Tuesday, October 27, 2009

92 Points...and what it means...Part 2


As for the winemaking itself, absolute, rigid, unrelenting cleanliness is the sine qua non of a 92 point wine. "The secret to pollution is dilution", is another way of saying, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." When cleaning barrels, clamps, hoses, pumps, ferment bins, picking bins, siphons, bungs...heck, everything in the winery... cleaning is not "a lick and a promise". Cleaning is being exquisitely careful about cleaning everything thoroughly, completely, and every time it is used. Bisulfite and dilute acids in washings help kill bugs or fungi in the low pH or high pH range. Basically what you want is a winery floor that if you dropped your sandwich on it, you could pick it up and eat it without worrying about it. That is the definition of clean.

As an aside, some years ago a commercial winemaker was helping me with some homemade wine, and due to fruit flies, he had covered the half ton bins with mosquito netting. Well, the bins were in his garage, and I noted his cat balancing on the rim of one of the micro bins. Sure enough, the cat fell in the fermenting wine, and the winemaker said, " Ah, no worries, it won't make any difference." I later had some of his commercial wine, and frankly, it tasted like wet cat fur. Well, this is an extreme example of how not to do it, but I have also seen in a large custom crush facility, one winery's grapes dumped into the destemmer right after another's, with no cleaning of the destemmer, or any of its allied equipment. Thank goodness that wasn't around here, but nonetheless, if the first load of grapes thru that destemmer had Botyritis, so then, did every other load of grapes that got processed. Hence, "The secret to pollution is dilution", ie, wash and clean everything with each use, and do so vigorously.

A complete and thorough knowledge of winemaking is essential, and also so are all the whistles and bells which include:

---high quality destemmers that cause minimal injury to grapes,

---Mistral sorting tables(moving or vibrating conveyor that removes bitter, tannic, green shot-berries, and manual removal of any remaining stems or otherwise imperfect grapes),

---d'le stage equipment for removing a reductive taste in a barrel wine

---low pressure, variable speed pumps that don't beat wines up

---rigid selection of barrels, and an impeccable system of insuring neutral barrels remain free of disease (boytritis, mildew, bacteria)

---minimal time between harvesting and crushing

---cold, slow, fermentations

---frequent, expensive chemistries done on wines to be certain pH, TA, and Brix are where they should be

---variable pressure wine press to separate juice from skins, without pressing at too high a pressure to prevent juice from crushed seeds(tannic) becoming part of the wine, and also to keep the wine from being "beaten up"

"The less trauma to a wine, particularly a good wine, the better it will be", is a mantra that is spot on.

Returning to the 100 point scale, 100 point wines are rare and are truly nectar of the Gods. 99 to 95 point wines are still in rarefied air, and 94-91 pointers are spectacular wines; 90 points is a wine to be extremely proud of. For that matter, wines from 89 to 86 points priced under $15 bucks is probably a heck of a good buy. As noted previously, problems arise when an $85 bottle of wine garners only 83 points. At that point it is safe to say that the winery was way too proud of that wine. Competition being what it is...well, in the midst of a ghastly recession, that $85 bottle will probably be selling for $20-$25 sometime in the next 6-12 months.

The last and most important part of 92 points, however, is reproducing it next year...and the next... and the next...and so on. 92 points one year and 83 the next is generally not ideal for building the brand. To establish a name for the winery, scores need to be consistently in the 90s. High 80s are fine, but some, if not most of the winery's wines need to be in the 90+ category. And when that rare 94 or 95 does come around, it is a cause for major celebration.

One final thought about Steve Heimoff, who actually was the one who rated our Paso Bordo...He feels his top score is 94-95. Only that rarest of wines gets his 100 point rating ,and he remembers just the small handfull of wines and wineries so honored. Thinking again of Heimoff's 92 rating, it is even more impressive when one realizes his top rating is going to be just 2 points higher than the 92 points awarded Paso Bordo. With that in mind we are once again re-dedicating ourselves to continue producing the perfect grape, and thence...the perfect wine.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

92 points...and what it means... Part 1


Cerro Prieto 2006 Paso Bordo...92 points, from Wine Enthusiast magazine. But what exactly does that mean? Well, generally, if you follow wine much at all, 90+ points are awarded to very, very, good wines. After that, it gets somewhat confusing. As one of my beer drinking friends said, "Hrumph, that's 8 points away from being 100, so I guess it's not THAT good." A more common response is, "Wow, you got 92 points! I can't wait to try it because it must be a great wine."

Honestly, the truth lies somewhere in between, because 100 points is a perfect wine. Just recently, a neighbor 2 hills over, Justin Smith of Saxum, garnered a
100 pointer...a perfect wine. Not only that, it was only 1 of 4 perfect wines awarded by Wine Spectator, and the first ever perfect score for a Paso Robles vineyard/winery. I might add that in the October, 2009, issue of Wine Enthusiast, Cerro Prieto was mentioned as one of the vineyard/wineries in the proposed Willow Creek sub-appellation (still part of Paso Robles AVA), along with Saxum, Jack Creek Cellars, Linne Calodo, L'Aventure, and Booker.
92 points or not, just being mentioned in the same rarefied air of those spectacular wineries was high praise, indeed.

