TN: 2009 Clos Saron Pinot

Very bretty, fecal notes that overwhelm what seems like okay fruit, I guess. This is not character, but a defect in winemaking. Very stinky and offputting. Have 3 more bottles…ugh. Just ordered from the winery.

Uhhhhhh…Chris…you know that AliceFeiring loves this wine???
Gideon’s wines are always an adventure. I typically find them…interesting. But they sometimes evolve in ways
that you don’t expect. This sounds like one that didn’t do well.
Tom

I had two very Bretty bottles of this as well (out of two). I asked about it a while back and I don’t think others had observed it. The Brett in mine was annoying but they were drinkable. There seem to be some Bretty wines that give me a metallic aftertaste that is very distracting and unpleasant, and unfortunately these did to a degree (I one had a whole case of 2001 Vieux Mas Des Papes like that). The Clos Saron was disappointing because other than that I think I would have liked the wine a lot. The actual aromas of Brett don’t bother me so much.

But…didn’t you feel virtuous knowing you we’re drinking a natural wine?

I’ve had three of these so far and they were very clean but I got them directly from the winery and hand-carried them home.

So you hand-carried them, and they were OK. Chris, how did you carry them that would explain the “fecal” notes?

My point (which I thought was obvious) was that natural wines are more risky when one is unable to guarantee that the wine stays cold its whole life. Brettanomyces blooms easier at warmer temperatures.

Or did you understand and just wanted to make a funny?

In general, I am making a funny where online chats are concerned. Butt and poop jokes are no exception.

I did actually have a bottle of the 2009 Home Vyd Pinot recently at a local restaurant, and it was very engaging and alive, but did have a definite…um…microbial streak, though not glaringly so.
In my admittedly limited experience, there seems to be a fair bit of bottle variation with the wines.

I think very highly of the winemaker, and some of his Renaissance wines were among California’s most distinctive. While some of the Clos Saron pinots have been superb, at those prices I just don’t feel like paying for someone’s science experiment. Sulfur has been used for centuries, and it ain’t so bad.

Nate - wines without so2 have good qualities that I like. I buy very carefully though because there is no doubt that they can spoil easily.

So I just opened one of these bottles and it’s the same as my others. Some slight reduction but otherwise pristine. It’s really too bad that these spoil for some people. Great great wine

I still got some older vintages in my cellar. I’m thinking 06 and maybe 05. The ones I opened were all good but I haven’t had one in quite some time.

I do like the Saron wines I’ve had that weren’t spoiled, and I very much like some of the so-called “natural wine” producers I’ve had (e.g. Overnoy, La Clarine), but I can never be sure if it’s the “natural” techniques per se, or just good winemakers using good juice.

I think its one in the same. Low intervention wine making only works with artisanal attention to detail and very healthy grapes.

And apparently not very well even then, if you care about quality control.

I don’t think its fair to say that low sulfur wine makers don’t care about quality control. There is risk in both making and buying these wines and anyone buying them can make their own risk/reward judgment. These wines offer something unique and some consumers are willing to take on some risk for a shot at distinctiveness. I can totally understand why someone wouldn’t or perhaps even should not buy these, but to say that the winemaker doesn’t care about quality is just a weird thing to say.

Ive actually spent a little bit of time watching Gideon at work and seen his approach first hand and there is no way he does not care about the quality of what he produces.

I didn’t say he doesn’t care about quality control. I said it is not working well.

Ouch - to be getting this experience as a Christmas gift! Chris - I am truly sorry to learn of your off-putting experience with our 09 Pinot. Since you have just received the wine a few days ago, we would gladly take back the remaining bottles if you’d like to return them.

Where do I start “answering” this? There are many issues involved here, so let’s start anywhere:

To begin, I would like to say that very recently, I have had my own first nasty experience with our 09 Pinot - very possibly from the same case from which came your four bottles (since it happens to be the very last one in our stock). I was surprised, since it was my first such experience with this wine, and since the character or “flaw” it was showing was unusual: this was neither reduction, oxidation, “lactic spoilage”, or brett - all of which we have seen at one time or another with our wines. It reminded me of the unpleasant aroma of fruit flies. Strongly bacteriological, both in the nose and at the finish. This was here at the winery, during a visit of two customers. I told them the bottle was “off” and opened a second one, which tasted much better.

What is the matter with that wine? I am not sure. Others with stronger analytical and scientific skills may be able to, or at lease would come up with some logical proclamations which would sound very convincing. But certainly, the experience was undeniably unpleasant. As I said earlier, we have seen wines go through lots of nasty phases at times. So far, I have not seen any of our wines truly “go bad” in an irreversible fashion. All of the wines which at one point or another showed the various cooties or nasties proceeded on to recover fully from their ailments. My take on this, which I know is not shared by all wine lovers, is: ok, this wine does not wish to be drunk right now and is saying it in very clear “words”. So let’s give it a few months or a couple of years to work out its issues. You may think this is wishful thinking, but I have gradually came to this approach over decades of wine consuming, aging, and making. It seems to work even if to the “scientific mind” this does not always make sense. They tell you that some of these “flaws” are permanent and irreversible and for many years I also believed in this, but found out by experimentation that in many (perhaps most) cases this is not so. (just to clarify - I am not saying that wine cannot or does not ever spoil, but I am talking about the way low sulfite wines evolve).

It is my conviction that in wine making more than “right or wrong” type decisions, there are trade-offs. With every decision at every step, something is preferred over something else. Sulfur use is a good example. Over the past 22 years, I have experimented with a number of approaches to the use of sulfites in the making and aging of wine. Starting from the conventional “scientific” formula of keeping “free” SO2 in the wine at a level determined by its pH, through various methods of attempting to reduce/limit it use: using it at crush, after m/l, and at bottling; only at crush and bottling; only at crush; not at all, and only at bottling… Each of these yielded different results. In the past two years, we use two “receipes”: one for our sturdier wines (no SO2 at all), and another for the more delicate wines, such as the white Carte Blanche, the rose Tickled Pink, the Cinsault Out of the Blue, and the Pinot Noir (non in the making and aging, 10-15ppm addition at bottling). In the case of our 09 Pinot, about half of the fermentation batches got 35ppm at crush and half did not. Non of it got any further addition post fermentation.

Certainly, SO2 has a useful role to play in wine making. But it is easy to see that the less of it is used in the process or present in the finished product, the more “possibilities” the eventual wine has in terms of expression, nuance, and complexity. But obviously, this comes at a cost: the wine is also less predictable, stable, and tolerant to numerous physical conditions which can affect its potential evolution and longevity.

One obvious example is shipping and storage temperatures. Another is the temperature fluctuations, vibration, shaking, and shocks involved in shipping/travelling. How often do you hear of wines which tasted so much better at the winery than here at home when we got back from our vacation in France/Italy/Wherever? With our wines, especially the Pinot, we strongly recommend letting them rest and recover for a few weeks after shipping, and preferably longer. And, of course, ensuring proper storage conditions thereafter. Yes, they are perishable… My own experience would suggest that in most likelihood, your 3 remaining bottles will go past the present unpleasant phase and blossom again over the next months/years. I believe this wine has the potential to age for a good decade or two if properly stored but, again, you’d be welcome to ship these bottles back to us for a full credit if this is what you’d prefer.