Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Paul Draper is the original Rock Star of Wine America. Why do I make this unconventional and radical claim? Of course, the term comes from the title of my series of e-books about the underground rock star winemakers of America, and if you go to the Kindle Store you can already find ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1: Point of Entry featuring Very Bad PR (describing how I hooked up with America and wine in Baltimore back in 1985) and #2: AZ with MJK – I could Drink a Case of You (describing the wine industry of Arizona and staring Maynard James Keenan). When Paul joined Ridge Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco back in 1969 it was still an underground and an underground producer, although the winery’s roots went back to 1886 (from which year part of the complex of buildings dates). However, even today the lists of California Cult Cabernets that collectors, somms and journalists have in their heads rarely include the Monte Bello Cabernet-based red wine blend that has been Ridge’s top wine since the 1971 vintage. The reason is that the don’t fit the massive, ultra-ripe and often sweetish mold of this category

Ridge still doesn’t fit in, nor does Paul, 79, pictured above at the Weinstein wine bar in Berlin. He isn’t under any illusions about that, nor does it bug him at a ll, rather it is the role that he’s become so accustomed to that he can’t imagine anything else. The flip side of this is the global network of Ridge fans who understand very well how these wines tick and enormously appreciate the undoubting way that Paul and his team (most notably Eric Baugher and John Olney) have stuck with their moderately rich, subtle and elegant style of wine regardless of what the rest of California’s wine industry does, with its tendency to lemming-like behavior every time a new wine fashion becomes visible on the horizon.  Instead, they have refined the style that Paul developed and learned how to dodge the many curveballs that this special climate (Mediterranean type, but with serious fog, and up on top of Monte Bello wind too) throws at them.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the 2011 Monte Bello, by far the best Cabernet-based red I’ve tasted so far from this extremely difficult vintage in California. This was the result of excellent viticulture and choosing exactly the right harvesting date, immediately before the heavy rains that seriously damaged much of the crop in Napa Valley. For anyone skeptical as to whether a CA Cabernet-based blend can match Bordeaux for elegance here is the answer! In a vera different way Ridge’s single vineyard Zinfandel-based red wines from Sonoma County, Geyserville and Lytton Springs, beak another CA wine mold. They always avoiding any trace of the heaviness, portiness and bombastic dimensions that mar many reds from this grape. Instead, they are medium-full bodied wines with generous dry tannins and a wonderful spice character (Geyserville) and herbal freshness (Lytton Springs). The 2012s are wonderful examples of these wines and should age magnificently. If only I still had a few bottles of the great 1991s, the year that I first met Paul!

The starting point for his approach was the decision, “to look backwards to pre-industrial winemaking, rather than look forward to high-tech methods.” This choice was so stark, because the continuity of CA winemaking was broken by Prohibition from 1920 – 1930. Although the CA grape growing industry survived Prohibition fairly intact, and some grape growers made a pile of money by shipping their grapes across the country and selling them with packets of yeast, legal winemaking almost ceased in the state (only wine for Holy Communion was allowed). When the winemaking industry final gained some momentum again in the 1960s most winemakers felt the logical thing to do was science-based futurism. This had very mixed results, and many of the most interesting wines in the state are made by winemakers who chose divergent paths from this dogma. Paul was one of the first of them and to this day is a role model for young CA winemakers who dare to be different. The effects of his influence will surely continue for decades to come, regardless how much longer he remains active himself.

Wein & Glas is the Berlin distributor for Ridge, and Frederick Wildman is the New York distributor. The Ridge wines are distributed globally. For further information consult:

https://www.ridgewine.com

It’s just under 24 hours since I (kicking and screaming with reluctance) signed up with Facebook and was greeted with just over 1,000 emails from people asking to be my “friends” or congratulating me that I had finally seen the light, capitulated to the inevitable, and joined the biggest club on the planet with the lowest common denominator of any club on the planet. I know, that’s me being negative and what I ought to do is keep an open mind, give it a chance, see how it works out, etc. And I will do that (kicking and screaming with reluctance!)

