Local Winemaker Creates New Standard for Science Curriculum: Promise Great Wine at the End and People Will Happily Stand in Dew-Soaked Grass and Learn About Botany

Since it’s been so long since Taste Camp, I seriously considered not returning to my posts on our experiences, but since the weekend ended with a visit to Linden Vineyards and time talking with owner/winemaker Jim Law, I decided to get over my feelings of embarrassment for my slacker blogger ways and share some of what I learned.

In case you’re a VA wine lover who’s been living under a rock for a few decades…apologies in advance to anyone who actually does live under a rock…Linden is typically viewed as one of, if not the, premier winery in the state.  Moreover, Jim Law has served as a vineyard and cellar mentor and advisor to many.  For reasons totally unknown to us now, it took us far too long to make our first visit to Linden, but we were quickly sold on the quality and consistency of his wines.  The opportunity to learn directly from Law was a huge draw for me in making Taste Camp fit into my incredibly busy spring schedule.

On Sunday, Law welcomed a bunch of tired but excited bloggers for a vineyard walk at his Hardscrabble site followed by a tasting of some of his single vineyard wines.  He started by telling us a bit about himself, and it really just made me want to share some food and wine with him as I encouraged him to talk about his life (anyone able to hook this up for me….anyone?).  He was a poli sci major who joined the Peace Corps where he was growing fruit crops in Africa.  Given that he grew up in a wine loving family, he looked into growing grapes/making wine when he returned to the US and spent some time in Ohio where he found that he loved it.  He looked to the coasts for his own vineyard/winery as that typically meant a wine buying public more interested in dry wines (it may be a stereotype, but cut him some slack since it was more than 30 years ago).  He felt that the west coast was “too established” and his “Peace Corps spirit” brought him to VA.  Yay for us!

If you’ve been to Linden, you know that he has a beautiful, hilly vineyard.  More important, he has good soil, drainage, airflow, etc.  This was not random.  As is true with just about all the best vineyards in the state, he went looking for the “right” site.  After all, just because grapes will grow somewhere doesn’t mean it’s the optimal location for them.  Anyway, Law (it just feels wrong for me to call this man by his first name) said the 80s were really focused more on climate and drainage issues in VA.  He’s now focusing more on soil and experimentation with clones.  While he still thinks we’re many years away from really knowing which clones do best in VA, and different parts of VA, he’s now ripping out most of his original plantings and replanting over a 5-10 year period with more attention to what should be planted where based on soil since it varies widely throughout his vineyard.  Yes, he’s sacrificing fruit from established vines, but he’s taking a much longer-term view.

I already talked about vineyard issues that came up throughout our Taste Camp visits in another post, so I won’t rehash them here.  You should be aware, however, that Linden offers a vineyard/cellar tour on weekends at 11:30.  If you can work this into your schedule, do so.  You won’t regret it.  Ask questions about the vineyard choices being made regarding new plantings, spacing, clones, etc.  You’ll learn a lot and gain a deeper insight into the wine industry.  My guess is, like me, you’ll quickly come to understand the Linden tagline “never content.”  It sounds tiring and depressing, but it’s a philosophy I embrace in many aspects of my own life.  Contentment can equate with laziness or too much satisfaction with the status quo.  Life is about growth and change, and Law clearly embraces this.  I so want to be him, in my own profession of course, when I grow up.

Anyway, you probably want to hear about the wine… You’re likely aware that Linden offers 2 “levels” of wines: single vineyard wines and non-vineyard designate wines.  The single vineyard wines are from either the Hardscrabble, Avenius, or Boisseau sites. Hardscrabble is the “home” vineyard.  It’s the largest, has more granite in the soil, and seems to do well for cab sauv according to Law.  The other two sites are managed by and leased from long-time colleagues of Law.  Avenius is a cooler site at a slightly higher elevation which makes it hard to ripen some reds.  He thinks this site is stronger for chard, sauv blanc, and merlot.  The Boisseau site is just into the Shenandoah Valley, is at a lower elevation, tends to be warmer, and has richer soils.  He says this site tends to show well for younger/crowd pleaser wines that are very fruit driven.  The non-vineyard designate wines are comprised of fruit from any or all of these sites that either didn’t make the cut to be in a designate wine or was extra.  Law also has a few wines in this category that are more “production wines,” like his vidal-riesling and seyval, that were never intended to be vineyard designate as they don’t particularly speak to terrior.

