I took the gold #1 to be a barrel selection that had a certain flavor profile/presentation that was distinct from the regular Syrah. Kinda interesting as the regular Syrah is not a single vineyard. I’d be interested to know the blend breakdown between the bottlings.
Hope it is ok to post this. Here is the letter …
It happens every year at this time.
The five people that we’ve hired to work with us during harvest will arrive tomorrow. We’ll spend the next few days beginning to orient them; giving them a little clarity on what their lives are going to look like for the next three months. We try to spell out our collective goals and our process in very real and incredibly detailed terms. But the same thing always happens: eyes glaze over, heads nod, “Yep, uh huh, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah…sorting, pumpover, punchdown. Long days. Yep, that kind of thing. Got it. Check.”
It is, in some ways, an understandable reaction. Some of them have enology degrees, most of them have worked multiple harvests on multiple continents. They’ve seen so much and have come to understand that all winemakers do the same things: harvest, ferment, press and move grapes, juice and wine from place to place. Same stuff, different cellar.
But for each of them there is this inflection point. We’ll be sorting or doing punchdowns or pumpovers and they’ll look at me, suddenly clear, and just nod. Yes. It is this tiny and wholly palpable moment of clarity. The realization that we all do the same things but it is in fact, the process, the way in which we approach the work, that differs greatly.
There is a vast and immeasurable gulf between the most beautiful way to do something and every other possible variation.
A pumpover is a pumpover is a pumpover until you’re not simply connecting a pump to the bottom of a tank, securing the hose someplace well above one’s head and walking away as the juice circulates, only to return when it’s time to move to the next tank, but instead, standing on a step-stool, directly over a small, open-top fermenter, figuring out the most perfect angle of your thumb over the wine flowing from the hose (so that the dispersion of the wine cascades in the most perfect arc, allowing the wine to fall on the fruit in the most proportional way.) Taking notice of the way the aromatics change as the wine seems to inhale deeply in the presence of oxygen and observing sensorially, the slight shift in the fermentation kinetic as the cooler wine washes over the warmest parts of the cap. The word punchdown means the same thing to everyone until you experience the difference between operating a pneumatic punchdown tool or standing instead on a small wooden board above the fermenter, focusing on submerging the fruit in the cap but stopping the downward motion one berry’s width from the bottom of the tank; between using brute strength to submerge the three-foot cap of a five-ton fermenter or leaning, bent at the hip, over a open-top, up-ended barrique filled with grapes, gently moistening the cap with one’s hands.
During the harvest of 2009, an interesting question emerged: what would the wine look like if we had a chance to work with one of the best vineyards in the Napa Valley. What would the effect of this singular process be on some of the most rarified fruit in this country?
What at first, was a point of curiosity, the subject of endless speculation while at the sorting table, became, by early 2010, a mission. And so we found ourselves, in the spring of that year, walking through True Vineyard high on Howell Mountain. True lies on a bench a few hundred feet below the summit of Howell Mountain. The vineyard was planted by Frank Dotzler in the late 90s. The site is nine acres and was literally carved out of volcanic bedrock. It presents an entirely different feeling than the endless rows of vines that carpet the valley floor and lower hillsides. The oaks and pyres of excavated rock that surround the site instill a feeling of intimacy. The site and the wines that emerge from it are incredibly specific. And yet the site itself seemed somehow familiar…so similar to the rocky outcropping that we farm for Antica Terra in Oregon. As we stood in the vine rows, exposed tops of volcanic boulders pushing up from underneath, flanked by spindly cabernet vines bearing tiny, sparse clusters, it became so clear that something was markedly different here; more intense, more emotional than what we had seen before. We had never worked with cabernet but couldn’t resist seeing what might come of this fruit in our hands.
We began working with a 1.22-acre block of True cabernet in the atypically cool growing season of 2010. As harvest approached one could almost see the otherworldly purple aromas waft from out of the rock and amongst the ripening clusters. Our block of cabernet hung until the last days of October when finally the flavors turned a corner, the tannins became sweeter and the acids seemed finer, clearer than they had in the weeks before. We harvested into small baskets and hauled the fruit up to the winery in a refrigerated truck.
