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’ll have more to say about World of Pinot Noir this week, but now it’s off on this cool, partly cloudy morning to the south, and a few days in Santa Barbara County.

(I will also have more to say soon about the movie I’m in, Blood Into Wine, and the way they portrayed — or didn’t portray — my blind tasting. Stay tuned.)

I was reading the L.A. Times this morning over breakfast (oatmeal for health, bacon in hommage to Homer Simpson, and also because there’s been a lot of talk about bacon at this Pinot Noir event) when I came across yet another article on that big fight in New York State over whether to permit grocery stores to sell wine.

Like you, I’ve been kinda sorta keeping up with that story. I understood the issues. I just wasn’t sure which side I agreed with. One the one hand are small, mom and pop liquor stores, who fear that if grocery stores are allowed to sell wine, it will hurt them and maybe drive them out of business. On the other hand are groceries, who argue, Why shouldn’t we be allowed to sell wine? It would be a great benefit to our customers, particularly those in rural areas, who won’t have to drive 5, 10 or more miles just to buy a bottle of wine.

Both sides have a point, as is often the case with tricky social, cultural and legal issues, which is why they’re hard to decide. For example, Napa’s winery ordinance is tricky because it pits wineries, who want an extra income stream, against some of their neighbors, who don’t want more traffic, etc. But in a democracy, somebody has to win. In the New York case, I’m siding with the grocers. They should be allowed to sell wine, for several reasons.

For one thing, it’s difficult for a state — in this case, New York — to present a coherent reason for intruding into private, commercial enterprise. Granted, alcohol is a regulated product, but it’s not clear that a State, or county or city, has the right to decide who should and shouldn’t be allowed to sell wine. Yes, States have the power to grant liquor licenses, but all things being equal, they shouldn’t be in the position of picking winners and losers. (The one exception I’ll make is that cities should be allowed to limit the number of liquor stores in ghetto neighborhoods.)

For another thing, this notion of letting only liquor stores sell wine is so antiquated, it’s pathetic. A holdover not only of Prohibition but of 19th century attitudes toward Demon Rum, it fails to recognize that wine is now a mainstream, respectable food. Most people who drink wine do so with meals, and in the company of friends and family. Wine is not some narcotic drug whose dissemination must be limited only to certain restricted areas, like prescription medicines sold in a pharmacy. (And even supermarkets, which are just giant grocery stores, contain pharmacies.)

Finally, we have only to look at our state of California to see that letting grocery stores sell wine seems to be doing little harm, if any, to wine stores. At small grocery stores, like 7-Eleven, all they stock are the big distributor brands that most mom and pop wine stores wouldn’t think of selling anyway. At larger supermarkets like Safeway, the selection is bigger, and there may be some overlap between what they sell and what a little wine shop sells, but if there is, it isn’t much. No, what small wine stores sell tends to be either rarer, more expensive wines or inexpensive imports that most grocery stores would never feature. I think of a wine shop like Paul Marcus, in my neighborhood, where you can get wonderful Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian wines for under $20. You’d never see them in a grocery store.

So I don’t think the New York liquor stores, who are organized under a group called “Last Store on Main Street” (an apocalyptic name meant to frighten) really have a case. I suspect New York State will eventually agree to let grocery stores sell wine, if for no other reason than that it will generate a quarter-billion bucks in new license revenues. If there are some liquor stores who feel threatened by open competition, let them upgrade to quality stuff. Consumers will shop wherever they think they can (a) get the best wine (b) at the best price (c) with the best customer service (d) and with the most convenience. They really don’t care if it’s a grocery store or a liquor store, and neither should New York’s (dysfunctional) government.

Old farts? Or rock stars?

At World of Pinot Noir, I introduced a friend of mine, a good-looking ultramarathoner without an ounce of bodyfat on his lean frame, to Richard Sanford, who is the Dean of Southern California winemakers. Hell, Richard is one of the Deans of all California winemakers. When Richard and I get together the conversation occasionally turns to Olden Times, and so it did there under the tent by the sea, where Richard was pouring Alma Rosa for the WOPN crowd. He was telling my friend about the old Sanford label and the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard when my friend — whom I like a great deal and admire for his creativity, not to mention the fact that he can run for 100 miles — said something about “you old farts.”

