2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis, Student Vineyard, Napa Valley College
Tasting Notes
In homage to the true Chablis of Bourgogne, our Napa knock-off imitates its lemon blossom aromas, firm structure, and mineral depth. The living soil Steve Krebs maintains in this beautifully balanced vineyard imparts to the finish mineral electricity rarely seen in California whites. Bâtonnage sur lies and restrained use of well-seasoned oak impart rich structure, aromatic complexity, and reductive strength that invite a few years’ cellaring. This wine can be expected to gain aromatic openness and mid-palate richness over the next few years and should be a reasonable candidate for extended cellaring.
Fermentation Techniques:
Prise de Mousse yeast. Fermentation on untoasted Alliers oak.
Elevage Details:
Malolactic fermentation suppressed. Weekly bâtonnage six months.
Specs
Vintage: 2005
Harvested: October, 6, 2005
Harvest Sugar: 24.6 Brix
Alcohol: 12.9%
Total Acidity: 6.2g/L
pH: 3.57
2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, Lake County
Tasting Notes
The mouth possesses a rich, generous core of black cherry and a lively mineral finish. Tannin structure, once quite hard, has evolved to a pleasant roundness: velvety on the back palate but still with a firm grip up front, indicating both drinkability and further aging potential of perhaps a decade but entirely enjoyable right now.
While certainly, a peppered steak would be suitable, you really must try it with grilled duck breast.
Vineyard Notes
Diamond Ridge Vineyards is located at the southeast corner of Clear Lake in Lake County. This remarkable site enjoys a cooling lake effect due to its close proximity to water. Its 2,000-foot altitude and clean, traffic-free air allow the sun to bathe its fifteen clones of Cabernet Sauvignon in high UV, resulting in brilliant color, firm tannins, and rich fruit aromas. Clone 15 is characterized by rich black cherry aromas and substantial tannins, while Clone 4 contributes finesse and brightness.
The vineyard’s stony volcanic soil imparts energetic mineral energy and surprising longevity. Accordingly, the wine was allowed 60 months in 20-year old neutral French oak which developed seductive tobacco nuances to greatly enhanced its complexity, adding elements of mysterious and intriguing “come hither” aromatics.
Specs
Vinatage: 2013
Harvested: October 12, 2013
Harvest Sugar: 24.9 Brix
Alcohol: 14.5%
pH: 3.73
2014 WineSmith Grenache, Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Tasting Notes
The nose is instantly alluring. One expects from your basic Grenache a simple strawberry aroma, but here we have in support of its bright fruitiness an intriguing collection of melon, droughty “garrigue” herbs, saddle leather, and Asian spice. The mouth is medium-bodied with fine tannins and energetic minerality.
As a result, the wine is more complex and intriguing than a simple picnic wine, but is certainly suitable for an outing in some summer meadow with a basket full of chicken and three-bean salad with sun-dried tomatoes. Its tannins have no edge at all, so I wouldn’t serve it with a steak, but it loves the game, from venison to quail and is magic with my Swedish meatballs, doused in a morel/porcini cream sauce with a dash of Marsala.
Vineyard Notes
There is, in my view, no other region in California that compares to the Santa Cruz Mountains for producing wines of distinctive terroir expression. Something about its mountain soils and mix of sandstone and greenstone, plus the lush surrounding herbs that encircle its tiny vineyards and impart their own distinctive “air-oir” gives each vineyard a unique stamp. The area is moderated by heavy Pacific influence but also lifted above the fog so that it enjoys plenty of cool direct sunlight, the perfect recipe for the grape to express itself.
Because of this, most of the region is best suited to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, of which there are many stunning examples. The Bates Ranch is located in the sheltered Corralitos region just south of Ridge Vineyards, and is famous for its Cabernet Sauvignon, while their Grenache, less well known, is also quite wonderful.
Specs
Vintage: 2014
Harvested: October 1, 2014
Harvest Sugar: 20.7 Brix
Alcohol: 12.6%
Total Acidity: 6.7 g/L
pH: 3.73
Included in the Box
3-bottles:
1x 2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis, Student Vineyard, Napa Valley College
1x 2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, Lake County
1x 2014 WineSmith Grenache, Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Case:
4x 2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis, Student Vineyard, Napa Valley College
4x 2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, Lake County
4x 2014 WineSmith Grenache, Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Winery: WineSmith Cellars
Owner: Clark Smith
Founded: 1993
Location: Sebastopol, CA
Clark Smith is an MIT drop-out who wandered out to California in 1972 and sold wine retail in the Bay Area for several years, where he acquired a love of Bordeaux, Burgundy and all things French and observed first hand the California winery explosion in the 1970s. After a three year stint at Veedercrest Vineyards, he secured enology training at UC Davis and spent the 1980s as founding winemaker for The R.H. Phillips Vineyard in Yolo County. In 1990, he founded WineSmith Consulting and patented a group of new winemaking techniques involving reverse osmosis, spinning off Vinovation, which went on to become the world’s largest wine production consulting firm over its 17-year history.
Frustrated with California’s winemaking trends, Clark started WineSmith Cellars in 1993 as a teaching winery to make Eurocentric wines to explore traditions beyond the mainstream, expanding for his winemaking clients the range of possibility for California fruit. Choosing to create long-term partnerships with committed growers rather than growing his own grapes, Clark has become a renowned expert on Cabernet Franc, having vinified twenty vintages from a wide variety of sites.
Teaching at Napa Valley College gave him access to the Student Vineyard for Faux Chablis and his Pauillac-style $100 “Crucible” Cabernet Sauvignon. From Renaissance Vineyards in North Yuba County, he has made a sulfite-free Roman Syrah and also produces a Pinot Noir from Fiddlestix Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills in a delicate, age-worthy Côtes de Beaune style. These wines are vinified in an ancient beat-up warehouse in Sebastopol, California.
WineSmith wines are noted for their longevity, classic balance, structural integrity, minerality, and understated soulfulness. They often are aged extensively prior to release. When drinking a WineSmith wine, always ask yourself “What is this wine trying to teach me?” Clark is a vocal advocate of living soil and graceful longevity, and generally avoids excessive oak, alcohol, or extended hang-time. He is not shy about employing new tools when they are needed, such as alcohol adjustment to bring fruit into balance or micro-oxygenation to build refined structure, but always fully discloses techniques which are controversial and is outspoken in explaining his rationale.
His book, Postmodern Winemaking, is the culmination of four decades of reflection on wine’s true nature.
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY
Hi everybody! It’s a pleasure to be here, but a little sad too. This is likely the last of a 19-year experiment called the Faux Chablis Project, and after this sale, I suspect there will be no more. Here’s a video about how the project came about: Faux Chablis project roots
I know this 3-pack is gong to require a little study. Each of these wines has a lot of story behind it - feel free to ask questions.
Together these wines embody the realization of my dream as a winemaker. Drink them and you will understand much better than I could explain in words. I do hope those of for whom these wines are old friend will chime in about your experiences with me and these wines.
I got an email a few days ago that I had been assigned to lab rat duty. Imagine my surprise (and excitement) when UPS pulled up (at a safe distance) with not one, not two, but three beautiful bottles of WineSmith! Best lab rat ever!
Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of Clark Smith and his wines. My wife and I have had the pleasure of two epic tastings with Clark and Mike Faulk over the past few years, even though we live in western NY. Of these three wines, I’m quite familiar with the cab and Grenache, and we’ve had the 03 and 04 Faux Chablis, but not the 05.
We decided that the way forward was to have three wine pairing dinners with these wines, and put them through their paces. Two dinners have happened, and the third will be Saturday night and I’ll report back.
Dinner #1:
2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, paired with sous vide NY strip steak, loaded baked potato, and roasted beet/goat cheese/almond/arugula
The cab was perfect for this meal. Great energy, black cherry, cassis, fine tannins, long finish. Profound red fruit on the nose. One of the best cabs I’ve had. We saved about half the bottle and drank it 24 hours later, and it was even better. Profound was the word we kept coming back to, an aged cheese sort of feeling on the palate, very rich and expansive in addition to the fruit. I was sad to see it go.
Dinner #2:
Fresh wild caught sea scallops, risotto, and grean beans, paired with the 2005 Faux Chablis.
Opened (at Clark’s recommendation) with an ah so with no problems for the 15 year old cork. Look at the beautiful golden hue of this wine! Upon opening, I was worried that the wine was flat and worn out, but suspected it just needed a few minutes to stretch its legs after all that time in the bottle. Indeed, after 15 minutes or so, the wine was singing. Fresh nose, definitely that lemon oil Clark talks about on the palate, oily/supple mouth feel, but good acidity and a ton of energy. It came alive at dinner with the scallops, and was at its best at the last glass. Incredible for such an aged Chardonnay. I would love to try it with mussels or oysters. Seafood seems to be its thing.
That’s all for now. Tonight is sous vide pork Marsala with the Grenache, and I expect that to be pretty spectacular.
I was hoping for the price point to be closer to $16 like some previous offers, but for this to be anywhere under $20/btl is pretty crazy. Wish I could swing two cases, but I’ll have to settle for one.
@rpm I’m honored to be a fellow lab rat on this offer, and, as always, your post is equal parts education and review- always a learning experience! I’m getting better at knowing what wines I like, and identifying well made wine, but still have a ways to go in technically evaluating said wine. It’s nice to see in your review that these wines are as good as I think they are, and pretty special for the price offered.
One more wine pairing dinner to post tonight! Stay safe and warm in Florida, it’s snowing in Rochester at the moment…
Love the Grenache, still have 4 of them.
Haven’t had the cab yet because my casemate hasn’t met up with me yet.
Went through some of the 05 and enjoyed it, but not as much as the 2004.
Yes, like any wine over ten years under cork, an AhSo is essential to getting the cork out without crumbling. The wax is soft and easily trimmed away. See the video in which I demonstrate this. It’s twenty minutes long - my apologies, but there’s a lot to say about this extraordinary trio.
@winesmith I watched the video, and it went from “I want to tell you how to open this bottle” to it being already opened - no demonstration. I have a number of bottles from 2003 to 2005 (I’m aiming to open a bottle of 2003 this evening) and some wisdom would be welcome!
@coynedj@winesmith A key trick with the AhSo, that I want everyone to know about, is being able to put the cork back in. Why would you ever want to do that? Corkage! If your state allows restaurants to let people bring wine, the AhSo is the most important wine tool you can have.
Bringing a young (for example) Winesmith or (another random example) Two Jakes wine to a restaurant later in the day, just pull cork out with AhSo, pour a little out as a sample, put the cork back in, and like magic your wine is decanting while on the way to the restaurant. For some wine you’ll want to do this earlier in the day or even the day before.
My wife and I were going out for the day and ending at a fancy restaurant in the country. I did this trick with the Kukeri PN around 11:00 AM, took the wine with us for the day’s jaunt, end up at the Blue Door in Flint Hill around 6:30, and proceeded to have an incredible (and cost effective, even with $20 corkage) wine experience with out gourmet meal.
When at a less wine savvy restaurant, it used to drive me nuts waiting for someone to open our wine. They had no clue that I’d needed this wine open for as long as possible while we didn’t drink it. I try to hint please open this now while trying to not get stressed. Well, with the AhSo trick, they can take their time! The wine’s already getting some air! Muahaha!
@winesmith So, Clark, where can you get a really decent ‘Ah So’ these days? All of the ones I have seen in the past 20 years or so have blades which are (1) inferior steel (or whatever they are!) and (2) much too thick. I used to have one from the ‘70s that had decent thin steel blades, but it broke a few years ago… Before that, I had one my father used in the 1930s of a very different design: one of the blades dropped down from a storage ‘handle’ and the other was withdrawn from the handle and inserted in the top, so the width could be varied with the size of the cork (up to at least a couple of inches). Surgical quality steel blades, the rest of it machined from decent steel. Sigh, someone with lighter fingers than mine is enjoying it now, if it hasn’t broken. I’ve never seen another like it, but my Dad said they were common in the business in before WWII, and were especially useful when there were many different sizes of corks in bottles and casks.
@rpm@winesmith
They have been sale priced more favorably.
Most of the prong openers I’ve run across, this included, seem too thick and tend to dig into the cork rather than stay between the cork and neck.
Perhaps we need to consider a quality product project.
@rjquillin@rpm@winesmith
The Durand is amazing, but you can jury rig a slightly less convenient version of it using a standard screw-pull and ah-so combination. Screw the pull in, it holds the cork up while you insert the too-thick-bladed ah-so. Hold them together while you twist/lift.
To be sure, the Durand is actually designed for this combination and is easier to use. But then again, it’s $125.
@rjquillin@rpm@winesmith
After a couple of years of use and many old crappy corks the Durand has never failed me. Not sure why you think the prongs are too thick? Zero failures for me anyway. Pricey yes
@klezman@rjquillin@rpm Ron, you’re right. I go through $10 Ah-So’s from BevMo like kleenex. My dependable friend Jason Kallsen has a Durand and loves it more than life itself. “Best money I ever spent” was his comment. It’s at the top of my list, and will save you frustration in the short term and money in the long term. It’s built to last.
@rjquillin@ScottW58@winesmith I don’t know if the Durand’s blades are too thick… haven’t actually handled or used one, and would have to try one to have an opinion…
@rjquillin@rpm@ScottW58 Ron, tell you what. I’m going to buy me one, so I’ll send it your way to try out - perhaps on this very wine. If you like it, keep it and buy me one. If not, just send it up to me. What say?
@rpm@ScottW58@winesmith
I’ve already ponied up and have one, for the modest taxed and delivered price of $118.75.
I find it a bit awkward, at least for me so far, but has done the trick. Perhaps I just need more practice!
I’d gladly exert the effort on one of those bottles of Cab.
@rpm@ScottW58@winesmith
Clearly ~not~ Amazon.
Best I can now find saves you exactly 2¢ over the direct price.
Got mine a year ago courtesy of Tbyrd & MdS via a sale their locker had going; $110 + tx.
@winesmith Some CT reports of the faux Chablis being past it’s prime. Wouldn’t mention it if the names didn’t match reputable community members. I realize that with a wine this age, you take some chances. Would you be willing to give reasonable odds? Definitely interested in the offer. Have been thoroughly enjoying an Any Gorilla from a Dec offer.
@losthighwayz@michaelvella not sure why michael’s been added but I came across it recently and I like that I can keep a list of wines I have in my cellar which is really just a spider filled crawlspace and no fun to poke around it. It does maintain a decent temp for keeping wine tho. Perhaps you really just want to share your thoughts about CT with me? Shoot! I’m hear to learn!!
