Here are some recent photos of our own organically certified estate vineyard, Hilltop Ranch, in Carmel Valley.

In the photos on the left, top and bottom, is Pinot Noir on the top or crest block.  Appolonio, our one and only vineyard guy is working on them here.  The photo on the top right is the lower block.  There is a few rows of Pinot Gris in the foreground and the rest is Pinot Noir.  In the back of this photo there are new retaining walls that were put in place late last year (this part of the vineyard is very steep).  The bottom photo on the right is the pond and bridge and in the back, behind the oak trees in the pond block with is all Dijon 777 clone Pinot Noir.

I will post much more information about the ranch as soon as I can pin down Appolonio, our ranch managers Tom and Cara, and our owner, Dick, for photos, so I can put their mug shots for all to see.

Some Housekeeping:

We were featured this week as the small business blog of the day. Check it out!

Today:

We will pour wine at the South Valley Wine Auction in Morgan Hill.  A fun event to benefit the athletic programs in the local school district.

 Tomorrow:

We will pour wine at the Simon Bull Gallery from 7-9 in Carmel.  This is a benefit for International Students, Inc.

We will pour wine in Monterey at the 10th Annual Legal Services for Seniors Cioppino Event in Monterey.  It should be a fun and lively time. Phil, from Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing will be servin it up that night.

 

This post is in response to Ben’s comments to my previous post “Artisan is a Relative Term”, below:

• Ben Says:
  April 26th, 2006 at 9:43 pm eIt’s funny. My spell check doesn’t recognize “artisinal.”        

  Hey Annette, I’m going to ask you to generalize. At around what case production would you say it becomes impossible for the winemaker to be truly hands on and it becomes more of an administrative position. I know it all depends on the operation, but at what point is hand crafted labor forced to give way to assembly lines? 5,000, 10,000 cases? 20,000?

• Hi Ben,
  Artisanal isn’t in my spell check, either, but hey, this is my blog so I can take a liberty here and there. (Hee, hee)

  As far as your question about winery size, that is hard to say and really depends upon the operation, the winemaker, and the culture of the company.  I can try and answer your question based only on my own experience:   I have worked in a winery that produced 50,000 cases/year, and the winemaker was still very much hands-on and involved in the physical work.  I have worked in a few wineries that made 400,000-600,000 cases a year and in those wineries the winemakers did a lot of desk work and went to a lot of meetings, and there were cellar crews that took care of the process from beginning to end.  The winemakers in the 400,000 case winery, however, were in the cellar smelling barrels, checking for leaks and sanitation problems, and were as aware as one can be in that kind of environment of what was going on.  In the 600,000 case winery, I was the one going around, smelling barrels, checking for leaks, etc., and my observations went up (maybe)through the chain of command (I wasn’t the winemaker at that winery, just a cellar rat).

  So, take from that what you will.  Artisan really is a relative term and depends upon one’s own perspective.  I can sit here and type all day about all the hands-on things we do here, and the way I look at it it really is hands-on, but there are folks that make wine here in California that destem their grapes by hand, don’t own a pump, and make only a few barrels of wine (George Wine Co.) each year — that’s a serious hands-on commitment and one I wouldn’t be prepared to take on anytime soon.

  So, I wish I could give you a better answer, but, alas, there are no easy answers, especially when it comes to the world of wine.  At least we are talking about wine here — how onerous is it to dig a little deeper to find out more about what one is drinking?  Maybe, it could be as bad as just having a few more empty bottles at the end of the day?  Cheers!

  
  

In this day and age of marketing and spin, it is difficult to know what is real and what is contrived or exaggeration.  These days, the proliferation of wine labels is daunting as well.  This has occurred not only because many new wineries have been created over the years, but also because large corporate wineries have offered new “small” labels of their own to take advantage of the consumer’s desire to purchase “artisan” wines. 

Now, I have nothing against large wineries or, for that matter, large production wines. Afterall, wineries such as Gallo and Kendall-Jackson have all introduced a lot of people to wine, and that is great for the industry.  These wines are most often affordable and I think drinking wine in general is good for people’s health no matter where it comes from or how much it costs.  But what I don’t like is the smoke and mirrors, romance and roses method of marketing and selling a possibly inauthentic “artisan” wine to unsuspecting winedrinkers who are looking for a unique, handmade product.