Anyway, Law gathered us on the crush pad as fog rolled up the mountain to taste some wines from both the Avenius and Hardscrabble sites.  We began with the ’11 Avenius sauv blanc.  2011 was a challenging year, but I appreciate the acidity and low alcohol in this wine.  That said, I’m guessing the acid will be a bit much for some people – although Law says it should integrate a bit over the next few months.  I noted a lot of lemongrass along with some boxwood and other herbal notes and finally some green apple on the finish.  We then moved on to the ’09 Avenius chard.  This wine is aged in old oak barrels, so the influence of the oak is barely noticeable.  There was only a slight hint of vanilla – I primarily noted some bright citrus notes and minerality.  This is my style of chardonnay.  FYI – Law said that Avenius chards typically peak around 5-7 years.  The final white was the ’09 Hardscrabble chard.  This one underwent partial malolactic fermentation, so I did note more butter and vanilla notes, especially on the nose, but I really appreciated that there was still a good backbone of acid to the wine.  That said, Law said that this was still a very young wine, so it needs more time to develop.

For reds, we tried the ’08 Hardscrabble and Avenius red blends.  The Hardscrabble is a cab dominant wine, and I got a lot of wild berry notes along with some earthy hints.  Its a soft wine that’s drinking well now but still has plenty of time to grow and change in the bottle.  The Avenius was definitely driven by petit verdot, and those dark fruit flavors just coated my mouth.  This was a big wine.

You might wonder why Law didn’t pull out any of his ’07s for us since so many people rave about ’07 as one of the best growing years in VA, especially for reds.  Well, Law said that he prefers the “typical” years like ’08 and ’09 as opposed to the hot, dry years of ’07 and ’10.  He’s all about balance, and those huge fruity, higher alcohol wines from ’07 and ’10 are less representative of his style or taste.  One of the big advantages for me about participating in Taste Camp was the opportunity to  try a wide array of wines from many vineyards and vintages in a short period of time.  While I do enjoy those big ’07s from time to time, when I’m looking for a wine to have with dinner, I do tend to reach for those from the more “typical” vintages.  What this means for me is that I have to watch for those in the future and stock up when I can.

Anyway, as you might have guessed from this long post that I had a great time and learned a lot.  Thanks Taste Camp, Linden Vineyards, and Jim Law for making this happen.  It was nice to follow a master, who knows he also still needs to be a student, through his vineyard and hear about his experiences, challenges, and insights.  I’m an academic by both training and inclination, so Law’s lifetime learning approach to vineyard management and winemaking resonates with me.  Plus passion is contagious.  If you haven’t been to Linden in a while, plan a visit.  It will be worth your time.

 

Winemaker Shocks World with Revelation: Microclimate Change is Global Warming for Gnomes

During TasteCamp, we got to spend time in 4 different vineyards.  We started Saturday with Doug Fabbioli in his vineyard at Fabbioli Cellars, moved to Tarara Winery where Jordan took us to the Nevaeh Vineyard, spent Saturday afternoon with Ben Renshaw, owner/winemaker at 8 Chains North, at Tranquility Vineyard, and ended the VA wine filled weekend with Jim Law at Linden Vineyards (more on this next week).

Jim Law's Hardscrabble Vineyard

While I took my little vacation from computers, I was struggling with how to talk about this part of TasteCamp.  I totally get that the vineyard is a critical factor in making great wine.  I also recognize that I’m not a plant person and I get bored when talk turns to soils, trellising systems, etc.  Given this, I tried to make Grape Envy Guy write this post since he geeks out on all things botanical, but his life is even more hectic than mine, and it just wasn’t in the cards.  Given this, I figured I had to just bite the bullet and share some general impressions with you.

Doug Fabbioli in his vineyard

First of all, all 4 vineyard visits made clear that these winemakers/vineyard managers are passionate about what they do in the vineyard and understand that it has a direct, and centrally important, relationship to what ends up in the bottle.  If you haven’t done a vineyard walk, watch for the opportunity to do wine at a local winery.  You’re bound to learn something, and it may well change how you think about wine (local or otherwise).

Jordan Harris

Second, despite the VA wine industry maturing, there’s still a lot of experimentation going on.  For example, both Doug Fabbioli and Jim Law talked about experimenting with carmenere, Jordan Harris talked about his lack of satisfaction with his trials of grenache and mouvedre, and everyone talked about trying different clones and rootstocks.