@kristian@losthighwayz They’re copying me because I like to make disparaging comments about cellar tracker reviews.
Generally I trust reviews on there about as much as I’d trust a sommelier at Taco Bell.
@michaelvella
What about CT notes from taster names you recognize from here? To me that’s certainly a far cry from the Taco Bell Sommelier (which I generally agree with the sentiment).
It’s a fair question. The other vintages have held their color amazingly well, but we did see some browning variation looking through the glass, and have diligently sorted through and pulled the darker-colored wines and consigned them to a Chardonnay Sherry project down the road. Tasting back through those wines, I now see that they are still profound and not dried out, so I think I over-reacted. I’m not putting them back into service for this offer, but I’m a lot less concerned.
The vintages 2003 -6 are much richer than the '01 and '02. That’s because we tore out all but the best sections of the vineyard that year and planted it to Clone 337 and 10 Cab Sauv, leading to the Crucible campaign.
Thing is, these denser wines have more color now, and the '01-'02 wines are the lightest and freshest, with many flowery layers, and are now my favorite wines. We have 9 bottles remaining of each, and before the pandemic had planned to organize tastings in twelve cities to pour the last bottle of all six vintages, plus four Crucibles and a comparison of the 2010 Cab Franc made with and without sulfites.
Any of you who were at the tastings in Minneapolis, Yonkers or Sonoma, please chime in with your impressions. To me it was mind-blowing, I hope we can do it in 9 more cities after the smoke clears.
@novium Well, this is a little different form the traditional Spanish process. We’re just going to take some 15-year-old Napa Chardonnay which we suspect make have dried out a bit, unbottle it, add some grape concentrate and some alcohol, play around with oak and try to make God’s Own Cream Sherry. It’s kind of similar to what we did to create an Instant Vintage Port knockoff called Any Gorilla.
@novium Ah, very perceptive question, grasshopper.
There is no RS. I pulled the ABV down to a sweet spot at 12.9 with a technology I invented.
My discovery in the early '90s was that if I wished to make French styles, I had to deal with the fact that brix, though easily measured and closely related to ABV in dry wines ().59 - 0.61 conversion), it has absolutely nothing to do with maturity in terms of the development of aromatics, color and phenolic maturity. This just takes time.
Our thesis, which was well proven in this project, was that we needed nice ripe yellow berries. My trips to Chablis proved this to be true. Chablis is ripe, but the high humidity keeps water from evaporating from the grapes. Not so here, so our brixes at maturity in this vineyard are more like 25, resulting in wines in the high 14’s. This one was 14.8%, resulting in a bitter finish which masked minerality and its lemon oil aroma.
In 1992 I developed and patented a process employing distillation and recombination of reverse osmosis permeate to reduce ABV in California wines. This procedure and others such as the Spinning Cone now reduce alcohol in about 45% of California wines. It’s standard practice now, with French wines of a similar percentage adding beet sugar to correct ABV up instead of down.
I performed this treatment on all six vintages of Faux Chablis with spectacular results.
I hope none of you are going to get freaked out by this. Winemaking is just cooking - the ultimate slow food (this one was 29 years of vineyard development and 15 years in the cellar - way more than any other beverage).
All wine is natural. All wine is highly manipulated (those aren’t grapes in that glass). No wine is as highly manipulated as any beer, yet nobody freaks out about the crazy things brewers do.
Did I just go off the rails? I’m punching before the bell. Forgive me.
Thing is, all y’all can count on me for the straight Jesus. I’m proud of what I do. Particularly in the Faux Chablis, where I invented a process that did something impossible and grew to benefit the whole industry and consumers in ways they aren’t even aware.
I encourage you on this forum to encourage winemakers to come out of the closet. I know these people. They all sweat bullets and then tell you they do nothing, just because the nimnos in the Natural Wine movement, who have never made wine, proliferate the ridiculous fiction that applying your skills as a winemaker is to be shamed and that benign neglect makes the best wine.
In my view, honesty is the only high moral ground. Makes one a clear target though, so shoot me.
@winesmith that’s awesome, thank you for sharing. I totally share your feelings on natural wine. Everything’s just another tool in the tool box, it’s all about what you’re trying to accomplish.
I will say that part of the reason I was asking is that I’ve made chardonnay from a vineyard just a bit further down the river from NVC and picked it at about 24 and change (and I used Prix de mousse). I’d been aiming for 23.5, but that’s the challenge of home wine making on the weekends! Despite the ripeness, we still had a pH of 3.15 and TA ~9. It also ended up with some very Chablis like characteristics, but I wanted to bring out a bit more of the deep midpalette fruit. I ended up bumping it to pH 3.6 (I’d actually been aiming for 3.3, let’s not discuss my conversation errors, hah. Lessons were learned). Did you also bump things a bit with this chard? If so, what did it start at? (I guess what I’m really curious about is how typical the high acids are to Chardonnay in that part of the valley!)
My experience is somewhat different, probably due to clone differences. This is a Hanes clone from Mt.Veeder which Domaine Chandon planted for sparkling. It hangs a long time before yellowing up, and we generally pick in mid-October. We ignore brix, which has nothing to do with ripeness. This generally means 24.5 brix or better so we end up with alcohols of, say 14.8. The wine at this stage tastes terrible. The alcohol obscures the lemony nose and puts a bitterness in the finish that masks the minerality. Also, since we use untoasted (neutral aroma) Alliers chips in the fermenter, the palate is terribly harsh. Crazy, huh? At this point our pH is 3.5 - 3.6 and our TA is about 6.2, so it isn’t a high acid wine, but derives its palate energy from the minerality in the finish which we believe is due to living soil.
But now the magic starts. We suppress malolactic with SO2. We stir lees twice a week until the harshness subsides (6-9 months).Then as we approach bottling, we use my patented reverse osmosis / permeate distillation to lower the alcohol to a “sweet spot” below 13% (for some reason, all six vintages came out to 12.9%, but I wouldn’t count on it. Then we simply bottle and wait.
Assuming you are making, say 5-8 gallons of wine, here’s what I would do in your shoes. First, take a shovel and see if you find an earthworm city in your vineyard. This will give you minerality. You can encourage this with covercrop and eschewing pesticides.
I think you are picking too early. Wait for yellow berries and brown seeds. This will give you flavor. Immediately dilute the must to 20.5 brix with springwater. (I know, this is scary. You will get more wine and better wine.) leave the acid be. Don’t add SO2 at crush. Prise de Mousse is fine - nice and clean. If you want some Bois Frais chips - the untoasted, 3-year air cured Alliers chip from Boise France, I can send you some as they come from G3 Enterprises in 10 KG sacks, enough for your needs into the next century. Add SO2 to 0.8 mg/L molecular - about 70 parts of KMBS - to suppress ML. You should rack off your gross lees and chips onto this dose in the receiving vessel (for good mixing) a day or two after dryness so you retain the light, sweet lees and leave the gross crap behind.
The very best way to perform your batonage anaerobically is to get yourself a GOFermentorJR for $500 and set it to automatically stir your wine twice weekly or do so manually at the punch of a button. You will love this thing for your small batches of reds as well.
When the texture is plump and smooth (probably some time in the summer), stop batonage, let it fall clear, and perform a sweet spot tasting. The wine should be about 12.5% alcohol, probably below the best spot, so instead of removing the alcohol with RO technology, we are going to add alcohol in 0.1% increments until we find the best one. Get yourself some 100 proof vodka. You will also need a 1 ml graduated pipette in 0.01 ml increments - I can send you one of those too. Set up ten glasses and put 50 mls of wine in each glass. The one on your left is the control. Add vodka to each glass as follows: 0.13, 0.27, 0.40, 0.53, 0.67, 0.80, 0.93, 1.07, and 1.20 mls. This should show you the range up to 13.4%. Swirl these glasses thoroughly and taste. Pay particular attention to the harmony and reduced astringency on the palate. (You can look higher too if you’d like a Meursault style in the 13s or a Montrachet style in the 14s.)
Now just pick the one you like best and add to the main lot the same amount of alcohol. For example, if you like the 0.53 addition and have 20 liters (20,000 mls) of wine, add 0.53 mls x (20,000/50) = 212 ml of 100 proof vodka.
Mix well, bottle and wait.
@winesmith Wow, thanks. That is fascinating. I’ll have to check with the grower what the clones were on the chard we were making. We picked about 500 lbs, and yeah, definitely hitting lees stirring, it’s been magic. Partially because it’s cool, and partially because it would be very hard for us to do otherwise, we’ve been going old school brown juice method, getting some of that browning right in the pressing since we’re just using a basket press and no co2, and then having the yeast and the lees stirring grab it all back. As a result, we’ve been getting less of that estery fruitiness and more this deep intense apple that just goes and goes. 7.5 ga fermented in a small French oak barrel (a bit more toasted than is probably ideal), and then in total maybe 50% of the wine got on average two weeks in the barrel. We actually got about two thirds of the way through malo before it stuck, at which point I made my little conversation error and we just had to break out the So2. So I’ve got about 25 gallons of chard (5 was tragically lost to a dropped demijohn), just bottled 20 ga white Zin, and have 35 gal regular Zin, and ten of pinot. My dad would like his garage back.
WineSmith…Is An Autobuy with us!! Of-course in for a Case!! We just enjoyed our last 2005 Faux Chablis, what a wonderful wine, and what a coincidence.
As Always thanks Clark for ALL your great wine’s!! PS>>Say Hi to Ruth-e for us
costly-mellow-trouble
In for a 3 pack. I shouldn’t be buying anything now. Daughter just graduated college and is moving back home. Son is home from college… I should be saving. But this is Clark wine. I loved the faux chablis the first time I had it years ago. Made me start trying white wines again. Everything clark makes is so yummy.
Auugghhh! Three cases in shipping, and now this? I’m trying to resist, but then I think that I would have spent $200 for the chance to taste (multiple) Faux Chablis (and some Crucibles, and a chance to reconnect with my Jr. High friend – go Sandcrabs!) if Clark had brought his road show to Chicago before I moved away, and now that I will probably never be near a city where he is visiting…
@Mark_L Fear not, Mark. As soon as things clear up, Chicago is first on the list for the vertical tasting and I am saving a bottle of each vintage for that happy day, hopefully next year.
BTW, I tested positive on March 17th, had a very mild three-day unpleasantness and have been asymptomatic for 7 weeks now. I do believe I’m past it.
I feel honored this week to have been chosen to LabRat all three of the WineSmith wines in today’s offering! As many know, SWMBO and I are riding out the pandemic season in sunny Southwest Florida… blissfully far from the Frozen North and sadly far from the vineyards of my real home in California. In order to do justice to Clark’s offering, we recruited two additional tasters: PK and his charming and lovely bride TK. PK and TK are knowledgeable, serious, and sophisticated wine drinkers; they’ve lived in France and elsewhere in Europe, and taste seriously and frequently in Napa and Sonoma. If anyone’s worried we violated social distancing protocols, we set up our tasting at opposite ends of an 8-foot table out-of-doors to ensure proper social distancing, and each brought our own glasses, crackers/bread, water, and cheese (for post formal tasting accompaniments). Wine conquers all!
For reference, we used the modified UC Davis 20-point scoring system and Ann Noble’s Wine Aroma Wheel to help us focus on a common vocabulary for our descriptions of the wines. Under this system, most good wines will fall in the range between 15 and 20 points. At the lower end of that range you get the upper end of “standard” wines that have no defects, nothing particularly outstanding about them either. At the upper end are found wines of outstanding character without defect. In my experience over the past 60+ years tasting, wines worth a 20 are rare, usually the wines that give an “AHA!” experience. (Lower scores range from the lower end of standard wines – you may have heard me speak of ‘sound commercial wine’ in the past – on down to those which have noticeable defects, but are still salable (though most Casemates would not consider them ‘drinkable’) on to wines too defective for the trade and completely spoilt wines. OK, I know, enough already! On to the wines!
OVERALL RECOMMENDATION – rpmAUTOBUY – get a case or two! Drink the Faux Chablis this year and next, the Grenache over the next 5-7, and the Cabernet Sauvignon starting in 2023, but save a bottle for 2033 or beyond.
2005 Faux Chablis
I’ve been drinking the Faux Chablis in one vintage or another since the 2010 rpm Magical History Tour when Clark brought it to Scott and Jana’s as part of a wonderful tasting/party/dinner in the vineyard. I was thoroughly charmed by it then, and have always enjoyed its Chablis-like character. 2005 was a good year in California, with some very nice, rich, ripe Chardonnay’s made in both Napa and Sonoma counties.
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK – all 2 points- comments included beautiful/great legs
Color (2 pts) rpm, PK, TK – all 2 points, SWMBO 1.5- deep gold, showing age but no browning
Aroma & Bouquet
(6 pts) rpm, TK 4, SWMBO 3.5, PK 3 – the higher scores emphasized apple/earthy-mushroom/vanilla, the lower scores found the nose more resinous to vanilla, with fig fruit.
Total Acidity (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, TK 2, PK 1.5 (not sure why lower here, all agreed balance good in discussion)
Sweetness, Body (1 each) all scored full points
Flavor (2 points) rpm, TK, PK 2, SWMBO 1.5 - comments included characteristic of Chardonnay, green apple, mild mushroom,
Bitterness and Astringency (1 each) all scored full points.
General Quality (2 pts) TK 2, PK 1.7, rpm, SWMBO 1.5 – comments included not minerally/chalky like Chablis, at peak, drink now.
Total Scores: rpm 17.5, SWMBO 16, PK 16.2, TK 18.
So overall, it’s clear we all liked the wine, though TK the most and SWMBO the least. TK really likes Chardonnay, SWMBO does too, but does not like either oaky or old Chardonnay, PK is much more a red drinker than white, and rpm like Chardonnay generally, quality Chablis especially. This is a very good bottle of wine, that anyone who doesn’t hate Chardonnay will enjoy, but rpm’s recommendation is that you drink it within the next year or so – see it as peaked, the only question being how long it will hold before it declines. SWMBO would drink it now.
2014 Grenache – Santa Cruz Mountains – Bates Ranch
The Santa Cruz Mountains have some really lovely vineyards, and as most Casemates know, are the home of the some of the earlier experiments with Rhône varietals, including Grenache, in California. Clark has done a truly outstanding job with the fruit from the Bates Ranch and made a wine that surprised and charmed us all. (Interestingly, last week SWMBO and I enjoyed a half bottle of the 2011 Bonny Don Le Cigare Volant). As many know, 2014 was a fine year in California, with lower yields due to the drought, but excellent quality.
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK 1, TK 1.5 everyone found it clear, but not brilliantly clear, perhaps it’s suffering from travel shock.
