Rhone trip revisited: California vs. Rhone blind tasting

Some of you followed the Rhone trip I wrote about last year (Northern Rhone Tour: Clusel-Roch, Jamet, Perret, Gonon, Sorrel, Cave de Tain, Clape, Allemand - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers). As a kind of celebration of that trip, Paul and Jackie Gordon organized a tasting of the wines from most of the producers we visited, and the California producers on the trip, with a couple of new additions. We had 16 tasters in all, a mix of winemakers and wine writers from several well-known publications:

Paul and Jackie Gordon (Halcon)
Bob Lindquist (Qupe)
Pax Mahle (Wind Gap, Pax)
Bradley Brown and Brad Friedman (Big Basin)
Adam Tolmach (Ojai)
Michael McCullough (in place of Jason for Drew Family)
Patrick Comiskey (Wine and Spirits, LA Times, and a plug for his new book American Rhône: How Maverick Winemakers Changed the Way Americans Drink)
William Kelley (Decanter)
Esther Mobley (San Francisco Chronicle)
Mike Dunne (Sacramento Bee)
Jim Gordon (Wine Enthusiast)
Cyrus Limón (solosyrah.wordpress.com)
Chuck Furuya (Master Sommelier, in from Hawaii)
Myself (humble scribe and scorekeeper)

Hillside Supper Club in San Francisco did a fantastic job of handling the wines for us (two bottles of each, opened on site, blended into magnum bottles), numbering, and pouring for the entire table.

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We tasted in two flights of six, then ranked 1-12. Everyone also wrote down their guesses of the origin (Cali or France). The wines were:

Flight 1
2013 Drew Mendocino Ridge Perli Vineyard
2013 Andre Perret Saint-Joseph Les Grisieres
2012 Jamet Côte-Rôtie
2013 Wind Gap Nellessen Vineyard Sonoma Coast
2013 Big Basin Rattlesnake Rock Santa Cruz Mountains
2013 Clape Cornas

Flight 2
2013 Halcon Alturas Yorkville Highlands
2013 Gonon Saint-Joseph
2013 Ojai Santa Maria Solomon Hills “Special Bottling”
2012 Clusel-Roch Vialliere Côte-Rôtie
2012 Allemand Cornas Chaillots
2012 Qupe Sawyer-Lindquist Edna Valley

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I have to say, this was a bit humbling. And frankly, it was a bit of a shame to have to “rank” the wines. These are all stars in their own right, every one of them a bottle I would happily spend the evening with. But we can’t call ourselves proper Americans if we don’t score things, haha. Below are the wines, in order of how the group ranked them, with my own notes and rankings (note that my scores correlated least with the group average, at 0.1, so take my notes with a grain of salt). It’s also fun to see what continent the group thought each wine was from:

1. 2013 Wind Gap Nellessen Vineyard Sonoma Coast
Deep crushed fruit nose, reserved, very rich, deep boysenberry/blackberry fruit, good acidity, very intense, I thought this might be Qupe (my #7, group #1, 7 votes Cali, 8 votes France)

2. 2013 Halcon Alturas Yorkville Highlands
Somewhat reserved nose, slightly meaty, rich, opulent, bright boysenberry, very tasty. I thought this might be Ojai (my #9, tied for group #1, tiebreaker goes to Wind Gap, 13 votes Cali, 2 votes France)

3. 2012 Jamet Côte-Rôtie
Slightly lighter, has a riper, sweet note, comes across a bit simple (my #11, group #3, 6 votes Cali, 9 votes France). This definitely changed and improved over time, showing better at the end of the evening.

