NYTimes: Asimov on SonomaCnty PinotNoir

A NYTimes article by Asimov on SonomaCnty PinotNoirs just went up:
NYTimes/SonomaCntyPinotNoir

In fact, the article is not about SonomaCnty Pinots, but about SonomaCoast Pinots. All the wines reviewed, as best I can tell, are from the far/extreme SonomaCoast. It’s has if the RRV Pinots do not exist and are not deserving of coverage in an article on SonomaCnty Pinots.
Rant Alert: One of the things I get so tired of is the continual trashing by wine writers of the SonomaCoast AVA. They always argue that the SonomaCoast AVA is so large and covers such a large range of terroirs/temperature ranges as to make this AVA meaningless. I would like to call bull$hit on this tired old rant.
To be sure, a Pinot from Ehren’s Estate is going to taste different from a Pinot from Sangiacomo Estate. Well…doh…whatta you expect??
Consider the NapaVlly AVA. Much smaller in size. But you never hear the NapaVlly AVA being characterized as “so large as to be meaningless”. A zin from Calistoga is going to be different from a Zin from Mt.Veeder is going to be different from a Zin from the town of Napa.
However, I have little doubt that these writers will continue to label the SonomaCoast AVA as meaningless. Me…I’ll just roll my eyes and say “BFD”. It’s a perfectly good AVA as far as I’m concerned.
End of rant.
Tom

Agreed! For Napa, just look at Oakville valley floor vs Spring Mountain vs Howell Mountain. Differences abound. I think the SC AVA, as long as it is, shares a lot more commonality among the wines.

He seemed to spend a lot of time talking about another country entirely.

Tom, I don’t think the article was meant to be about Sonoma County pinot, but rather only about Sonoma Coast, hence the omission of other Sonoma County appellations. As I understand it, generally the author doesn’t write the headline, so the “Sonoma County” in the headline was probably the editor’s error, not Asimov’s. And the mention of Burgundy was only a couple of paragraphs, which made sense for the point he was trying to make. One thing I got from the article is how horribly expensive the wines have become!
[cheers.gif]

First paragraph: What is your favorite American region for pinot noir?"

Last paragraph: “Offer me a fine red Burgundy…”

I’m being overly harsh but I really did not get the feeling he enjoyed any part of that writing assignment.

That last paragraph was written by Florence Fabricant, with a recipe/food pairing for those wines. But with that said, I do agree that it looks like he didn’t end up liking the tasting as much. Doesn’t seem like great QPR. However, I have to quibble with why you guys are so upset by his focus only on the Sonoma Coast? He’s free to delineate these tastings however he wants, and besides the headline (which, I agree, was probably just put on by his editor – the Times’ editing/copy editing has been rather poor lately), there’s no promise that this was only Sonoma County, so I can’t understand why you guys seem so disappointed or betrayed. And while I get the point that Napa has different terroirs, too, the size differential between Napa and Sonoma seems pretty significant to me, albeit as someone who’s only been there a couple of times. Driving around Napa was much simpler/easier than trying to wrap my head around how vast Sonoma seemed, and I personally think it’s reasonable to make a tasting more focused by picking a specific part of Sonoma. Kinda like a Beaujolais tasting focusing only on a single cru like Morgon or Regnie, etc., instead of the larger region as a whole, since the differences between the wines can be quite significant…

Uh…last time I checked a map, Sonoma Coast is in Sonoma County.
Put your knickers back on and stop futzing.

A few comments (please note, this is written pre-coffee :slight_smile: )

  • One small thing to note about this line:

But you never hear the NapaVlly AVA being characterized as “so large as to be meaningless”

The Napa Valley AVA is also broken down into 16 smaller AVAs, so while I’ve never heard it called meaningless, there are enough distinctions in terroir, climate, etc. that the TTB agrees the differences warrant their own designations.

