New York Wine Diary: Day 19 – Rajat Paar, the Man Behind “American Burgundy”

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Stuart

I’m sitting in my “country cottage” in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a glass of the 2013 Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir from Rajat Parr’s Sandhi Wines in Lompoc, Santa Barabara County California. Although the bottle was opened 8 days ago it’s still full of life, and I will probably kill it while I’m writing this posting. However, one thing is for sure, this wine is about as far away from those sunny Claifornia, “good, good, good, good vibrations,” as wine can get. This is a deadly serious wine that is also seriously daring and extremely cool in NYWC (New York Wine City) where skepticism of California wines is deeply rooted and endemic. Typically, they are regarded as fat and heavy, but Rajat Parr’s wines are exactly the opposite of that. In fact, I think that I should warn you not to mess with this Dude – I mean the wine! – unless you are prepared for a taste experience that is set on a collision course with mainstream Californian wine. The roads fork here and the man pictured above is in good part responsible for that situation! Depending on your NYWC perspective he is either the devil incarnate or he is the savior of California wine. Middle ground? Don’t be stupid! This is NYWC – the Center of the Known Wine Universe – and the future of California wine, the most high-profile American wine is at stake!

Perhaps that might seem like a critical statement, even an attack on Rajat Parr, but I assure you that it’s nothing of the kind. It’s my attempt to grasp a complex situation that Rajat has in part created, and that to a greater part developed around him in ways he couldn’t control. That basic situation is true of anyone who sticks their neck out, as I’m well aware having stuck my neck out a long way many times. I first met Rajat in Vienna back in June 2012, but that was at the Slanted Door Restaurant (of San Francisco, California) pop up during the hectic VieVinum wine fair. It was crowded, there was (rightly) much excitement about Charles Phan’s food (about as far removed from the Wiener Schnitzel as you can get) and no chance to talk at length. Then, by a slightly elliptical route I received samples of the 2013 wines from Sandhi Wines and Domaine de la Côte and a lunch invitation from Rajat Parr. At Restaurant Boulud Sud not far from Columbus Circle, where I took the picture above. I found him to be charming – a word I try to avoid using at all possible costs – and a very relaxed gourmet. However, he also said a bunch of stuff that made it clear how serious and determined he is, to the point where I struggled to make sense of the man, the phenomenon. Let me state it plainly, what Rajat is doing is NOT part of the regular world of the California wine industry.

I’m also still seriously struggling to make sense of the wines, and I began tasting the Chardonnays from Sandhi Wines (all made from bought in grapes like the Pinot Noir reds) 11 days ago. Those dry whites were pretty challenging, and I was much less impressed by them than the reds from both of Rajat’s labels. First of all, it was a shock to taste Chardonnays that were lighter in alcohol and higher in acidity than is normal for dry German Rieslings in this century. You see, in the past it was always the other way around, even if the Chardonnays came from that grape and Pinot Noir’s homeland Burgundy. To be frank, if they hadn’t taste so strongly of the lees (techie term for the yeast that settles to the bottom of the barrel/tank after fermentation is completed) then they would have been seriously lean, tart and sometimes green. I like that lees character, but I wondered if the wines weren’t way too dependent upon it to halfway harmonize. And the regular 2013 Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay struck me as just plain thin. Sorry, but I’d rather drink the “basic” Santa Barabra County Chardonnay from Au Bon Climat winery than any of these wines. And I promise you I am not afraid of acidity!

I spent a lot of time and trouble trying to figure out the Pinot Noirs from Sandhi and Doamine de la Côte, because they were so heterogeneous. Not without reason did Bruce Schoenfeld write in his The Wrath of Grapes article published in New York Times at the end of May this year that these wines tasted as if they came from several wineries. The only thing that they had in common (also with Rajat’s Chardonnays) was low alcohol and high acidity. Here the balance of the wines is less challenging though, but the only category of California wines that they fit into is the new IPOB (In Pursuit of Balance) one, a style and an association of winemakers that Rajat was a co-creator of. Once again, the crucial question is just how good do these wines taste, and my answer can’t be a simple thumbs up or thumbs down because of their diversity.

The most exciting of them for me was the relatively full-bodied (13% alcohol is the high end of the scale for Rajat’s wines that often have less than 12%) 2013 Memorious Pinot Noir, a wine that had some richness and tannic power as well as aromatic delicacy. At about $60 retail this is a modestly priced wine from Rajat’s range compared with the 2013 La Côte Pinot Noir at just under $100 a bottle. Much as I liked the elegance of that wine it did not blow my socks off, even in terms of subtlety (and it is subtle). Returning to the example of Au Bon Climat, winemaker Jim Clendenen’s top Pinot Noir, the ravishing Isabelle, averages $49 per bottle retail according to wine-searcher.com. That makes it a steal compared to Rajat’s wines.

Of course, everybody has to decide what they want and what they’re prepared to pay for it. All the Sandhi and Domaine de la Côte wines extremely well made and most of them are very distinctive, but you have to be willing to pay a serious price for any of them. In spite of that, during our conversation Rajat said that, “maybe Domaine de la Côte will never be commercially viable.” This combination of high prices and a weak bottom line struck me as pretty crazy, and it can only be explained by the extremely low yields. He quoted a yield of 0.77 tons per acre for the 2015 La Côte Pinot Noir, or just under 12 hectoliters per hectare. I translate the yield into the European measure, because as the label for this wine shows, the reference point for Rajat is entirely European. Looking at the Burgundian style label I again feel confused. It looks like a pastiche, but according to Rajat it is a homage. For me it’s a positive thing to have role models and to use them both as an inspiration and as a measuring stick for your own progress. However, this looks very literal, almost like a slavish copy.