The poor word “artisan” has taken such a beating in my view — the term is now used so loosely (for instance:  I just heard Carl’s Jr. is using “artisan” breads in new sandwich items??).  I have toured many, many wineries of various shapes and sizes over the years and have worked in a variety of wineries in differing capacities as well.  I’ve also talked with lots of winemakers.  So, without being specific about certain wineries (I wouldn’t want it to seem as though I am unfairly criticizing any winery here because that is not my intent), I would like to elucidate what artisan probably means in a large winery and what artisan means to me and many other small winery winemakers.

Large winery:  These facilities can be huge.  Hundreds or even thousands of truckloads of grapes are processed every year(each truck can hold about 20-22 tons grapes at a time), and during harvest at a large winery one will often see trucks parked in long lines in the hot sun waiting to dump their loads.  Much of this fruit is harvested by machine, and machine harvested fruit means that not only the fruit, but everything else in or around the vine is harvested as well:  snakes, mice, birds and bird’s nests, sprinkler heads, irrigation pipe, tomato worms, etc., etc.  (I could go on and on and mention unmentionables that I’ve either seen or heard about, but you get the picture).  This fruit is then processed, moved around by powerful pumps or screw conveyors, and sent to holding or fermentation tanks that can be 10,000, 20,000 or even 50,000 or 100,000 gallons in capacity.  All in all, these wineries are built to move extremely large volumes of grapes, juice and wine through the system.  Oh, and to be fair, I should mention that although all of that MOG (Material Other than Grapes) I mentioned earlier tends to come in with those grape shipments, wines at these facilities are usually sterile filtered in the end, so don’t worry about getting mouse hair or bird feathers in your wine bottle…….

The “artisan” wines made in large facilities may or may not be made differently from the “less-special”, large-volume wines.  These wines might be made from grapes of a certain part of a vineyard, they might be wines in barrel identified as interesting or unique, or they might not be a whole lot different from other wines the winery produces, they just have a different label.

Winemakers in these facilities tend to be what I call “administrative” winemakers (I say this with much respect –I have many friends who work in these positions, by the way – and also out of experience because at one time I was one of them).  These winemakers tend to sit at their desks and write work orders.  The lab does the analysis for them and gets samples they need.  Sometimes these winemakers go out into vineyards, other times they rely on the vineyard managers to tell them when to harvest.  Grape contracts are made by grape buyers in the company or are grown by the winery, so winemakers make wine with what grapes are given to them.  They may or may not use barrels to age the wine (much wine is “microoxgenated” in stainless steel tanks with “barrel alternatives”, for instance).  The culture of a large facility may even look down upon a winemaker who wants to be physically involved in the wine production process.  Afterall, a winemaker who is driving a forklift or doing a pumpover might be taking someone else’s job duties in the overall hierarchy of the company.

So, a “small” production or “artisan” wine that comes from a large facility may or may not have experienced any “hands-on” treatment, as these words connotate.

Small Winery: 

To give you an idea of what I mean by small, I will use tons of grapes as a measurement.  Last year, for instance, Cima Collina processed 60 tons of hand-picked wine grapes.  Other small wineries are bigger than this or smaller, but we aren’t talking thousands of tons here.  Most small wineries sort fruit by hand and eye (so, pulling out anything rotted, unripe, any leaves, the occasional plastic vine tie), move grapes, juice, or wine around as gently and as little as possible with equipment designed specifically for gently, small winery use.  They might also use small tanks or bins (bins can be 1/2-ton, 3/4-ton, maybe tanks are 1-5 tons in capacity).  In the spirit of being straightforward, yes, some bugs do come in with the grapes — earwigs and yellowjackets mostly. We try to get them out as best we can, but some do go into the tanks with the grapes. 

As for the winemaking, I have folks who are in the cellar doing the work, but I pull my weight and do the wine work just as much.  White wines, for instance, I do myself.  I load the presses, I press the juice, I barrel the juice down, inoculate it, etc. etc.  For reds, I sort grapes, do punchdowns, drain tanks, shovel skins.  I get my own samples and do my own lab analysis, but what I have discovered is that the lab analysis I do now is very minimal compared to other jobs I have worked.  I attribute this to working so closely with the wines and can understand more often than not what is going on with a wine without needing a number to tell me.