He meant it, I’m entirely sure, affectionately and without malice. We all say things that pop into our heads without thinking. I do every day, and I know it was that way with my friend. Still, it hurt, a little. Maybe it tapped into so much of the crap about dinosaur print writers who don’t get it versus cool young Twitterers who are the wave of the future, yadda yadda. At some point in one’s life and career, you have to start wondering if you’re still relevant — and maybe you find yourself trying a bit harder to prove you are.

So here I am now, in a coffee shop in “downtown” Santa Ynez, nursing a non-fat latte, when I pick up a copy of last Nov. 26’s Rolling Stone. Therein is an article on “the historic concerts for the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” The musicians included such old farts as Mick Jagger, Bruce Springstein, Aretha Franklin, Bono, Patti Smith, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkle, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Ray Davies, Jackson Browne, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sting — and on and on.

You know, I’ve read and heard younger rockers, like Fergie, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Trey Anastasio, Will.I.Am, Shakira, Pink, Sheryl Crow, Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, even Adam Lambert credit their musical forebears with blazing paths, breaking down barriers, opening entirely new genres and whole new universes of possibilities that enable pop music to forever stay vital, and to be one of America’s enduring contributions to world culture. And if you ask Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder and their generation, they always and happily pay their propers to the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Elvis, Cole Porter, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Fats Domino — that list also goes on and on.

For the life of me I don’t know wine writers seem more hung up with generational divisions than rock stars. Professor Saintsbury inspired Harry Waugh and Michael Broadbent, who inspired Hugh Johnson, who inspired Oz Clark and Jancis Robinson, who has inspired God knows how many women to believe they can be great wine writers. The writers of the 60s and 70s even inspired Robert Parker, even if it was in the negative sense that he decided to be unlike them, as Elvis decided to be unlike Pat Boone and the Sex Pistols decided to be unlike Journey. Parker, Johnson, Waugh, Bob Thompson, Charlie Olken and, yes, Jim Laube inspired me. I have some reason to think, or at least to hope, that I have inspired younger writers, and I know that Richard Sanford has inspired a generation of younger winemakers. Even now, there are brilliant young vintners working up and down California who keep one eye on the venerable past, with all its lessons and wisdom, as they stride into futures filled with hope and promise.

Old farts, or rock stars? Richard Sanford still has a few tricks up his sleeve. So do I.

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.

It comes as no news to me that “lighting can influence both how wine tastes and how much consumers are willing to pay for it.”

Everything influences how wine tastes: temperature, setting, time of day or night, what you previously ate, how you feel, if you got enough sleep, the glasses you taste from, the flight in which the wine is included, what you see outside the window (if there is a window), whom you are with — I could go on.

Under these circumstances, the curious reader will wonder, “Well, then what’s the value of a wine review?” This is a fair question, and one that can’t be analyzed enough.

I know a fellow — Rod Smith, whom many of you also know — a fine writer. We once were at a tasting that Andy Beckstoffer held in his Rutherford offices of Cabernet Sauvignons from his portion of the To Kalon Vineyard (Robert Mondavi’s portion is spelled “Tokalon”). There was a small group of us scribes sitting around a table, tasting and scribbling. Rod had been fairly silent, so I asked him what he thought of the wines.

I remember Rod giving me a less than charitable glance and then saying, in fairly withering terms, “I don’t review wines. I write about them.” Well, sure; I took his point. Rod had reached the conclusion (I’m doing a lot of inferring here, but I think it’s true) that wine criticism is so inherently subjective, there’s no point in doing it. His approach is to write beautifully and elegantly and factually on all aspects of wine’s history and production.

I do that, too, both in my articles for Wine Enthusiast and in my books for University of California Press. (In my Russian River book, there are only one or two critical remarks made about specific wines, and none at all in my Conversations book.) But I also am paid to be a critic, and so a critic I must be. That means I have got occasionally to defend our practice, in spite of the many instabilities that afflict it.

Along these lines, 1WineDude wrote yesterday of his experience at the pre-Premier Napa Valley tasting, where our hosts had graciously set up big flights of Cabernet and Chardonnay. The Dude described his aversion to tasting his way through such massive events (and gently prodded Vinography for doing so). I didn’t make it into print in that posting, but I was there at the Culinary Institute of America, and ran into Dude at one point. When he asked me what wines I liked, I had to tell him, “None,” because the fact is that I wasn’t there to drink or taste. It makes no sense at all to me to try and review wines seriously under the circumstances of a mob scene, in a fairly alien environment of fuss and confused commotion. Instead, I took advantage of the scene to study it, rather like an anthropologist in the field (Margaret Mead among the Samoans?), witnessing the sometimes odd, sometimes amusing, sometimes baffling behavior of the populace. You can learn a lot from just watching people, especially when so many of them are bloggers.