Color (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 2 those who had some experience with Grenache thought the color characteristic, good.
Total Acidity (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 2
Sweetness (1) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1
Body (1) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1 – medium body
Flavor (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1.5 – it was good, but not varietally identifiable at first, one taster got slightly unripe berry flavors – blackberry and raspberry.
Bitterness and Astringency (1 each) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK full scores
General Quality (2) rpm, SWMBO, TK 2, PK 1.8 – very nice wine, one taster found finish a little short, others disagreed.
Total Scores: rpm 17.5–18, SWMBO 17.5, PK 17.5, TK 18
Bottom line is that this wine is really very good, will go very nicely with food, and you really need to buy some! rpm thinks the wine is quite drinkable now, but that it will continue to improve for at least 5 years before peaking, and will hold a few years after that. It’s not a varietal that any of the four tasters normally drink or think about buying, but we were all very much impressed. Kudos, Clark!
2013 Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon
For many, Cabernet Sauvignon is the main event! It’s the California wine that (typically) ages the longest and is the most complex and interesting in its myriad expressions. 2013 was an excellent year for Cabernet in California, seeming to me a bit like 1973 with 2012 reminding me in youth of 1970. As we approach this wine, background on your tasters: rpm loves Cabernet, prefers the traditional (picked less ripe, lower alcohol, more elegant, balanced) style epitomized in the Cabernet Sauvignon made by Cathy Corison, André Tchelistcheff (at Beaulieu Vineyards), and George Deuer (at Inglenook through 1964), drunk in maturity. PK loves Cabernet, typically drinks ‘bigger’, riper, and more ‘modern’ style Cabernet, is tolerant of more unresolved tannin and thus more comfortable drinking younger Cabernet that rpm, though he also loves good, aged, traditional Cabernet. SWMBO is not an particular fan of the Cabernet grape, but likes traditional style Cabernet, as long as it’s not too high in alcohol, at maturity. TK enjoys Cabernet, but does not like overly tannic or overripe Cabernet. With that introduction….
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) PK 2, rpm 1.5, SWMBO and TK 1 – it was clear, but perhaps was less clear than it would have been had it not just travelled across the country.
Color (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK all 2 – characteristic, deep, dark
Aroma & Bouquet (6) rpm and PK 5.5, SWMBO and TK 5 – tight (appropriate for age – opened an hour + ahead of tasting), cassis, raspberries, hint of eucalyptus, dust, leather, earthy, hint of strawberry later. All tasters very consistent in aromas and bouquet perceived.
Total acidity (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK all 2 – acidity and balance noted as appropriate for age.
Sweetness (1) all full score
Body (1) all full score
Flavor (2) all full score – all tasters found characteristic of Cabernet grape, cassis (black currant), some light leather hints, favor appropriate for the age and development of the wine.
Bitterness (1) all full score
Astringency (1) all full score
General Quality (2) PK 1.8, rpm, SWMBO and TK all 2 – aging well, very nice wine
Total Scores: PK 19.3, rpm 18.5, SWMBO and TK 18
Bottom Line: This is a truly fine Cabernet Sauvignon, in close to traditional style, for which we see a long life. It can be enjoyed now (if you decant and leave open a couple of hours), but both rpm and PK think that the added bouquet, knitting, and resolution of tannin that it will see if you let it age at least another 5 years or more will more than repay your patience. rpm sees this as a 25-30 year wine with proper storage, anticipating peak around 2035. Both SWMBO and TK liked this better than most Cabernet Sauvignon and would look forward to drinking it at maturity.
@rpm Thanks for the excellent notes! I’d be curious to have another bottle of the Faux Chablis since I finished my 2005s a year or two ago.
@Winesmith I’m wondering whether the lower clarity observed in the reds has to do with your meticulous focus on colloid formation that you’ve discussed in the past. Most colloids don’t end up being completely transparent in the way we think of wine clarity. Thoughts?
@klezman@rpm My wines tend not to precipitate tannins because as you say the colloids are very fine. However I do not filter nor do I cold-stabilize these wines, and this can lead to a slight turbidity.
Anyone from staff on who can comment on why available states lists Michigan, but when trying to place an order it says this can’t be shipped there? I’d really like to buy this before it sells out, or get a clear answer that it is not available to me. (Which would be strange because previous offerings from this vintner have been no issue to ship here)
Unbelievably thorough and fair reporting, generally spot-on. I think the Davis 20-point system is antiquated, designed to look for faults in a time when half of commercial wines would be considered unmerchantable today. However you have used in the best possible way.
My gripe with the Aroma Wheel is that it tries to reduce a wine to its elements, like pulling apart a Beethoven symphony into its individual notes (Ah, A-sharp! He’s using a lot of A-sharp! So THAT"S why it sounds so good!)
I am shooting for soulfulness. Like in music, this is an emergent property of the whole wine. Particularly in the nose, these “come hither” qualities elude description, yet they are the whole point of the wine.
Some notes about the Faux Chablis. Unless you’ve drunk a lot of old style Chablis, say from William Fevre, this is a very difficult wine to spring on somebody.
First of all, there is no vanilla in this wine as it has never seen a barrel. What that is, I believe, is lees character (think Late Disgorged Champagne) from the twice weekly batonage in tank, enhanced by subliminal notes of whiskey lactone, a coconut element from the untoasted Allier chips I put in the fermenter for tannin structure and anti-oxidative properties.
While very fine to drink now, It’s amazingly fresh with no aldehyde. Based on the vertical 2001-2006 tastings I’ve been doing, I think it will be at its best in a couple years, right where the 2003 is now, because the lees character is just beginning to emerge. We have lots of citrus fruit (I call it lemon oil, similar to furniture polish) but the lees add to the “come hither” and are just beginning to emerge.
For the Grenache and the Cab, your drinking window speculations are the same as mine.
Many thanks for your thorough and impeccable examination.
@winesmith The pleasure was all ours! When I was asked if the Faux Chablis had seen wood, I said I didn’t think so, but if it had, it would have only been neutral older barrels. I hear you on the ‘lemon oil’ , lees, and the ‘late disgorged Champagne’ thoughts, but those notes didn’t come through for any of us. I’m quite fond of LD/RD sparklers and I think I would have picked up on it, but ymmv, and it’s also the case the wine had just flown in a couple of days before… for real fairness, I’d prefer to let a wine rest a few weeks after shipping before going all technical tasting on it SWMBO is particularly chary of older Chardonnay, as I had some really old ones we drank past prime (but still alive!) that she really disliked (though I thought were interesting). BTW, I drank quite a bit of William Fevre Chablis in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s. I think I see the connection, but the style reminds me more of the grand cru Le Grenouilles we used to get (though honestly, I don’t think it would be fair to compare the FC with Grenouilles). The ‘81 LeGrenouilles didn’t peak until the mid-90s and was still fine at the millennium, though the last bottle we had was sadly faded by 2006…
Comparing this FC to the 2003, I can see waiting a year or so, but not much more.
@winesmith I hear you that the Davis scoring system focus fairly heavily on the flaws that once abounded and are (mercifully) increasingly rare… though it does work nicely to do a number on some of the very unbalanced, overripe, and hot wines one sees far too much of even now… I continue to use it primarily because I’m used to it and I really dislike the 100 point scales where virtually every wine is a 88-95, just as all the children in Lake Wobegone are above average… It does have the virtue of making you evaluate each of the elements of the wine systematically.
I also fully appreciate your objection to the Wine Aroma Wheel. I, too, don’t love the reductionism that it can encourage, though that’s not what I think Ann had in mind. I see it as a bit of a counter to the excessively creative and obscure descriptions that say more about the writer’s imagination than they convey useful information to someone trying to understand a wine from a review. The value of something like the Wine Aroma Wheel is not for thee and me waxing poetic as we share a George Deuer Inglenook Cask Cabernet in its dotage, as it were, but in giving those a bit newer to the sport a common vocabulary as they try to build their own taste memories and share wines with others.
@rpm Absolutely, and you are using the 20-point system the way they really did at UCD. Dinsmoor Ebb when he was head of the department told me - start with the final score you think it deserves, then direct your attention to the specific realms for your notes. Generally they didn’t assign scores to the elements. He said (this was in the days of Bo Derek) that a perfect 10 is arrived at through an overall assessment, not a tally of the scores of various body parts. In the days when we were just trying to make clean, sound wines, it was not necessary to assess a wine as characteristic of a particular style or terroir.
The challenge today, when most wines are sound and they cover a huge range of styles and regions, is that we lack regional standards. I actually think the 100-point system where wines are considered in a linearity based on true-to-type is perfectly fine for European wines. Chateau Latour is a terrible Beaujolais and we understand what is meant by Barolo, Mosel or Muscadet-sur-lies, so ranking makes sense. In the U.S., this is not yet the case. Nobody knows the characteristics to be expected from, say Viognier from Sonoma, North Yuba, the Snake River Idaho and Monticello, Virginia, so they are judged on varietal character expectation and great wines are often found lacking. At appellationAmerica.com in the Blue Book I have spent a decade making those distinctions and we are about 30% done with the important ones. Once we are clear what a region is supposed, even forced by Mother Nature, to provide as a style or set of styles, then the 100-point system would be fine. We’ll likely be dead by then, so for today, the challenge is to be open-minded to a new style. We call it “innate charm,” which is really what Dr. Webb was talking about.
@winesmith I certainly agree that we need to develop some regional standards of what we mean by various types. The shoe-horning of all American Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, into a concept which essentially describes wines made from grapes grown on the West side of the Napa Valley on the alluvial fan around Rutherford (as wonderful as those wines are!!) isn’t realistic. Yet, I confess that’s the benchmark I have in the recesses of my mind, with memories of long-lived, well-made wines going back into the 1940s. Part of our problem is that we’re varietally focused more than we’re terroir focused, although the interplay is more complex that most people even in the business appreciate, IMHO. I do think over the next 50-odd years or so, we’ll see shifts in the predominant grapes in various places. I also hope we can move away from the Parkerized style that grafted itself onto the ‘no wimpy wine’ movement that emerged just about the time The Robert betook himself to Bordeaux, discovered Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, and began a career of thoroughly misunderstanding all grapes Cabernet… (but I digress)…
Oh well, I think I’m too old now to get deeply involved in the project, which I’ll have to leave to the more energetic in the generations behind us…
I can accept a 100 point scale along the lines you describe if we set the benchmark score for the average of each type at 50 (at least until we better understand if the distribution is normal or something else we need to take into account). Why have 100 points if you’re only using about 20 of them?
@rpm@winesmith
Super interesting. The mention of a focus on terroir vs grape caught my attention. There are quite a number of winemakers who are heavily invested (both philosophically and monetarily) in older vineyards that they link to various aspects of California terroir. You probably know them - Joel Peterson, Morgan Twain-Peterson, Tegan Passalacqua, Mike Officer, Thomas Rivers Brown, etc. While some of their work included the “no wimpy wine” style and some very high Parker scores, these are people who are trying to make wines of place. Have you tried them? Any thoughts on their work?
Also of related interest, the Petersons’ estate vineyard now called Bedrock (formerly Madrone Ranch) has some very old vines and was one or two plots over from Peter Wellington’s estate vineyards. This makes me even more sad that VJB hacked out most of the older vines when they purchased the winery.
@rpm Why 100 points if we use 20? You pointed out the Davis 20 point only uses 5. It’s just human nature. But when I use the UCD, I do it in decimal points so I have 50 gradations. I think the 100-point was developed for the same reason - more gradations. It doesn’t matter to me.
What is happening over times that regions are zeroing in on what they’re best at. In most of the Napa appellations, Cabernet Sauvignon make the most sense (though the correct clones and rootstocks vary) partly because if made properly, it really is a stunning region for this grape, while SB and Zinfandel can be very good, they’re not better than Dry Creek where acreage is 10% of the price. Thus over time, CS will come to dominate. Nature has already zeroed in on distinctive AVA styles: Oak Knoll is refined and full of lemons, Howell Mountain is remorsely tannic no matter what you do, Yountville is soft, round and feminine, Combsville is dense, full of blueberries and long aging.
In my scenario, a Howell Mountain Cab should be dinged if it is drinkable young - a betrayal of consumer expectation, while an Oak Knoll Cab should be dinged if it is not reasonably approachable upon release.
The problem with Napa is that it’s so famous that its acreage is very pricey, thus the wines are as well, so its client base is highly affluent fools who just want display wines and like them at 17% alcohol, 2% RS, abrasive tannins and raisiney noses. Sounds like port to me.
There are exceptions like Ch. Montelena, Opus One and Burgess, but they are rarer than they should be. I hate to say it, but what Napa really needs is a global bone-crushing recession to break this viscious cycle so unbecoming to its Holy Ground.
Parker thrives because he likes big wines, but it’s not his fault. We need writers like Jancis Robinson and Karen McNeil to connect better with their own fans, and I think that’s happening as millennials lose patience with Parker’s boomer-centric approach and want lower alcohols and affordable profundity. At least I hope so, since that’s what we do.
@winesmith Agree with everything except that Parker is not Parker’s fault. Another subject not worth clogging this thread with. As I’m sure you did, I’ve watched Parker’s rise, and baleful influence on winemaking, since the late 1970s/early 1980s.
As many of you are aware, I am a proponent of matching music with wine. If you can discern the wine’s emotional message, its easy to find resonant music to enhance its enjoyment. For example my Cab Sauv does not do well with polka. It’s dark and angry, so it likes The Doors’ People Are Strange and the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Particularly for the Faux Chablis, which is enigmatic and nothing like the oaky, toasty, alcoholic butterbombs we have come to expect and dread, its expression can be tricky to grasp. The finish contains considerable mineral liveliness which could block plumbing the depths of its aftertaste, and the right music really helps this.
Recommended:
Jeru by Gerry Milligan and Chet Baker
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik (A Little Night Music) Mozart
Romanza - Ruben Romera
You’ve Got The Love - Florence & the Machine
100,000 Fireflies -The Magnetic Fields
Mais Que Nada - Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66
Should Have Known Better - Sufjan Stevens
Arioso - J.S. Bach
Symphony #4 in F Minor, Opus 36:IV Tchaikovski -
Chicago Symphony
@winesmith Quite an interesting list. I mentioned that I had planned to open a 2003 FC, but I checked and it’s a 2005, so I’ll post some unofficial rat notes later today. Now to dig up my Gerry Mulligan and Magnetic Fields CDs…
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: Tax & Shipping not included in savings calculations)
WineSmith Cellars Favorites - $60 = 21.42%
Grabbed a case primarily to get the Faux Chablis, but a Napa Cab never goes to waste and I’m confident the Grenache will be good too. I have one bottle of the 2005 Faux remaining and its still great. People cannot believe they are drinking a 15 year old white wine. Thanks !
