Bedrock Fall Release 2018

With the upcoming release only a few days away there is a lot to talk about. Hoping that some Berserkers (and possibly MTP) have more information on the following:

-This release looks to include a multitude of different wines, huge even by Bedrock standards. It also appears that several new wines will see their first vintage in this release.

-Morgan, Chris and the gang did a vertical of all 2011 and 2012 Bedrocks, hopefully we’ll see some notes on those wines included with the release.

-Updates on progress of Bedrock owned vineyards, some were purchased in great condition (Evangelho) but others needed years of attention to become viable again. We’ve seen some bits and pieces in the Bedrock video series, but would love to see some updates on progress and where those grapes are going.

Can someone post the list of what’s gong to be offered. Ever since the web site upgrade, I no longer get e-mail notifications.

The last email I received from Bedrock was lacking any detail about what is offered.

From Chris’s save the date email:

Bedrock Wine Co.’s Fall Release will hit inboxes on July 31st for Mailing List Members and August 7th for Waiting List Members. The release will feature a cross section of wines, from the newest iteration of Old Vine Zin, Bedrock Heritage and Evangelho Heritage wines, to Wirz Riesling and Judge Sauvignon Blanc, Hudson Syrah and the few precious bottles of our first release of Sky Vineyard Zinfandel. All in all, one of my favorite releases of the year and crammed with yumminess.

:slight_smile: Thanks, Rich!!

I have not, either.

That Sky was something special!

Hell yeah it was! Definitely not to be missed if you’re offered some!

I didn’t get the first offer after the upgrade. Get in touch with Chris and he’ll get it straightened out.

I think we need to tap into the great energy spirits within the old vines and pay homage [cheers.gif] to all who have tended them in the past [worship.gif] in order for Morgan’s notes to appear. So all together now… grouphug [dance-clap.gif]

You have to say “Morgan Guy Tecumseh Twain-Peterson MW” 3 times fast or it doesn’t work.

Since I haven’t purchased before, I hve to wait a week for the leftovers! Wahhh

Genuflect when you say that. :wink:

Just tried it while looking into a mirror and was greeted by Mary Ewing-Mulligan MW by mistake…probably should have drank less Bedrock before trying

Yikes!!

Here are the wine notes. As many of you already know Frank Evangelho passed away recently and the loss of our friend has sucked a bit of my writing lifeblood- as such, the write-up for the newsletter is still in process. It will be done by Tuesday but this should get y’all started. As always, you guys are getting the pre-proofed copy so please excuse the invariable typos/misprints/idiocies. Prices will be in the realm they usually are. Also, we intended to do a 2011 and 2012 tasting with notes to check in on those wines but we just flat-up ran out of time- we hope we can get that done for the Winter Release, I know there is a lot of demand for a drinking chart on some of those wines. Cheers! -MTP

2017 Wirz Riesling, Cienega Valley: Bedrock is usually a house divided when it comes to our Riesling Vineyards, with Chris preferring the savoury, wooly and wild fruit from Pat Wirz’s beautiful vineyard and me tending to lean towards the crystalline, gardenia-laced, expression from Cole Ranch in Mendocino. In 2017 though we crack this wine and drink in peace as this is my absolute favorite rendition of Wirz yet- straddling the line between savory and dense, floral and elegant. I have a feeling in ten years we will do a retrospective of the vintage and be very surprised by how well this wine has aged. Honeysuckle and talc aromatics lead to a gorgeous mouthful of fruit. This is straight-up fun to drink!

2017 Judge Sauvignon Blanc, Bennett Valley, Sonoma County: Judge Vineyard is located in a cool section of Bennett Valley along Grange Road. The rocky, well-drained site gets enough warmth to fully ripen but is cool enough that there is plenty of acid-drive to balance the pineapple and exotic spice tones. We barrel ferment the wine in a combination of cigare barrels and lightly toasted Stockinger piece which add a subtle richness to the wine. Stylistically this is closer to Bordeaux blanc than traditional California SB.