  • As Xaviar rightly points out, the headline was most likely not written by Asimov. (disclosure: I’ve worked in news outlets for the past 20 years). It’s rare that a headline by the writer will ever make it to the final. That doesn’t give the editor or headline writer a pass if it’s inaccurate, but something that may be an important nuance to the expert, isn’t always known or realized by the generalist. And since Sonoma Coast is indeed part of the county … I wouldn’t criticize it too harshly.

  • Lastly, really excited to see the Red Car Heaven & Earth on this list. It’s always been one of my favorites from that winery and the 2013 was indeed beautiful!

I would make the point that the Napa Valley is one valley that has been considered as such since the 19th century. Yes, there are differences between Howell Mtn and Stags Leap. But nobody ever lumped in vineyards grown near Petaluma with those grown in Cazadero until this AVA was created. They are in the same county and that’s it.

Of course, all these AVAs are stretched. Pope Valley is part of the Napa Valley. To get there you have to drive up a small mountain from St Helena until you get to Angwin, then you drive down the hill to Pope Valley. The Russian River AVA extends all the way to the Alexander valley Bridge, near Jordan winery. The central Coast AVA goes from Santa barbara county to Sunol, near Oakland.

Of course, politics have always been part of appellation laws.

Tom, I respectfully beg to differ: Sonoma Coast is NOT a perfectly good AVA. And the comparison to Napa Valley is spot-on; there ARE all these sub-apps there because the locations differ, and location matters.
Except….yes, except when the winemaking gets in the way. When you pick any variety toward the riper end of ripe (dare I say “overripe?”) you lose sight of the place. There is flavor convergence, yes, with power and intensity to be sure, but at the loss of aromatic elegance and intensity. A well-oaked overripe wine may fool you into crediting the grapes and the site for complexity and nuance, but time will reveal as the flavors fall apart, diverge, and don’t improve with age. If you are making wine with restraint, those site differences come through. So some of us go on about the importance of site but I’ll quote the article: “Even in Burgundy, where expressing the intricacies of terroir has been raised to a high art, the human element remains the most important thing.”
And elsewhere, “the stylistic preferences of the winemakers are crucial.”
Mr. Asimov and his panel have their stylistic preferences: “For my part, the best wines were bright and precise, with finely delineated aromas and flavors of spicy, earthy red fruits and flowers balanced by brisk freshness and lively acidity. But we also found wines that were muddled, oaky and rustic in an unpleasant way.” At least he’s clear about what he likes, and you can take it from there and adapt accordingly.


FYI
The Pahlmeyer Jayson Sonoma Coast PN is (Wayfarer and) Hallberg vineyards – there’s your Russian River. Guarachi Sun Chase Vineyard – Western slope of Sonoma Mountain, between 1200 and 1400 feet elevation.

(article title seems to be an editing error, as others have mentioned.)

Nick,

Interesting points indeed - and I think you can substitute any AVA and the ‘challenges’ of there being ‘noticeable typicity’ when ‘winemaking’ takes over [wow.gif]

Cheers!

Thanks for your comments, Nick. Perhaps “perfectly good AVA” is not the right choice of words. Perhaps “adequate” would be better.
Certainly, in the NapaVlly, this AVA is totally divided into sub-AVA’s. But the wines are almost always labeled sub-AVA/NapaVlly because the NapaVlly label sells wine. And most
people/buyers put more stock in the NapaVlly name than in the Rutherford or Oakville name.

The SonomaCoast AVA is not nearly as subdivided into sub-AVA’s as is the NapaVlly (yet, anyway). But, to me, the SonomaCoast AVA on the label does have some meaning as to
where the grapes originate. But, as w/ NapaVlly, I look to the name of the producer to more closely delineate the style of the wine.

I stand corrected on the Pahlmeyer and the Guarachi origins. I assumed they were also extreme SonomaCoast. Not sure why they didn’t use
RRV/SonomaCoast or SonomaMtn/SonomaCoast on their label…which would have made more sense (to me) as just SonomaCoast doesn’t nearly have the cachet as NapaVlly carries.
So the title/headline is not nearly as misleading as I first thought. Thanks for clarifying that for me, Nick.