This, as you know, has become for us, commonplace. Lillian was born in Santa Barbara but before the first wine was even bottled, I moved to Oregon. Since then, the wines have always been raised in a very different place from where the grapes ripened; grapes of southern sun brought up in a cold, damp, Oregon cellar. The wines, however, remained a perfect distillation of my time in a sunnier place.
This combinatorial approach has had an affect. Not so much on the wines themselves and not, most notably, on the process by which they’re made, but on our perspective. We were doing this work, trying to take these powerful varieties from this sun-drenched place and execute them with a fineness and a sense of levity. We were, however, working in a vacuum. I was freed from all the local chatter (at least in regard to California. The same cannot be said about the Willamette Valley). I was neither privy to all the speculation about the vintage, nor to fads in winemaking practice. We harvest the fruit and I’m left on my own, monk-like and hermetic, to chart a course for the vintage. Freed from customs and norms by our northern exposure, the wines became progressively more interesting; more distinct. It became a matter of a personal micro-culture.
This perspective resulted in, most markedly, the three wines we will release this fall.
When the wines from True Vineyard are young they taste chiseled. The lavish black fruit, violets and ample tannin are rendered clear by the rock. But this is not such a wine. This wine has returned to the surrounding forest. Its long, 19th century style elevage, and two-vintage cepage has relieved the wine of all its edges. Violets have become roses, left free to drift among the leaves. For this wine, we take the image of the Luthéal, a kind of prepared piano, which expanded and extended the harmonic register of the piano itself; a symbol of the amalgamation of lived experiences that gave rise to this wine.
As it was in Napa, the 2011 growing season on the central coast was preternaturally cool. This resulted, in our cellar, an expression of syrah that was completely unlike anything we had made before. The wines seemed to shine with an inner light; wildly floral, lace-like texture and incredible nuance and finesse. Amongst the wines, there were a few barrels that sang with an altogether different voice. These barrels, Jamet-like in character, added a profundity to a full composite of the vintage but were singularly exquisite when pulled into a cuvée of their own. This is the wine where Cote-Rotie meets the sea; not the Mediterranean, but the vast, warm, Pacific. It is a wall of iron, lavender, black pepper, and blood, but it is also iodine, salt-breeze, and an endlessly lilting, gentle ocean. The most remarkable aspect of this wine is the tannin. You can feel them before you taste the wine as they draw other senses into play. They are immense and at moments seem to fill the entire wine; and yet absolutely gentle, ultimately dissolving in fruit. For this wine we have created a new distinction: Lillian Gold Series. If, in subsequent vintages, we find small selections of barrels that come together in a way that is beautiful and completely distinct from the Lillian syrah, we will release it with this label.
And so what, one might ask, has become of the “Blue” Label?
It has, many of you will be relieved to know, been put to rest. Not the wines with the extended elevage themselves. I will continue, in any vintage in which I see wines that seem so tightly coiled in their barrels that I am compelled to allow them to rest and evolve for an additional year in barrel, to produce a small cuvee from these wines. This has been the case since my very first vintage and every subsequent vintage save 2010. What will no longer exist is the nameless blue/not blue label that only served to confuse everyone. That was not, in any way, my intention. These wines will now become part of the ongoing “Gold Series.” Each cuvee will be numbered and the words “Gold Series” printed on the label itself. The wine described above is the 2011 Gold Series No.1 and if the 2011 barrels that we held back last year, that are yet resting in the cellar, come together, in a cuvee of extended elevage, we will bottle that wine as 2011 Gold Series No.2.
We recognize that you’ve had to wade hip-deep through a huge amount of new information in this little missive. Our doors and the phone lines are open. Please reach out to us directly if there’s anything we can do to help clarify anything, visit us at the cellar if you find yourself in the Willamette Valley, call us on the phone to let us know if there is something we can do for you or drop us a line and tell us what you think of the wines.
We’d like to take this opportunity, once again to thank you for your wildly generous support and enthusiasm for the work that we do. We are keenly aware that were it not for this relationship we would be alone along the long stretches of the Interstate hauling this fruit ever north to fulfill a dream that we could never share.
Thank you so much~
Maggie
Just confirmed the Cabernet is NV - a blend of 2011 and 2010.
ditto
Don’t understand the $200 price for the inaugural 2010-2011 cab made from True vineyard. Love that vineyard but $50 per glass is ridiculous. Maybe the tea leaves are “get some of this so you can order the 2012 Lillian True”? After all the 2012 Outpost True has a 97-100 RP…hope not, but that’s what it seems.