@winesmith Agree Im sure it will be great. I have a case of your Two Jakes of Diamonds Aspects Red Blend that I think is Lake County. Think I’ll try one tonight !
@forlich Yes, it’s a Meritage blend, 100% from Diamond Ridge Vineyards in Lake County. You’ll love it. Good news: we are about to bottle a 2013 Two Jakes Aspects, so stay tuned.
Was lucky enough to get chosen as a lab rat for this offer from one of my favorite winemakers!
Have tried the Faux Chablis and Grenache so far and will open the Cab later today. While I see that there are a couple lab rat reports posted already, I have not read them nor have I read the descriptions posted by Casemates, so as not to be unduly influenced in my perceptions of the wines.
Having said that, I have previous experience with both the Faux Chablis and Cab but this was my first go at the Grenache, despite having some in my cellar from previous offers. I will compose and post the notes one wine at a time in order to get them up ASAP.
So, without further ado…
2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis
LOOK: Beautiful golden hue in the glass, with great clarity. Slow-forming, medium spaced legs when swirled. SMELL: Lemon butter nose with hints of peach and citrus zest.
TASTE: Golden delicious apple, and Myer lemon with some white peach, general citrus and tropical fruit notes. Light baking spice notes as well, which became more pronounced when the wine was paired with spicy Asian noodles in yakitori sauce.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Some viscosity leads to a creamy, rounded mouthfeel despite medium acidity and Clark’s signature minerality on the tongue. Lip-smacking finish that invites continued sips.
SUMMARY: I looked at my previous tasting notes on CT after finishing the above and see that my current impressions are almost identical, with golden delicious apple and Myer lemon leading the way. However, this bottle had no hint of oxidation like the last one. Tasted much fresher than one would expect from a 15 year old Chardonnay. Clark’s wines are known for their longevity and this is no exception. Very nice wine with or without food, my LW and I greatly enjoyed the bottle and emptied it quickly!
OMG I can’t believe I’ve ordered yet again. In the last week I clicked “buy” approaching once a day on average, if you include the meh offer. This week there were 4 shipments to me. And yet this is just an offer I can’t refuse. The Faux Chablis sounds like something not to be missed, since I enjoy the odd and the esoteric, it sounds like it definitely is all that. And having lived in Santa Cruz before, I must have some of the “local” Grenache. And Lake Country I like for Sauv Blanc but never had a Cabernet from there.
There are many great Lake County Cabs and they are always good values. The Hess Cab has a very large percentage from Diamond Ridge, which is noted for its bright cherry aromas, firm tannins, minerally volcanic soils and its amazing longevity. The air is very clean up there and the bright UV brings out these features and eliminates rot and pyrazines.
Was going to open one of our remaining Faux Chablis, but then saw we’re down to ONE 2014. We have picked up the latest offers with the Granache, and have been unable to stay out of those.
Sadly, we’re in the club with several of you- we’ve got four offers in flight (plus the Meh from Friday). Ugh- dreading the credit card bill, but worth it. Now gonna need to secure some more space in the cellar, or throw a massive CM party. @winesmith and @winedavid49, thanks for the great offer! (even though you’re killin’ me!)
/giphy fluttering-knowing-tea
We have some of the 2013 cab from a previous Casemates offer. Just popped out first bottle and it’s delicious stuff! Definitely in for more and cannot pass up a precious few remaining Faux Chablis! Starting to have some warm days but worth the risk for a case!
LOOK: Pretty, translucent magenta in the glass. Clear, no sediment. Medium sized legs when swirled.
SMELL: Strawberry with loam, cassis and a slight herbal note.
TASTE: Palate is very similar to the nose with strawberry, loam and creme de cassis. The herbal note is also there. I remember Clark describing it in one of his wines as “garrigue” and I think that applies here as well. Strawberry is the main component but it is tempered with the loam and garrigue. It’s almost like you’re getting the entire strawberry plant in liquid form with fruit, leaves and runners with soil still clinging to them.
I like how the earthiness tempers the fruit to prevent it from being jammy. The creme de cassis note helps to round out the palate. Paired very well with 4-cheese baked mac & cheese, as well as a BBQ pork loin sandwich. The wine continued to open up with time and air, as raspberry notes joined the strawberry fruit.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Smooth and lush despite being relatively light-bodied with food-friendly acidity and great minerality. Complex wine with a number of components that are all very well integrated.
DAY 2: I saved some to try the next day (today). The earthiness has dissipated somewhat, revealing more fruit and some spice. Even more enjoyable than yesterday and it paired nicely with a double cheeseburger w/lettuce and mayo.
SUMMARY: Tasty Grenache that is extremely food friendly, seeming as though it could pair well with just about anything. The way it improved and continued to open up over time bodes well for its cellaring potential. Another winner from WineSmith!
2014 WineSmith Grenache Bates Ranch, paired with sous vide pork Marsala over egg noodles, French green beans, fresh scratch dinner rolls.
While cooking we started in on the wine, which I had opened this morning. We went through Clark’s Grenache play list on Spotify, and it seemed pleased with our choices.
I echo the other rats. This is a generous, plush strawberry and herb festival, pure joy in a bottle, but grounded with complexity. Just to check the music pairings I switched to a polka, killer of every red wine, and our friendly wine suddenly had a sour streak down the middle. Weird!
This dinner was a great pairing for the Grenache, everything working together beautifully. It’s hard to think of food this wouldn’t compliment. Pretty flexible.
Another thumbs up for this one. This was a great week to be a lab rat- my family and I are very grateful.
For those of you in Colorado, it is next on our list after Chicago. What we really will need in both cases is a champion to work with us on a venue, either at someone’s home or a restaurant that won’t charge except for the food. Please let me know if you’d be interested.
LOOK: Deep ruby color, bordering on purple. Clear, with medium-spaced, medium width legs when swirled.
SMELL: Cherry nose with hints of eucalyptus and an overall “barrel room” smell that is very appealing.
TASTE: Tart cherry with currant, light oak and baking spice. As the wine opened up it became a richer, fuller wine with greater depth. The tart, bright cherry notes got fleshier and turned to almost a black cherry. There was a leesy component added to the flavor profile as well as some additional spice notes.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Strong mineral buzz on the tongue from this medium bodied Cab. Mild tannins become grippier with time in the glass. Medium+ finish with lingering minerality.
SUMMARY: Well-built Cab that is still rather primary and will take time to develop additional tertiary notes as foreshadowed by its metamorphosis over the course of an evening. Enjoyed this wine with some English chocolates but it was crying out for a rich, fatty slab of meat, especially after it became more expressive with additional air time.
Looking forward to seeing how this wine evolves over the years. If you get a full case you will have 4 of these to play with. I would drink one soonish as it’s enjoyable right now (probably best with a short decant). Then try another bottle every 3 or 4 years to see how it develops over the next decade.
You all are killing my wallet this week. I’m not a terribly active member but felt a need to say that this offering, and the surrounding discussion are the perfect example of why I’ve been hanging around this group starting back in the w.w days (seems like maybe a decade now). I REALLY appreciate all the knowledgeable, detailed input from both members and vintner. Please keep doing what you do for a long time to come. In for a case (even though I really shouldn’t).
/giphy hideous-offbeat-lettuce
As promised, I opened a bottle of 2005 Faux Chablis this evening. I had it with mussels (wnance put the idea in my mind, and I never need much of an excuse to have mussels). Getting the cork out without an ah-so was a challenge. My first attempt with a standard corkscrew resulted in a half cork, but I resorted to an unusual remedy which worked quite well - a small flat-head screwdriver. Did the job without depositing cork into the bottle.
It was golden in color as rpm noted; certainly not browned. I got the lemon oil on the nose and found it to be very tasty, well balanced and with a long finish. It went very very well with the mussels and I somehow found myself pouring a little more at the end of the meal. While I enjoyed it quite a lot, I must say that I’ll aim to finish off my existing inventory and the bottles I receive from my case order fairly soon - I’m not sure how much longer it will hold up. Not that drinking several bottles of this excellent wine will be a burden, mind you!
@coynedj Mussels!!! Sounds great. Did you feel that the wine found its groove about 15-20 min after you opened it? Next time use the AhSo from the get go, the cork should come out fine.
@wnance Can’t use an ah-so, since I don’t have one. Yes, it did get better as the meal progressed. I poured it too close to mealtime, a mistake I don’t plan on making again.
@coynedj Interesting about the cork… I don’t have an Ah-So here in Florida, and have despaired of finding a good one to replace those I’ve had in the past. But, I opened the Faux Chablis with a garden variety Pulltap waiter’s corkscrew I’ve had for at least a dozen years or so, and had no difficulty whatsoever.
My contention is that you have at least two years before this wine peaks. Right now it’s mostly lemon oil, but there are nuances of the sur lees character earlier vintages now display, adding an extra dimension. Anywhere in that window I am confident, after that, hard to say what adventures await. I will say that the 2001 is my favorite, but it’s a different animal - lighter and with many layers like a Gruner Veltliner.
This is a much bigger, more concentrated wine and I don’t know what that means. Ain’t it nice when a wine can show you something unexpected? When I started this project, I had not the faintest notion we would wind up here two decades later speculating on when, if ever, these wines are going to die. Reminds me of the days of Evil Kenevil.
@winesmith Hopefully this gets to you and you aren’t too busy. i have the faux chablis in my grubby little hands and planning to cellar most of it but can’t help but to open one now.
Was wondering if you have thoughts on optimal serving temperature for this?
@cbrehman@winesmith
I remember Clark saying (and my experience with many bottles,) best when slightly chilled to enjoy all the complexity it has to offer. As it warms up you’ll discover how it changers.
I pull it out of the wine frig 30 to 45 minuets before hand, then open it when we have dinner. Hope it helps.
@cbrehman@PLSemenza Yes, it would be a shame to serve it too cold. It’s really like an albino red, so 55-65F is ideal. Personally I go for the higher end of this range.
@rjquillin@woopdedoo@Winedavid49 And a shout out here to both woop and rj, and of course, winedavid, without whom the rpm Magical History Tours would not have been possible. Huge undertaking on the part of everyone involved, but one of the most personally rewarding things I’ve done over the past dozen years!
My case arrived today. I displaced some very good wines (to an uncontrolled basement rack) to create room among other WineSmith/Two Jakes, Wellingtons, Pedroncellis, and a few others to make room in my controlled storage (holds about 100 bottles). I then cringed when I realized that the Faux Chablis bottles are a bit larger and will not fit into my rack. I found room for two at the top (among some other too-large bottles), and then moved other two bottles from the bottom rack to another level which allowed two more of the Faux Chablis to stand upright on the bottom. Not ideal, but it will have to do. I guess my only consolation is that the Faux Chablis will likely be consumed in the in the (relatively) nearer future.
@Winedavid49 I happened upon a 1999 (21-year-old) Wellington Zin as I was perusing my storage. I’ll probably consider it to be of legal drinking age and open it fairly soon.
We worked our way to the first bottle of Faux Chablis on Saturday, and were disappointed to find the cork dried out and broken, requiring some careful removal and with the flavor seeming to be a bit corked. Hoping for a better outcome this evening I cut through the wax on a second bottle, and began cork removal only to find a completely crumbled cork, which I then had to filter out before we could even taste a sip. The wine, once filtered through new cheesecloth to remove the tiny bits, was more flavorful than the first bottle, but seemed far less robust than expected.
Unfortunately, not a great experience thus far, but have hopes for the reds.
@dkrupps
Those Faux Chablis corks are notorious for that. Best to use an Ah-So style opener and if you do lose some of the cork into the bottle, this filtered pour spout does a good job of keeping it out of your glass. (Also great for filtering sediment from older bottles which is mostly why I use it).
Finally, there is some oxidation with these Faux Chablis’ and due to the cork issues, the amount of oxidation can vary so some bottles are definitely “fresher” tasting than others. Fortunately for me, I enjoy the characteristics imparted by some light oxidation as it adds complexity to the flavor profile but there is a limit and of course YMMV.
@chipgreen@dkrupps@winesmith@Winedavid49
I agree with and second both of Chip’s recommendations. (we do have them both)
Additionally we have enjoyed; lets say 2++ cases of the Faux Chablis over the years. (still have 6 bottles left) This is an unusual White wine, utilizing the Red wine production processes. That said, we find this wine best enjoyed between the traditional White & Red temperature range, very slightly chilled. I’m sure Clack will chime in.
I’m afraid crumbly corks are just what happens to wines 15 years or more in bottle. I’ve been drinking up my old “Special occasion” reds in hopes to make my way through my 100 cases before my liver goes bad on me. In the last three days I’ve had a '94 Tarawarra PN, '95 Rennaisance Meritage and a '91 Fiddlehead Cellars Santa Maria PN. All were magnificent, surprisingly well preserved, but all the corks were completely deteriorated. I got them out easily with my trusty Durand. Best $125 I ever spent.
Concerning this wine, I concur with all the above. This particular vintage was always the densest of the six, and seems to be peaking now, while the other years are holding up well. I drink a lot of Georgian clay jar wine, certainly an acquired taste, but I like them a lot, and this vintage is beginning to resemble them.
BTW, we’re running a sale on the very last of this experiment on our site and there are currently only 23 bottles left in the world. It was a real privilege to run this 19-year experiment and your support over the years and your appreciation of what I was trying to do have made it an extremely gratifying experience for me.
@winesmith Ha! Only 23 left in the world. Why, I have ten in my cellar at this very moment. Gotta pick up the pace on drinking them, from the sound of things.
2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis, Student Vineyard, Napa Valley College
Tasting Notes
Fermentation Techniques:
Prise de Mousse yeast. Fermentation on untoasted Alliers oak.
Elevage Details:
Malolactic fermentation suppressed. Weekly bâtonnage six months.
Specs
2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, Lake County
Tasting Notes
Vineyard Notes
Specs
2014 WineSmith Grenache, Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Tasting Notes
Vineyard Notes
Specs
Included in the Box
Price Comparison
$399 for a Case of 4x 2005 Faux Chablis, 4x 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon, 4x 2014 Grenache at Winesmith Wines
About The Winery
Winery: WineSmith Cellars
Owner: Clark Smith
Founded: 1993
Location: Sebastopol, CA
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, WY
Estimated Delivery
Friday, June 5th - Tuesday, June 9th
WineSmith Cellars Favorites
3 bottles for $69.99 $23.33/bottle + $2.67/bottle shipping
Case of 12 for $219.99 $18.33/bottle + $1/bottle shipping
2005 Faux Chablis
2013 Cabernet Sauvignon
2014 Grenache
Hi everybody! It’s a pleasure to be here, but a little sad too. This is likely the last of a 19-year experiment called the Faux Chablis Project, and after this sale, I suspect there will be no more. Here’s a video about how the project came about:
Faux Chablis project roots
I know this 3-pack is gong to require a little study. Each of these wines has a lot of story behind it - feel free to ask questions.
