The weeks leading up to a mailing list release tend to be especially reflective for me (Cody) as I think back to old vintages and find myself chewing on the details of the year and its wines, as well as the philosophical strings that tie all the Desire Lines together in time and space. On drives to work or to the mountains, on walks with the family in the evenings, and in quiet moments in the cellar my wheels are spinning to sort out the why and how.
When we first started making our own wines, I figured that launching a wine brand was akin to solving a mathematical proof – state the theory at the outset and show the work to prove the theory. In other words, decide in advance what our founding theory and guiding principles would be and hew to those carefully over the course of fermentation and élevage, with the finished product proving the wisdom of the theory and principles.
Now it seems to me that the process has been just as much a series of discoveries as it has been a pre-ordained set of movements. Which is fitting, I guess, seeing as the name Desire Lines recalls our journey to California and evokes the routes we take all over the state to our vineyards—paths that are uniquely us. Along those lines, I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to work with new vineyards (hello Wiley Vineyard Riesling!) and to experiment with new techniques (Cabernet Sauvignon and racking…), and the ways in which those have brought new perspective and a sharper focus to our existing vineyards and wines.
Granted, there are a lot of things we haven’t changed about our winemaking, and likely never will: we look for wonderfully farmed sites with distinctive personalities; we work gently in the cellar over the course of fermentation to build wines that balance succulence with vibrancy; and we let things move along slowly over the course of élevage to refine, polish, and reveal the personality of each site as we see it. All with the aim of making delicious and satisfying wines that transport you to different places and past vintages.
I’ve been reflecting on age-ability as a theme that ties our wines together. We choose to put our name on the back label – Rasmussen Family Wines – both as a statement of our identity (small, family-owned winery) and as a statement of hope, that our kids will someday have the chance to taste and enjoy the wines that we made when they were just toddlers. We aim to strike a balance between immediate charm and the capacity to evolve and improve with age, at the expense of the wines occasionally showing a little closed and modest on pop and pour (as a reminder – decant, decant, decant!).
2019 WINDS OF CHANGE RED WINE, CALIFORNIA
...which brings us to a new wine for us! Introducing our 2019 Winds of Change Red Wine which is, quite simply, Desire Lines – our whole journey – captured in one bottle. The wine is our ode to California’s cool and windy places, where some of our favorite varieties take on new life—Syrah becomes lithe and perfumed, Carignan becomes vibrant and rich, and Mourvèdre smells like a strawberry pie cooling on the windowsill on a sultry summer night.
The 2019 is a delightfully approachable blend built around Syrah (73%), with the addition of Mourvèdre (10%), Carignan (8%), Grenache (6%), and Petite Sirah (3%), all from vineyards near and dear to us in the windy areas of California that keep us coming back for more (think Petaluma Gap and the Oakley Sands) along with older plantings of Rhône varieties that should be far more popular than they are. Strawberry and red cherry fruit compote on the nose complemented by savory notes and a subtle spice, with fine-grained tannins on the palate and a terrific juiciness and succulence.
The blend is pulled from barrels that show a little softer and less tense than those that we choose for the vineyard designates, rendering a wine that is both fresh and rich, textured and round. We’ve lovingly referred to this as our “back the truck up” wine. I have no doubt that this wine will benefit from time in bottle as well, just like its vineyard designate-brethren, but all the same the wine is built to be more immediately user-friendly. As we say on the back label – may this wine be a wind of change for these underrated varieties that we love so much!
2019 EXPERIMENTAL SERIES NO. 3 – WILEY VINEYARD RIESLING,
ANDERSON VALLEY
When I first brought up with Emily the idea of making Riesling, I practically promised to drink it all myself if it didn’t find an enthusiastic audience. Thankfully, I never had to test the wisdom of my words, as our Cole Ranch Riesling has become our most acclaimed and most popular wine. With a couple of vintages of Cole Ranch under our belt, I thought it might be fun to find another expression of Riesling from California, ideally from another cool climate and from older vines too.
Thankfully, for the sake of mileage on the car, we found just what we were looking for in the wilds of Mendocino County, on the same fruit sampling loop as Cole Ranch – Wiley Vineyard, in the Deep End of Anderson Valley. Wiley Vineyard was one of the first few vineyards to be planted in Anderson Valley following the repeal of Prohibition, with a block of Riesling planted in 1976 on a ridgeline above the valley floor, encircled by redwoods and Douglas fir trees. Since then, Wiley has gained prestigious neighbors – Bearwallow and Kiser vineyards are just across the highway, and Wendling Vineyard is on the other side of the ridge.