Curious pricing, but Maggie is only getting an acre. Who knows what she’s paying for that acre. Most people I would think could care less about cost though, unless trying to rationalize this purchase. Cost aside, price is too rich for my blood. I don’t think the business model has evolved well on this one. I loved the first couple releases of Lillian, from those original Whitehawk rows that Manfred built SQN on. The expansion requiring the addition of Stolpman and BN fruit were a detriment IMHO.
The 05 release of True from outpost was a standout in the vintage for me. It is a special site, but I’m not sure it’s that special with the fruit marked up to a premium for a non-estate label. Then again, I don’t get the dynamics of Napa. I suppose this could be the next ToKalon/DrCrane/GIII/Statelane/Whatever…
Love the Outpost True Vineyard. Had the 07 a couple weeks back and WOW. Last years release of Outpost True (2011) was $110…this is $200…one has a great track record…the other TBD.
I have had the Outpost True from 07 and 08 within the past month. Both exceptional.
The MV Lillian seems a bit stratospheric to me.
I tend to agree. Have had the 04 and 05 Lillian a couple of times and thought they were great. It seems curious that someone who has built a brand and a reputation on Syrah would bring out a Cab at twice the price and thereby devalue what she became known for. I don’t get the marketing here.
Can only hope the 2012 Outpost True won’t have a significant price increase.
Yeah that 04 and 05 were phenomenal Syrahs. I wish this venture would’ve continued along that early trajectory. They are on a new tangent now - I wish them the best though.
Decided to call Maggie about the Gold Series, True NV and wow, can she talk! Truly a lot of energy and a passion for making the very best wine. She reminds me of an artist with a very emotional connection to her craft, to each vintage, and without any preconception or recipe of making her wines, and I came away with the thought that “Yes, I believe”.
The offer letter does give all the facts about the change to the Gold label. It will definitely help me as my color blindness makes such differences in packaging (regular vs blue line) virtually undetectable. Whether there is a Gold #2, depends on how the 2011 Syrah long aged barrels come together. She is very confident with the 2011 Syrahs despite the coldest growing season on record. She did not make a 2010 “blue” as the wine never came together, and so she declassified it.
The True Cab blend is a new baby for her and she will also produce a 2012 & 2013 & 2014 and if any of these vintages are better blended, there could be another NV. For Maggie it is all about the best expression. The $200 price was based on an assessment of all costs, which she said she reviewed several times to be sure it was accurate. These costs include everything and that she obviously has higher fruit costs than Outpost, after all, they own the property. The price was based on the simply recovering all costs of producing the wine plus a very small margin. She described the process of tasting this blend blind against other top shelf Napa cabs and it was better than most. Although no names were mentioned, she did say she compared it to other 95+ point wines and that she is on the mailing list of Abreu, Futo, Araujo, Harlan, Scarecrow and several others. The results were that this wine was beautiful and ranked as high or even better than the others in the tasting. Sadly, I forgot to ask her what vintage she compared it to. The 2010-2011 NV was better than the 2010 or 2011 bottled alone. I asked what she thought about the drinking window and she simply said she did not know and that the wine was ready today. She admitted that she has not been able to figure out what component would allow her to predict a wine’s aging potential. Interesting conversation. I’ll bite.
For me, that passion that Maggie has for her wines makes passing that much more difficult. But her wines are already at the top of what I spend per bottle and $200 is a little too much. Hopefully we’ll get some notes from others…
Thanks, SteveM for posting that info. I had missed what happened to the 2010 syrah (I wonder where the declassified juice ended up?). I thought it was just me wondering why the last release was 2009 and this was 2011 blue label release. I bought a few of both releases.
Ashley
I’m going to celebrate this thread by opening a 2005 Lillian tonight for dinner. Cheers!
I will be opening both of the Lillian Syrahs and the Cabernet Sauvignon on Monday in order to prep tasting notes. I will report back on the cab.
Just visited Outpost recently and heard a rumor that the 2012 would not see anything but a normal price increase.
Yeah, I have pretty much loved all of her offerings. It is purely a ‘money thing’ for me.