Tarara's Nevaeh Vineyard

Third, site matters.  Grapes will grow on a lot of different sites throughout the state, but they aren’t all ideal.  Also, even within a given vineyard site (e.g., the Hardscrabble Vineyard at Linden), there are microclimate issues that need to be considered, soil variations, etc.  Winegrowers are getting more and more selective about the sites on which they plant their vineyards, the varieties they plant at each site, etc.  That said, economics play a major role in the choices people make, and many are working with less than ideal sites (Fabbioli being one such example).

Tranquility Vineyard

Fourth, there’s a real tension between the desire to make “fine wine,” which often involves incredibly low yields per acre, and the desire to actually be able to make a living from a vineyard/winery.  This also plays a role in bottle price (practices resulting in lower yields may drive a higher bottle price, etc.).  This drives choices about trellising, fruit dropping, etc., and I’m starting to understand how this changes the resulting wine (lower yields may result in more concentrated flavors while higher yields may be related to more overt fruitiness by less depth or development of complex flavors).  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with any of these choices – it is a business, and people need to make money.  That said, it’s really interesting to learn about factors that play a role in and motivate vineyard management choices.

Doug Fabbioli is growing pears in ship bottles for his pear "port"

Finally, it was again reiterated that the VA wine world is incredibly collaborative.  People share their successes and struggles so that all can improve the quality of the wines being made in the commonwealth.

Jim Law - a teacher, mentor, and advisor to many - still sees himself as a student

Because I’m not sure where else I’ll put these things, let me cram a few more pieces of information in here…

Did you know that Doug Fabbioli grows and sells asparagus?

Doug Fabbioli is one of the founders of the Piedmont Epicurean Arts Center which was founded to help students learn about the epicurean arts from farm to table so that they can establish their own successful agribusiness and play a role in keeping parts of VA (such as Loudoun County) actively agricultural.

Ben Renshaw

Ben Renshaw was a major trooper since he hosted the Tranquility Vineyard walk the day after his wedding!

Otium Cellars

Thanks to Otium Cellars, handily across the street from Tranquility Vineyard, for hosting tasting after our vineyard walk.  GEG and I still intend to return for a more traditional winery visit and tasting in the, hopefully, not too distant future, but it was nice to get a sneak peek at the Otium releases.  My favorite of the ones we tried that day was the ’10 malbec, but I still preferred the two vintages of the Furnace Mountain Red from 8 Chains North that we tasted.

 

Gaggle of Bloggers Responds to “Hey Baby Wanna See My Cave?” With Resounding Yes, Floodgates Opened for Even Worse Lines

Day 2 of TasteCamp found us spending a lot of time in the vineyard learning about the growing side of VA wine.  I’ll share some of my impressions about this tomorrow, but I decided to talk about the 2^nd grand tasting held at Tarara Winery as well as the lunch and vertical/horizontal tastings organized by Jordan Harris, winemaker/general manager, and the Tarara crew.

 When we arrived at Tarara, Jordan decided to begin by taking us out to the Nevaeh vineyard via a wagon ride.  He poured us some’11 petit manseng to enjoy on the ride (try it if you get the chance – I love this grape, and this was an enjoyable example) and then poured some ’07 viognier when we got to the vineyard.  (Tarara was still using corks for the ’07 whites, and I was amused to see Jordan using a wing corkscrew to open the bottles.)  Again, I’ll talk more about the vineyard tomorrow, but it is clear that Jordan, like most winemakers, believes that good wine is made, at least in large part, in the vineyard.  On the return ride, we were treated to a taste of the long self out ’07 syrah (co-fermented with viognier).  This was one of my favorite wines of the weekend, so kudos to Jordan for raiding the library for us.

When we returned to the winery, we began the 2^nd grand tasting in the “cave.”  (Whitey, the now deceased owner of Tarara, wanted a wine cave, so he built one – yup, that’s not my life either.)  Thanks to Corcoran Vineyards, Delaplane Cellars, General’s Ridge Vineyard & Winery, Horton Vineyards, Loudoun Valley Vineyards, Narmada Winery, Philip Carter Winery, Stinson Vineyards, Tarara Winery, and Zephaniah Farm Vineyard for pouring for us.  Given that approximately 40 wines were part of this grand tasting, it should be unsurprising that things start to run together a bit.  I have no idea how actual wine professionals manage to make it through tastings like this on even a semi-regular basis.  Spitting is all well and good, but it takes a lot to stand out in this kind of crowd.