Having a label designed for a California wine that looks totally Burgundian is one thing,  making wines in California that taste something like Burgundy is another. The obstacles to that begin with the facts that Burgundy is at about 47° North and has a mildly continental climate, whereas the Rajat’s vineyards are at about 34° 30′ North and, being only 8-9 miles from the Pacific Coast, have a distinctly maritime climate. That divergence in growing conditions is massive, but only the most obvious of the many obstacle to achieving such a goal, because there are a ton of other differences between Burgundy and California. The question I can’t get out of my head is whether Rajat’s isn’t trying too hard to imitate Burgundy under conditions where this is simply impossible. Has he made himself a slave to the role model wines that he loves? Is he pushing the envelope of elegance way too far and too hard? I ask those questions as someone who also has a tendency to try too hard and push the envelope way too far.

I haven’t quite finished that bottle of Sandhi Pinot Noir, although I have been enjoying it, but this is one complex story, and I just saw a completely different angle I could have used to writing it. Maybe tomorrow, if I can find the time and the ideas develop in an interesting way I will write that story too. Rajat is a very complex guy and the ramifications of what he’s doing are much greater than his critics (Robert Parker being the most prominent) give him credit for. And for the first time in many years I described someone as “charming” and “serious”.

 

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New York Wine Diary: Day 17 – Dry Austrian Riesling Past & Present, and Nearly Always Great!

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Stuart

Although Austria is one of the most important producers of dry Riesling on Planet Wine the profile of these wines varies enormously from market to market, and here in the USA is well below the relative prominence and popularity of Grüner Veltliner. This was no doubt the reason that the Austrian Wine Marketing Board staged a very ambitious tasting of these wines that covered all the significant producing regions, and spanned the vintages 2013 back to 1990. The 1990s was the period of fastest growth in the vineyard area planted with Riesling in Austria (and it still continues to grow, if at a slightly slower pace), and was also the period of my most intense involvement with these wines, so there was a personal reason for me to be seriously interested to taste these wines.

Although just 4.06% (2009 figures from Statistics Austria) of the nation’s vineyards compared with Grüner Veltliner’s 29.4%, much of the latter produces everyday quaffing wine and almost nobody is making that kind of wine from Riesling in Austria (here the contrast with Germany is striking!) With Riesling Austrian winemaker are focusing on producing good to top quality. Combine this with the fact that, in contrast to just about every other Riesling producing nation/region, Austria is making almost exclusively dry wines and you can see why these are way more important for the nation than that 4.06% suggests. However, there are also massive differences in the degree of commitment to Riesling of the various regions. 16.4% of the Wachau’s vineyards are planted with Riesling, the figures for the Kamptal, Kremstal and Wien (Vienna) are 9.4%, 10.3% and 13.7% respectively. At the other end of the scale in Mittelburgenland – the heart of the homeland of the red Blaufränkisch grape – it is just 0.16%, or about one hundredth of the regions specializing in Riesling!

Of course, the important thing is how the wines taste, and the excellent 2013 vintage is the right place for those Riesling drinkers unfamiliar with these wines to start. 2013 was a cool vintage, but those growers with a good standard of vineyard cultivation who picked late ended up with wines around 13% and a bright acidity . The 2013 Heiligenstein “Atle Reben” from Jurtschitisch in Langenlois, Kamptal is a beautifully elegant example with great subtlety of aroma and flavor, entirely drinkable now but with many years of life ahead of it. The 2008 Heiligenstein “Alte Reben” (old vines) from Willi Bründlmayer also in Langenlois showed how brilliantly wines like this can age. It still had bright peach and grapefruit aromas, and a racy finale with serious mineral intensity.

In warm years like 2011 dry Austrian Rieslings like the Steiner Kögl from Salomon Undhof in Stein, Kremstal can push 14%  alcoholic content with the power and richness that brings, also the much softer acidity that comes with those things, but still have a really satisfying balance. Those wines can also age very well as the 2003 Reserve from Müller-Grossmann in Palt, Kremstal, a wine from a very hot year that still has great citrusy freshness. It is this style that is more widely associated with Austrian dry Riesling and Germany very rarely come up with wines of this type, so there is something unique about it in Europe.

Inevitably, it was the older wines in the tasting that took the limelight. For Willi Klinger, head of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, the 1997 Achleiten “Smaragd” from the Domaine Wachau – it is that region’s co-operative winery – was particularly significant, because he was the director of that winery when this wine was made. Although this was quite a warm year that wine had a moderate 13% alcohol and at 18 years of age was delicate and filigree in flavor with a had impeccable balance. No less exciting and lively were the more powerful and concentrated 1999 Loibenberg “Smaragd” from F.X. Pichler in Loiben, Wachau (conclusively disproving the rumor this producer’s wines don’t age well), and the 1997 Steinrigl “Smaragd” from Prager in Weissenkirchen, Wachau that was simultaneously mellow and energizing. I vividly remember these wines when they were young and they have kept all the promises they made back then when Planet Wine was a very different place to what it is today.

What more do you want from mature dry white wine?