I could go on and on and bore you with the details, but you get the idea.  Suffice it to say that small wineries pay more attention to detail because they can, they were made to do just that, and very often the winemaker is in the middle of it making sure nothing falls through the cracks.  That is what artisan means to me and other small winemakers and wineries around the world.

Where does “artisan” rate on your scale of authenticity?

2005 Wines

I’ve been tasting through the 2005 wines and these are my impressions thus far:

Chula Vina Chardonnay:  mineral and pear, very light herbal character right now, nice textural mouthfeel good finish thus far.  It will be racked in early August and bottled at the end of August.  It will get much fatter and richer from 3-1/2 more month of barrel ageing.  If it is anything like the 2004, the herbal character will go away and the oak will come forward a little more.

Chula Vina Pinot:  all really good, but really a mixed bag in terms of characters.  Some lots of Pommard tend toward cranberry fruit, while the 115 is black cherry.  Nice mouthfeel so far.  It will be interesting to see how these develop until racking.  These will be racked at the very end of June.

Tondre Grapefield Pinot Noir:  this is the first year we made this and it is pure Santa Lucia Highland — lots of dark fruit, dense, rich.  It is not very expressive now and I think will open up quite a bit more, but it has great potential.  This wine will be racked mid-August.

Hilltop Red:  we are blending this as I type.  All of the components (Newell Cabernet Sauvignon, Cab Franc and Petite Sirah; Cedar Lane Merlot) needed racking and airing.  We steamed the barrels to get the tartrates out.  After blending today, they will be SO2 adjusted and splashed back into the barrels.  These barrels will probably be racked again in a few months, and then racked and bottled at the end of August.  Dark, rich, lucious.  I love this wine — it is very approachable.

Hilltop Ranch and Vineyard Estate “Linda’s Block” Pinot Gris:  I only have one barrel and one keg of this.  I wish I had 10 times as much.  It’s filled with lots of minerality and texture.  I have been stirring it very, very gently the last few weeks.  I don’t know if this will be a commercial bottling because we will probably want to drink it all ourselves…….:).  (I’m going to have to rig up an alarm system for this barrel because I wouldn’t put it past Dick, the owner, to sneak it here and siphon some to go with dinner.  Dick is Cima Collina’s owner.  He was here last week and really liked this wine.  This block is named after his sister-in-law, Linda (more on Dick and his family at a later date…)).

Hilltop Ranch and Vineyard Estate Pinot Noir:  This, too, is the first year for this fruit.  Although a new vineyard, the vines were in their 5th leaf at harvest time.  We decided in 2004 not to let a crop on the vines that year because most of the vines needed more time and to reserve their energy to establish themselves (the soil has a good amount of what we call “chalk rock”, so it was difficult for them to establish themselves).  I did not keep the different blocks separate (lower block, pond block and top block) because there wasn’t enough fruit to warrant that (only 4.75 tons altogether).  It is very distinctive from the other Pinot we have here:  the fruit had tiny, tiny berries and the color looks almost like Syrah ( I had treat it more like Syrah than Pinot while it was fermenting).  Beyond color, though, it displays right now some sassafras, cola and spice characters as well as lots of dark fruit, but it is very, very closed, so it is hard to come up with a whole lot of descriptors at this point.  I’m very excited about this wine.  It not only is the first Pinot vineyard in the lower Carmel Valley region, but the soil is fantastic, the grapes are organically grown, our ranch team is great, and the wine has great potential.  Stay tuned on this one….

Housekeeping

Where to Find Cima Collina Wines

Here’s an updated list of where one may find Cima Collina Wines in California:

 Lunardi’s:  all 6 locations (San Bruno, Los Gatos, San Jose(2), Belmont, Walnut Creek, Burlingame)

Mission Ranch, Clint Eastwood’s resort in Carmel

The Grill at Ryan Ranch, Monterey (as of May 10)

Deli Treasures, Mid-Carmel Valley

Fandango, Pacific Grove
Shopper’s Corner, Santa Cruz               Clementine’s Kitchen, Monterey
Deluxe Foods, Aptos                             Uncorked, Saratoga
Kuleto’s, Los Gatos                               Star Market, Salinas
The Bountiful Basket, Carmel                Sierra Mar, Post Ranch, Big Sur
Passionfish, Pacific Grove                      Monterey Fish House
Village Fish House                                Paradise Wine Bar
Grasing’s, Carmel-by-the-Sea               La Playa, Carmel-by-the-Sea
Bixby’s Martini Bistro, Carmel                Bahama Billy’s, Carmel
Taste of Monterey                                The Market at Pebble Beach

