Compared to CA and the glory days of old.
In Santa Cruz, Madson is a must. Itās in a cluster of buildings with other small businesses incl. lunch options, and the historic Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyards. Theyāre making a Bates Ranch Cabernet again. They also have a label (Quinta Cruz) for quite a range of Spanish and Portuguese grapes.
Birichino makes a lot of fun wines, like their excellent Malvasia Bianca, and some serious stuff like a Peter Martin Ray Vyd Cab.
Sante Ancangeli makes some of the best Pinot and Chard, plus a little Syrah.
Down in Corralitos, Alfaro/Farm Cottage, especially for their Trout Gulch Chards and Pinots. Lester, Windy Oaks and Ferrari Family (old vine Pinot. The vineyard has had several names over the years, most recent prior name was Woodruff).
Of course thereās Mount Eden. House Family is not far from the beginning of the driveway.
I believe Rhys now takes appointments, as does Mindego Ridge. Not far from Fogarty.
Then thereās Ridge, which is also appountment only.
Beauregard, just north of Santa Cruz on Bonny Doon Rd.
Big Basin has a tasting room in Santa Cruz and is taking visitors at the winery again.
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Odd at first but I found when I recalibrated my expectations they were fantastic. The Skin contact pet nat malvasia bianca altered my perception of what wine can and is supposed to taste like. For me that wine almost presents like a west coast Hazy IPA, It is the only canned wine that I actively seek out.
I would suggest going to Santa Cruz and hitting up the Swift street wineries. In particular Santa Cruz Mountain Vine Vineyard and Madson. and I would toss in Silver Mountain. Go to downtown and hit up Birichino and walk over to Big Basinās tasting room. If you are up for a walk I would hit up Storrs. You can have a great day In the Corrailitos area but should have a car/driver for the area.
And as always what Wes says.
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Good recent article on many of these vineyards
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At risk of a thread drift, may I ask a couple of questions to help me understand my experience of Domaine Eden vs. Mount Eden Chardonnay?
Iāve had various bottles of Mount Eden Chardonnay over the years and have invariably loved them. They are in my top tier of wines worldwide that excite me. In contrast, Iāve also had various Domaine Eden Chardonnays over the years and Iāve consistently not enjoyed them. Specifically, I find the āforward fruit, earlier drinkability and obvious hedonismā of Domaine Eden manifests itself in a lack of refinement and a mismatch between fruit profile / intensity and acidity. Now, if I said āI really like Mount Eden but am so-so on Domaine Edenā, I wouldnāt think twice about it. It would be a normal range of elasticity. However, Iām poles apart. So 2 questions:
1/ Does anyone else feel that enormous disconnect between Mount and Domaine Eden? Again, not slightly different or even very different. Enormous difference.
2/ What do you think explains this difference?
I was thinking about this last week and re-listened to the IDTT podcast with Jeffrey Patterson. I thought he said something interesting when asked what he has learnt from working with fruit from outside the original Mount Eden site. His first response was not about other properties at all, rather that it showed him the uniqueness of Mount Eden. This provided a hypothesis to answer my question. It made me wonder whether this is one of those cases where two wines that are closely related can diverge dramatically because small differences in site, barrel selection, and stylistic intent are magnified in the finished wine.
In this sense, my lack of enjoyment for Domaine Eden actually reinforces my appreciation of Mount Eden. The stark contrast suggests that what makes Mount Eden extraordinary for me is precisely how difficult its qualities are to transfer. This may also explain why I enjoy most Santa Cruz wines, but find my experience with Domaine Eden unusually disappointing.
Interested to hear any views. The question for me is not why I prefer Mount Eden - thatās easy to understand - but why the difference in my response is so extreme.
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I think what Jeff said is the major part of this. Mt Eden Estate is a unique terroir similar to Monte Bello. The Domaine Eden fruit mostly comes from the old Cinnabar property if memory serves. While a strong wine growing site its certainly never carried the reputation of Mt Eden or Monte Bello.
I actually opened a bottle of '21 Dom Eden Chard this week as I like that vintage. It notes on the back that it contains 27% Mt Eden Estate fruit. While I like this bottling for its clean Chardonnay expression with a good value, it doesnāt carry near the power that the Eden Estate wine typically does even with quarter of it being from that property.