2017 Bedrock Heritage Wine, Sonoma Valley, Sonoma County: As always, from the 1888 plantings at my family’s vineyard planted in the heart of Sonoma Valley. This field-blend of 27 varieties performed beautifully in 2017, doing exactly what a field-blend should do in a warmer year in that the Carignan, Mataro, Syrah and other later –ripening varieties retained acidity and perfume even if earlier ripening varieties like Petite Sirah and Tempranillo got a bit riper than normal. This has the trademark Bedrock spice, citrus oil/cointreau and dark red fruits (Mulberry? Raspberry?) I would expect from our dearly beloved home vineyard. This is going to age quite well though similar to 2015 this could be consumed slightly earlier than some thanks to the delicious fruit. Roughly 55% Zinfandel, 15% Carignan, 10% Mataro and then everything else (Syrah, Alicante, Trousseau Noir, Mission,….you get the point).

2017 Evangelho Heritage Wine, Contra Costa County: 2017 was the first year we had full control over farming at Evangelho following our purchase of the vineyard that Spring. This wine, though possessing the characteristic suaveness of the site, does possess a trace more density than years pass- likely due to the additional thinning passes we made. It was also an exceptional year for Mataro in a generally very strong year at the site and the variety makes up over 30% of the blend. As such this has some wonderful savory aromatics that balance and complicate the courtly fruit- upon opening a bottle of 2015 recently I was struck by an exotic curry powder/garam masala note starting to come forth which I liked a lot. Aged predominately in 600 gallon foudre and large format barrels this wine saw very little new oak as we wanted the delicate complexities of the site to show.

2017 Old Vine Zinfandel, California: I am incredibly proud of this wine. I have said it here before but it bears repeating- even though this is one of the least expensive wines we make, in many ways it is the most important. First, it is the one Bedrock wine that trickles out to most markets so if someone gets introduced to our wines there is a good chance it is this one. As such it has to be reflective of the style we place value on. Second, this is the wine that more than any other allows us to rehab old vineyards by giving us a place to put the fruit while we upgrade farming, pruning, and soil health. Third, we now farm over 50% of the fruit that goes into this bottling, which allows us to make the hard farming decisions that sometimes need to be made (dropping fruit, picking in multiple passes, etc.) to ensure we get the quality we need. Fourth, it is a statewide blend of vines averaging over 80 years of age, which means we can flex towards the strengths of a vintage. In 2017 we were able to put extra focus on the great quality in Contra Costa County (27%), Dry Creek (12%), Sonoma Valley (17%), Alexander Valley (11%) and Lodi (10%) in the blend to create a delicious, balanced and juicy wine. Fifth, we want this wine to spread the gospel of Zinfandel from California, and as such this sees fruit from pretty amazing vineyards such as Evangelho, Bedrock, Nervo Ranch, Teldeschi Ranch, Sodini and Pato Vineyard. The final wine is roughly 86% Zinfandel, 5% Petite Sirah, 5% Carignan with the balance being Alicante Bouschet and all the other crazy and lovely field-blended varieties found in our old vineyard.

2017 Sky Zinfandel, Mt. Veeder, Napa: Maybe our only year of making wine from this stunning vineyard perched high atop Mt. Veeder. The vineyard is composed of dry-farmed Zinfandel planted by Lore Olds, the mercurial mountain man behind Sky Winery. I have loved the wines from this vineyard my entire life and when we were offered the possibility of working with the fruit we jumped on it. In fact, we are the first winery to make wine from Sky grapes since the 1970s when Lore sold some fruit to his former employer Mayacamas Winery. This wine is one of my favorites of the year (unfortunately one of the scarcest too) featuring gorgeous mountain fruit aromatics, plenty of pepper and a core of deep fruit buoyed upward by crisp acid and tannin.

2017 Dolinsek Heritage Wine , Russian River Valley, Sonoma County: The 1910 planted vines at Dolinsek Ranch did yoeman’s work in 2017, producing a blue-fruited burst of deliciousness possessing trademark friendliness with a beam of leavening acidity to back it up. A field-blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Alicante Bouschet, Barbera, Black Muscat planted on north-facing slopes of Goldridge Loam on the western edge of the Rancho del Santa Rosa this vineyard always puts out scant crop resulting in wines of uncanny concentration despite the gentler tannin structure. Give this a decanting to let it unwind but this is a good candidate for earlier drinking for the vintage.