4. 2013 Gonon Saint-Joseph
Lovely perfumed nose, tasty, vibrant, deep boysenberry/pomegranate, great acidity, Allemand-like. I forgot there was actually an Allemand in the lineup, otherwise I would have guessed this one. I thought it might be Clape (my #1, group #4, 1 vote Cali, 14 votes France)

5. 2013 Drew Mendocino Ridge Perli Vineyard
Deep crushed fruit nose, quite rich, deep boysenberry/blackberry, excellent acidity, fine structure, beautiful wine (my #6, group #5, 7 votes Cali, 8 votes France)

6. 2013 Andre Perret Saint-Joseph Les Grisieres
Dusty, nettle nose (stems?), nice medium reserved dark blackberry/pomegranate fruit, good acidity, very nice (my #4, group #6, 2 votes Cali, 13 votes France)

7. 2013 Ojai Santa Maria Solomon Hills “Special Bottling”
Bit of ripeness, slight sweeter edge in contrast to other wines, bright boysenberry/blackberry, some oak? great depth, intense and complex. Beautiful wine. I thought this could be Clusel-Roch. (my #2, group #7, 10 votes Cali, 5 votes France)

8. 2012 Allemand Cornas Chaillots
A bit lighter, more elegant in this lineup, with more of a blueberry note than the other wines. Very nice, but somewhat a wall flower here. (my #8, group #8, 4 votes Cali, 11 votes France)

9. 2012 Clusel-Roch Vialliere Côte-Rôtie
Quite rich, decent acidity, showing a bit one-dimensional at the moment, but still a nice wine (my #10, group #10, 8 votes Cali, 7 votes France)

10. 2013 Big Basin Rattlesnake Rock Santa Cruz Mountains
Slightly riper dark crushed fruit nose, fairly rich, intense dark blackberry/pomegranate, fine structure, medium acidity. (my #5, group #10, 8 votes Cali, 7 votes France)

11. 2012 Qupe Sawyer-Lindquist Edna Valley
Dark fruit, apparent oak, good balance. I think the wines at the end of the second flight are starting to suffer a bit from being last to taste. (my #12, group #11, 11 votes Cali, 4 votes France)

12. 2013 Clape Cornas
Gorgeous medium intensity, spice, complex, really beautiful wine. I thought this might be Clape, maybe Clusel (but I thought the Clusel we were tasting was Grandes Places, not Vialliere). (my #3, group # 11, 13 votes Cali, 2 votes France)

Edited to make this addition: To have a little fun, we scored the wines based on just the professional writers rankings, and then with everyone included. It was pointed out to me that the rankings I posted above are for the writers. So for clarity, here are the rankings based on everyone at the dinner. First 5 didn’t change, a bit of reordering in the second half of the rankings:

1. 2013 Wind Gap Nellessen Vineyard Sonoma Coast
2. 2013 Halcon Alturas Yorkville Highlands
3. 2012 Jamet Côte-Rôtie
4. 2013 Gonon Saint-Joseph
5. 2013 Drew Mendocino Ridge Perli Vineyard
6. 2013 Ojai Santa Maria Solomon Hills “Special Bottling”
7. 2013 Andre Perret Saint-Joseph Les Grisieres
8. 2013 Big Basin Rattlesnake Rock Santa Cruz Mountains
9. 2012 Allemand Cornas Chaillots
10. 2012 Clusel-Roch Vialliere Côte-Rôtie
11. 2013 Clape Cornas
12. 2012 Qupe Sawyer-Lindquist Edna Valley

The California/France comparison was very interesting. A few wines (Drew, Jamet, Wind Gap, Big Basin, Clusel) were fairly evenly split in terms of guesses, while others (Peret, Halcon, Gonon, Ojai, Allemand, Qupe) were pegged pretty well. Only the Clape was guessed incorrectly by most of the group. Good news was that no one got less than 6 right, with 6 tasters getting 8 right, and two (Pax and Jim Gordon) the champions with 10.

A really fun evening, the result of a ton of work by Paul and Jackie in getting everyone invited, finding a suitable date and venue, acquiring all of the wines, and making it all happen. Many thanks to both of them for that, and for including me.

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Wow-amazing line-up of attendees let alone the wines. Sorry to get technical, but that Ojai is a “Special Bottling”. For Ojai fans, they are sometimes few and far between though Adam seems to be issuing more of them lately-anyway something of a big deal.