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Domaine Eden is a blend of declassified Mount Eden fruit, purchased ānegociantā fruit, and the lower-elevation Cinnabar winery. So, at least a portion of the fruit isnāt deemed as high quality as the fruit put into the Mount Eden wines, Iām guessing the Cinnabar fruit is going to be riper and rounder because of the lower elevation, and negoce fruit is going to be more of a crapshoot since they arenāt farming it.
Domaine wines are also made differently to be more approachable earlier, as you noted.
So Iām guessing your palate is reacting against a combination of all these things.
I took a look on their website and they donāt say anything about purchased fruit; it states inputs comes from either Mount Eden or Domaine Eden plots. Where is the information about the purchased / external fruit coming from?
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Given the difficulty getting to many of these wineries by car, is there a centrally located tasting room where you can sample many of these wines?
About 16,000 cases of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are produced from purchased grapes. In 2007, Mount Eden acquired the Cinnabar winery and vineyards in the Saratoga foothills, located one ridge to the south of Mount Eden. This has been named Domaine Eden and offers earlier drinking wines that are in part composed of purchased fruit.
Maybe Domaine Eden including purchased fruit has changed. @Wes_Barton would know more, Iām guessing.
Before purchasing Cinnabar, Mount Eden had a second tier called Saratoga Cuvee. This was all from vines they managed in the Saratoga area, so could choose to call estate. Calling that āpurchased fruitā isnāt fair. It could also include declassified Mount Eden fruit.
There was some overlap of both Domain Eden and Saratoga Cuvee, indicating perhaps they were figuring out what to do with their new situation and didnāt include other vineyards in DE at first. Makes sense to want to assess those vines.
In the '70s Mount Eden had a label for purchased fruit called MEV.
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I think the Domaine Eden Cabernet includes grapes from other vineyards. My impression is that the Chardonnay is only from the two estate vineyards with the percentages varying from vintage to vintage. Also think the Pinot Noir is mostly from the Cinnabar site, possibly only from it most years.
-Al
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Thanks all. For Chardonnay, Al and Arvās comments were also my understanding from listening to Jeff, reading the website, and looking through the tech sheets. Since my interest stems from the magnitude of the difference, I would have found it less fascinating had purchased fruit been involved.
Iād be interested in any further thoughts on whether and why the disconnect feels so large. And is the magnitude of difference in my evaluation actually unsurprising to those who know the vineyards and wines well?
Am I right Cris that you generally enjoy both Mount Eden and Domaine Eden Chardonnay, or was your positive view more specific to the 2021 Domaine Eden?
I have very little experience with Mount Edenās Chardonnays, although I am trying to get more. The only time I had the Domaine Eden was when I visited the winery around three or four years ago. I thought at that time that I thought the Wolff Vineyard was about as good as the Domaine Eden for a much lower price. But, both of these wines were very young and I donāt really know what happens to them with age.
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I had tried the '21 at the large appellation tasting and liked it. The Pinot too. I picked up a couple bottles of the Chard as the value is nice for about $33. But I am not a regular buyer of the Domaine bottlings.
I think that as the crow flies, the Mount Eden vineyards are only about a mile from the old Cinnabar vineyards that now produce the grapes for Domaine Eden. But I believe soils, aspect and exposure are very different.
Mount Eden is clearly a great and unique vineyard. Also, over the decades Jeffrey Patterson has made it his lifeās work to produce only great wines under the Mount Eden Estate label. I believe that in almost every vintage a percentage of the Mount Eden wines are excluded from the Estate bottlings and ādeclassifiedā to Domaine Eden.
I enjoy all of the Domaine Eden wines and consider them good values, excellent representatives of the Santa Cruz Mountains. But the Mount Eden Estate wines are simply on another level.
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@Wes_Barton @Al_Osterheld @Dan_Kravitz
Have any of you had the 2020 Mount Eden Pinot Noir? I had a bottle over the weekend blind, and it had this intense, acrid spiciness to it, for lack of a better term. It didnāt taste burnt or smoky, per se, but there seemed something off about it.
Iām curious whether this might have been a case of smoke taint or perhaps I just had a funky bottle?
I havenāt had it, but I recall they sold it at a super low price at one point.
-Al
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Heās someone where the work really is in the vineyard. He really dialed that in over the years. The winemaking is pretty much what Martin Ray did (with much better quality control), which heād learned from Paul Masson.
Paul Masson had identified the future Mount Eden site as better than his - and heād put in effort finding his. Itās just a better site than Domaine, and priced accordingly. But, expect it to keep getting better.
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