Feb 23, 2007
I keep rooting for Carneros. I can’t help it. Over the years it got bad raps from critics, has experienced an identity crisis, seemed to be at the top of the Pinot heap before being overtaken by other regions and has to dance between between being both Sonoman and Napan. Those are some big chips to carry around on your shoulders. But have you tasted the wines? Check out this list: Saintsbury, Schug, Etude, Acacia, Donum Estate, Sangiacomo, Hudson, Durell,…
Jan 29, 2007
So I’m sitting around a table listening to Will Bucklin, Jeff Gaffner, and Joel Peterson have a conversation. What do they all have in common? You’d be hard pressed to find three people who have a more hands-on and theoretical knowledge of Old Vine, Field Blend Zinfandels from Sonoma Valley. I was at the table just for the ride. There was a writer there too who was interviewing the three of them for a story. But you wouldn’t have known…
Jan 26, 2007
The philosopher of Science Thomas Kuhn famously suggested that it is impossible to fully understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another or rival paradigm. I’ve been thinking about the notion of terroir some more and it strikes me that we may have rival paradigms in play when it comes to terroir that make it difficult to achieve a singular "philosophy of terroir". THE TERROR PARADIGMSThe two terroir paradigms at play seem to be the Old World…
Jan 5, 2007
America’s system of appellations, known as American Viticultural Areas (AVA’s), is, I admit, problematic. In some cases it’s VERY problematic. All you have to do is look at the "central coast" or "Sonoma Coast" AVAs to understand this. While we have some fairly intriguing and terroir-based AVAs like Green Valley, Anderson Valley, Rockpile, Stag’s Leap District and Atlas Peak, they are, in most cases, lines drawn on a map that represent the desires of the marketing mined. Yet, given the…
Jan 3, 2007
I’ve been thinking a bit about the nature of "terroir" and how wine drinkers interact with the idea. There are some of us, myself included, that often give the impression that when terroir is evident in a wine that’s always a good thing. Let me be clear about what I think is, or should be, self evident: 1. Characteristics in a wine that are demonstrably derived from terroir are NOT ALWAYS GOOD. As St. Vini points out in an earlier…