Wiley Vineyard is colder than Cole Ranch with a prominent marine influence from the nearby Pacific Ocean, giving a wine that’s relatively more taught and laser-focused. Because the two wines are made so similarly (whole cluster pressing with cold settling in tank, followed by fermentation in neutral barrels, where the wines are left on fine lees until bottling in the summer) the difference between the wines is simply vineyard expression. Whereas Cole Ranch is extravagantly perfumed and exotic in the glass with a bracing tension and viscousness on the palate, Wiley is pure and lean on the palate (3 g/L RS) and characterized by lemon citrus, resinous herbs, and a slight brackishness on the nose. In other words, it tastes just as it should – like Riesling from a cold, maritime vineyard at the edge of ripening in the Deep End of Anderson Valley.
2018 GRIFFIN'S LAIR VINEYARD SYRAH, PETALUMA GAP
The climate of Griffin’s Lair is defined by the daily onrush of cold winds that sweep through the Petaluma Valley, limiting vigor and slowing photosynthesis. There is on the Sonoma coast, between Tomales Bay and Bodega Bay, a gap in the coastal range: within this 18-mile stretch of coastline, no barrier higher than 600 feet exists, while ridgelines to the north and south rise to over 1000 feet.
As the sun heats inland California over the course of the morning, a pressure differential develops between the cold, dense air sitting over water just off the coast, and the increasingly warm, less-dense air over land. By noon, the difference in air pressure is great enough to suck the cold air inland, through the Petaluma Gap and all 33 miles to San Pablo Bay by way of Petaluma Valley.
Griffin’s Lair bears the full brunt of this chilly diurnal cycle, perched on a northwest-facing hillside in the very throat of the Petaluma Gap. This marine influence moderates the afternoon temperatures of the Petaluma Valley, delivering cool air when temperatures would otherwise be at their highest. The vines are regularly buffeted by winds strong enough to limit leaf stomatal conductance, which delays sugar ripening by shutting down photosynthesis, often for hours at a time each day. Portions of the Petaluma Gap are effectively the coldest parts of the vast Sonoma Coast AVA.
Griffin’s Lair is the vineyard that we first bought fruit from in 2015, the founding vineyard for Desire Lines – the vineyard that launched a thousand FedEx packages. Like previous vintages, the wine fermented un-inoculated with 50% whole cluster and a submerged cap through the first half of fermentation, pressed off just short of dryness, and put down to neutral large format barrels for 15 months before bottling. The wine tastes unmistakably like Griffin’s Lair, suffused with cherry, black tea, and bacon fat, all of which are cast in high relief by the cap submersion. The vineyard continues to amaze me by the way it bears the imprint of the vintage so clearly – we do practically the exact same thing in the winery each year, and yet the wine has a personality all its own year after year. The 2018 shares some of the pliancy, sinewy heft and briny personality of the 2015 (which has aged beautifully) leavened by a brightness and snap that calls to mind the 2016.
2019 LICHAU HILL VINEYARD CABERNET SAUVIGNON, PETALUMA GAP
This is the second wine we’ve released from Lichau Hill Vineyard and I’m even more excited about the potential of the vineyard than I was last year. The 2018 is shaping up beautifully in bottle and the 2019 felt like a big leap forward in terms of our understanding of Cabernet Sauvignon, both in the field and in the winery. I think it’s an absolutely exceptional site, the perfect marriage of a cooler coastal climate and the crazy rocky soils of a great mountain Cabernet vineyard. Freshness, perfume and vibrancy meets power and concentration.
Planted in 1999 in soil so rocky that a wall was built around our block from the rocks excavated during planting, Lichau Hill (Lichau pronounced “lee-how”) sits high up on a south-west facing ridge, looking down at Gap’s Crown Vineyard below and the rest of the Petaluma Gap splayed out into the distance, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The vineyard is thoroughly singular, the only Cabernet Sauvignon planted in the Petaluma Gap AVA. The vineyard is situated just above the fog line and far enough inland to ripen Cabernet, even if it may take until late October to reach just 24° brix.
Our 2019 Lichau Hill Cabernet Sauvignon was fully destemmed, fermented and left on skins for thirty days in tank, and aged for 15 months in 225L barriques with 33% new oak included. The wine has a silky mouthfeel with vibrant acidity and a distinctly red-fruited profile, with pretty notes of red currant, red apple skin, rose petals and graphite. For the first time in 2019 we experimented with racking during élevage and I’m very pleased with the results. Four of the six barrels in the blend were racked once, after malolactic, and I like that the little bit of added oxygen helped to polish the tannin and brought out some of the floral and subtly savory aspects of Cabernet’s personality, while reducing some of the sweetening and softening effects of extended time on lees. It’s a direction we’ll continue in the future with Cabernet.
