Clever Wines Syrah is Ready!!!

After nearly 16 years in the wine business, and over 7 having run my own wine shop and wine bar, I have finally put my money where my mouth is. The long patient wait is over and in just a matter of a few weeks I anticipate the arrival of the 2008 vintage of Clever Wines Syrah, Sonoma Coast “Stage Gulch Vineyard.”  After three press runs, aged separately in two different types of oak for nearly 18 months, we made the final blending decisions and decided that ageing was done and it was time to bottle this baby up! The finished product is a gorgeous, supple, intensely fruited Syrah with just enough of that tar, white pepper, roasted meat and bacon aroma that are commonly associated with Syrah. I’m here to tell you this wine is GOOD, legitimately good. That’s not just proud papa speak, as a wine professional I can say – objectively – that this wine speaks to everything that is true to the Syrah grape and everything that is true to a Syrah grape from a cool climate vineyard. Its good.  Real good, and that’s important.

Even though this is a 2008 vintage wine, you need to back up a few years really, to the Spring of 2005, to get the whole story because there is an important point here that I don’t want to get lost. There is a lot, I mean A LOT, of bulk wine in the world. This is something that is particularly problematic in California. If I simply wanted a vanity/private label with my name on it and something half assed in the bottle I could have been on my third go-round of wine by now. Pull up the truck, bottle up a couple hundred cases of cheap wine and move on. Piece of cake, right? Problem being, I had gone down that road before.

In 2005 I was approached about making some private label wines.  The red was a Syrah carbonically macerated, kind of a bulk wine (albeit produced by one family) that wasn’t terrible but wasn’t that great either, but that was ok.  The idea was to put a private label it, bring it in and generate some cashflow for bigger and better things. When the wine arrived (all 300+ cases of it) I pulled the cork on the first bottle and my heart sunk.  The wine was marginal, it was just “ok” at best and it had my name on the label.  I realized instantly I had done it all wrong, starting at the bottom that is. If there was one thing – and only one thing – somewhat positive about Hurricane Katrina is that the heat compromised all of that wine and gave me a good reason to close it out (and thus was born the 3 for $10). With a big sigh of relief I was done with a big, expensive mistake.

I swore that I would make wine again but the next time I did I was going to make a real wine, make something that bore my name, something of which I could be proud. I wanted to make a wine that showed a grape at its best and, most important, tasted like it was from SOMEWHERE.  All of this is why I jumped at the chance to make Syrah with my good friend and winemaker Paul Hoffman.

In July of 2008 Paul called me up to say that Jens Kullberg, owner of the Stage Gulch vineyard, had suddenly lost one of his vineyard grape contracts and that we had the chance to grab the grapes. I jumped at the opportunity as I had purchased Stage Gulch fruit before and I knew the coolness of the vineyard and its position in the Petaluma Gap made for some potentially seriously good Syrah.  Moreover, Paul is as enamored with the Syrah grape as me.  Freaks, I think you might call us for the Syrah grape.  Also, we are of a like mind with regards how best to make it (with slight variations of bottling philosophy). I knew that combination of great grapes from a vineyard well suited for Syrah and a winemaker that shared my thoughts of what made a great Syrah made for a sure thing.  On a foggy morning in October 2008 the grapes were picked, and in barrels they’ve sat since then, up until last week that is.  On a rainy Monday in mid-January 2010 I took the early flight to SFO, hopped in a rental car and hauled my happy ass up to Sonoma. The wine had been in barrel for almost 18 months and it was time to take its temperature. Here’s what went down.

Lets Make Some Wine Decisions

Like any good wine adventure begins, we realized we were both starving and needed a little fortification so we hit The Gourmet Taco Shop.  Ironically, this was the place where a VERY hungover (read: still slightly drunk from the night before) Paul and I hatched idea for Clever Wines.  Though we were very much in the belly of the beast we were fortified enough by our carnitas and Sols to talk Syrah and thus the idea was born.  Now, the next two pictures have nothing to do with wine, but this place has got to have one of the best carnitas burittos I’ve ever had.  Anyway, onto other things.

Ok, so on to the wine.

The wine was made orignally at the Roche Winery in Carneros but Roche sold out this year and is now a hole in the ground.  Paul moved all of his wine over to MacCrostie winery.  MacCrostie holds wine for about a dozen or so different wine projects and despite the exterior that says more about Elmwood Business Park than Sonoma wine country, the interior has everything you need to make good wine.

Paul used a winemaking technique whereby we did three presses of the fruit: One was to collect two barrels of free run juice, then we did a 1st press under a pnemuatic wine press of two barrels full, then we pressed again and got about a barrel and a half. The theory being that different runs would extract different levels of tannin and expression of fruit in each barrel. Tasting 18 months later out of a Triology glass, we realized that philosphy paid off:

Free Run/FF Barrel: Good gamy, black tar “roady” nose, deep, rich fruit. Good tannin
Free Run/Taransaud: WOW!! WOW!! WOW!!! Same nose but much brighter fruit. Loads of fruit up front but lacking in mid-palate.

1st press/FF barrel: more white pepper on nose, good fruit but softer smoother mid-palate.
1st press/Taransaud: Nice tannin, similar aroma showing more pepper than tar. Again, not a ton of fruit but the structure was much better.

2nd press/FF Barrels: dark fruit, dark color and tannin. The backbone of the wine and the source of the great, inky color.

This all really shows why you blend, the aromas and intensity of the free run juice was unreal, but it lacked mid-palate. The structure of the 1st press was spot on, but lacked opulence. The 2nd press gave that extra tannin the wine needed. After the laborious process of ageing the wines this way we decided to just mix them all together, that the outcome of the wine would be significantly greater than the sum of its parts. To say I am excited about the wine is an understatement, to say I can not wait is as well. I am proud to put my name on this wine and I am eager to share it with all of my friends when it arrives.  What I am most proud of, however, is that I made REAL WINE, not a wine-like commodity.

PS. . .

So, as a side note, what do you do if you are a winemaker living next door to some of the best Chardonnay vines in California? Well, if you’re Paul Hoffman you pull your back yard out and plant it to Dijon Clone Chardonnay! Oh, and for good measure put in a Bocce Ball court.

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