Photo of the Achleiten & Klaus sites of Weissenkirchen, Wachau by Gerhard Elze

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New York Wine Diary: Day 14 – Ernst Loosen Pushes the Mosel Riesling Envelope Yet Again

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Stuart

In more or less it’s present form the GG (Grosses Gewächs) category of single-vineyard dry German wines goes back to the 2002 vintage, and during those years a bunch of things about this category have become standard practice to the point where they strike many people in the German wine scene as carved in stone and therefore beyond all discussion. One of those things is the principal that because the rules state the release of the GGs may not happen before September 1st of the year after the vintage that this is when those wines must be released. Although this is a major advance over the situation beforehand in which high-end dry Rieslings were sometimes being rushed onto the market less than 6 months after the grapes were picked, there is no evidence to back up the argument that making these wines so they can be sold from September 1st after the harvest is always ideal. In fact, September 1st has become the standard because most of the wine merchants and restaurants in Germany want to get their hands on these wines as soon as they can, according to the ancient motto SELL! SELL!! SELL!!!

That’s why what Ernst Loosen of the Dr. Loosen estate in Bernkastel on the Mosel, pictured above, is doing is so important. He’s question what the ideal way to make these powerful dry wines really is. Already his “regular” Riesling GGs don’t fit into the regular time frame, because they are released on November 1st after the vintage, and with the 2011 vintage he has created two new categories: GG Reserve that is aged for two years longer before release, and GG Hommage that will aged many years longer before sale. Of the latter category not one bottle has so far left the Dr. Loosen cellars except for tastings. “I think we will probably release the first of them, the 2011 Hommage from the Ürziger Würzgarten in 2021,” Ernst said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world to do. In today’s hectic wine world in which modern cellar technology makes it possible to bring wine to market within weeks of the harvest this is really seriously abnormal!

There’s much more though. To understand what he’s doing properly you have to realize that Ernst’s not just hanging on to these wines longer, that is being more patient, these dry Rieslings are spending almost the entire time until bottling sitting in the traditional Mosel Fuder (1,ooo liter / 263 gallon) barrels on the full deposit of yeast left from fermentation, also called gross lees. By not disturbing the lees, much less regularly stirring them (what the French call batonage), and this means that for at least two year much of that yeast remains alive, helping to keep the wine fresh and gently “feeding” it as they very slowly breaks down. This is the way Ernst’s great-grandfather Peter Loosen made his dry wines (he only made dry wines until 1953). Of course, this is an interesting and highly unusual method, but the proof is in the tasting, and yet more importantly in the drinking.

That’s why the tasting Ernst staged this afternoon at the Aldo Sohm Wine Bar in NYWC (New York Wine City) was so important. He provided two chances to compare three of these wines, of which the first comparison was the vital one for seeing what the difference between the same wine after one year on the full lees, two years on the full lees and three years on the lees are. Those three wines were all dry 2011 Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling GGs and were made from the same lot of grape juice picked in one corner of that site. The first of them was the “regular” version of this wines (one year), the second the Reserve (two years) and the third the Hommage (three years). The first of these was clearly the most developed of the trio and a little bit rustic compared with the others, but full of the herbal and berry character typical for this site with its red volcanic soil. The Reserve version was so much fresher, but also more elegant with more precisely delineated flavors, and to drink now the most pleasing. Then came the massive, almost monolithic and very closed Hommage. Those are not just my comments either, but were echoed by the other tasters, each of us finding our own words but coming to a very similar conclusion. Consumers often think this kind of unanimity is the norm in the wine scene, but actually it is really rare.

The second demonstration was the row of the 2012 Riesling GG “Alte Reben” Reserves from the Wehlener Sonnenuhr (grey slate soil), Ürziger Würzgarten and Erdener Prälat (red slate soil) sites, pictured above, that are about to be released on November 1st. They were bottled about one year ago and have been aged in bottle since then. The premium you will pay for this extended ageing process is about 100%. For example, according to winesearcher.com the regular Riesling GG “Alte Reben” from the Ürziger Würzgarten averages $37 retail. The Reserve version will therefore retail for about $75. But on to that crucial factor, the taste! The differing characteristics of these three sites were very clearly apparent. Although the Sonnenuhr didn’t have the floral notes many wines from this site that are bottled young show, it did have the peachy fruit and the combination of ripeness and sleekness. Likewise, the Würzgaren was true to its name – it means spice garden – reminding me of the smell of spices being roasted in a hot dry pan. There was also the hint of dried strawberry that sometimes enabled me to recognize the wines from this site in blind tastings. It was very complex, warm and cool elements mingling and a hint of wild strawberry. In contrast the Prälat was massive and much more reserved, and in spite of its abundant power and concentration still finished fresh. By the way, all of the wines described above clock in at between 12% and 13% alcohol; analytically they are not monsters by any means.

Any readers still suffering from the prejudice that dry Mosel Rieslings are lean and tart and therefore a mistake need to experience these wines. Possibly, some of the decision makers in the VDP producers association that governs the production of the GG wines also urgently need to taste them. It seems that some of them would prefer that Ernst Loosen didn’t push the Mosel Riesling envelope and didn’t make the best dry wines from the Middle section of the Mosel Valley in living memory as he is now doing!

 

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New York Wine Diary: Day 11 – Dear Citizens of Planet PR, please help me!

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Stuart

Dear Citizens of Planet PR,

I thought that I understood you rather well, but now I realize that I may have completely  misunderstood you. I first encountered PR men and women more than 30 years ago, and I promise you that, unlike many of my colleagues, I have a basically positive impression of your profession. Right from the beginning I befriended PR people and I still have friends in PR, in fact, I met up with some of them just yesterday afternoon. I promise you that I’m not just talking about Facebook “friends” either! This means that over decades I was given an insiders’ view of PR and how it work, and I found all of this really fascinating. And that’s why I’m at a loss for words.

