I got my new Melville mailer this week and I was quite intrigued by the following comment in the mailer (which by the way is consistently a good read): “Another significant aspect affecting the 2008 small lot collection pinot noirs is that we decided to take a giant step towards purity and honesty by removing any new oak on the wines. Melville has historically been very conservative on the use of new oak and has gradually moved ovet the last five years to this neutral oak regime. After ten years of growing pinot noir and finding a rhythm in the vineyard, Melville’s confidence in removing the distraction of oak and the crutch that it plays in wine production has never felt more correct…one of the dilemmas with this particular cellar choice is that you stand more naked and vulnerable to the world. One no longer has the cover-up that oak can provide for flawed material.”
This kind of approach has for me a couple angles worth discussing.
In the past, I have posted/asked whether pinot could taste exciting/engaging/(whatever word you want to use here) without the influence of oak. The consensus opinion on this piece from the responses, if I recall, was that oak added complementary seasoning, a layer to the flavors that raised the overall wine. However, with Melville’s approach, what would your take be on their direction with these 2008s?
The comments from Melville are provocative and I quite like them. I have tasted enough wines that seemed to have too much oak, too much seasoning, and I seemed to enjoy chasing down a few things that showed that purity. Moreso, and most recently in my own experience, I seem to be shying away from wines that overtly sweet. Not to say I don’t enjoy them but far less than I used to. I also seem to be interested more than ever in wines that have this ‘purity’, where oak is de-emphasized, such as what you can find with Copain, for instance.
Further, it seems that Melville has also throttled back (at least for this vintage the whole cluster–25% on the Terraces and 33% on the Carrie’s). Have any of you got to taste these from bottle yet? It would seem to me that removing the new oak and cutting some of the whole cluster back some…how is that affecting these final wines? FWIW, I own a vertical back to 2002 of Carrie’s and 2003 for Terraces and have a lot of experience with these wines so any feedback here on what the 2008s taste like would help with my buying decision.
I got the mailer too and might stop in to Melville next week as I will be visiting family in California. If I get the chance to taste, I will post notes.
Interesting stuff. Lots of thoughts run. Are they saying their wines will be better without any new oak? Kind of an extreme statement that not a majority of the worlds producers would agree with. If they are trying to get away from a perceived oak dominance in their wines then I am down with that though I don’t remember thinking Melville’s wines were overly oaky. I hate to see wineries taking extreme positions like that just for the sake of doing it. They should have recognized patterns by now with what they get.
Another thing is when I hear these sorts of proclamations I always wonder what they mean by ‘new oak’. Some peoples new oak is an unused as of yet barrel. For some its a barrel that has been used less than 5 times.
I liked the Terraces quite a bit in 06 and 07. I hope they don’t mess with it too much. They were getting a nice minerally quality to them.
I assume that, by process of elimination, the Melville Pinot Noirs that make up the majority of their production - the non “small lot” Pinots - are impure and dishonest? Fun marketing that one!
I am not a fan of adopting one winemaking technique irrespective of the vintage. Some wines in some vintages may do better with more new oak, some with less new oak, some with none. Same goes for whole cluster. As a winemaker, I think it is my duty to respect what the vintage and vineyard gives you and follow that path. Obviously Melville has been dealing with these vineyard sections for some time and are going down this path thru experience. I wouldn’t question their decision to do this at all in 2008 - my only question would be doing so as an “every year” decision.
Cris, as I will note to Adam below in my comments to his post, it would seem to me that Melville’s comments may elicit a comparison to an extreme position but they have been consistent over time in cutting oak back across all their wines. The 2008 Verna’s syrah, according to the tech sheet on their webesite, is made in 8-12 year old barrels; the 2008 Verna’s chardonnay in 5-12 year old barrels; and even back to the 2006 Estate chardonnay shows 6% new. This would speak to the point of not only cutting it back, but to your other comment about what is ‘new’, including meeting or going past the number you offered of 5 times.
Adam, as I said on the other board (you stalking me or is it me stalking you?), I appreciate your comments back. I was interested to see how someone in the winemaking community saw this topic.
As for your first point, I went back to the Melville website and looked at the 2007 and 2008 pinots that make up their largest production–Estate and Verna’s–and the new oak percent data in the tech sheets show 18%/10% and 16%/10%, respectively. 10% is getting very close to 0%, and they did dial back the oak between these two vintages another 60-80% in total. This would suggest to me that they are in pretty close alignment with the oak philosophy even with largest part of their pinot production.
I know Greg, Stephen and their group doesn’t post so we may left with discussing your second point in a vacuum.
It’ll be interesting to taste these upon release - will certainly have to try some . . .
Of course, the only way to ‘see’ if they made the ‘correct’ decision would be to taste the same wines out of newer oak barrels . . .it’s the only really appropriate a/b comparison . . .
And I agree with the others about this being an ‘always’ decision vs. it being a ‘let’s see what each vintage brings us’ one . . . difficult in the wine biz AFAIC to make ‘absolute’ decisions as it relates to winemaking - too many variables that change with each vintage . . .
I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to say whether new oak is necessary to make a “great” Pinot (though Simone Bize for example uses little to no new oak and certainly makes at least very good wines, especially in terms of value). However, I wonder how the terms “terroir”, “transparent”, “wine that speaks of a place”, etc are reconciled with the use of new oak. Not all winemakers say that they’re trying to make wines that express a place, but many do, and most of them use new oak to some degree I imagine. But wouldn’t adding wood flavor to the wine interfere with that goal? Or maybe the key is to use a low enough amount that it doesn’t overwhelm those things? And then there are other variables, such as the toast level of the barrels, how long they’ve been dried before being used, vintage characteristics as has been pointed out, and I’m sure others that I’m not aware of.