Together these wines embody the realization of my dream as a winemaker. Drink them and you will understand much better than I could explain in words. I do hope those of for whom these wines are old friend will chime in about your experiences with me and these wines.
I got an email a few days ago that I had been assigned to lab rat duty. Imagine my surprise (and excitement) when UPS pulled up (at a safe distance) with not one, not two, but three beautiful bottles of WineSmith! Best lab rat ever!
Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of Clark Smith and his wines. My wife and I have had the pleasure of two epic tastings with Clark and Mike Faulk over the past few years, even though we live in western NY. Of these three wines, I’m quite familiar with the cab and Grenache, and we’ve had the 03 and 04 Faux Chablis, but not the 05.
We decided that the way forward was to have three wine pairing dinners with these wines, and put them through their paces. Two dinners have happened, and the third will be Saturday night and I’ll report back.
Dinner #1:
2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, paired with sous vide NY strip steak, loaded baked potato, and roasted beet/goat cheese/almond/arugula
The cab was perfect for this meal. Great energy, black cherry, cassis, fine tannins, long finish. Profound red fruit on the nose. One of the best cabs I’ve had. We saved about half the bottle and drank it 24 hours later, and it was even better. Profound was the word we kept coming back to, an aged cheese sort of feeling on the palate, very rich and expansive in addition to the fruit. I was sad to see it go.
Dinner #2:
Fresh wild caught sea scallops, risotto, and grean beans, paired with the 2005 Faux Chablis.
Opened (at Clark’s recommendation) with an ah so with no problems for the 15 year old cork. Look at the beautiful golden hue of this wine! Upon opening, I was worried that the wine was flat and worn out, but suspected it just needed a few minutes to stretch its legs after all that time in the bottle. Indeed, after 15 minutes or so, the wine was singing. Fresh nose, definitely that lemon oil Clark talks about on the palate, oily/supple mouth feel, but good acidity and a ton of energy. It came alive at dinner with the scallops, and was at its best at the last glass. Incredible for such an aged Chardonnay. I would love to try it with mussels or oysters. Seafood seems to be its thing.
That’s all for now. Tonight is sous vide pork Marsala with the Grenache, and I expect that to be pretty spectacular.
I was hoping for the price point to be closer to $16 like some previous offers, but for this to be anywhere under $20/btl is pretty crazy. Wish I could swing two cases, but I’ll have to settle for one.
Thanks, Clark!
@DrWorm has no idea why they’re being tagged here.
@wnance Well done.
Not the strip, the Rat.
@wnance I want your life!
@wnance Excellent food pictures!
@wnance Nice reviews, lovely pics!
@wnance - very nice review with food pairings, check out my more technical review…
@rpm I’m honored to be a fellow lab rat on this offer, and, as always, your post is equal parts education and review- always a learning experience! I’m getting better at knowing what wines I like, and identifying well made wine, but still have a ways to go in technically evaluating said wine. It’s nice to see in your review that these wines are as good as I think they are, and pretty special for the price offered.
One more wine pairing dinner to post tonight! Stay safe and warm in Florida, it’s snowing in Rochester at the moment…
@wnance Thank you for the great report and the food pairings look delicious too.
Love the Grenache, still have 4 of them.
Haven’t had the cab yet because my casemate hasn’t met up with me yet.
Went through some of the 05 and enjoyed it, but not as much as the 2004.
Great offer here Clark, thanks!
Yes, like any wine over ten years under cork, an AhSo is essential to getting the cork out without crumbling. The wax is soft and easily trimmed away. See the video in which I demonstrate this. It’s twenty minutes long - my apologies, but there’s a lot to say about this extraordinary trio.
@winesmith I watched the video, and it went from “I want to tell you how to open this bottle” to it being already opened - no demonstration. I have a number of bottles from 2003 to 2005 (I’m aiming to open a bottle of 2003 this evening) and some wisdom would be welcome!
@winesmith I checked another Youtube video on the ah so. Gotta get one of those.
@coynedj No kidding. I must have inadvertently sliced it out of the video. Let me work on restoring it back in the morning. Thanks for the heads-up.
Clark
@coynedj @winesmith A key trick with the AhSo, that I want everyone to know about, is being able to put the cork back in. Why would you ever want to do that? Corkage! If your state allows restaurants to let people bring wine, the AhSo is the most important wine tool you can have.
Bringing a young (for example) Winesmith or (another random example) Two Jakes wine to a restaurant later in the day, just pull cork out with AhSo, pour a little out as a sample, put the cork back in, and like magic your wine is decanting while on the way to the restaurant. For some wine you’ll want to do this earlier in the day or even the day before.
My wife and I were going out for the day and ending at a fancy restaurant in the country. I did this trick with the Kukeri PN around 11:00 AM, took the wine with us for the day’s jaunt, end up at the Blue Door in Flint Hill around 6:30, and proceeded to have an incredible (and cost effective, even with $20 corkage) wine experience with out gourmet meal.
When at a less wine savvy restaurant, it used to drive me nuts waiting for someone to open our wine. They had no clue that I’d needed this wine open for as long as possible while we didn’t drink it. I try to hint please open this now while trying to not get stressed. Well, with the AhSo trick, they can take their time! The wine’s already getting some air! Muahaha!
@winesmith So, Clark, where can you get a really decent ‘Ah So’ these days? All of the ones I have seen in the past 20 years or so have blades which are (1) inferior steel (or whatever they are!) and (2) much too thick. I used to have one from the ‘70s that had decent thin steel blades, but it broke a few years ago… Before that, I had one my father used in the 1930s of a very different design: one of the blades dropped down from a storage ‘handle’ and the other was withdrawn from the handle and inserted in the top, so the width could be varied with the size of the cork (up to at least a couple of inches). Surgical quality steel blades, the rest of it machined from decent steel. Sigh, someone with lighter fingers than mine is enjoying it now, if it hasn’t broken. I’ve never seen another like it, but my Dad said they were common in the business in before WWII, and were especially useful when there were many different sizes of corks in bottles and casks.
@rpm @winesmith
Could this be the Durand you’re looking for?
@rjquillin @winesmith I’d have to see and use one before I’d think about dropping $125 on it…
@rpm @winesmith
They have been sale priced more favorably.
Most of the prong openers I’ve run across, this included, seem too thick and tend to dig into the cork rather than stay between the cork and neck.
Perhaps we need to consider a quality product project.
@rjquillin @rpm @winesmith
The Durand is amazing, but you can jury rig a slightly less convenient version of it using a standard screw-pull and ah-so combination. Screw the pull in, it holds the cork up while you insert the too-thick-bladed ah-so. Hold them together while you twist/lift.
To be sure, the Durand is actually designed for this combination and is easier to use. But then again, it’s $125.
@rjquillin @rpm @winesmith
After a couple of years of use and many old crappy corks the Durand has never failed me. Not sure why you think the prongs are too thick? Zero failures for me anyway. Pricey yes
@klezman @rjquillin @rpm Ron, you’re right. I go through $10 Ah-So’s from BevMo like kleenex. My dependable friend Jason Kallsen has a Durand and loves it more than life itself. “Best money I ever spent” was his comment. It’s at the top of my list, and will save you frustration in the short term and money in the long term. It’s built to last.
@rjquillin @ScottW58 @winesmith I don’t know if the Durand’s blades are too thick… haven’t actually handled or used one, and would have to try one to have an opinion…
@rjquillin @rpm @ScottW58 Ron, tell you what. I’m going to buy me one, so I’ll send it your way to try out - perhaps on this very wine. If you like it, keep it and buy me one. If not, just send it up to me. What say?
@rpm @ScottW58 @winesmith
I’ve already ponied up and have one, for the modest taxed and delivered price of $118.75.
I find it a bit awkward, at least for me so far, but has done the trick. Perhaps I just need more practice!
I’d gladly exert the effort on one of those bottles of Cab.
@rjquillin @ScottW58 @winesmith where do I get it for that price?
@rjquillin @rpm @ScottW58 My very question. Inquiring minds want to know.
@rpm @ScottW58 @winesmith
Clearly ~not~ Amazon.
Best I can now find saves you exactly 2¢ over the direct price.
Got mine a year ago courtesy of Tbyrd & MdS via a sale their locker had going; $110 + tx.
@winesmith Some CT reports of the faux Chablis being past it’s prime. Wouldn’t mention it if the names didn’t match reputable community members. I realize that with a wine this age, you take some chances. Would you be willing to give reasonable odds? Definitely interested in the offer. Have been thoroughly enjoying an Any Gorilla from a Dec offer.
@kristian care to share your thoughts about CT @michaelvella?
@losthighwayz @michaelvella not sure why michael’s been added but I came across it recently and I like that I can keep a list of wines I have in my cellar which is really just a spider filled crawlspace and no fun to poke around it. It does maintain a decent temp for keeping wine tho. Perhaps you really just want to share your thoughts about CT with me? Shoot! I’m hear to learn!!
@kristian @losthighwayz They’re copying me because I like to make disparaging comments about cellar tracker reviews.
Generally I trust reviews on there about as much as I’d trust a sommelier at Taco Bell.
@michaelvella
What about CT notes from taster names you recognize from here? To me that’s certainly a far cry from the Taco Bell Sommelier (which I generally agree with the sentiment).
It’s a fair question. The other vintages have held their color amazingly well, but we did see some browning variation looking through the glass, and have diligently sorted through and pulled the darker-colored wines and consigned them to a Chardonnay Sherry project down the road. Tasting back through those wines, I now see that they are still profound and not dried out, so I think I over-reacted. I’m not putting them back into service for this offer, but I’m a lot less concerned.
The vintages 2003 -6 are much richer than the '01 and '02. That’s because we tore out all but the best sections of the vineyard that year and planted it to Clone 337 and 10 Cab Sauv, leading to the Crucible campaign.
Thing is, these denser wines have more color now, and the '01-'02 wines are the lightest and freshest, with many flowery layers, and are now my favorite wines. We have 9 bottles remaining of each, and before the pandemic had planned to organize tastings in twelve cities to pour the last bottle of all six vintages, plus four Crucibles and a comparison of the 2010 Cab Franc made with and without sulfites.
Any of you who were at the tastings in Minneapolis, Yonkers or Sonoma, please chime in with your impressions. To me it was mind-blowing, I hope we can do it in 9 more cities after the smoke clears.
@winesmith what’s involved in making them sherry? That sounds kind of amazing
@novium Well, this is a little different form the traditional Spanish process. We’re just going to take some 15-year-old Napa Chardonnay which we suspect make have dried out a bit, unbottle it, add some grape concentrate and some alcohol, play around with oak and try to make God’s Own Cream Sherry. It’s kind of similar to what we did to create an Instant Vintage Port knockoff called Any Gorilla.
@winesmith oh, cool! The any gorilla was delicious. You’ve given me some ideas for things to experiment with.
@winesmith anywhere in Colorado on your short list? I’d love to go to something like this!!
@kristian Yes, there’s a lot of interest in CO. When the time comes, we’ll need a champion to help us arrange a venue. Does that interest you?
@winesmith Hell. Yes. I’ll send you my contact info.
So this is all interesting! Out of curiosity, on the faux Chablis, I noticed it was 24.6 brix + prise de mousse but only 13% abv. What’s the RS?
@novium Ah, very perceptive question, grasshopper.
There is no RS. I pulled the ABV down to a sweet spot at 12.9 with a technology I invented.
My discovery in the early '90s was that if I wished to make French styles, I had to deal with the fact that brix, though easily measured and closely related to ABV in dry wines ().59 - 0.61 conversion), it has absolutely nothing to do with maturity in terms of the development of aromatics, color and phenolic maturity. This just takes time.
Our thesis, which was well proven in this project, was that we needed nice ripe yellow berries. My trips to Chablis proved this to be true. Chablis is ripe, but the high humidity keeps water from evaporating from the grapes. Not so here, so our brixes at maturity in this vineyard are more like 25, resulting in wines in the high 14’s. This one was 14.8%, resulting in a bitter finish which masked minerality and its lemon oil aroma.
In 1992 I developed and patented a process employing distillation and recombination of reverse osmosis permeate to reduce ABV in California wines. This procedure and others such as the Spinning Cone now reduce alcohol in about 45% of California wines. It’s standard practice now, with French wines of a similar percentage adding beet sugar to correct ABV up instead of down.
I performed this treatment on all six vintages of Faux Chablis with spectacular results.
I hope none of you are going to get freaked out by this. Winemaking is just cooking - the ultimate slow food (this one was 29 years of vineyard development and 15 years in the cellar - way more than any other beverage).
All wine is natural. All wine is highly manipulated (those aren’t grapes in that glass). No wine is as highly manipulated as any beer, yet nobody freaks out about the crazy things brewers do.
Did I just go off the rails? I’m punching before the bell. Forgive me.
Thing is, all y’all can count on me for the straight Jesus. I’m proud of what I do. Particularly in the Faux Chablis, where I invented a process that did something impossible and grew to benefit the whole industry and consumers in ways they aren’t even aware.
I encourage you on this forum to encourage winemakers to come out of the closet. I know these people. They all sweat bullets and then tell you they do nothing, just because the nimnos in the Natural Wine movement, who have never made wine, proliferate the ridiculous fiction that applying your skills as a winemaker is to be shamed and that benign neglect makes the best wine.
In my view, honesty is the only high moral ground. Makes one a clear target though, so shoot me.
@winesmith that’s awesome, thank you for sharing. I totally share your feelings on natural wine. Everything’s just another tool in the tool box, it’s all about what you’re trying to accomplish.
I will say that part of the reason I was asking is that I’ve made chardonnay from a vineyard just a bit further down the river from NVC and picked it at about 24 and change (and I used Prix de mousse). I’d been aiming for 23.5, but that’s the challenge of home wine making on the weekends! Despite the ripeness, we still had a pH of 3.15 and TA ~9. It also ended up with some very Chablis like characteristics, but I wanted to bring out a bit more of the deep midpalette fruit. I ended up bumping it to pH 3.6 (I’d actually been aiming for 3.3, let’s not discuss my conversation errors, hah. Lessons were learned). Did you also bump things a bit with this chard? If so, what did it start at? (I guess what I’m really curious about is how typical the high acids are to Chardonnay in that part of the valley!)