You see, the title of my first e-book for Kindle is ROCK STARS OF AMERICA #1 – Point of Entry featuring Very Bad PR and among other things this is arguably the ultimate how-not-to guide to PR. However, so far I got almost zero response to its publication from PR people, even my friends who are PR people. So, today I’m writing all citizens of Planet PR to ask if I have misunderstood you, or if I have accidentally insulted to all in some way that I can’t begin to understand.

Let me stress once again that I am anything but anti-PR. Unlike many of my colleagues I never felt that I was a victim of PR. I understand that the name of your profession says that it is the public, at least certain specific segments of the public, that you are after. I am merely a means to reach certain groups – and with 500,000 plus hits per month so is this blog! – and I am therefore not the target of your work in the direct sense. What you want is to reach me in a way that will make me reach your target audience. And, of course, I am often dependent upon you for introductions, contacts, samples, or information without which often my work won’t funtion. There is a mutual dependence I have no fundamental problem with.

So please enlighten me as to my failings, or those of my new work, if you can. If you feel positively about my new work, then of course I’d be pleased to hear that too, but finding out if I went wrong this e-book and where I went wrong is more important. You see it is the first in a long series and I am already well advanced writing #2. Should you not yet have read my ultimate how-not-to guide to PR, but want to then just click on this 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

 

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New York Wine Diary: Day 7 – Yes, But…

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Stuart

As regular readers know, this blog has a positive attitude, and is always on the look out for good news, but this doesn’t mean that I will ever look the other way when there is bad news, or try to ignore uncomfortable truths rather than face them. That would mean being in denial, a self-destructive state that is also dangerous for those around the person or group who are in denial. Only facing the past and dealing with the present make the future better, and they can be painful processes. When you do that it can sometimes feel like you’ve slammed into a brick wall, and that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.

Life is not always a rose garden or a sunny vineyard and for me there’s no alternative to acknowledging this and acting accordingly. As Angelo Gaja of Barbaresco, Piemont – Italy’s most famous winegrower – once said to me, “unfortunately every side of a hill doesn’t face south.” And of course, if you own the whole hill there’s no point in pretending that the north side gets enough sun to grow wine on. Therefore I must ask for your patience for a few days until I’ve make it over my personal hill from the north side to the south side. When the light of inspiration has gone on again you will hear from me at length and in detail. Many thanks!

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New York Wine Diary: Day 2 – A Look in the Rear-View Mirror at 1990 (Mouton, Chapoutier and Riesling)

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Stuart

Drinking wine is always to some extent about looking back through the rear-view mirror at the past, because the wine in your glass didn’t just miraculously form there, rather, in the more or less distant past somebody made it then put it in that bottle. Even – a heretical statement I know! – so-called “natural” wines have all been made and bottled by someone, even if she or he’s claiming to have a direct line to God, can literally feel the Force, or has the hots for the divine. Good, bad and ugly wines are all made.

Of course, you can do this rear-view mirror thing more systematically as a group of friends and I did on my last night in Berlin, by focusing on one particular vintage. We Berliners picked 1990 because just the it was the other day that there was the 25th anniversary of German reunification on October 3rd, 1990. I’d missed the Berlin Wall coming down, because I had terrible spinal problems in the summer and fall of 1989, but on October 2nd 1990 I rose early at my apartment in Bernkastel on the Mosel and set off by train Berlin (a 12 hour journey back then!) to experience the celebrations there that night. At the very moment of reunification, midnight of the night October 2nd to 3rd I passed through the Brandenberg Gate at the center of a peaceful crowd estimated to be one million strong. The best thing of all was that the PA system was too weak for us to be able to hear the politicians pontificating about their great achievement and the momentous historic moment; perfect!

1990 was also an excellent vintage for German Riesling – arguably the first of the current Golden Age – and I stashed a lot away as a result. However, during the intervening 25 years there were plenty of opportunities to open those bottles, and so my stocks are now down to the point where I could just about offer a selection of these wines. A couple of friends were in the same situation, some of them having high-end French reds that I hadn’t bought back then, so we clubbed together and invited a handful more people who we felt would really appreciate the wines to join us in the Kurpfalz Weinstuben in Berlin. That’s where the photograph above (taken by my dentist Gerhard Gneist, like all the following pictures) was taken. I’m holding the first wine of the evening, the 1990 Dunkley red from England (!), a wine that was theoretically made from Pinot Noir grapes and was just about alive.

After this bizarre start to the evening we turned our attention to more serious red wines, including the 1990 Château Mouton-Rothschild with the painting by Francis Bacon on the label – the Irish painter died just before the wine was released and the painting had been lying in a draw at Mouton for years – and its smaller brother from the Medoc, Bordeaux the 1990 Château Clerc-Milon. The 1990 Mouton was darker in color, more youthful and more oaky in aroma, more powerful and tannic in taste than the 1990 Clerc-Milon, but opinion in the group was divided as to whether all this “more” made it better. I was one of the group who preferred the more elegant and harmonious taste of the smaller brother; a delicious glass of wine, if not mind-blowing. More than anything else it was the characteristic aroma of roasting coffee beans of the 1990 Mouton that either turned us on or off the Mouton according to our personal taste. The real competitor to it was the 1990 Hermitage La Sizeranne from the house of Chapoutier in the Northern Rhône, a wine of peppery power and great balance. The wines from this producer today are much more flashy and bigger than this, and I wonder if they will age anything like as this one did.