 

Events

Look for us at:

Clementine’s tomorrow — Friday, April 21 from 11-1 — for a live radio broadcast and Cima Collina Pinot Noir tasting.  Clementine’s (in additional to having a wonderful name) is a great place to buy wine, cheese, sandwiches, in addition to kitchen items.  Check it out when in the area!  Also at Clementine’s on May 4, we will pour our wines for all to enjoy…

 the South Valley Wine & Food Auction in Morgan Hill on the evening of April 28th.  This is a fundraising event for the athletic programs at the Morgan Hill Unified School District.  It looks like there will be lots of small wineries pouring at the event.

Friends of Legal Services for Seniors 11th Annual Ciao! Cioppino! Dinner.  We are donating the wine for this event and Phil from Phil’s Fish Market is cooking the Cioppino.  If you have never tried Phil’s Cioppino then you are missing out!  This is Saturday, April 29th.

On May 10th we will do a wine tasting event by pairing our Pinot Noir with dinner at The Grill at Ryan Ranch.  If you haven’t been to the Grill, then try it out.  Great food, great prices, great people.

In Chicago:  Our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay will be the featured wines at a fundraising event for Friends of Ryerson Woods on May 6. 

Wine Review

Interested in finding out what other folks think of our Pinot?  Take a look at this April 9th write-up from the “Prince of Pinot“.

I stumbled across a quote from the writings of Colette the other day.  Colette was a rather prolific French writer who grew up in Burgundy during the late 1800′s (for more information click here).  She is famous for much of her fiction, but I enjoy reading her writings about her life in Burgundy, and also those about her mother, Sido, a practical woman who was in tune with nature and its cycles.  In this passage, she talks about her introduction to wine and her wine “schooling” as a child:

     It was between my eleventh and fifteenth years that this admirable educational program was perfected.  My mother was afraid that I was outgrowing my strength and was in danger of a “decline”.  One by one, she unearthed, from their bed of dry sand, certain bottles that had been aging beneath our house in a cellar — ………– I drank Chateau Lafites, Chambertins, and Cortons which had escaped capture by the “Prussians” in 1870.  Certain of these wines were already fading, pale and scented like a dead rose; they lay on a sediment of tannin that darkened their bottles, but most of them retained their aristocratic ardor and their invigorating powers.  The good old days!
     I drained that paternal cellar, goblet by goblet, delicately…My mother would recork the opened bottle and contemplate the glory of the great French vineyards in my cheeks.
     Happy those children who are not made to blow out their stomachs with great glasses of red-tinted water during their meals!  Wise those parents who measure out to their progeny a tiny glass of pure wine – and I mean pure in the noble sense of the word – and teach them:  “Away from the meal tale, you have the pump, the faucet, the spring, and the filter at your disposal.  Water is for quenching the thirst.  Wine, according to its quality and the soil where it is grown, is a necessary tonic, a luxury, anda fitting tribute to good food.”  And is it not also a source of nourishment in itself?……It is no small thing to conceive a contempt, so early in life, not only for those who drink no wine at all but also for those who drink too much.
     The vine and the wine it produces are two great mysteries.  Alone in the vegetable kingdom, the vine makes the true savor of the earth intelligible to man.  With what fidelity it makes the translation!  It senses, then expresses, in its clusters of fruit the secrets of the soil.  The flint, through the vine, tells us that it is living, fusible, a giver of nourishment.  Only in wine does the ungrateful chalk pour out its golden tears…..

Can we take claim to any of these theories in modern day America?  Wine as medicine?  Teaching our children about respect and responsibility for alcohol?  The transference of the qualities of the soil through the vine into a form that is not only useful to the body, but also a unique, singular expression of it’s elements?

From reading these old words, I realize that most folks in France at the time who were probably more agrarian in those days, accepted these ideas without question.  Here in the modern America, we have to analyze, debate, pour money into an organization in order to test an idea, etc. about all of those “contentious” topics:  underage drinking,  wine and health, “what is terroir?”.  I realize debate is a democratic principal, but these days, I prefer to keep it simple and just read Colette and enjoy a glass of wine.  How about you?  Bon Sante!