POPSOCKETS! ROAD ROCKETS! SONNY CROCKETT! AWESOME!
@novium
My experience is somewhat different, probably due to clone differences. This is a Hanes clone from Mt.Veeder which Domaine Chandon planted for sparkling. It hangs a long time before yellowing up, and we generally pick in mid-October. We ignore brix, which has nothing to do with ripeness. This generally means 24.5 brix or better so we end up with alcohols of, say 14.8. The wine at this stage tastes terrible. The alcohol obscures the lemony nose and puts a bitterness in the finish that masks the minerality. Also, since we use untoasted (neutral aroma) Alliers chips in the fermenter, the palate is terribly harsh. Crazy, huh? At this point our pH is 3.5 - 3.6 and our TA is about 6.2, so it isn’t a high acid wine, but derives its palate energy from the minerality in the finish which we believe is due to living soil.
But now the magic starts. We suppress malolactic with SO2. We stir lees twice a week until the harshness subsides (6-9 months).Then as we approach bottling, we use my patented reverse osmosis / permeate distillation to lower the alcohol to a “sweet spot” below 13% (for some reason, all six vintages came out to 12.9%, but I wouldn’t count on it. Then we simply bottle and wait.
Assuming you are making, say 5-8 gallons of wine, here’s what I would do in your shoes. First, take a shovel and see if you find an earthworm city in your vineyard. This will give you minerality. You can encourage this with covercrop and eschewing pesticides.
I think you are picking too early. Wait for yellow berries and brown seeds. This will give you flavor. Immediately dilute the must to 20.5 brix with springwater. (I know, this is scary. You will get more wine and better wine.) leave the acid be. Don’t add SO2 at crush. Prise de Mousse is fine - nice and clean. If you want some Bois Frais chips - the untoasted, 3-year air cured Alliers chip from Boise France, I can send you some as they come from G3 Enterprises in 10 KG sacks, enough for your needs into the next century. Add SO2 to 0.8 mg/L molecular - about 70 parts of KMBS - to suppress ML. You should rack off your gross lees and chips onto this dose in the receiving vessel (for good mixing) a day or two after dryness so you retain the light, sweet lees and leave the gross crap behind.
The very best way to perform your batonage anaerobically is to get yourself a GOFermentorJR for $500 and set it to automatically stir your wine twice weekly or do so manually at the punch of a button. You will love this thing for your small batches of reds as well.
When the texture is plump and smooth (probably some time in the summer), stop batonage, let it fall clear, and perform a sweet spot tasting. The wine should be about 12.5% alcohol, probably below the best spot, so instead of removing the alcohol with RO technology, we are going to add alcohol in 0.1% increments until we find the best one. Get yourself some 100 proof vodka. You will also need a 1 ml graduated pipette in 0.01 ml increments - I can send you one of those too. Set up ten glasses and put 50 mls of wine in each glass. The one on your left is the control. Add vodka to each glass as follows: 0.13, 0.27, 0.40, 0.53, 0.67, 0.80, 0.93, 1.07, and 1.20 mls. This should show you the range up to 13.4%. Swirl these glasses thoroughly and taste. Pay particular attention to the harmony and reduced astringency on the palate. (You can look higher too if you’d like a Meursault style in the 13s or a Montrachet style in the 14s.)
Now just pick the one you like best and add to the main lot the same amount of alcohol. For example, if you like the 0.53 addition and have 20 liters (20,000 mls) of wine, add 0.53 mls x (20,000/50) = 212 ml of 100 proof vodka.
Mix well, bottle and wait.
@winesmith Wow, thanks. That is fascinating. I’ll have to check with the grower what the clones were on the chard we were making. We picked about 500 lbs, and yeah, definitely hitting lees stirring, it’s been magic. Partially because it’s cool, and partially because it would be very hard for us to do otherwise, we’ve been going old school brown juice method, getting some of that browning right in the pressing since we’re just using a basket press and no co2, and then having the yeast and the lees stirring grab it all back. As a result, we’ve been getting less of that estery fruitiness and more this deep intense apple that just goes and goes. 7.5 ga fermented in a small French oak barrel (a bit more toasted than is probably ideal), and then in total maybe 50% of the wine got on average two weeks in the barrel. We actually got about two thirds of the way through malo before it stuck, at which point I made my little conversation error and we just had to break out the So2. So I’ve got about 25 gallons of chard (5 was tragically lost to a dropped demijohn), just bottled 20 ga white Zin, and have 35 gal regular Zin, and ten of pinot. My dad would like his garage back.
WineSmith…Is An Autobuy with us!! Of-course in for a Case!! We just enjoyed our last 2005 Faux Chablis, what a wonderful wine, and what a coincidence.
As Always thanks Clark for ALL your great wine’s!! PS>>Say Hi to Ruth-e for us
costly-mellow-trouble
He who is absolutely NOT buying any more wine… just bought a case. Now, I need to go to bed.
@coynedj The solution is obvious. Drink up. Now that you have no social life for the foreseeable future, what are you saving it for?
Wine direct shipped is the new adult Disneyland.
I’ve never seen anything like this - a celestial wine glass over my back porch.
@winesmith The west coast version of the Polar Vortex?
@Mark_L Dunno. I have never seen anything like it. It was right there off my back porch last night.
WineSmith taught me … that California grapes married to the right technique beat most of the random French wine I have bought. Auto buy.
I get an error when trying to order that it can’t be shipped to MI, but yet MI is listed on the available states list…
@nklb Me too…
In for a 3 pack. I shouldn’t be buying anything now. Daughter just graduated college and is moving back home. Son is home from college… I should be saving. But this is Clark wine. I loved the faux chablis the first time I had it years ago. Made me start trying white wines again. Everything clark makes is so yummy.
@mommadeb
/giphy dormant-milky-net
@mommadeb Congrats on your daughter’s graduation! Wow how time flies.
@trifecta thanks! I I can’t believe she’s done! Now all we need is foe foe the movie industry to open back up so she can get a job
We don’t really need more Can Sauv but I’m infinitely intrigued by the Faux Chablis and we do love a good Grenache.
Still debating as I’ve really been trying to watch the spending right now, but Clark is such an autobuy…
/giphy first world problems
@sdilullo Send me you Cab Sauv . . . hahahaha
Auugghhh! Three cases in shipping, and now this? I’m trying to resist, but then I think that I would have spent $200 for the chance to taste (multiple) Faux Chablis (and some Crucibles, and a chance to reconnect with my Jr. High friend – go Sandcrabs!) if Clark had brought his road show to Chicago before I moved away, and now that I will probably never be near a city where he is visiting…
@Mark_L resistance is futile
@rpm You’re right (your report below pushed me over the edge).
/giphy middle-assured-loon
@Mark_L Fear not, Mark. As soon as things clear up, Chicago is first on the list for the vertical tasting and I am saving a bottle of each vintage for that happy day, hopefully next year.
BTW, I tested positive on March 17th, had a very mild three-day unpleasantness and have been asymptomatic for 7 weeks now. I do believe I’m past it.
@Mark_L In the same boat maybe our wines are hanging together in transit and splitting up in Chicago on their last lap to NJ or NY
@forlich Since I’m about 50 miles south of the midpoint between Kansas City and St Louis, it’s more likely that my shipments come through St Louis.
I feel honored this week to have been chosen to LabRat all three of the WineSmith wines in today’s offering! As many know, SWMBO and I are riding out the pandemic season in sunny Southwest Florida… blissfully far from the Frozen North and sadly far from the vineyards of my real home in California. In order to do justice to Clark’s offering, we recruited two additional tasters: PK and his charming and lovely bride TK. PK and TK are knowledgeable, serious, and sophisticated wine drinkers; they’ve lived in France and elsewhere in Europe, and taste seriously and frequently in Napa and Sonoma. If anyone’s worried we violated social distancing protocols, we set up our tasting at opposite ends of an 8-foot table out-of-doors to ensure proper social distancing, and each brought our own glasses, crackers/bread, water, and cheese (for post formal tasting accompaniments). Wine conquers all!
For reference, we used the modified UC Davis 20-point scoring system and Ann Noble’s Wine Aroma Wheel to help us focus on a common vocabulary for our descriptions of the wines. Under this system, most good wines will fall in the range between 15 and 20 points. At the lower end of that range you get the upper end of “standard” wines that have no defects, nothing particularly outstanding about them either. At the upper end are found wines of outstanding character without defect. In my experience over the past 60+ years tasting, wines worth a 20 are rare, usually the wines that give an “AHA!” experience. (Lower scores range from the lower end of standard wines – you may have heard me speak of ‘sound commercial wine’ in the past – on down to those which have noticeable defects, but are still salable (though most Casemates would not consider them ‘drinkable’) on to wines too defective for the trade and completely spoilt wines. OK, I know, enough already! On to the wines!
OVERALL RECOMMENDATION – rpmAUTOBUY – get a case or two! Drink the Faux Chablis this year and next, the Grenache over the next 5-7, and the Cabernet Sauvignon starting in 2023, but save a bottle for 2033 or beyond.
2005 Faux Chablis
I’ve been drinking the Faux Chablis in one vintage or another since the 2010 rpm Magical History Tour when Clark brought it to Scott and Jana’s as part of a wonderful tasting/party/dinner in the vineyard. I was thoroughly charmed by it then, and have always enjoyed its Chablis-like character. 2005 was a good year in California, with some very nice, rich, ripe Chardonnay’s made in both Napa and Sonoma counties.
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK – all 2 points- comments included beautiful/great legs
Color (2 pts) rpm, PK, TK – all 2 points, SWMBO 1.5- deep gold, showing age but no browning
Aroma & Bouquet
(6 pts) rpm, TK 4, SWMBO 3.5, PK 3 – the higher scores emphasized apple/earthy-mushroom/vanilla, the lower scores found the nose more resinous to vanilla, with fig fruit.
Total Acidity (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, TK 2, PK 1.5 (not sure why lower here, all agreed balance good in discussion)
Sweetness, Body (1 each) all scored full points
Flavor (2 points) rpm, TK, PK 2, SWMBO 1.5 - comments included characteristic of Chardonnay, green apple, mild mushroom,
Bitterness and Astringency (1 each) all scored full points.
General Quality (2 pts) TK 2, PK 1.7, rpm, SWMBO 1.5 – comments included not minerally/chalky like Chablis, at peak, drink now.
Total Scores: rpm 17.5, SWMBO 16, PK 16.2, TK 18.
So overall, it’s clear we all liked the wine, though TK the most and SWMBO the least. TK really likes Chardonnay, SWMBO does too, but does not like either oaky or old Chardonnay, PK is much more a red drinker than white, and rpm like Chardonnay generally, quality Chablis especially. This is a very good bottle of wine, that anyone who doesn’t hate Chardonnay will enjoy, but rpm’s recommendation is that you drink it within the next year or so – see it as peaked, the only question being how long it will hold before it declines. SWMBO would drink it now.
2014 Grenache – Santa Cruz Mountains – Bates Ranch
The Santa Cruz Mountains have some really lovely vineyards, and as most Casemates know, are the home of the some of the earlier experiments with Rhône varietals, including Grenache, in California. Clark has done a truly outstanding job with the fruit from the Bates Ranch and made a wine that surprised and charmed us all. (Interestingly, last week SWMBO and I enjoyed a half bottle of the 2011 Bonny Don Le Cigare Volant). As many know, 2014 was a fine year in California, with lower yields due to the drought, but excellent quality.
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK 1, TK 1.5 everyone found it clear, but not brilliantly clear, perhaps it’s suffering from travel shock.
Color (2 pts) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 2 those who had some experience with Grenache thought the color characteristic, good.
Aroma & Bouquet (6) PK 5.2, rpm, SWMBO, TK 5 – woody/earthy to tobacco/leather; spicy (black pepper), earthy mushroom, woody-tobacco / Smokey/ fruit-fig, spicy, woody, earthy tobacco, mushroom, berry.
Total Acidity (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 2
Sweetness (1) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1
Body (1) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1 – medium body
Flavor (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK 1.5 – it was good, but not varietally identifiable at first, one taster got slightly unripe berry flavors – blackberry and raspberry.
Bitterness and Astringency (1 each) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK full scores
General Quality (2) rpm, SWMBO, TK 2, PK 1.8 – very nice wine, one taster found finish a little short, others disagreed.
Total Scores: rpm 17.5–18, SWMBO 17.5, PK 17.5, TK 18
Bottom line is that this wine is really very good, will go very nicely with food, and you really need to buy some! rpm thinks the wine is quite drinkable now, but that it will continue to improve for at least 5 years before peaking, and will hold a few years after that. It’s not a varietal that any of the four tasters normally drink or think about buying, but we were all very much impressed. Kudos, Clark!
2013 Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon
For many, Cabernet Sauvignon is the main event! It’s the California wine that (typically) ages the longest and is the most complex and interesting in its myriad expressions. 2013 was an excellent year for Cabernet in California, seeming to me a bit like 1973 with 2012 reminding me in youth of 1970. As we approach this wine, background on your tasters: rpm loves Cabernet, prefers the traditional (picked less ripe, lower alcohol, more elegant, balanced) style epitomized in the Cabernet Sauvignon made by Cathy Corison, André Tchelistcheff (at Beaulieu Vineyards), and George Deuer (at Inglenook through 1964), drunk in maturity. PK loves Cabernet, typically drinks ‘bigger’, riper, and more ‘modern’ style Cabernet, is tolerant of more unresolved tannin and thus more comfortable drinking younger Cabernet that rpm, though he also loves good, aged, traditional Cabernet. SWMBO is not an particular fan of the Cabernet grape, but likes traditional style Cabernet, as long as it’s not too high in alcohol, at maturity. TK enjoys Cabernet, but does not like overly tannic or overripe Cabernet. With that introduction….
Our scores, with highlights of comments:
Appearance (2 pts) PK 2, rpm 1.5, SWMBO and TK 1 – it was clear, but perhaps was less clear than it would have been had it not just travelled across the country.
Color (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK all 2 – characteristic, deep, dark
Aroma & Bouquet (6) rpm and PK 5.5, SWMBO and TK 5 – tight (appropriate for age – opened an hour + ahead of tasting), cassis, raspberries, hint of eucalyptus, dust, leather, earthy, hint of strawberry later. All tasters very consistent in aromas and bouquet perceived.
Total acidity (2) rpm, SWMBO, PK, TK all 2 – acidity and balance noted as appropriate for age.