All of this would hardly be worth mentioning if it hadn’t brought up something else, something that I also received a bunch of analog comments about (i.e. people actually spoke to me, I mean to my actual face!) You see, after spending 20 years living in Berlin and writing just about all my regular columns and some daring books in German I have a Stammpublikum, that is a hard core of regular fans who want to read and hear me in German. Dear Stammpublikum, honestly I have a lot sympathy for you. Those people who accuse me of leaving Berlin are talking out of their asses (not least because I own an apartment here and most of my stuff including an oversized wine cellar is here), but it is true that I have been writing more in English and rather less in German since New York became my second home. I know that many of you would have preferred for me to stick with German. If you urgently need a large dose of full-throttle Stuart Pigott in German, then please buy the current issue of Der Feinschmecker magazine (12/15) in which there is a big article by me about Berlin. There is also my regular column in FINE, and every two weeks I have a column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Indeed, this Sunday’s issue will contain the highlights of the year and that’s a must for German-speaking readers!

Why did I make the move to publishing e-books, in English? When, three years ago, I once again began spending a serious amount of time in places that my mother tongue is spoken I realized how much I had missed it, and how much easier it is for me to write in it. Most of my writer heroines and heroes wrote in English (Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Wolfgang Hilbig are important exceptions), and most of what I read is in English. I have a fluency in my mother tongue that extends from the last things I thought while writing this to my first memories and beyond all those things into the realm of imagination and dreams. This – and the technical possibilities for self-publishing on Kindle – made it possible to write ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2: AZ with MJK so fast that it came out just four days after the last events described in the book actually happened. Can you imagine how liberating that was? If not you might want to read the book. It is obtainable from the Kindle Store (just download the free Kindle app on your phone or tablet, then click on the link below):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018BWI9EM?keywords=Stuart%20Pigott&qid=1448210914&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

There is also the simple fact that it is easier to write about english-speakers in their own language. ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA is a series of e-pamphlets that each explores the underground winemaking of one American state in-depth. It would have been absurd to publish this material first in German, and waiting to simultaneously publish a German-langauge edition alongside the original English-language one would have slowed me down by several months. That is not shooting from the hip, the American way of doing things that belongs to this project as much as the logo above and below this story. I am now considering an offer from a potential translator (who I got to know through Facebook – it is good for something) and we’ll see if this is a viable proposition. I will certainly have to pass on the costs to readers, so expect a $9,99 cover price instead of $4,99 for the English-language original. However, the more pressing question is if it can successfully be translated, for the tone is a special variation of American-English incorporating some English-English elements. There are numerous American literary and rock music associations, every one of which a German translator would have to “get”. So, dear Stammpublikum I’m investigating the possibilities, but making no promises I don’t know if I can keep. Tut mir leid!

When I took a flight from the Wine Metropole Berlin to New York Wine City (NYWC) on this day three years ago I was definitely planning on beginning a new life, but dividing my time between two cities in the long term was not part of my plan. However, it only took a very short time before that was what I was doing, and now I’m not thinking about living any other way. If you scroll down to the postings below, then you will see what this life with one foot in Berlin and the other in NYWC has made possible for me. The motto of my latest writings, most importantly the series of short e-books ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA, is a three word phrase that sent a shiver of excitement through my teenage body when I first heard it: complete artistic freedom. And that’s why the Freedom Tower in New York is pictured at the top of this posting.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Berlin and it’s good to be back. However, many of the things that make modern Germany a great place were imported from the US during the immediate post-WWII years, most importantly of all the fundamental principals of the constitution, technically referred to as the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. The first words of the Basic Law (Article 1 – 1), Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority, represent a complete rejection of the disastrous situation in Germany during the Nazi period and the many atrocities committed by that state (and many German people, often with the assistance or collusion of non-Germans) during those 12 years. This is the foundation stone of the openness of Berlin, although much else has become allied to that principal that encourages that openness. Nowhere in Germany does the process by which positive thoughts and actions grow out of, and become associated with, this fundamental principal function better. That has a lot to do with the city’s division by the Berlin Wall from August 1961 thru November 1989 and the enormous efforts made since then to bring the two sides fully together, a process that has been extremely successful.