Then we switched to German Riesling and the change was like going from day to night, because of the enormous freshness of the 1990 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Auslese from Weingut Willi Schaefer in the Mosel. I remember this as a young wine and it always had the same diamond-like brilliance and positive hardness (it has a stack of acidity!) that it did the other evening in Berlin. Blind I would have guessed it to be no more than half it’s actual age. nobody was hesitant about praising this wine and it was a tough moment when the last drops were poured from the bottle. My guess is that in another 10 or even 20 years this masterpiece of Mosel vitality and delicacy will taste just as good!

Then came a pair of Gold Cap, i.e. best barrel bottlings of Auslese that were truly extraordinary. The 1990 Kiedricher Gräfenberg Riesling Auslese Gold Cap from Robert Weil in the Rheingau was an opulent wine packed with dried apricot aroma and at least as much power as the 1990 Mouton had in its very different way. Here was a wine of the kind that win blind tastings, and not without good reason. As imposing as it was, I was completely bowled over by the 1990 Erdener Prälat Riesling Auslese Gold Cap from Dr. Loosen in the Mosel, because here there was no fat on its sinewy and tautly muscular body. As Paula Sidore of www.weinstory.de said, it tasted of the peach stone rather than the flesh of the peach. To me it tasted as mineral as any wine gets, and this component of the wine seemed to soak up the sweetness (not high) in it completely, so that it tasted totally clean and invigorating. As I swallowed the first sip of it the 25 years seemed to dissolve for a moment. Then I realized that all I was doing was looking in a rear-view mirror that was turned in a particularly favorable direction, and the next morning I would have to pack my bags and fly to New York…

Many thanks to Rainer Schultz of the Kurpfalz Weinstuben who will be retiring at the end of October after 40 years at Berlin’s most historic wine bar. Much of that history he wrote!

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Berlin Wine Diary: Day 7 – How I Stole the Ideas for ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA from Rock Star American Winemakers

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Stuart

Good writers steal all their best ideas, but then they give them a twist the person they took them from would never have thought of. In this kind of way I got the idea for ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA from Randall Grahm (pictured above on the big day), the charmingly crazy and sensationally creative winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyards of Santa Cruz in California, who I first met at the winery on March 2nd, 1992. That day he told me that California should, “make wines that celebrate our image.” When I asked him what his home state’s advantages for winemaking he told me, “1) lack of history, 2) flexibility, 3) cheap land, 4) sunshine.”  Beginning with his Rhône-style red Le Cigare Volante (first vintage 1984) he’s built one successful one new wine brand after the other, later selling some of them for stacks of millions, only to move on to the next daring high risk project.

At lunchtime on November 18th 2013 we sit next to one another in The Breslin Restaurant in the ACE Hotel on just off Broadway. After presenting his new wines to a small group of people from NYWC (New York Wine City) Randall became very quiet and thoughtful. Suddenly the words popped out that were to set me thinking, then traveling and writing. “Nobody’s written about the sea change in the wine industry. 20 years ago it was much more idealistic. People in the wine industry wanted meaning and now they want money. OK, I’m interested in both. Now there’s a cynicism and self-consciousness, and a sense of randomness…The weird thing is 20 years ago your job as a winemaker was to make a really great wine. If you did, then you sold it. Now you don’t know if you can sell it! Then you’ve got all the new shock labels. Is that how you sell wine now?”

Finally, he rather sheepishly acknowledged that, of course, he was responsible for some of the first eccentric wine labels. Some of them were sitting on the table in front of us! That only made what he said all the more fascinating. Was it true? And if so, did it apply only to California, or Wine America as a whole? Here was a Big Question that it would be exciting to answer, and I don’t mean a nice round answer, rather the jagged-edged truth.

Shortly after I get to know another extraordinary winemaker from California, Clark Smith (pictured above). The author of Postmodern Winemaking (2013, University of California Press) uses science to debunk the myths and misnomers that afflict the wine scene, obscuring its members’ view of the real world of wine. We met at a tasting of American wines in the cellar of the ACE Hotel on December 15th 2013. He began with some sweeping assertions. “The paparazzi of the wine industry have hit us with the accusation of manipulation.” He was talking about my profession, and I cast nervously around the room to see which of my colleagues were there, but I was the only wine journalists present, in fact NYWC was conspicuous by its absence. “It is my view that all winemaking is extremely manipulative. It’s all about artisanality,”he continued. Of course, artisanal derives from “art”, which we in the West traditionally contrast with nature. Today “natural” and “authentic” are crucial words for NYWC and the scene everywhere on Planet Wine, but when I hear them I often wonder what my colleagues are really talking about.

Then came an even more important observation. “If you count the number of different brands that each state produces, rather than the number of gallons of wine each producers, then California doesn’t dominate American wine in anything like the same way.” What he was talking about is the fact that a very large proportion of California’s wine production goes into a very small number of brands. The production figure for each of them needs to be so high in order to enable them to be nationally distributed in a nation with 310 million inhabitants.  Because, for example, few wineries in New York State distribute outside the Northeast so there are few larger brands and very many different wines considering a total statewide wine production that’s a fraction of California’s. That makes for stylistic diversity, and is often married to idealism.

The blind tasting that followed his remarks demonstrated again and again the amazing diversity of American wine. What were the high points? Norton is arguably the American wine grape and the 2010 Norton from the Augusta Winery in August/Missouri (a short drive outside St. Louis) was a powerful red wine that could hold its own against the best from California, but costs under $20 from the winery! Even more exotic, but equally delicious was the red Petit Blue from Hermit Woods Wines in Meredith/New Hampshire. All the experts present praised the last wine when they tasted it blind, but none guessed it was actually made from wild blueberries and honey! Clearly some major stuff had happened in Wine America but so far gone either completely or largely unreported. It struck me then that if Randall was right with his observations, then they apply far more to California than the rest of America.