Sweetness (1) all full score
Body (1) all full score
Flavor (2) all full score – all tasters found characteristic of Cabernet grape, cassis (black currant), some light leather hints, favor appropriate for the age and development of the wine.
Bitterness (1) all full score
Astringency (1) all full score
General Quality (2) PK 1.8, rpm, SWMBO and TK all 2 – aging well, very nice wine
Total Scores: PK 19.3, rpm 18.5, SWMBO and TK 18
Bottom Line: This is a truly fine Cabernet Sauvignon, in close to traditional style, for which we see a long life. It can be enjoyed now (if you decant and leave open a couple of hours), but both rpm and PK think that the added bouquet, knitting, and resolution of tannin that it will see if you let it age at least another 5 years or more will more than repay your patience. rpm sees this as a 25-30 year wine with proper storage, anticipating peak around 2035. Both SWMBO and TK liked this better than most Cabernet Sauvignon and would look forward to drinking it at maturity.
@rpm amazing rattage! Hope you’re keeping safe down in SWFL.
/giphy whipped-moral-direction
@rpm Thanks for the excellent notes! I’d be curious to have another bottle of the Faux Chablis since I finished my 2005s a year or two ago.
@Winesmith I’m wondering whether the lower clarity observed in the reds has to do with your meticulous focus on colloid formation that you’ve discussed in the past. Most colloids don’t end up being completely transparent in the way we think of wine clarity. Thoughts?
@klezman @rpm My wines tend not to precipitate tannins because as you say the colloids are very fine. However I do not filter nor do I cold-stabilize these wines, and this can lead to a slight turbidity.
@klezman @winesmith I appreciate the clarification/explanation.
@rpm Excellent reviews, they picked the right person to Lab-rat
@rpm Fantastic - thank you for all the details.
Anyone from staff on who can comment on why available states lists Michigan, but when trying to place an order it says this can’t be shipped there? I’d really like to buy this before it sells out, or get a clear answer that it is not available to me. (Which would be strange because previous offerings from this vintner have been no issue to ship here)
@nklb @kasandrae
Working to verify what may be amiss…
@nklb apologies. Michigan is a nogo.
@Winedavid49 Okay, I’m very sorry to hear that but thank you for the clarification. Hopefully it’s back on for your next offering!
@nklb
You could attempt a direct contact/ship.
Compliance is a gray area for some.
Unbelievably thorough and fair reporting, generally spot-on. I think the Davis 20-point system is antiquated, designed to look for faults in a time when half of commercial wines would be considered unmerchantable today. However you have used in the best possible way.
My gripe with the Aroma Wheel is that it tries to reduce a wine to its elements, like pulling apart a Beethoven symphony into its individual notes (Ah, A-sharp! He’s using a lot of A-sharp! So THAT"S why it sounds so good!)
I am shooting for soulfulness. Like in music, this is an emergent property of the whole wine. Particularly in the nose, these “come hither” qualities elude description, yet they are the whole point of the wine.
Some notes about the Faux Chablis. Unless you’ve drunk a lot of old style Chablis, say from William Fevre, this is a very difficult wine to spring on somebody.
First of all, there is no vanilla in this wine as it has never seen a barrel. What that is, I believe, is lees character (think Late Disgorged Champagne) from the twice weekly batonage in tank, enhanced by subliminal notes of whiskey lactone, a coconut element from the untoasted Allier chips I put in the fermenter for tannin structure and anti-oxidative properties.
While very fine to drink now, It’s amazingly fresh with no aldehyde. Based on the vertical 2001-2006 tastings I’ve been doing, I think it will be at its best in a couple years, right where the 2003 is now, because the lees character is just beginning to emerge. We have lots of citrus fruit (I call it lemon oil, similar to furniture polish) but the lees add to the “come hither” and are just beginning to emerge.
For the Grenache and the Cab, your drinking window speculations are the same as mine.
Many thanks for your thorough and impeccable examination.
@winesmith @winedavid49
see whisper
@winesmith The pleasure was all ours! When I was asked if the Faux Chablis had seen wood, I said I didn’t think so, but if it had, it would have only been neutral older barrels. I hear you on the ‘lemon oil’ , lees, and the ‘late disgorged Champagne’ thoughts, but those notes didn’t come through for any of us. I’m quite fond of LD/RD sparklers and I think I would have picked up on it, but ymmv, and it’s also the case the wine had just flown in a couple of days before… for real fairness, I’d prefer to let a wine rest a few weeks after shipping before going all technical tasting on it
SWMBO is particularly chary of older Chardonnay, as I had some really old ones we drank past prime (but still alive!) that she really disliked (though I thought were interesting). BTW, I drank quite a bit of William Fevre Chablis in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s. I think I see the connection, but the style reminds me more of the grand cru Le Grenouilles we used to get (though honestly, I don’t think it would be fair to compare the FC with Grenouilles). The ‘81 LeGrenouilles didn’t peak until the mid-90s and was still fine at the millennium, though the last bottle we had was sadly faded by 2006…
Comparing this FC to the 2003, I can see waiting a year or so, but not much more.
Again, very nice work with all of these wines
@winesmith I hear you that the Davis scoring system focus fairly heavily on the flaws that once abounded and are (mercifully) increasingly rare… though it does work nicely to do a number on some of the very unbalanced, overripe, and hot wines one sees far too much of even now… I continue to use it primarily because I’m used to it and I really dislike the 100 point scales where virtually every wine is a 88-95, just as all the children in Lake Wobegone are above average… It does have the virtue of making you evaluate each of the elements of the wine systematically.
I also fully appreciate your objection to the Wine Aroma Wheel. I, too, don’t love the reductionism that it can encourage, though that’s not what I think Ann had in mind. I see it as a bit of a counter to the excessively creative and obscure descriptions that say more about the writer’s imagination than they convey useful information to someone trying to understand a wine from a review. The value of something like the Wine Aroma Wheel is not for thee and me waxing poetic as we share a George Deuer Inglenook Cask Cabernet in its dotage, as it were, but in giving those a bit newer to the sport a common vocabulary as they try to build their own taste memories and share wines with others.
@rpm Absolutely, and you are using the 20-point system the way they really did at UCD. Dinsmoor Ebb when he was head of the department told me - start with the final score you think it deserves, then direct your attention to the specific realms for your notes. Generally they didn’t assign scores to the elements. He said (this was in the days of Bo Derek) that a perfect 10 is arrived at through an overall assessment, not a tally of the scores of various body parts. In the days when we were just trying to make clean, sound wines, it was not necessary to assess a wine as characteristic of a particular style or terroir.
The challenge today, when most wines are sound and they cover a huge range of styles and regions, is that we lack regional standards. I actually think the 100-point system where wines are considered in a linearity based on true-to-type is perfectly fine for European wines. Chateau Latour is a terrible Beaujolais and we understand what is meant by Barolo, Mosel or Muscadet-sur-lies, so ranking makes sense. In the U.S., this is not yet the case. Nobody knows the characteristics to be expected from, say Viognier from Sonoma, North Yuba, the Snake River Idaho and Monticello, Virginia, so they are judged on varietal character expectation and great wines are often found lacking. At appellationAmerica.com in the Blue Book I have spent a decade making those distinctions and we are about 30% done with the important ones. Once we are clear what a region is supposed, even forced by Mother Nature, to provide as a style or set of styles, then the 100-point system would be fine. We’ll likely be dead by then, so for today, the challenge is to be open-minded to a new style. We call it “innate charm,” which is really what Dr. Webb was talking about.
@winesmith I certainly agree that we need to develop some regional standards of what we mean by various types. The shoe-horning of all American Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, into a concept which essentially describes wines made from grapes grown on the West side of the Napa Valley on the alluvial fan around Rutherford (as wonderful as those wines are!!) isn’t realistic. Yet, I confess that’s the benchmark I have in the recesses of my mind, with memories of long-lived, well-made wines going back into the 1940s. Part of our problem is that we’re varietally focused more than we’re terroir focused, although the interplay is more complex that most people even in the business appreciate, IMHO. I do think over the next 50-odd years or so, we’ll see shifts in the predominant grapes in various places. I also hope we can move away from the Parkerized style that grafted itself onto the ‘no wimpy wine’ movement that emerged just about the time The Robert betook himself to Bordeaux, discovered Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, and began a career of thoroughly misunderstanding all grapes Cabernet… (but I digress)…
Oh well, I think I’m too old now to get deeply involved in the project, which I’ll have to leave to the more energetic in the generations behind us…
I can accept a 100 point scale along the lines you describe if we set the benchmark score for the average of each type at 50 (at least until we better understand if the distribution is normal or something else we need to take into account). Why have 100 points if you’re only using about 20 of them?
@rpm @winesmith
Super interesting. The mention of a focus on terroir vs grape caught my attention. There are quite a number of winemakers who are heavily invested (both philosophically and monetarily) in older vineyards that they link to various aspects of California terroir. You probably know them - Joel Peterson, Morgan Twain-Peterson, Tegan Passalacqua, Mike Officer, Thomas Rivers Brown, etc. While some of their work included the “no wimpy wine” style and some very high Parker scores, these are people who are trying to make wines of place. Have you tried them? Any thoughts on their work?
Also of related interest, the Petersons’ estate vineyard now called Bedrock (formerly Madrone Ranch) has some very old vines and was one or two plots over from Peter Wellington’s estate vineyards. This makes me even more sad that VJB hacked out most of the older vines when they purchased the winery.
@rpm Why 100 points if we use 20? You pointed out the Davis 20 point only uses 5. It’s just human nature. But when I use the UCD, I do it in decimal points so I have 50 gradations. I think the 100-point was developed for the same reason - more gradations. It doesn’t matter to me.
What is happening over times that regions are zeroing in on what they’re best at. In most of the Napa appellations, Cabernet Sauvignon make the most sense (though the correct clones and rootstocks vary) partly because if made properly, it really is a stunning region for this grape, while SB and Zinfandel can be very good, they’re not better than Dry Creek where acreage is 10% of the price. Thus over time, CS will come to dominate. Nature has already zeroed in on distinctive AVA styles: Oak Knoll is refined and full of lemons, Howell Mountain is remorsely tannic no matter what you do, Yountville is soft, round and feminine, Combsville is dense, full of blueberries and long aging.
In my scenario, a Howell Mountain Cab should be dinged if it is drinkable young - a betrayal of consumer expectation, while an Oak Knoll Cab should be dinged if it is not reasonably approachable upon release.
The problem with Napa is that it’s so famous that its acreage is very pricey, thus the wines are as well, so its client base is highly affluent fools who just want display wines and like them at 17% alcohol, 2% RS, abrasive tannins and raisiney noses. Sounds like port to me.
There are exceptions like Ch. Montelena, Opus One and Burgess, but they are rarer than they should be. I hate to say it, but what Napa really needs is a global bone-crushing recession to break this viscious cycle so unbecoming to its Holy Ground.
Parker thrives because he likes big wines, but it’s not his fault. We need writers like Jancis Robinson and Karen McNeil to connect better with their own fans, and I think that’s happening as millennials lose patience with Parker’s boomer-centric approach and want lower alcohols and affordable profundity. At least I hope so, since that’s what we do.
@DrWorm is totally at fault here.
@winesmith Agree with everything except that Parker is not Parker’s fault. Another subject not worth clogging this thread with. As I’m sure you did, I’ve watched Parker’s rise, and baleful influence on winemaking, since the late 1970s/early 1980s.
@DrWorm doesn’t celebrate Mother’s Day because they think it’s a Hallmark Holiday.
As many of you are aware, I am a proponent of matching music with wine. If you can discern the wine’s emotional message, its easy to find resonant music to enhance its enjoyment. For example my Cab Sauv does not do well with polka. It’s dark and angry, so it likes The Doors’ People Are Strange and the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Particularly for the Faux Chablis, which is enigmatic and nothing like the oaky, toasty, alcoholic butterbombs we have come to expect and dread, its expression can be tricky to grasp. The finish contains considerable mineral liveliness which could block plumbing the depths of its aftertaste, and the right music really helps this.
Recommended:
Jeru by Gerry Milligan and Chet Baker
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik (A Little Night Music) Mozart
Romanza - Ruben Romera
You’ve Got The Love - Florence & the Machine
100,000 Fireflies -The Magnetic Fields
Mais Que Nada - Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66
Should Have Known Better - Sufjan Stevens
Arioso - J.S. Bach
Symphony #4 in F Minor, Opus 36:IV Tchaikovski -
Chicago Symphony
@winesmith
Reiner? Muti? Solti? Barenboim?
@winesmith Quite an interesting list. I mentioned that I had planned to open a 2003 FC, but I checked and it’s a 2005, so I’ll post some unofficial rat notes later today. Now to dig up my Gerry Mulligan and Magnetic Fields CDs…
@winesmith Only the Grenache left to rat tonight, but happy to listen to music while we cook- what’s on its play list?
@wnance Here’s your Grenache Playlist link.
@winesmith Thx!!
@winesmith Change in plans - the FC will be tomorrow. Maybe too late, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: Tax & Shipping not included in savings calculations)
WineSmith Cellars Favorites - $60 = 21.42%
Grabbed a case primarily to get the Faux Chablis, but a Napa Cab never goes to waste and I’m confident the Grenache will be good too. I have one bottle of the 2005 Faux remaining and its still great. People cannot believe they are drinking a 15 year old white wine. Thanks !
This is not a Napa Cab - it’s from Lake County. You won’t be disappointed.
@winesmith Agree Im sure it will be great. I have a case of your Two Jakes of Diamonds Aspects Red Blend that I think is Lake County. Think I’ll try one tonight !
@forlich I had a bottle of that the other night. It’s excellent.
@forlich Yes, it’s a Meritage blend, 100% from Diamond Ridge Vineyards in Lake County. You’ll love it. Good news: we are about to bottle a 2013 Two Jakes Aspects, so stay tuned.
@winesmith I think you got a detail wrong there. You already bottled that!
/giphy obsessed-beneficial-boot
Was lucky enough to get chosen as a lab rat for this offer from one of my favorite winemakers!
Have tried the Faux Chablis and Grenache so far and will open the Cab later today. While I see that there are a couple lab rat reports posted already, I have not read them nor have I read the descriptions posted by Casemates, so as not to be unduly influenced in my perceptions of the wines.
Having said that, I have previous experience with both the Faux Chablis and Cab but this was my first go at the Grenache, despite having some in my cellar from previous offers. I will compose and post the notes one wine at a time in order to get them up ASAP.
So, without further ado…
2005 WineSmith Napa Valley Faux Chablis
LOOK: Beautiful golden hue in the glass, with great clarity. Slow-forming, medium spaced legs when swirled.