It’s a great place for me to live for these reasons, but it is a great place me to work because of another principal enshrined within the Basic Law (Article 5 – 1), Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting…shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. This also represents a radical rejection of the situation during the Nazi period, and was no less inspired by an American example (the Bill of Rights of 1789). This principal has also put down deep roots in Germany, and nowhere does this function better than in Berlin, the seat of government, as the German media’s extensive and fearless reporting of the NSA affair clearly shows.

Germany wouldn’t be what it is today without the influence of America and Germany (including those Germans with anti-American sentiments – though they may not want to admit it) knows that. At some point soon I will write about the influence of Germany on America, which is less obvious, unknown to many Americans and seldom acknowledged. First, though it’s time for some serious reporting from the Wine Metropole Berlin!

There has been some suggestion that the portrait on the cover of my new Kindle e-book ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2: AZ with MJK is not of the singer-winemaker Maynard James Keenan (Puscifer & Tool / Caduceus Cellars & Merkin Vineyards). The reason that some people have jumped to the conclusion seems to be that in Angelyn Cabrales portrait he is shown smiling. So there seems to be a need to put the record straight. The cover image is based on the above photograph of MJK that I took in The Bunker, aka Caduceus Cellars in Jerome, Arizona on November 15th, 2014, and as you can see from it he does smile just like everybody else! To learn more about the man, his wines and the Arizona wine industry that he is a vital part of click on the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018BWI9EM?keywords=Stuart%20Pigott&qid=1448210914&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

This also seems like an opportune moment to explain that the portrait on the book’s cover is a work of embroidery, a stitched drawing and collage of fabrics. Angelyn Cabrales developed this technique and circular format herself although she is still a student at The College of New Jersey. The design of the book’s cover is also her work, although it is modeled on the cover that Alexandra Weiss of Bad Dürkheim in Germany did for #1 in this series of outrageous tales about America, wine and I. Research for #3 about the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York continues this very day!

I am feeling enormously relieved after completing a writing marathon that was the reason for the long radio silence here. You see, I was almost totally preoccupied by the intense last days of writing and corrections to my e-book ROCK STAR OF WINE AMERICA #2: AZ with MJK: I Could Drink a Case of You. Finally in the early hours of this morning it went on sale at the Kindle Store at Amazon. Please note that if you don’t own a Kindle all you need to do is download the free Kindle app on your device, then head to the Kindle Store. Here is the link to the right page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018BWI9EM?keywords=Stuart%20Pigott&qid=1448210914&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Unlike #1 that was set in the Baltimore of 1985, ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2 describes events in Arizona and NYC stretching from November 14th, 2014 thru November 17th, 2015. It’s hard for me to imagine how a book can be more up to date than this, yet also takes it’s subject seriously. My subject is the wine industry of Arizona – one of the ultimate “wrong” places for grape growing and winemaking in America – the singer-winemaker Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer & Toole and Caduceus Cellars & Merkin Vineyards, and other leading winemakers in the state like Kent & Lisa Callaghan of Callaghan Winery and Todd & Kelly Bostock of Dos Cabezas Wineworks. They are true American pioneers and this is a rock ‘n’ roll tale that massively pushes the envelope of what a wine book can be. If you want a regular wine book this work is not for you. However, if you are looking for excitement and adventure then follow Hunter S. Thompson’s recommendation, “buy the ticket, take the trip.”

A colleague of mine in Germany, Stephan Reinhardt, who writes for The Wine Advocate got wind of this column’s forthcoming appearance and wrote on twitter #tickingbomb. Well, here’s the explosion!

It’s not without some good reason that I sometimes get referred to as the  “Riesling Guy” or even, “Mr. Riesling”. My fascination with that grape is decades old and the STUART PIGOTT RIESLING GLOBAL logo that stood at the top of this blog for two and a half years still appears at the bottom of appropriate postings. The other side of this is that a bunch of people around the world also say that I hate Chardonnay, or even that I just don’t understand it, but this is complete. Sure, I hate what I call Bullshit Chardonnay, that is the crudely oaky and/or sweet and/or alcoholic wines with Chardonnay printed on the label, although often 25% of something else in the bottle. That’s entirely legal in the US. However, I love elegant Chardonnay just as much as I do good Riesling or Pinot Noir (aka Spätburgunder / Blauburgunder in the German speaking world). Although there are other grape varieties that can give wonderful wines in cool climate regions, to my mind this is the most important trio for that kind of grape growing location.

