Indian Summer - El Molino Winery |
Late August early September is my favorite time of the winemaking calendar. The grapes are reaching full maturity and as harvest begins all your prior harvest experience kicks in as decisions need to made as grapes get turned into wine. The days are long, usually starting around six in the morning at the vineyard as the picking crew readies itself, and continues through the day into the late night. At El Molino we make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the two great grapes of Burgundy, and it is the fickle Pinot which ripens first. Once the Pinot fermentations are underway, the grapes rise to form a cap on top of the juice which requires manual plunging four times a day, this is the workout section of harvest as you use a stainless steel stick to plunge the grape cap into the juice to keep the cap wet and to help extract the flavor and aroma compounds present in the skins. About at this point the first of the Chardonnay will be picked and we will press the juice from the skins and send that juice to barrels for fermentation and maturation. |
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In California, we usually experience an Indian summer during harvest through September and October and this provides great weather to still enjoy Rose and white wines at lunch and the evenings. A Rose that I have particularly enjoyed lately is the Bieler Père et Fils Rosé Cuvee Sabine 2008. This wine is made by Charles Bieler as an homage to his father and is a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault. Crisp and refreshing but ripe with lovely notes of strawberry and citrus this wine is a treat over lunch or before dinner. I tend to favor either the very flinty Sauvignon blancs such as those from Sancerre or the fuller riper examples with a touch of Semillon blended in to fill out the mid-palate and increase viscosity. One such example is the Arietta Napa valley “On the White Keys” 2007, where the Sauvignon component brings pungent grass and straw whereas the Semillon adds lemon, lime and beeswax while giving the wine wonderful length. However, nine times out of ten I tend to favor Chardonnay over all other white grapes. It might be that I make it, but Chardonnay can deliver on so many different levels. Take Chablis for instance, when tasted blind many people would not associate this as Chardonnay, it is the antithesis of cheap and cheerful Chardonnay. Steely, gun flint, wet wool and lime framed by bracing mouth watering acidity that at once caresses and attacks the palate with flavor. The 2006 wines that are now on the shelves show those great qualities as well as the older 2003’s which despite the heat of that vintage are drinking beautifully, in particular, the Vincent Dauvissat Chablis 2003. Another example of this style of wine but from California is the Melville Clone 76 Inox 2008. The wine sees no oak just stainless steel, no malolactic fermentation and five months of maturation in stainless steel to offer a pure expression of the season and the vineyard. Grapefruit and meyer lemon give way to white strawberry and mineral notes that are continued on the palate with more weight and viscosity than Chablis but with great mouthwatering acids to give the wine cut and precision.
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More often than not I tend to drink the leftovers from our winery tours. We open fresh bottles for each group of visitors so there are usually bottles that are open that need drinking, waste not want not as it is said! Our current release, the El Molino Rutherford Chardonnay 2007 has shown beautifully from the outset with lemon blossom, pineapple and yeast aromatics. It is on the richer side of the spectrum with great weight and viscosity but with lively acidity that provides a crisp counterpoint to the ripeness inherent in California Chardonnay. A glass before dinner is a ritual that I hardly miss and then for dinner I usually enjoy a glass of our Pinot noir. I continually wonder at the ability of wine to provide a reference point for people and places that make up our cumulative life experience. Whenever I drink our Pinot, I am always reminded of my dad Reg Oliver who resurrected the old ghost winery when he uprooted our family from Manhattan to Napa in 1981. I was nine and my brother Jack was five and we watched in awe as dad, in his madras plaid shorts, stomped the Pinot in our garage while the old collapsed cave was excavated and made into a modern winery. Many years were spent holding a bucket and smelling the wondrous aromatics of the ferments, cherry, red and black, damson plums. Watching dad manhandle the barrels into place and the smell filling the winery caves as the barrels were filled with freshly fermented wine smelling of pipe tobacco, Indian spices and black tea. You will find all of these in our current release, the El Molino Rutherford Pinot Noir 2006 and with a bit of luck, memories of friends and family at the table that will last a lifetime. This year, in celebration of our twentieth Wines may be purchased directly from the winery: www.elmolinowinery.com
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