I realized that I’d already begun investigating what I now call the Other Wine America, the one that doesn’t either belong to the California mainstream, or try to imitate it, many years before. For example, there were my trips to South Dakota in 2005 and 2010, and my more recent discovery of the New Jersey’s wine industry. During much of 2014 I was very busy promoting my book BEST WHITE WINE ON EARTH – The Riesling Story (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), but all the time the Other Wine America was getting its claws deeper and deeper into me. I had to throw myself into this and a trip to see the wine industry of Arizona in November 2014 convinced me that I indeed had a Big Subject that few of my colleagues were taking seriously. It was an intoxicating thought.

At the end of last year I realized that I had a great opening story for a book about America, Wine and I in the outrageous tale of my first visit to the USA in September 1985. This had the advantage of never having been told in writing before, and I immediately knew that if I was going to use it I had to describe those events as if they had happened yesterday. However, there would then be a big jump from this story to the following ones that would focus on the present. Could I risk that? I felt very hesitant for a while.

It was my American therapist in Berlin, Dr. Brian Pheasant (sorry no photo) who gave me the decisive push that made me start work on what is now ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1. He loved the thought of me writing something outrageous, no doubt because he felt this would be therapeutic for me. And mostly his advice had proved to be spot on, at least when I followed it thoroughly. Suddenly all the ideas came together in my head and all I needed to do was write. That’s now the task facing me with issue #2. The subject is Arizona. WATCH THIS SPACE!

In the meantime you can click the link below and buy #1!

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

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Unter Schweizerfahne: Das Weingut Hans Lang von Frank Ebbinghaus

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Stuart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Von Winzer Ernst Loosen (Dr. Loosen/Bernkastel) stammt folgende Anekdote: Anfang der 90er Jahre klingelte sein Telefon: Ein Unbekannter orderte in breitem Schwyzerdütsch einige Kisten Riesling Auslese. Loosen habe sofort aufgelegt. Denn: Ein Schweizer, der damals Mosel-Riesling bestellte – das konnte nur ein Fake sein. Hier täuschte sich der welterfahrene Winzer. Der Bittsteller war echt und ließ nicht locker bis er seinen Wein bekam. Inzwischen baut er selbst in Graubünden Riesling an, von dem er schreibt: „Mit Verlaub: Man spricht deutsch“. Es handelt sich – mit Verlaub – um Daniel Gantenbein.

Während Gantenbein Riesling-Reben in die Schweiz einführte, um dort Mosel-Riesling herzustellen, erzeugt Daniel Vollenweider, ebenfalls ein waschechter Schweizer, Mosel-Riesling an der Mosel – und zwar der Spitzenklasse.

Neuerdings zieht es die Schweizer auch in das Rheingau. Damit endet dieser etwas holprige Einstieg. Und wir sind beim Weingut Hans Lang (Hattenheim/Rheingau), das 2013 von dem Schweizer Brieftaubenzüchter und Käser (mehr Klischee geht nicht! Oder bläst er auch das Alphorn?) Urban Kaufmann und dessen Lebensgefährtin Eva Raps, der langjährigen Geschäftsführerin des Verbandes deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP), übernommen wurde.

Hans Lang? Hat jeder Riesling-Fan bestimmt schon mal gehört. Aber auch probiert? Ich jedenfalls nicht, abgesehen von zwei gereiften Weinen an einem heißen Berliner Sommerabend nach einer anstrengenden Rotweinprobe. Sie schmeckten mir nicht, aber das zählt nicht. Stuart schreib über dieses Weingut in seinem Buch „Die führenden Winzer und Spitzenweine Deutschlands“, Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1997: „Hans Langs Weine sorgen nur selten für Schlagzeilen und sind vielleicht nicht unbedingt der Stoff, aus dem die Träume sind, aber sein Betrieb ist eine zuverlässige Quelle für gut gemachte trockene Rheingau-Rieslinge …“. Eine gute Begründung, warum die Weine bisher unter meinem Radar blieben.

Jetzt aber haben Urban Kaufmann und Eva Raps ihren ersten Jahrgang erzeugt und gleich eine den Aufbruch schon optisch bezeugende Sonderedition aufgelegt. Das Etikett ziert die Farben der Schweiz auf goldenem Grund sowie den Namenszug „Kaufmann“. Und ein Wein heißt auch noch „Tell“ oder, wenn man den Schriftzug auf dem Etikett als zusammenhängenden Text liest: „kaufmann tell Rheingau Riesling“, was ja, wenn man von einer kleinen Konjugationsschwäche des Englischen absähe, eine echte Ansage wäre.

Aber großes Gedöns ist nicht die Sache des Jungwinzerpaars. Sie gehen es bescheiden an: Keine gigantischen Investitionen, kein pompöser, von einem flying winemaker kreierter neuer Weinstil. Urban Kaufmann und Eva Raps sind ins kalte Wasser gesprungen (am Rand hielt der freundschaftlich verbundene Hans Lang den Rettungsring bereit). Mit schweizerischer Bedachtsamkeit gehen sie Schritt für Schritt voran, um Weine zu machen, die sie mögen und für typisch Rheingau halten: „klar, präzise und elegant“.

