I (Cody) have been thinking about time a lot lately. Maybe it’s because we’re releasing, for the first time, a second vintage of our wines, or maybe it’s the excitement of having a baby on the way, or even the reality of turning (gasp) thirty years old. I found myself pondering the passage of time last week as I was listening to Gregory Alan Isakov’s gorgeous album with the Colorado Symphony. I was driving back home from the Oakland Airport late one night last week, sleep-addled and exhausted from a week of wine seminars, and was struck by the beauty and longing of his song Living Proof:
Oh Darlin’, pardon me
Can you help me remember
When we were all flying free
We were dust from our bodies
And we were flicker and flame, yeah we burned till the morning
Darlin’, pardon me
It’s a song (near as I can figure) about love and beauty and ephemerality, told initially through the prism of wandering around in the hill country — a desire line, of sorts. In the process of writing the release letter, Em and I have been reflecting on our second year making our own wines, and the joys and terrors of the whole process — in particular, that feeling on the morning of the pick. The crew shows up in the pre-dawn light, hinting at new life, and you’re cold and tired (because, harvest…) and yet so grateful for a second year with a great vineyard, and also terrified because you’ve called the pick and it’s too late to change your mind now. At that point the winemaking starts, but the most important decision has already been made. It all has a feeling of flying free, aflame with passion. All of that came rushing back last week, and nothing makes me more excited for another harvest than enjoying the fruits of years past.
Both wines in this release show so clearly their respective vintages. I was thinking about this last week during one of the seminars I attended for Master of Wine students, where we were challenged to define the terms “entry-level wine” and “premium wine.” How would you go about that? It is, like most simple questions, deceptively tricky. Price point obviously, the size of the consumer base, quality maybe, but what about the element of variability? In general, entry-level wines tend to minimize or eliminate variability, to avoid confusing the consumer, while variability is accepted (and arguably expected) for most premium wines. I’d argue for clear vintage expression as a hallmark of most great wines – if the expression of terroir in a wine is a place and time brought into being by a farmer and winemaker, shouldn’t we as winemakers be as faithful to time as to place? We may try to render the most complete wine in each vintage, but we’re still working with fundamentally different fruit from the previous vintage. All that to say, these wines are just a little different than the previous vintage, like variations on a theme. They’re clearly recognizable as products of place and time; siblings to the previous vintage, and I love them all the same.
2016 GRIFFIN’S LAIR SYRAH
I’m terrifically pleased with our 2016 Griffin’s Lair Syrah. It’s a lovely wine, more vibrant and lithe than the 2015, owing mostly to the weather immediately preceding the pick. In both 2015 and 2016 we faced a hot and dry weather spell just on the cusp of harvest at Griffin’s Lair.
In 2015 we choose to pick just after the heat, because the growing season had been quick, generally warm and dry, and we felt that the extra time might give us a little extra concentration and tannin resolution. In 2016 the ripening window had been longer thanks to more mild temperatures in late August and early September, and so we decided to pick just before the heat to showcase the purity of the vintage.
Like the 2015, the 2016 Griffin’s Lair Syrah was fermented with 50% whole cluster, with a submerged cap for the first half of fermentation and raised in neutral large format barrels for 15 months before bottling without fining or filtration. The 2016 is a bit more red-fruited than the 2015, especially after a decant; both strut the bacon, olive tapenade, and black tea that practically shout “Griffin’s Lair!”
2017 COLE RANCH RIESLING
Cole Ranch is but a blip on the map of Mendocino County – at just 189 acres in total, with less than 50 acres planted, it is the smallest American Viticultural Area (AVA) in the country, and the only AVA with just a single vineyard. In this sense it is, like Coulée de Serrant and Château-Grillet in France, a very singular terroir. The vines were planted at Cole Ranch in 1973, making it (we think) the fifth-oldest Riesling vineyard in the state. The vineyard sits in a narrow valley in the mountains between Boonville and Ukiah.
The valley benefits from the cooling maritime influence of nearby Anderson Valley, and yet has a large diurnal and seasonal range of temperatures like inland Mendocino County. It snows in Cole Ranch once or twice a winter, and three years running we’ve begun the morning of the pick in temperatures below 30°. We are fortunate to work with the fruit, and grateful that John Cole thought to plant Riesling in his valley so many years ago.
Like the 2016 Riesling from Cole Ranch, the 2017 was whole-cluster pressed and fermented in neutral wooden barrels. 2017 was a warmer vintage relative to 2016, and thus the wine is richer and more tropical in flavor than the 2016. We racked the 2017 from neutral barrel to stainless steel drums in March, à la the wonderful Meursaults of Domaine Roulot, to encourage the wine to tighten up before the bottling in July. Like the 2016, the 2017 has six grams residual sugar and a 3.0 pH, our homage to the German Grosses Gewächs Rieslings.
And, with all that said regarding vintages, this year in particular we’re praying for a great vintage because we’ve got a little boy on the way next month and we need to make a birth-year wine! Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy year. As always, thank you so much for your support; we hope that you enjoy the wines.
Love,
Cody & Emily