Anyway, I continue to be impressed with Zephaniah.  They poured 2 cab francs and 2 chambourcins.  I heard a ton of comments along the lines of “I don’t like chambourcin, but that one from Zephaniah really impressed me.”  When a winery can make people rethink what can be done with a hybrid grape they’re doing something right!

On the white side, the ’11 viognier from General’s Ridge was much more to my taste than the ’10 we had when we visited them (that one was overwhelmed by the vidal in the blend), and I also liked the ’10 viognier from Narmada.  It’s getting harder and harder to find a crisp, stainless viggy these days, but this one was light, floral, and refreshing.  The ’10 meritage from Philip Carter grabbed my attention as well.  There’s a fair bit of oak in there, and the wine struck me as needing more time in the bottle, but it offered some nice flavors.  Clearly it’s time for another visit there.  I also appreciated the ’11 petit manseng from Delaplane.  I’m always excited to see this grape as part of a non-dessert wine.

On the red side, it was great to taste the ’10 LEAP, a blend of mouvedre, syrah, and grenache from Tarara.  They do a special wine for leap day each time it rolls around, and I bought one while it was on its one day sale (I think you can still get it at a much higher price, however).  I like the earthy fruit I found in this wine.  I also thought the Tarara Boneyard red offered a heck of a lot for a value red ($15, I think).  The Delaplane table, however, was my favorite.  Jim Dolphin brought the ’08 Williams Gap blend as well as his ’07 Shirland Syrah (a wine I totally regret not buying the one time I had the chance).  Both were drinking really well, and the syrah was a wine I just couldn’t bring myself to spit.

After the grand tasting, we headed to the other side of the cave to help ourselves to lunch.  Pizzaria Moto did a great job of keeping the pizzas coming as we appeared to be a group of very hungry bloggers.  While we were eating, Jordan set us up with a self guided tasting of wines that resulted in a series of horizontal verticals (wines from different vineyards [horizontal] from multiple years [vertical]).  With lunch, I checked out the ’10 Honah Lee and Nevaeh whites.  Both were fine, but neither stood out – likely due in part to palate fatigue from the grand tasting.

After lunch, I spent some time checking out the reds.  Jordan had 4 red blends form the Tranquility Vineyard site – a ’08, and ’09, the ’09 Three2One Cellars collaboration, and a barrel sample of the ’10.  The ’08 was definitely my favorite, but since I liked my reds with some age on them, this shouldn’t be a big surprise.  It was really fun to see how different the Three2One Cellars collaboration was from the Tarara Tranquility blend form the same year.  Clearly they are different wines, with different blends, but the Three2One wine was a lot more fruit forward.  I like a bit more earthiness to my wine, and I found that more in Jordan’s bottle.

self guided tastings get a bit messy

I generally found myself preferring the Nevaeh wines, however.  I have no idea if I’d have the same reaction were I to do this again, but I’m happy with wine being a subjective experience and am willing to embrace my fickleness.  Jordan opened an ’07 meritage (mostly Nevaeh fruit), the ’08, the ’09, and provided a barrel sample of the ’10.  Again, the ’08 was doing it for me (I started to see a theme with my preferences, so check back when I talk about Linden Vineyards next week), but I generally preferred the earthy, as opposed to more fruity notes, I found in these wines.

asparagus in a floral arrangement is brilliant!

Thanks to Jordan Harris, Tarara Winery, Pizzaria Moto, and all who poured at the grad tasting.  I had a great time catching up with or meeting everyone.  Don’t forget to check in tomorrow as I talk about our vineyard walks.

 

Blogger Wins Nobel Prize for Avoiding Easy Jokes About Compressed Melons, Accolades Pile Up

I am such a bad VA wine blogger…sorry for disappearing for the past week.  My work life was all about pushing to get things done so that I’d have time to go to TasteCamp and then playing catch up after the long weekend was over.  This led to major burnout on both the work and blog fronts.  To recover, I unplugged from all but the most essential electronic communication.  Thankfully, I’m feeling much happier about all aspects of my life after some time away from my computers and smartphone, and I’m now ready to return to some VA wine impressions from TasteCamp.