When I taste wine formally, it has to be under precise circumstances in my home. Same time of day, same glasses, same table, same computer, same pattern of opening bottles in the kitchen and bagging them, same corkscrew (a standard somm’s), same view outside my window of a terraceful of geraniums and cacti, same lighting, even with the same TV turned on (with the sound off), which comforts me. Only then can I be assured that all the influences I described above can be minimized in their impact.

Does that make my winetasting less subject to distortion? Yes. Does it make it perfect? No. People who are deadset against individual wine reviewing will always find plenty of reasons to criticize it, and their reasons have some validity. All I can do is do my job, as carefully as I know how, and hope it has some value.

I returned home in a euphoric state of mind. (My therapist had to explain the difference to me between “manic” and “euphoric.”) All this stuff about monetization and ethics and “blogs into books” may be boring inside-the-beltway fare for 99.9% of the wine-drinking public, but it’s the meat-and-potatoes of the writer’s life, and it was so educational and pleasant to be able to explore these issues with our own kind.

Alder Yarrow did a yeoman’s job at coverage on his blog the other day. I had noticed him more or less continually pecking away on his laptop (Joe Roberts, too) and wondered how a mere human can be in 2 places at the same time, i.e., listening and paying attention to the intellectual give-and-take of a panel discussion, while at the same time twittering and/or blogging. But, as Alder and Joe and the others seem to be able to get away with this balancing act quite well, who am I to say it can’t be done?

I do take some — not a lot, but some — issue with Alder singling out Heather John’s statement

“Wine writers have some of the worst reputations for bad ethics in the business”

as “The most interesting.” After all, there were dozens of interesting, compelling and wise things said throughout the symposium’s three days. I could, for instance, cite Michael Bauer, to the effect that “A paid wine writer can afford to be ethical.” Heather may have simply been reporting on what she’s told by P.R. people, and I don’t doubt that the bad behavior Alder itemized is rampant among a certain class of “writer.” But the implication that malfeasance is more widespread among print writers than bloggers made me squirm. Well, of course it would be, for now; there are a lot more employed print writers than bloggers, they’ve been around for a longer time, the wineries have long histories with them, etc. So it’s not because print writers are sleazier or less ethical, it’s a question of numbers. There’s been this suggestion that bloggers are somehow purer and more noble than print writers; less capable of sin; less self-interested, and more interested in the greater good. That’s piffle.

Not piffle is this sentence from 1WineDude: “Both Eric Asimov and Steve Heimoff are practical, warm and charming in person (meaning that I have lost at least two bets and the week isn’t even over yet).”

Why would Asimov and Heimoff not be charming and warm? I don’t know what “practical” means, though. (And, by the way, nobody is more charming than Mr. Dude himself!) Somebody (okay, not just anybody, but the estimable Tom Merle) wrote in to the Dude’s website that:

“Of course your hosts would ~say~ this. They can’t ask you point blank to shill for them, even though…they expect it. Just as all entities who sponsor press junkets are morally right to expect coverage for their product, service of client. This is planet earth. If someone scratches your back, you better scratch back or you have violated the protocol.”

So let’s take a minute to talk about gratitude, and back-scratching, and who-owes-what-to-whom-for-what, and all that good stuff. The late, great California Secretary of State, Jesse Unruh (yes, the same guy who said “Money is the mother’s milk of politics”) once remarked, of lobbyists:

“If you can’t take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women, and vote against ‘em anyway, you don’t belong in the Legislature.”

Those are words of wisdom, Mr. Merle, which I would paraphrase thusly: “If you can’t take their samples, eat their food, stay in their lodges and then trash their wines, you shouldn’t be writing about wine.” (I have deliberately omitted any reference to SWOTJ, or “screwing while on the job.”) I don’t mean “trashing” gratuitously, only as needed. It’s also, I may say, a little unfair to “them” to imply that “they” expect good coverage in return for their largesse. In my long career, they don’t. They hope for good coverage. They may even pray for it. But it would be tacky for them to expect it, and most winemakers — at least, in California — aren’t tacky. As for Mr. Bill Harlan, who, as the managing partner (or whatever his title is) of Meadowood and the proprietor of  Harlan Estate, if anybody thinks this man needs to have his back scratched by a blogger, you don’t know him.