The 1995 vintage was disastrous for Pinot Noir producers in the Santa Maria Valley. Yields were drastically down because of poor weather during flowering and harvest. Then Sierra Madre Vineyard, a grape source for a number of small producers, was sold to Robert Mondavi Winery, which wanted to keep the grapes.
“Everyone was short of Pinot Noir grapes,” recalls Dick Doré, co-owner of Foxen Winery. “The Pinot Wars, we called them.”
A second chance
Enter Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke, who own Cambria Winery. Doré was working in the Foxen tasting room on a Saturday afternoon in 1996, when Jackson stopped by to taste some Pinot. The two started talking about the tight grape supplies, and Jackson offered to sell Foxen 4 tons of fruit every year if the winery would make a vineyard-designate wine from Julia’s Vineyard at Cambria. The plan has succeeded brilliantly for Cambria. Its 2006 Julia’s Vineyard Pinot recently won the No. 1 spot on Wine Enthusiast’s “Top 100” list.
Around the same time winemaker Lane Tanner, who was having Pinot Noir supply problems of her own at her eponymous winery, was at a charity auction in Atlanta and ducked out to do some shopping with Banke, Jackson’s wife. They sealed a deal similar to the one between Jackson and Doré, and the seeds were sown for what became the Julia’s Vineyard Artisan Program.
Jenny Williamson (now Doré), who was handling marketing at Cambria, got the idea to offer Julia’s grapes to five or six wineries every year. “It just seemed like a win-win situation,” she says. Small producers, who were suspicious that larger wineries wanted to push them aside, would get some grapes, and Cambria—one of those big wineries—would get a chance to showcase its vineyard. Jackson and Banke embraced the idea.
Jenny Doré notes the “different artistic expressions” that the various winemakers bring to the Julia’s Vineyard grapes. Indeed, the artisan program provides a vivid illustration of how Pinot Noir grapes from the same vineyard can be turned into very different wines, based on the differing approaches of the winemakers.
Cambria has 420 acres of Pinot Noir planted to a variety of clones, ranging from the older 2A and Pommard 4 to the newer Dijon clones. Participants in the artisan program draw from roughly 120 acres of Pinot, all planted to Pommard 4.
That part of the vineyard, which is divided into five blocks, sits on a mesa above the Sisquoc River, a section of the valley that locals call the “Santa Maria Bench.” Most of the grapes for the artisan program come from the blocks known as B4 and B6, which have rows that run east-west (the rest of the vineyard has north-south row orientation). B4, planted in 1991, is on VSP trellis, while B6, planted in 1971, exhibits more of the old-time California sprawl.
A look at 2007
In the 2007 vintage, six wineries made Julia’s Vineyard Pinots: Byron and Lane Tanner, whose grapes came from block B4; Cambria and Bonaccorsi, which used block B6 fruit; and Foxen and Hitching Post, which sourced grapes from B4, as well as from some newer plantings. (In addition to the small-production artisan wine, Cambria produces 47,000 cases of Julia’s Vineyard Pinot, which draws from the entire estate and includes a range of clones.)
Cambria management declined to disclose how much the winemakers paid for the Julia’s Vineyard grapes, but high-end Pinot Noir fruit from the Santa Maria Valley generally sells for between $3,500 and $5,000 per ton.
The artisan wines are made in a range of styles—from Lane Tanner’s more restrained, elegant wine to the bigger, riper, high-alcohol bottlings of Foxen and Bonaccorsi. Wines & Vines took a closer look at three of them (Lane Tanner, Cambria and Foxen) to see what accounted for the differences.
Around the beginning of August, the winemakers identify which vineyard rows they want. Cambria winemaker Denise Shurtleff says that most stick with the same parts of the vineyard, year after year. At that point, says vineyard manager Kevin Sage, the winemakers can ask for specific actions in the vineyard—more leaf-pulling or aggressive cluster thinning, for example. But “most of the time,” Sage says, “they’re pretty happy with what we do” and don’t ask for anything special. “We get a feel for what everyone likes,” he says. “That’s our approach every year.”
Santa Maria Valley had a long growing season in 2007. Early summer was warm, but the weather cooled toward September, allowing for an orderly harvest. Pinot yields averaged around 2 tons per acre, Sage says; there were fewer clusters than normal, and the clusters and berries were small. Shurtleff adds that ripening was even and, with the small berries and higher ratio of skins to pulp, color extraction was good.
Although picking decisions are a major factor in the wines’ stylistic differences (Shurtleff says that Bill Wathen of Foxen and Gray Hartley of Hitching Post “joke that once Lane Tanner picks, they pick two weeks later”), there are also differences in the winemaking—from the use of oak to cold soaks to yeasts.
Lane Tanner Winery
Santa Maria, Calif.
True to her reputation, Tanner was the first to pick in 2007, harvesting her block Aug. 30, when the grapes were at 23.7° Brix. Like many winemakers, Tanner says she picks for flavors, but that doesn’t mean riper is better. “What flavor are you picking for?” she asks. In her case, she’s looking for “a lack of green,” but she also wants “exciting, burst-in-your mouth flavor.” If the grapes get too ripe, she says, the flavors get more jammy, then “dull, dull, dull.”
