley, but we don’t care about Central Valley Cab, do we?). That means Napa Valley is going to be churning out an ocean of 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, starting in about a year and continuing (for late releasers) through 2013.

In the just-issued, official “Grape Crush Report” (preliminary) for the 2009 California crop is a section that’s always worth reading: “Base Price Paid to Growers.” It essentially summarizes individual dollar deals from growers to producers who buy grapes. While there were some pretty cheap transactions ($350 a ton for District 4 Cabernet? I wonder where those grapes came from?), most of the grapes went for between $6,000-$11,000 a ton. The official “weighted average” for Napa Cabernet was only $4,743 per ton, but that average is skewed low by the cheap grapes, which will end up in inexpensive bottlings that have little impact on high-end Cab. By contrast, the weighted average for District 3 Pinot Noir (which includes Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast) was just $3,039 — and we know how expensive those bottles are.

Now, my good friend, Pierce Carson, wrote in last week’s St. Helena Star that, due to “grape prices holding their own,” even this large harvest won’t significantly lower bottle prices. Pierce interviewed Vic Motto, a grape and wine finance guy whom reporters like me have turned to for many years as a source of information. Vic’s prediction was nonchalant. “(A recession) is never permanent. The wine we’re making today will be sold tomorrow — we’ll see what tomorrow brings.” He was, if anything, optimistic about Cabernet’s future.

I’m not so sure. I have a feeling deep down in my gut, as Turrentine seems also to, that these high prices cannot hold. And if cult Napa Cabernet begins to tumble (which, in fact, it already has), how long will it take before the downward pressure hits Sonoma County, Paso Robles, even Santa Barbara County?  “[T]he economics of the wine business are still much better than most industries,” Pierce quotes Motto as saying. That may be true, in the sense that owners (many of them wealthy to begin with) are able to tread water, so they’re not in the dire straits of, say, the auto industry. But what about consumers? They are in dire straits. Even a multi-millionaire owner can’t afford to absorb big losses year after year.

My feeling is that, by this summer, we’ll have a greater understanding of how much damage was, or wasn’t, caused to Napa Cabernet by the Recession and, now, 2009’s big crop. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn of more bankruptcies, more sales, more dumping at Costco or wherever. Also, consider the fickleness of the consumer, who’s always looking for the latest critical darling. As I look over my highest-scoring Napa Valley Cabs since last Fall, I see brands such as Hestan, Redmon, Napa Angel, Knights Bridge, Piña and Sabina. These are not exactly household names. In other words, there’s a whole new crop of new (or relatively new) producers chasing, or should we say threatening, the more traditional boutique brands. Is there room for everybody? Not in my opinion, and not in reality. As MSNBC online reported just yesterday, “Napa Valley is facing the worst wine downturn since the early 1980s. Premium wines priced between $50 and $125 were ‘a dead zone’ in 2009, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s annual wine market report…”. I can’t see that changing in 2010. Something’s gotta give.

And this just in:

Where will Hardy land? That’s been the question over the ultimate job destination of Mr. Wallace, who won Murphy-Goode’s Really Goode Job. We now know: “I am passing along a press release to your email that announces Michel-Schlumberger’s unique partnership with the winner of the Really Goode Job, Hardy Wallace. He is moving into our winery where he will be writing about his experience living at a winery in addition to his other pursuits…”. That’s the word from Jim Morris, who works for Schlumberger. Same job, different location. Is the pay still ten grand a month? Enquiring minds want to know!

And this too

I’ll be doing a really nice, different kind of wine tasting at Old Crow Tattoo, in my neighborhood, on Sat. Feb. 20, starting at 8 p.m. The address is 362 Grand Ave. Stop by. I’d love to see you!