I was recently reminded of all this by Rajat Parr of Santa Barbara, California who kindly sent me samples of his 2013 vintage Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs sold under the Sandhi (made from bought in grapes) and Domaine de la Côte (made from grapes his own vineyards) labels. Here in NYWC (New York Wine City) these are mega-cool wines often revered in a manner someone outside the wine scene of this fair city would find hard to image. I really wouldn’t be surprised to see graffiti here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn saying, “Rajat is God, according to the same principal that back in the ’60s and early ’70 Eric Clapton’s fans wrote graffiti saying, Clapton is God. (Anyone interested to read my own opinion of these wines just needs to scroll down this page). Unfortunately, most of the comment about this was analog – people actually spoke to me! – and I therefore can’t provide links to it, but being so straight about my skepticism about the balance of the Sandhi and Domaine de la Côte wines certainly had a polarizing effect on the citizens of NYWC and far beyond!

This whole situation raised the question if California produces elegant Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at all. Rather by chance last night Ed Thralls of the Thralls winery in Windsor, Sonoma County (pictured above) provided me with a conclusive positive answer to that question. His 2013 Antonio Mountain Chardonnay is the most distinctive new wine from this grape I’ve encountered in a couple of years. Sleek and firm with a lemon character that’s at once intense and subtle (anyone luck enough to have eaten a lemon from the Amalfi coast of Italy will know what I’m talking about) it reinvents Chardonnay elegance in a style I didn’t even imagine would be possible. The 14% alcohol is balanced by a vivid acidity, and the harmony is so good I wouldn’t have had trouble draining a whole bottle by myself. When did I last say that about a Chardonnay that costs $35 a bottle from the winery, and not much more on the shelf? What makes this all the more extraordinary is that before yesterday afternoon I’d never heard of Ed Thralls and his wines.

Thralls’ Pinot Noirs are no less original, the 2013 Anderson Valley bottling having seen exactly 0% new oak. The cherry and raspberry fruit aromas of this wine have an uplifting freshness and a delicacy that I found very enticing, and as I lingered over it a herbal note developed that perfectly fitted the rather medium body and moderately dry tannins. It is the same price as the Chardonnay described above, and even Thralls top Pinot Noir, the 2012 Bucher Vineyard from the heart of the Russian River Valley will only sting you for $45. Here you can smell a hint of spice from the oak, but the wine manages to be rich and filigree with a fragrance that had me hooked from the first sniff. (Frederick Wildman is the NYWC distributor).

As you can see, I don’t like Chardonnay or Pinot Noir and I don’t understand them – BEWARE: HEAVY DUTY INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH IRONY IN USE!

Again by chance, the Taste Ontario NYC event was just a few days after my encounter with Rajat Parr and his wines. Of course, there is a very major climatic difference between the Santa Rita Hills of Santa Barbara County in California and both the Niagara Peninsula and Prince Edward County in Ontario where Norman Hardie (pictured above) makes what I think are North America’s most original cool climate Chardonnays. His two bottlings of Chardonnay from those two locations of the 2013 vintage are arguably the best wines of his career. They clock in at barely 12% and have a brilliance that is hard to describe with regular vocabulary without resorting to cliche’s. The 2013 Niagara Chardonnay is the more energetic and challenging of the two – here the brilliance has a diamond-like edge to it – and the 2013 County Chardonnay has a more gentle and caressing mouthfeel. Both have a saline quality that I regard as genuinely mineral, and a flinty aroma many professional tastes call mineral, but I prefer not to make fancy claims about like that. BOth these wines retail for around $30 (Artisan Wines is the NYWC distributor).