Thanks so much for sharing both in text and photos! Would have loved to be a fly on the wall listening to this group and hear their thought process! I don’t know what it is, but Pax always seems to have some kind of magic touch!

Thanks Mitch, fixed.

Love this post.

Thanks for sharing. I’ve been thinking of holding a blind tasting along these lines…

Hey Paul - when are you and Jackie coming back to DC?!

Great idea for a reprise of that epic trip (I’ve read those posts many times), and great notes, Alan. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing your notes, Alan. It truly sounds like an epic tasting.

How long were the wines open before you tried them? And how long did you sit with each flight? Last but not least, we’re all of the guesses and preferences written down before anything was revealed or did everyone talked about them?

As you said at the beginning, it’s a bit of a bummer that you weren’t able to sit with these all night long, and perhaps even until day 2. Based on your notes, they all seem quite beautiful but still quite young.

Cheers.

Larry

There was a lot of discussion within the group of CA producers about the preparation of the wines. I was advocating for decant 24hrs ahead but, as some of the wines were arriving the evening of the tasting, the conclusion was to open on the night. We popped the corks and poured two bottles into a magnum - that gave them some air and removed any bottle variation.
We tasted each flight over dinner, spending around 45 minutes with each flight.
I do feel the second flight had a slight disadvantage - attention was starting to waiver a little and palate fatigue kicking in. I wanted to do all 12 in one flight but there was not the space on the table.
All notes/rankings were done completely blind with very little conversation across the group on the wines prior to tally of the scores.

Back in September. Exact date to be decided.

Posts like this are why I love this forum. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, Paul - that helps a great deal!

Cheers

Hi Larry, Paul has already answered, but just a few more thoughts. I spent as much time as I could with each flight before ranking. I always try to give my palate several minutes before sampling the next wine, but even then it’s difficult to taste through a dozen wines (let alone dozenS of wines, as critics do in a day). After we were done, and the wines all came out, I went back and sampled through many of them. They were still evolving, most continuing to improve as they aired.

Some of the wines were a real surprise. Pax called the Jamet instantly, but I couldn’t get much out of it at all. Clape, OTOH, was uniformly near the bottom, and called “California” by almost everyone, yet for me it was #3, beautifully deep and complex, and pretty clearly French. Interestingly, both the Clape and Qupe were the last wines in their respective flights. Maybe they suffered from being last in tasting order? Like a good horse in a bad post position.

Great event , great write up. Did anyone think to calculate the average cost per bottle on French vs California? Seemed like a good showing for the Cali group.

I can tell you that the average price of the N.Rhones was $92.
I would need to calculate the CA Syrah costs but I would estimate average retail around $40.

Always a pleasure to read your notes on Rhone Alan. Interestingly enough I opened a 13 Clape not too long ago and I also would have thought it was a california syrah, except mine wasn’t gorgeous and complex, it was really brutish a touch oaky and a bit muddled with alcohol while most certainly overly ripe.

RE: 2012 allemand chaillot, do you feel they are shutting down a bit? Seems that way.

Charlie, Well, I could have sworn I had tried the big 13 Clape before, but looking in my notes it was always the Renaissance (except at the domaine last year). I loved that wine every time. Who knows, maybe my palate was just in a different place from everyone last week. It’s interesting you mention oak, since there isn’t a new piece of wood within 100 yards of the cellar (including the building). It’s all years and decades old.

The 12 Allemand definitely did not match my earlier notes on that wine, seemed quite a bit lighter and more elegant than what I’ve had in the past year or two.

Fascinating notes Alan - thanks!

Thanks for the notes! Love the pics!

+1

I love this!! I honestly would have anticipated less confusion over each wine’s country of origin when discussing Northern Rhône vs California. Then again, I have very little experience with Northern Rhône wines.

My greatest indicators for a Côte-Rotie or a St-Joseph would’ve been coffee grounds and black pepper, yet these notes remind me more of a, say, Gigondas or the like.