But I digress...what does it all mean...the 92 points and all? I will quote liberally and frequently from Steve Heimoff 's blog of October 8, 2009 (http://www.steveheimoff.com/), to help put this point business into perspective. His blog title, pretty well says it all. "How can we get distributors and other wine buyers to get beyond their '90 point plus' obsession?" Basically Steve writes that "87,86, 84, and even 83 points are not 'low 80s, but mid to high 80s' wines."

Heimoff continues, "The problem is that distributors and many wine buyers look at anything below an 86 as a 'low score'. 87 and 86 are not low scores, and neither is an 85 or 84. All are considered "very good" or "good" scores by Wine Enthusiast's definition. "Of course, if a wine scores 85 points and retails for $50 or more, then there is a problem, but it's not my problem...it's the problem of people at the winery who establish the price," writes Heimoff.

Again quoting, "It's a cliche to say that anything below 90 is dead on arrival. At Wine Enthusiast we don't turn up our noses at an 86 point wine. Wines that score in the 90s tend to be bigger, riper, and probably oakier than those in the 80s...and what I don't understand is how to get the word out that the 90 point threshold is not some magical, absolute event horizon, the dividing line between Heaven and Hell. It's just a number. If you have any ideas how to decriminalize scores in the 80s, let me know." For those of you who enjoy not only drinking, but reading about wine, and wish to stay current on any political, financial, agricultural, technical, or tasting information related to wine, I would highly recommend Steve Heimoff's blog. A real benefit is that his blogs and print articles are not only interesting, they are entertaining...plus he has a keen sense of humor. Personally, he is my favorite wine writer/blogger, and I would encourage anyone reading this blog to check out Heimoff's.

Again, back to 92 points...for Cerro Prieto it is a monumental honor and achievement that a low volume winery (250-350 cases/yr) can compete with much older, much better financed, and much more experienced wineries. The saying goes, "Great wines start in the vineyard", and it is truer than one might imagine. It took 7 years before I felt our vineyard was fine tuned enough to make our own wine. We sell 90% of our grapes to up scale, high end wineries, and make our wine from the other 10%. Amazingly, our 2006 Paso Bordo was our first bottling, but we started with a vineyard in perfect shape to make a near perfect wine. Low yield of 3-5 lbs/vine, painstaking care of each and every vine, and no hesitation in dropping any fruit deemed "less than perfect"...those principles all go into making a 92 point wine. To be continued in Part 2.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Interlude...the unexpected...and fame

When writing a blog, one never thinks about the last blog actually being the last. So it appeared last June 30, when I left the vines and wines for a 7th back surgery in San Diego. Three surgeries and 3 1/2 months later I am back home after 12, 4, and then 49 consecutive days in the hospital. Follow that up with a one month stay in a step-down care facility next to the hospital, and the last
3 1/2 months have literally disappeared. Gone. Finished. Worse, I was deprived of caring for my vines, watching them mature, fine tuning them, watering, adding nutrients, thinning, pruning, waiting, watching. Fortunately, our vineyard manager, Dewight Jones, and good friend, Doug Kruse, of Jack Creek Cellars, were here to oversee the vineyard, and they did yeomans' jobs under some downright frightful conditions.

The unseasonable heat of May revisited the Paso area again in late September for almost 2 weeks with temps above 105 degrees on a number of days. Our recently grafted lower vineyard of Pinot Noir and Sauv Blanc got hammered, but our signature Cab Sauv and Syrah did famously. Yes, we have a smaller crop than planned, but the quality is once again non-pareil. Tough as this year was, our Cab and Syrah from our mountain vineyard will once again be something special.

The death knell of a good blog is irregular or infrequent writings or postings. If that is the case, then Pasodocwine blog should be on life support. Instead, however, we returned home to find our Paso Bordo prominently displayed in the October issue of Wine Enthusiast, with a 92 point rating and a very nice write- up on Cerro Prieto Vineyard & Cellars...with our Cab/Syrah blend featured as one of the top half dozen of California's Big Bold Blends.

Additionally, the Paso Robles AVA was recognized for what it now is...a very legitimate player/producer of fine wines in California, and Cerro Prieto is smack dab in the heart of the Big Bold Blend area. Altho we are influenced by the high temps of Paso AVA, we additionally have the low-lows from the Templeton Gap influence. Five wineries/vineyards received special recognition in Wine Enthusiast: L'Aventure, Linne Calodo, Cerro Prieto, Jack Creek Cellars, and Saxum.(Booker should have been in there, too). All are within the "Willow Creek"area(which one day will be a sub-appellation of Paso AVA). As Justin Smith of Saxum said, "When you are getting a wine from the Willow Creek area, you know what you are getting."

So things could have worked out better healthwise, but the end result of our labor of love, work, time, expense, and devotion were all well rewarded...albeit in our absence. The only sad thing is our Paso Bordo inventory is now down to less than 80 cases, so if you wish to try some, sooner is probably better than later.