Drei Weine sind so bisher entstanden. Sie sollen zeigen, wohin die Reise geht. Und das tun sie auch, wenngleich recht unterschiedlich. Der 2014 Kaufmann Rheingau Riesling empfängt einen mit seinem feinen Bratapfelduft, die kräftige Säure ist gut integriert, eine zarte Mineralität lädt ein zum Trinken – ein erfrischender Wein, der allerdings auch etwas einfach ausgefallen ist und nach drei Tagen aus der offenen Flasche genossen zunehmend rustikaler wirkt und abbaut.

Einen Quantensprung stellt der 2014 Kaufmann Tell Rheingau Riesling aus Hattenheimer Spitzenlagen dar. Der Wein hält eine kühle, jederzeit elegante mineralische Spannung, wie man sie sich von trockenen Rheingau-Rieslingen wünscht. In der Nase ein Hauch gelber Früchte und ein sehr feiner Anflug von Süße, die von reifen Trauben stammt. Ansonsten ist der Wein zunächst etwas zugeknöpft, zeigt aber unter Lufteinfluss noble, kühle Steinfrucht und einen sehr animierenden mineralischen Abgang. Nach einer Woche schmeckt der Tell nach Mirabellen und einer hellen, an Tabak erinnernde Würze, die sich mit der präsenten mineralischen Säure bestens verbindet. Der Tell hat Potential.

Eindeutig in der Liga der Großen Gewächse (GG) spielt der 2014 Kaufmann Wisselbrunnen Riesling. Es ist ein Wein, der sich mit Schweizer Bedächtigkeit (um dieses Klischees jetzt totzureiten) am Gaumen entwickelt und vor einem langen Leben steht. Dieser Spitzenwein ähnelt dem Tell, nur weist er eine weit höhere Komplexität und Tiefe aus. Auch hier sind die Aromen gelber Früchte im Moment mehr zu erahnen als zu schmecken, aber sie sind einen Tick reifer als beim Tell (der Wisselbrunen hat 12,5% Alk., die beiden anderen Weine je 12 %), aufgrund einer geradezu steinigen, aber nicht aufdringlichen Mineralität ist das Geschmacksbild noch nobler. Die mineralische Säure trägt alles, sie ist nie spitz und gibt dem Wein trotz seiner Reife und Kraft auch Zartheit und Tiefe. Nach einer Woche hat sich der Wisselbrunnen in der halbvollen Flasche im Schneckentempo weiterentwickelt. Er duftet nun deutlich nach gelben Pflaumen ohne zu viel Süße, entwickelt am Gaumen eine feine Würze sowie eine vibrierende Lebendigkeit und Vielschichtigkeit. Mit 25 Euro pro Flasche ab Hof ist der Wisselbrunnen für Rheingau-Verhältnisse recht fair bepreist (der Rheingau Riesling kostet ab Hof 9,50 Euro, der Tell 16,50).

Hier zeigt ein Jungwinzerpaar eine deutliche Handschrift. Diese ersten Ergebnisse sind umso beeindruckender als der Jahrgang nicht eben einfach war. Urban Kaufmann und Eva Raps sollten den eingeschlagenen Weg, elegante klassische Rheingau-Rieslinge zu erzeugen, entschlossen weitergehen. Der Hitze-Jahrgang 2015 hält die nächste große Herausforderung bereit.

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Berlin Wine Diary: Day 1 – The Backstory to ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Stuart

Every story has a backstory, however, I must point out that this is a widely misunderstood expression. A backstory isn’t simply the biography of a character or group of characters before the beginning of the story in which she/he or they feature, rather it is the series of events that directly lead to the situation at the beginning of the story. Today I have to tell a backstory, the one that leads up to the publication of ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1 – Point of Entry featuring Very Bad PD as a Kindle e-book just few days ago. Put more simply: how and why did I come to publish this completely outrageous little book!

The story this new work tells is of my first visit to America on a press trip to Baltimore back in September 1985. Normally, a press trip is the last thing I would consider writing about at length, but so much happened on this one that even as it all happened it was clear to me that this definitely wasn’t normal. Over the weeks, months and years after I returned to London and my life as an absolute beginner at wine journalism I frequently recounted episodes that occurred during those first days in America, and they always seemed to amuse my listeners. However, as the years stretched into decades I took this to be no more than a heap of amusing stories for the dinner table. The greater significance of the whole story – its themes of success and failure in life, love and sex, rites of passage into the big wide world, etc – eluded me. I just didn’t get that, although I told these stories so often.

Everything changed one rainy day in the summer of 2011 in the steep vineyards above the Rheingau wine village of Lorch thanks to the woman pictured above, Regine Schneider of the Schneiderei PR and marketing agency in Berlin. I was on the road with film director Alexander Saran and his team shooting the second series of the TV series Weinwunder Deustchland, or Wine Wonder Germany, for Bavarian Broadcasting (a PBS station). That day I had to interview young winegrower Eva Fricke of the eponymous start up winery in the vineyards high above the river Rhine. She told me beforehand that she was nervous about appearing in front of the camera and asked if she could bring a friend with her for support. I explained to her what the situation on location would be, and told her that as long as her friend accepted this she could join us that day. Her friend was Regine Schneider.

I got on very well with Regine from the first moment. We frequently had to interrupt shooting to wait for the rain to stop, and this gave the three of us plenty of time for chatting and storytelling. The subject of America came up and I told one of those “after-dinner” stories about my first trip there, the one about a PR woman. Both the young women found it very entertaining and Regine suggested that I should write the whole story of that trip down, because, “there’s so little literature about really bad PR.” Suddenly, there was not only a reason to write, but also a potential title.