In a rather more generous and supple way Thomas Bachelder’s Chardonnays from the Niagara Peninsula are also genuinely stylish. Here is another alternate vision of the elegance that this grape’s wines are capable of. The 2013 Wismer Winfield #1 Chardonnay has floral notes and a great balance of lemony freshness and discrete creaminess. I could barely detect the oak and on that point too this was the exact opposite of Bullshit Chardonnay and the clichéd recipe winemaking behind that category. (Bachelder is new with Wildman in NYWC). I don’t want to be unkind, but a wine journalist ought to have an opinion, and in my opinion these three wineries are doing very much what Rajat Parr says he’s do with Chardonnay in Santa Barbara, but all too often fails to achieve.

Elegant Chardonnay is a special winemaking discipline and it is incompatible with the demands of wine fashions. Instead, it demands a vision of winemaking style and the right techniques in both the vineyard and the cellar to make this kind of balance possible. Push something too far in either of those places and you will fail. Here are some great successes that are also affordable!

PS For those of you searching for Riesling content. Norman Hardie told me that he expected to pick his Prince Edward County Riesling grapes in 5 days, and if he stuck to that plan then he’s picking tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th!

Note: I seem to have a major talent for getting myself into trouble. Trying to appease the cockroaches of the nation led to a storm of protest from New York’s who felt that I was entirely lacking in sympathy for them in their daily lives, which often also involve encounters with cockroaches. I have even been accused of being a foreign agent guilty sympathizing with the enemy. Bill de Blasio’s office didn’t call, but I was told in no uncertain terms, that if I didn’t desist, then I would incur his wrath. I promise you that the last thing on my mind when all this started was taking sides in a dispute that is so old and that awakens such visceral reactions. So now I have to apologize to both sides. Just to make it all crystal clear: Yes, I do know what a large cockroach looks likes (I have decades of experience), yes, I have encountered them unexpectedly (a huge one once ran over my hand) and I have had to deal with them. However, due to the prior complaint from the other side of this equation I’m leaving the text below to stand as I wrote it.

When I wrote ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1: Point of Entry featuring Very Bad PR I had no idea what I was unleashing upon an unsuspecting world, much less how this would come back like a boomerang flying straight at me! As well as a lot of more or less positive comments that were nice to hear, I have received a long letter of complaint from the attorneys representing the American Association of Cockroaches (AAC). No, I’m not talking about the professional body of cockroach exterminators, nor even the club of those people who keep them as pets and breed them. The complaint comes direct from the cockroaches themselves, and they appear to be well organized since they have some rather high-powered legal representation. This is the reason I have to be precise in what I say.

The problem seems to have arisen through the appearance of two cockroaches, both already dead, in my story. I felt that they played spectacular roles in the story and that this would be positive for this often reviled category of creature (of which there are many sepcies). I’m not going to risk the B-word with three letters as that could lead to yet be construed as being pejorative and lead to yet more trouble! Let me make it plain, I am not anti-cockroach. If I find any in my NYC home, then I put them out rather than killing them as most people do. It was in this spirit of live and let live that I wrote my story, and mentioned my two cockroach co-stars in all the publicity material about ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1. This appears to be how they found out about my work, downloaded the free Kindle app on their cellphones and tablets, then purchased it through the Kindle Store on www.amazon.com. After reading it many of them felt insulted. Clearly, the PARENTAL ADVISORY Explicit Content logo on the cover did not in any way alter how they felt about my work.

The AAC’s position is that by only including dead cockroaches in my story and in situations where they create moments of shock and suffering for the human characters who encounter them my new work disseminates a negative characterization of their members. Please don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not dismissing this argument and if my work were one of fiction, then I would seriously consider adding some living and attractive cockroach characters to create a more balanced picture as the AAC demands. However, mine is a work of non-fiction and a product of journalism. I have tried to tell the truth, in the events I describe only two cockroaches appeared and they were both dead. That is the reason I’m not willing to go back and add living and attractive cockroach characters to the story. That would be a falsification of the truth. However, I understand the pain that this news, and I hereby officially apologize to all cockroaches who feel that my story has insulted them and their like. This was entirely unintentional, and should cockroaches appear in my work in the future I will consider this question carefully.

This last point is going to get me into more trouble with the AAC, but anyone who wishes to read my work and make up their own mind should click on the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/ROCK-STARS-WINE-AMERICA-featuring-ebook/dp/B015QQWTKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443094170&sr=1-1&keywords=Stuart+Pigott