SMELL: Lemon butter nose with hints of peach and citrus zest.
TASTE: Golden delicious apple, and Myer lemon with some white peach, general citrus and tropical fruit notes. Light baking spice notes as well, which became more pronounced when the wine was paired with spicy Asian noodles in yakitori sauce.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Some viscosity leads to a creamy, rounded mouthfeel despite medium acidity and Clark’s signature minerality on the tongue. Lip-smacking finish that invites continued sips.
SUMMARY: I looked at my previous tasting notes on CT after finishing the above and see that my current impressions are almost identical, with golden delicious apple and Myer lemon leading the way. However, this bottle had no hint of oxidation like the last one. Tasted much fresher than one would expect from a 15 year old Chardonnay. Clark’s wines are known for their longevity and this is no exception. Very nice wine with or without food, my LW and I greatly enjoyed the bottle and emptied it quickly!
@chipgreen Thank you for lab ratting. I enjoy everyone’s unique perspective.
@WCCWineGirl
Thank you for the opportunity
OMG I can’t believe I’ve ordered yet again. In the last week I clicked “buy” approaching once a day on average, if you include the meh offer. This week there were 4 shipments to me. And yet this is just an offer I can’t refuse. The Faux Chablis sounds like something not to be missed, since I enjoy the odd and the esoteric, it sounds like it definitely is all that. And having lived in Santa Cruz before, I must have some of the “local” Grenache. And Lake Country I like for Sauv Blanc but never had a Cabernet from there.
/giphy fastest-airborne-zinc
There are many great Lake County Cabs and they are always good values. The Hess Cab has a very large percentage from Diamond Ridge, which is noted for its bright cherry aromas, firm tannins, minerally volcanic soils and its amazing longevity. The air is very clean up there and the bright UV brings out these features and eliminates rot and pyrazines.
would LOVE to order this but will stay on the sidelines until SUMMER SHIPPING commences.
BTW , most definitely would have ordered Twisted Oak, but after video chat with el jefe chose not to. Again, the whole summer shipping thing.
My apologies for inadvertently trimming out the AhSo demonstration. Here is the full track. That demo starts at 4 minutes, 30 seconds into the clip.
/giphy damaging-perceptive-curve
Was going to open one of our remaining Faux Chablis, but then saw we’re down to ONE 2014. We have picked up the latest offers with the Granache, and have been unable to stay out of those.
Sadly, we’re in the club with several of you- we’ve got four offers in flight (plus the Meh from Friday). Ugh- dreading the credit card bill, but worth it. Now gonna need to secure some more space in the cellar, or throw a massive CM party.
@winesmith and @winedavid49, thanks for the great offer! (even though you’re killin’ me!)
/giphy fluttering-knowing-tea
We have some of the 2013 cab from a previous Casemates offer. Just popped out first bottle and it’s delicious stuff! Definitely in for more and cannot pass up a precious few remaining Faux Chablis! Starting to have some warm days but worth the risk for a case!
/giphy luscious-terminal-back
2014 WineSmith Grenache Bates Ranch
LOOK: Pretty, translucent magenta in the glass. Clear, no sediment. Medium sized legs when swirled.
SMELL: Strawberry with loam, cassis and a slight herbal note.
TASTE: Palate is very similar to the nose with strawberry, loam and creme de cassis. The herbal note is also there. I remember Clark describing it in one of his wines as “garrigue” and I think that applies here as well. Strawberry is the main component but it is tempered with the loam and garrigue. It’s almost like you’re getting the entire strawberry plant in liquid form with fruit, leaves and runners with soil still clinging to them.
I like how the earthiness tempers the fruit to prevent it from being jammy. The creme de cassis note helps to round out the palate. Paired very well with 4-cheese baked mac & cheese, as well as a BBQ pork loin sandwich. The wine continued to open up with time and air, as raspberry notes joined the strawberry fruit.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Smooth and lush despite being relatively light-bodied with food-friendly acidity and great minerality. Complex wine with a number of components that are all very well integrated.
DAY 2: I saved some to try the next day (today). The earthiness has dissipated somewhat, revealing more fruit and some spice. Even more enjoyable than yesterday and it paired nicely with a double cheeseburger w/lettuce and mayo.
SUMMARY: Tasty Grenache that is extremely food friendly, seeming as though it could pair well with just about anything. The way it improved and continued to open up over time bodes well for its cellaring potential. Another winner from WineSmith!
Labrat Dinner #3:
2014 WineSmith Grenache Bates Ranch, paired with sous vide pork Marsala over egg noodles, French green beans, fresh scratch dinner rolls.
While cooking we started in on the wine, which I had opened this morning. We went through Clark’s Grenache play list on Spotify, and it seemed pleased with our choices.
I echo the other rats. This is a generous, plush strawberry and herb festival, pure joy in a bottle, but grounded with complexity. Just to check the music pairings I switched to a polka, killer of every red wine, and our friendly wine suddenly had a sour streak down the middle. Weird!
This dinner was a great pairing for the Grenache, everything working together beautifully. It’s hard to think of food this wouldn’t compliment. Pretty flexible.
Another thumbs up for this one. This was a great week to be a lab rat- my family and I are very grateful.
@wnance Do you cater?
/buy
@redjeep0 that isn’t the command? Or does that only work at meh since you have a choice on CaseMates?
/giphy surging-cheap-sycamore
@redjeep0
I don’t think that works on Casemates?
Here’s a link to the song we all sang at our wedding while passing the '14 Grenache around. The WellSmith Blessing Cup.
For those of you in Colorado, it is next on our list after Chicago. What we really will need in both cases is a champion to work with us on a venue, either at someone’s home or a restaurant that won’t charge except for the food. Please let me know if you’d be interested.
Welp, all the great Rat reports completely talked me into spending money I should be holding onto. A case it is!
/giphy testy-bejeweled-sloth
@sdilullo Is that Baby Yoda?
/giphy oblong-abashed-patch
/giphy chivalrous-terrifying-grog
2013 WineSmith Cabernet Sauvignon, Lake County
LOOK: Deep ruby color, bordering on purple. Clear, with medium-spaced, medium width legs when swirled.
SMELL: Cherry nose with hints of eucalyptus and an overall “barrel room” smell that is very appealing.
TASTE: Tart cherry with currant, light oak and baking spice. As the wine opened up it became a richer, fuller wine with greater depth. The tart, bright cherry notes got fleshier and turned to almost a black cherry. There was a leesy component added to the flavor profile as well as some additional spice notes.
FINISH/MOUTHFEEL: Strong mineral buzz on the tongue from this medium bodied Cab. Mild tannins become grippier with time in the glass. Medium+ finish with lingering minerality.
SUMMARY: Well-built Cab that is still rather primary and will take time to develop additional tertiary notes as foreshadowed by its metamorphosis over the course of an evening. Enjoyed this wine with some English chocolates but it was crying out for a rich, fatty slab of meat, especially after it became more expressive with additional air time.
Looking forward to seeing how this wine evolves over the years. If you get a full case you will have 4 of these to play with. I would drink one soonish as it’s enjoyable right now (probably best with a short decant). Then try another bottle every 3 or 4 years to see how it develops over the next decade.
purple loves @barney.
Thanks to all the rats, great write ups!
/giphy appalling-curt-cloth
Happy Mother’s Day!
You all are killing my wallet this week. I’m not a terribly active member but felt a need to say that this offering, and the surrounding discussion are the perfect example of why I’ve been hanging around this group starting back in the w.w days (seems like maybe a decade now). I REALLY appreciate all the knowledgeable, detailed input from both members and vintner. Please keep doing what you do for a long time to come. In for a case (even though I really shouldn’t).
/giphy hideous-offbeat-lettuce
As promised, I opened a bottle of 2005 Faux Chablis this evening. I had it with mussels (wnance put the idea in my mind, and I never need much of an excuse to have mussels). Getting the cork out without an ah-so was a challenge. My first attempt with a standard corkscrew resulted in a half cork, but I resorted to an unusual remedy which worked quite well - a small flat-head screwdriver. Did the job without depositing cork into the bottle.
It was golden in color as rpm noted; certainly not browned. I got the lemon oil on the nose and found it to be very tasty, well balanced and with a long finish. It went very very well with the mussels and I somehow found myself pouring a little more at the end of the meal. While I enjoyed it quite a lot, I must say that I’ll aim to finish off my existing inventory and the bottles I receive from my case order fairly soon - I’m not sure how much longer it will hold up. Not that drinking several bottles of this excellent wine will be a burden, mind you!
@coynedj Mussels!!! Sounds great. Did you feel that the wine found its groove about 15-20 min after you opened it? Next time use the AhSo from the get go, the cork should come out fine.
@wnance Can’t use an ah-so, since I don’t have one. Yes, it did get better as the meal progressed. I poured it too close to mealtime, a mistake I don’t plan on making again.
@coynedj Interesting about the cork… I don’t have an Ah-So here in Florida, and have despaired of finding a good one to replace those I’ve had in the past. But, I opened the Faux Chablis with a garden variety Pulltap waiter’s corkscrew I’ve had for at least a dozen years or so, and had no difficulty whatsoever.
@coynedj @rpm I bought this one from Amazon. High quality materials and construction but not for those who have thick fingers. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002WZR4K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
No Michigan?
@woopdedoo wootleg it to your in-laws in Naples… we’re always happy to help you drink it…
@rpm I did think of that …
My contention is that you have at least two years before this wine peaks. Right now it’s mostly lemon oil, but there are nuances of the sur lees character earlier vintages now display, adding an extra dimension. Anywhere in that window I am confident, after that, hard to say what adventures await. I will say that the 2001 is my favorite, but it’s a different animal - lighter and with many layers like a Gruner Veltliner.
This is a much bigger, more concentrated wine and I don’t know what that means. Ain’t it nice when a wine can show you something unexpected? When I started this project, I had not the faintest notion we would wind up here two decades later speculating on when, if ever, these wines are going to die. Reminds me of the days of Evil Kenevil.
@winesmith Hopefully this gets to you and you aren’t too busy. i have the faux chablis in my grubby little hands and planning to cellar most of it but can’t help but to open one now.
Was wondering if you have thoughts on optimal serving temperature for this?
@cbrehman @winesmith
I remember Clark saying (and my experience with many bottles,) best when slightly chilled to enjoy all the complexity it has to offer. As it warms up you’ll discover how it changers.
@cbrehman @PLSemenza Yes, it would be a shame to serve it too cold. It’s really like an albino red, so 55-65F is ideal. Personally I go for the higher end of this range.
@PLSemenza @winesmith Perfect. Thank you both!
Do we have nominations for best threads and winery participation?
This one is at the top of my list.
@winesmith @winedavid49
@rjquillin Absolutely - this is one of the best I’ve seen since Casemates came into this world!
@rjquillin @sdilullo good call!
@rjquillin Brings back memories of why I organized the first tour … learned a lot since then, but still a lot to learn.
@rjquillin @woopdedoo @Winedavid49 And a shout out here to both woop and rj, and of course, winedavid, without whom the rpm Magical History Tours would not have been possible. Huge undertaking on the part of everyone involved, but one of the most personally rewarding things I’ve done over the past dozen years!
Dang, missed it by this much? Grr time change.
My case arrived today. I displaced some very good wines (to an uncontrolled basement rack) to create room among other WineSmith/Two Jakes, Wellingtons, Pedroncellis, and a few others to make room in my controlled storage (holds about 100 bottles). I then cringed when I realized that the Faux Chablis bottles are a bit larger and will not fit into my rack. I found room for two at the top (among some other too-large bottles), and then moved other two bottles from the bottom rack to another level which allowed two more of the Faux Chablis to stand upright on the bottom. Not ideal, but it will have to do. I guess my only consolation is that the Faux Chablis will likely be consumed in the in the (relatively) nearer future.
@Mark_L it think it has enough age on it
@Winedavid49 I happened upon a 1999 (21-year-old) Wellington Zin as I was perusing my storage. I’ll probably consider it to be of legal drinking age and open it fairly soon.
We worked our way to the first bottle of Faux Chablis on Saturday, and were disappointed to find the cork dried out and broken, requiring some careful removal and with the flavor seeming to be a bit corked. Hoping for a better outcome this evening I cut through the wax on a second bottle, and began cork removal only to find a completely crumbled cork, which I then had to filter out before we could even taste a sip. The wine, once filtered through new cheesecloth to remove the tiny bits, was more flavorful than the first bottle, but seemed far less robust than expected.
Unfortunately, not a great experience thus far, but have hopes for the reds.
@dkrupps
Those Faux Chablis corks are notorious for that. Best to use an Ah-So style opener and if you do lose some of the cork into the bottle, this filtered pour spout does a good job of keeping it out of your glass. (Also great for filtering sediment from older bottles which is mostly why I use it).
Finally, there is some oxidation with these Faux Chablis’ and due to the cork issues, the amount of oxidation can vary so some bottles are definitely “fresher” tasting than others. Fortunately for me, I enjoy the characteristics imparted by some light oxidation as it adds complexity to the flavor profile but there is a limit and of course YMMV.
@chipgreen @dkrupps @winesmith @Winedavid49
I agree with and second both of Chip’s recommendations. (we do have them both)
Additionally we have enjoyed; lets say 2++ cases of the Faux Chablis over the years. (still have 6 bottles left) This is an unusual White wine, utilizing the Red wine production processes. That said, we find this wine best enjoyed between the traditional White & Red temperature range, very slightly chilled. I’m sure Clack will chime in.
I’m afraid crumbly corks are just what happens to wines 15 years or more in bottle. I’ve been drinking up my old “Special occasion” reds in hopes to make my way through my 100 cases before my liver goes bad on me. In the last three days I’ve had a '94 Tarawarra PN, '95 Rennaisance Meritage and a '91 Fiddlehead Cellars Santa Maria PN. All were magnificent, surprisingly well preserved, but all the corks were completely deteriorated. I got them out easily with my trusty Durand. Best $125 I ever spent.
Concerning this wine, I concur with all the above. This particular vintage was always the densest of the six, and seems to be peaking now, while the other years are holding up well. I drink a lot of Georgian clay jar wine, certainly an acquired taste, but I like them a lot, and this vintage is beginning to resemble them.
BTW, we’re running a sale on the very last of this experiment on our site and there are currently only 23 bottles left in the world. It was a real privilege to run this 19-year experiment and your support over the years and your appreciation of what I was trying to do have made it an extremely gratifying experience for me.
@winesmith Ha! Only 23 left in the world. Why, I have ten in my cellar at this very moment. Gotta pick up the pace on drinking them, from the sound of things.