2017 Bien Nacido Syrah, X-Block, Santa Maria: What?! Yeah, we are still pretty gobsmacked we got this fruit in 2017 too. For those who don’t know this legendary Syrah site here is the down low: This was originally planted to Riesling on its own-roots in 1973 and then grafted over to Syrah in 1987 at the request of the legendary Bob Lindquist of Qupe and others. Over the years it has gone to Bob, Bonny Doon, and others, including our friend Sashi Moorman at Piedrassi who was responsible for us getting the fruit in 2017. When I got a call that he had a few more tons than expected I immediately sent down a reefer truck to get it. Even though the fruit was only in the mid-22s sugar it was some of the ripest fruit I tasted all year. We broke it down into several 1 ton oak fermenters with varying percentages of whole-cluster between 0-100% and elevage was done in 500l used Stockinger barrels You know what? They were all f-in great and the final wine is a blend of all the lots. The best news of all is that we will start receiving this fruit yearly. I will note that this is a bit of a stylistic outlier for us in that it is 12.4% finished alcohol and a more lacey, crunchy, aromatically ethereal wine than our north coast sites give us. This will age nicely but can also be enjoyed with a decant in the nearer term. Get it!

2016 Hudson Syrah, T’n’S Blocks, Napa Carneros, Napa: Ahhh Hudson! When I think of Syrah with room-filling aromatics- you know, the pepper, the spice, the cured meat, the SAUCISSON- I always think of the first Syrah’s I had from this famous site. This is perhaps the most elegant rendition of this wine we have made since the 2011, and I hope it will continue to develop as well as that wine. In 2016 we amped up the level whole-cluster in S block and it shows here- bringing the pepper spice to another level. This being Hudson though, it continues to balance this high-tone perfume with a solid anchor of dark but bright fruit. This is a lovely one.

2017 Esola Zinfandel, Shenendoah Valley, Amador County: From vines planted in 1968 on granite in the heart of Shenendoah Valley, Esola Vineyard tends to show a crystalline, elegant side of Zinfandel. Even in the warmer 2017 vintage this wine leads with pepper-spiced red fruits and lots of perfume. Aged primarily in large foudre and large format oak barrels, a small fraction of which were new, this is feels almost like Nerello Mascalese as much as it does Zinfandel. Always one of my favorite wines we make as it shows off how site expressive and chameleon-esque Zinfandel can be.

2016 Drummond’s Petite Sirah, California: Coming predominately from the old vine Petite Sirah at Teldeschi Ranch blended with a bit of refined Pets from Palisades Vineyard in Calistoga this is opaque, dense, and age worthy Petite Sirah. Dark blue fruits combine with a swirl of pepper and jambon on the brooding nose. Though large-scale in density and weight we still hope for delineation and freshness in this wine; we want muscle but we want it to still do a releve in the glass.

2015 York Creek Mountain, Tinto, Spring Mountain, Napa: We made 900 bottles of this totally unique wine, which means we have about 850 to sell as we have been poaching bottles from the celllar like mad- we all love it. From a field-blended block of Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesca, Tinta Barroca and Tinta Cao grown on the tip-top of Spring Mountain this is intensely aromatic and rather beautiful wine. For those who don’t have a lot of experience with Touriga Nacional (which is the majority of this wine) outside of Port production it is almost as if Syrah was crossed with violet flower and black pepper tree. This is an oddity but one of my favorite wines we have made in the last few years. Alas, due to a few factors it is also the only wine we will make from the site.

Thanks for the notes, Morgan. Once again, I fear my plan to cut back my purchases will fall by the wayside.

Oh, I so hope I’m allocated 1-2 of the limited or one-time productions.

What an awesomely wild-ass bunch of wines. [swoon.gif]

Oh damn, the Birn Nacido is coming out…looking like at least 2 cases

Thanks Morgan. Planning to visit the new tasting room this fall.