I don’t see how a wine can be Objectively balanced, regardless of your point about stems, it’s still a subjective matter. Someone’s wildly stemmy wine can be another persons perfectly balanced wine( extreme in any direction is still subjective). Does not a preference create a sense of balance?
Dujac village wines are on the upper end of my stem tolerance and occasionally too stemmy. Higher end wines, no. But Dujac makes riper, richer wine than what comes out of Falstaff.
I’m admittedly highly stem-sensitive. My point is not about whether the wine is tasty or not tasty; I’m saying that a wine that is all the way at one end of the spectrum in terms of a key element of winemaking, and all the way at one end of the spectrum in terms of the vineyard it comes from, is a curious wine to be calling “balanced”. Unless balanced is just a way to say “I like it” in which case, sure.
BUT have you tasted this and found it stemmy? That is the question here. It’s made with grapes too, should I assume it will be grapey too?
Your stemmy is a 
that you put in place.
Yes Mike, I’ve had Kutch Falstaff and Alesia Falstaff.
I don’t remember which one it was but someome shared a Kutch Pinot with me and I didn’t find it too stemmy at all. There are California Pinots Ive had that I thought had unbalanced stems but that was not one of them.
David,
What was the most recent vintage of the Kutch you tried?
Not the 2012 - either the 2011 or 2010. I’ll confess to not liking Kutch pinots generally - a local store to my office carries them, so I’ve had a few (in the literal sense, 2 or 3) and I thought they were overstemmed. But again, I’m stem sensitive and I find most 100% whole cluster wines that don’t come from very ripe vineyards to be overstemmed. I just dispute whether any wine that is as extreme as a Falstaff bottling with a ton of stems should be described as “balanced”. That’s using “balance” in the obnoxious Raj Parr sense of the word to mean “wines in a specific style”.
I don’t go back to far with tasting/drinking Jamie’s wines, but I have seen a real increase in refinement the last couple of years. It’s why I eventually joined the list.
Within a weeks time, one taster said my wine tasted like an Aussie Syrah while another says it tastes stemmy and green. At the end of the day, everyone’s tastes are different. No right nor wrong.
There are people who never would consider using stems no matter what and make or made great wine like Jayer, Rouget, Lafarge, Chevillon, Ponsot, Grivot,. Then there are others who use it all the time, every year. I make wines for my own taste and MAN oh MAN do I love whole cluster in my Pinot Noir. My highest epiphany wines have come from producers who use loads of stems including: DRC, Roumier, L’Arlot, Montille, old Potel, Simone Bize, Leroy, de Courcel, Pacalet, Confuron-Cotétidot, & Clos des Lambrays.
Celebrate diversity!
Once again David, as I posted above and never heard back on:
Jamie - I’m not a schnoorer. I can (and do) buy the wines I’m interested in trying, including wines that are interesting but not necessarily wines I expect to like.
IIRC, Roumier doesn’t use loads of whole cluster - I thought under 50% for every wine in the portfolio, and scaling up from very little whole cluster for the less concentrated bottlings to more for the GCs. There’s a big difference between some whole cluster and 100% whole cluster, just as there is for some new oak versus 100% new oak.
Considering that your first list includes my two favorite burgundy producers (Lafarge and Chevillon) and a third who made one of the better burgs I can remember tasting (Grivot, though I’ve had others less exciting from there), and your second list includes a number of producers I recoil from, I agree this is a question of tastes being different. But the question isn’t whether the wine is GOOD, it’s whether its BALANCED or, more specifically, what BALANCED means when used to describe a wine other than “Me likes it lots”.
This thread was actually about the 2012 Kutch Flastaff. The ‘balanced’ semantics can wait for the next unavoidable IPOB/AFWE thread.
Jamie, you can save DavidZ’s bottle for whenever I get a chance to come visit the winery. i’ll be sure to follow up with notes.
Quite unfair to proclaim such on one bottles tasting (maybe if even, I would bet money you never had Kutch Falstaff) if you ask me. But then again, just the usual ‘you’. Being a schnoorer should be your biggest problem…
Jamie, don’t waste the bottle.
Brett,
Send me your address and I will send you David’s bottle he passed on.
As for Roumier, he uses (almost always) 100% whole cluster in his Musigny bottling in every vintage since 2000.
On another note, one of my top 3 favorite producers in Burgundy is Mugneret Gibourg. The sisters always 100% de-stem so for me, it’s not a stem only world that I drink in.
As for the premise that 100% stem inclusion or zero stem inclusion changes a wines balance doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I have never read nor heard before today either professionally nor enthusiastically that point.
You don’t think that its possible for a pinot to be thrown out of balance by overstemming? I have never read nor heard someone take THAT position. Surely you must believe that there is a point at which stem character becomes too pronounced?
Hmm… Well, you got me. Yes, I agree. It’s just not an absolute for me. Rarely do I find that too much stem character becomes too pronounced because of the producers I drink. I don’t buy the producers who don’t know how to manage stems (and there are a lot). So rarely do I find this point to be made.
I do understand your point though. Fortunately, I drink way above my pay grade.
Life is short, drink like it’s the last supper and drink what you love not what others love.
I was totally undecided about what I was going to drink tonight, but now I know…first bottle of Kutch I can lay my hands on. Doesn’t matter what. Could be Sonoma Coast. Could be Falstaff. Could be Rosé.
2013 Kutch Sonoma Coast is in my glass. I guess I am stem tolerant because it is beautiful.
DavidZ
Disclaimer as I have known Jamie for many years, and shared many bottles over many evenings and made many wines alongside of him on my journey.
The high Potassium content in the stems actually serves to RAISE the PH of the wine and LOWER the acidity. That’s sort of the point of including them actually, not to add green flavors, but to bring balance to the wine. Acids precipitate out of the solution faster with the stems present, and some tannins are imparted where there wouldn’t be any. Jamie’s inclusion of the stems in the ferment brings balance to the otherwise edgy Falstaff fruit. Jamie works with cool climate sights and he picks at less maturity than others, In my opinion the wines wouldn’t be very balanced without the stem inclusion… I saw the Falstaff fruit arrive at the winery in 2012 as well as all of his other fruit, tasted it out of the macro bins, tasted the ferments and the finished wines. They are effing legit.