That was a couple of steps forward, but only small ones. Just as a murderer needs a motive to kill his victim, so a writer needs a compelling reason to write a story – at least if there’s no money being offered to do so. Over the next years I saw Regine Schneider a couple more times, and each time she asked me about the Very Bad PR story. However, I saw Eva Fricke (pictured above – her choice of photo!) more often, because I was closely following the development of her dry and medium-dry Rieslings. During the last four years they went from being very good to really spectacular, so we often tasted them together, and each time she would ask me when I would finally around to writing the Very Bad PR story. That didn’t provide me with a reason to write it, but her niggling reminders prevented me from forgetting the project.

Towards the end of 2014 I realized that the story of my first trip to America was the logical place to begin a book about the unsung winemaking heroes and heroines of America, because it explained how and why I got hooked up with wine and with America. That makes it the backstory to all those stories. Writing it took me some time, due to the interruption of my round the world trip in January-February 2015, but I completed it in the spring. At first it seemed unfortunate that the idea of publishing my stories about the unsung winemakers of America as a printed book wouldn’t fly, but in the end this proved to be fortunate, because it forced me to see them as a series of much shorter self-contained works. Then came the realization that self-publishing as e-books for Kindle is really rather easy. Just as a murderer needs to have the means to kill his victim, so a writer also needs the a practical method to publish his story in order for it to be viable.

Seeing this story as a self-contained entity, rather than a long book chapter, greatly helped focus my mind on how to make the story more exciting to read. The final impulse came from a conversation with my friend the TV producer and reporter Jürgen Fränznick, pictured above just a few weeks ago. Jürgen helped me move all my stuff into my new NYWC abode in Williamsburg, Brooklyn after which we went for a coffee together in the nearby Oslo coffee bar at 328 Bedford Avenue. Jürgen told me that he had something important to say about the stories on my blog, but it was critical, so did I want to hear it? I said that made it even more important for me to hear it, and he told me that the stories on my blog were too elliptical to ever achieve wide popularity. It was quite a shock, but a good shock, because it gave me the final kick up the ass that I needed to sharpen up several crucial points in the story. For better or worse it is my first really straight story!

To purchase it 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

Thanks once again Regine for setting me on this course!

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NYWC Diary: Day 12 – The Cover Story of ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Stuart

The image on the cover of my first e-book, ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1 pictured above, has already got a lot of comment and I felt that I must tell the story of how it came about. By chance a friend in NYWC (New York Wine City) recently introduced me to Angelyn Cabrales, a young Philippine-American artist who is still studying in New Jersey. We were having brunch in a waterfront restaurant and in spite of all the distractions it didn’t take long before Angelyn showed me some of her work on her iPhone. Her circular portraits were like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I was immediately very excited, not least because of the medium. It was clear to me from the first glance that although they looked like drawings or collages involving drawing, in fact they were stitched. I recognized the embroidery hoop and metal clip with a screw that hold the cloth tight in a circle from school. As a child, I’d done some embroidery, but of a much more basic kind than this.

I asked Angelyn to email me some photos of her work, and I saw them at home on my computer screen I knew that I would be commissioning one of these works for the cover of my first e-book for Kindle. At this point I’d already asked Alexandra Weiss of Weisswieschwarz to design a logo for the series that would harmonize with the STUART PIGOTT RIESLING GLOBAL logo that previously stood at the masthead of this ship. I was also into the final round of corrections to the manuscript and it was clear to me that the PARENTAL ADVISORY Explicit Content sign would need to go on the cover, not least because of paragraph one of the main Text (there is an introduction before that disturbing pornographic moment).  Suddenly, I had a concept for the cover, Alexandra Weiss agreed to do the design work, and all I needed was a portrait of me by Angelyn, since I am the main character in ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1. She worked very quickly and I collected it from her at Caffe Reggio in Greenwich Village just over a month ago. As soon as I saw it I knew that it was absolutely right. Shortly after that she sent me the following series of photos of its creation.

At this early stage only the vaguest tentative outlines of the image are present, and you really couldn’t imagine what was coming if you didn’t know already.

Now it looks a bit spooky and reminds me of H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man that made a big impression on me as a teenager.

But with the outline of just one side of the face the image becomes much clearer. It may be stitched, but if you see it at this stage, then it is clear that here stitching is drawing.

Now seen from a greater distance it’s plain that the white cloth on which the portrait is taking shape lies over the red and blue patterned cloth that will form the background. Angelyn explained to me that when the portrait is completed she then cuts away the remainder of the white cloth to expose the background. This is, in fact, a very simple method, but I think a very effective one for it creates a dramatic effect without any unnecessary complication. The form comes from the tools of the medium, and she has not complicated this either, rather remained true to it and trusted it. As someone who tends to unnecessarily complicate things (who is also well aware of that problem) I greatly appreciate this drive for clarity through simplicity.

Seeing how “rough” her cover art for ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1 looked at the early stage of its making was also reassuring, because the text was also horribly rough in its early stages. Ernest Hemingway once said, “the first draft of anything is shit,” and that certainly applies to my story. I also hat to cut some material off, and to add a few things that accentuated the situation of the 25 year old me in the story. It is a story about success and failure in love and life, driven hopes and fears, lust and anxiety, and is also the story of strange rites of initiation into the way the world really works. There is, of course, some wine in it and plenty about America. It is also one of very few literary works about PR, and may be the ultimate “how NOT to” book on PR. Inexplicably, all of this does make a round whole, and that makes Aneglyn Cabrales striking cover image all the more appropriate. All the trial versions of Alexandra Weiss’ cover design were great, but I chose the one that showed the circular image with the clip and screw in fall to be faithful to this remarkable work of art.

To purchase it 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

 

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