In the winery, she destemmed all the fruit—particularly important because the stems are often still green when she picks—then she generally adds ice or dry ice to cool the berries to a uniform temperature—“not really a soak,” she says.
Tanner didn’t add any acid or additives. After the grapes cooled for about 36 hours, she inoculated with Assmanhausen yeast, which she started using in 1981, and which she says gives her a slow and complete fermentation. It also preserves “as much of that fresh fruit flavor as I possibly can.”
The 14-day fermentation took place in 4-foot-square wooden bins with removable plastic liners—containers that hold about 1.3 tons. Tanner punched down by hand, starting with four times per day and decreasing in frequency and duration as fermentation progressed. The wine was pressed when it reached less than 1° Brix. Wine from the freerun and gentle pressing was blended in tank and then immediately moved to barrels.
Tanner also uses less new oak than her colleagues. Her 2007 Julia’s Vineyard Pinot spent about 11 months in French oak, and only about one-third of the 60-gallon François Frères barrels were new. “I want it totally fruit,” she says. “I don’t like the flavor of oak.…Too many people confuse oak flavors with grape flavors.” Tanner looks to oak primarily for color stability and tannin.
She racked once in February, when malolactic finished, then again in August, before bottling. The wine wasn’t fined, but Tanner did a loose filtration just to make it visually clear. “I get out the rocks and frogs,” she says.
The finished wine came in at 13.8% alcohol, with a total acidity of 0.64 and a pH of 3.5.
Cambria Estate Vineyards & Winery
Santa Maria, Calif.
For Cambria’s artisan wine, Shurtleff picked Sept. 6 and 12, at around 26° Brix. Shurtleff says she’s looking for seed maturity, acid that’s in balance with the fruit flavors and the tannins, and varietal fruit flavors like cherry, cranberry and blueberry. “I can’t say that we ever get total seed maturity, because we don’t,” she says, nor is there much stem lignification. “The goal isn’t to make a high-alcohol bomb,” she adds.
The grapes were all destemmed and went through a seven-day cold soak. No acid or additives were introduced; Shurtleff says she rarely needs them. She inoculated with Williams-Selyem yeast, which she likes for what it brings to the wine’s mid-palate.
The artisan Pinot is fermented in 59-gallon new French oak barrels that have had one of the heads removed so they can be used as tanks. Shurtleff settled on this method because “the oak marries better,” she says. “We like that balancing act later in the bottle.”
The wine was punched down by hand twice a day. After a six-day fermentation, the wine was pressed when dry, then aged for 11 months in the same barrels that were used for fermentation. The press wine wasn’t used in the final blend. The wine wasn’t racked until bottling, nor was it filtered.
The finished wine has an alcohol content of 14.8%, total acidity of 0.55 and a pH of 3.58.
Foxen Vineyard
Santa Maria, Calif.
Foxen worked with two vineyard blocks in 2007. Block B4, which Tanner also uses, was picked at 25° Brix on Sept. 20, almost three weeks after Tanner harvested. Block B3—a newer, higher-density Pommard 4 block to the west that is cooler but gets more sun—was picked Sept. 6 at 25.2° Brix.
Foxen’s Wathen says block B3, where the rows have a north-south orientation, gets “more complete ripeness earlier.” Wathen says he wants grapes with brown seeds, lignified stems and no green flavors. He adds, however, “I want to be sure that (the fruit) is not shriveling.” He says he’s aiming for a “real red fruit, spicy style” of Pinot.
The grapes were all destemmed. Bill Wathen says he uses a specific inactivated yeast during destemming, before a four- to five-day cold soak. No acid was added. Wathen inoculated with Bourgogne RC212 yeast, which he likes because it’s reliable and ferments to dryness. He says it also preserves the “deep red fruit flavors.”
The grapes were fermented in 5-ton, open-top stainless steel tanks for 10 days, with manual punch downs twice per day. Wathen moved 10% of the fermenting juice to new barrels when it reached 10° Brix. The rest was fermented until dry and gravity-fed to barrels. Press wine goes into Foxen’s Santa Maria Valley Pinot.
Wathen ages his Julia’s and other vineyard-designate Pinots in 227-liter François Frères French oak barrels for about 16 months. Two-thirds of the barrels for the Julia’s wine are new, while the rest are a year old. He says he needs the additional aging time because he’s using such a high percentage of new barrels. “You’re not getting the integration” without the longer aging, he says, adding that 14 to 16 months is “kind of the sweet spot.”
The wine was racked without oxygen in late winter 2008 and again in March 2009. It wasn’t fined or filtered; Wathen says he doesn’t do either unless the wine is unstable.
The finished wine has 15.2% alcohol, total acidity of 0.61 and a pH of 3.64.
A resident of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Laurie Daniel has been a journalist for more than 25 years. She has been writing about wine for publications for nearly 15 years and has been a Wines & Vines contributor since 2006. To comment on this article, e-mail edit@winesandvines.com.