I left off after taking about the opening lunch and first grand tasting at Boxwood, so I’ll pick up where I left off by talking about the Friday night dinner at Breaux Vineyards.  Jen Breaux Blosser and the whole Breaux crew know how to pull out all the stops for an event, so I was excited to see what they’d have in store for us.  As you’d expect, there was a lot of good Breaux wine, but there was also a lot of great food courtesy of Tuscarora Mill.

Jen welcomed the TasteCamp crew to Breaux with glasses of the ’10 sauv blanc and stations where we could taste the ’10 viognier, the ’10 Jen’s Jambalaya, and the ’02 merlot reserve.  While we were tasting and chattingwith each other as well as the Breaux staff, we were also able to taste some wonderful passed hors d’oeuvres.  My favorites were the seared scallops on lavosh with fennel salad and orange glaze (I love me some scallops) and the compressed melon with feta and sherry gastrique.  I need to figure out how to compress some melon at home because I kept stalking the wait staff holding those trays so that I could get another taste.  As for the wine, my patio winner was the merlot reserve.  If you’ve got a bottle of this at home (perhaps from when you attended one of the merlot vertical tastings), know that it’s still drinking really well.  If you open it, you won’t be disappointed, but you can probably also wait another year or two.  I was also glad that Grape Envy Guy finally got to try the Jen’s Jambalaya as I don’t think he ever has.  We eat a lot of spicy food, so it’s nice to have some local, affordable slightly sweet white options, and at 1% residual sugar, this one was well balanced and very enjoyable.

We were eventually moved into the tank room for dinner which began with a glass of the ’11 Breaux rosé, a dry rosé from nebbiolo, cab sauv, and chambourcin, and a salad of local greens, got cheese, and walnuts.  This is the first wine available by Breaux’s new winemaker David Pagan Castaño, and it was described to us as being done in a Spanish style.  I don’t think I’ve had a Spanish rosé before, so I’ll have to take their word for it, but it was very fruity, refreshing, and worked well with the salad to start the meal.

We then moved on to the main course of beef medallions with a bacon fig sauce and a gorgonzola risotto with currants and almonds.  I was in love with this course, and it paired particularly well with the ’07 cabernet sauvignon.  The other wine poured with this course was the ’07 cab franc reserve.  This is a massive wine, and I think it still needs more time.  Right now, the oak influence is too prominent for me, but many others were loving it, so if you get a chance to taste this one (it’s rarely poured), let me know what you think.

We were then treated to a cheese course with a vertical of nebbiolo.  The ’01, ’02, ’05, and a barrel sample of the ’07 were poured.  I was excited for the opportunity to taste these wines since we had to miss the nebbiolo vertical event since we were already committed to attending the Jefferson Meritage vertical (my favorite wineries so need to coordinate their event schedules with me…oh right, I’m not that important).  The ’07 is still a monster and just too young to really get a good sense of what it will be like.  It’s been a while since I tasted the ’05, and it seems to be aging well, but my favorites were still the ’01 and ’02.  I was leaning slightly towards the ’02, but I had a hard time expressing why.  The nice part of this was that we have bottles of both of these wines at home, so this let us check in on how they’re likely doing without opening our only bottles (hey – we’re getting better about aging wine, but we rarely have the money to buy more than 1 or 2 bottles of these wines).

By the time dessert rolled around, I was very full, so I just tasted the white chocolate-apricot cake served with lychee sabayon.  It was really well done, but I was trying to stave off food coma.  With this final course, we were served the ’10 Chère Marie (a late harvest vidal blanc) and the ’06 Soleil.  The Chère Marie wasn’t my style of wine, but I enjoyed the Soleil.  GEG isn’t yet sold on the sherry-style wines, however, so none came home with us.

Throughout dinner, Jen and crew did a great job filling us in on the history of Breaux as well as providing some information about their expansion plans and the oversees marketing.  Since we’re local (as are most of our readers), this wasn’t new info for us, but we still had a great time learning more about the Breaux wines as well as our dining companions – so cool to actually meet people who write blogs you’ve been reading for a while.

Thanks for the great dinner Chef Patrick Dinh!

Anyway – I promise, I’m not disappearing anytime soon, so I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the TasteCamp visit to Tarara.