I just sometimes get a bit irked when wine writer continually trash the SonomaCoast AVA as so large as to have no meaning. It certainly does have some meaning as
to identifying where the grapes originate. As w/ NapaVlly, I don’t expect SonomaCoast to identify the style of the Pinot…only its origins.
Tom

As someone who works with Pinot Noir in most all the appropriate AVA’s of Sonoma County, I wish one of these writers would consider tasting thru our efforts when writing about this lovely area. I don’t have a vested interest in elevating one AVA over another and really do try to celebrate the personality traits of each given situation within modest stylistic parameters.

It is so easy to select different producers with vastly different stylistic purpose in order to amplify differences between the AVA’s. This obfuscates an important question: What are the differences in personality?

One could argue that Chambolle is superior or inferior to Gevery all day long…I’d rather hear them described for what they are best suited for.

Tom, I think that Napa Valley cab enthusiasts are, in fact, a lot more oriented to the sub-AVAs than you seem to think. Calistoga, Oakville, Yountville, Rutherford, Spring Mountain, Mt. Veeder tend to have different characteristics, and wine consumers that are more Napa-cab-oriented than you are (these days) care about those characteristics and probably choose wines based on them.

Great points as usual, Fred. I know you don’t post here often, but when you do, your words are powerful.

What you point out remains one of the greatest challenges in my mind - determining whether AVA’s really lead to some kind of ‘typicity’ in wines from that area or not.

To me, winemaker intervention, whether it be by the use of new oak or their picking regime, often masks what is brought to the table by the site itself. Your thoughts?

Cheers.

I agree that Fred has a very good point here, Larry. Wish Fred would post here more often…he always has something cogent to say.

People seem to think/believe that within an AVA, there should be some common character/trait in the wine…that “terroir” thing. It’s not going to happen.
The AVA system only identifies where the grapes originate…nothing else. It’s up to people w/ better palates than mine to identify the “terroir”
of a particular AVA. Heck, I’ve done plenty of side-by-side tastings of Bedrock & Carlisle vnyd wines and danged if I can identify the unique
“terroir” of those wines. “Terroir” is overrated. [stirthepothal.gif]
Tom

Love it, Tom!!!

Larry,

So you are saying that wines like Romanee Conti cannot show terroir because they use 100% new oak?? Aubert de V once said to me that the terroir emerges only after the wine has been in barrel for a long time.

Are you saying that Clendenen’s single vineyard wines have no terroir because he uses too much oak and that only his inexpensive wines, which are aged in used barrels, have terroir.

I would say that these wines --La Tache etc, Jim’s single vineyard wines–are made for ageing.

There is one big difference between American laws for AVAs and French laws for AOC…in france the making of the wine is much more controlled…grape variety, yield in the vineyard, sometimes minimal alcohol levels. Here the wine can be made from any variety, grown any way, with no limits of yield. Of course, vignerons usually battle these laws with secret tanks, late night wine shipments, double sets of books for glass companies etc.


In both countries politics can triumph over reason and usually does.

Of course, as many have pointed out, the Bordeaux classification is completely wacky as a first growth can turn second or third growth land into first growth land by buying the vineyard.

Mel,

The only way to answer your question is to try said wines with and without the new oak. Period.

There is no way to really know without side by side tastings - let me know when we can make this happen please :wink:

Cheers!

OK, Mel…is that a statement that you believe??? It’s something that puts my BS antennae on full alert.
Would his statement also apply to, say, Chablis?? Or only for DRC wines?

I would say that these wines --La Tache etc, Jim’s single vineyard wines–are made for ageing.

Wouldn’t argue that point at all, Mel. But not sure how that’s relevant to terroir. Unless you’re saying that terroir reveals itself
only in an aged wine?



In both countries politics can triumph over reason and usually does.

Amen on that one, Mel. And not just in the wine world.
Tom