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 2004 Monga Zin ®Jose Lopez Vineyard Cucamonga Valley The Monga Zin® is named both for its immense (humongous) mouthful of flavors and for its southern California region of origin, Cucamonga Valley, home to many of California's oldest Zinfandel vineyards. This vineyard is 84 years old, just like my Dad, planted in 1918 for "packing grapes" to ship to home winemakers in Chicago and the East. The vines struggle in the near desert-like conditions, with rocky-sandy soil that holds very little water; they have only grown to about 18" tall, and have just a few tiny fist-sized clusters on each vine. These old vineyards are falling victim to urban sprawl, as housing developments and warehouses spread from nearby Ontario Airport. I was happy to be able to get the precious crop off of this one…the Jose Lopez Vineyard. It is bordered on 2 sides by freeways—I-15 and 210 from San Bernardino—and it is a bit surreal to see the overpass rising above the old “bush-vines.” It is actually the 10 lanes of freeway that protected our vines from the fires that ravaged the nearby San Bernardino Mountains in October 2003—do I dare say I am grateful for asphalt?! I buy this fruit through Don Galleano, the "don" of the local paisanos, and a native of Cucamonga. He has a passion to keep these old vineyards alive despite their rather poor economic returns--only 0.5 ton/acre instead of the expected 2-4 tons/acre of younger, irrigated vineyards, even high quality ones. Through his dedicated efforts, this vineyard passed the rigid CCOF standards and can now be labeled "organically grown"--tho we do not label it thus because “organically grown wines” tend to be grouped off to the side in stores and not with their own varietal type--something I would not rather have happen! Also, there is still a lot of confusion over the differences between “organically grown” (as Monga is, meaning just the vineyard practices are organic) and “organic wine,” which one presumes is made with no added sulfites and therefore has a short shelf life and high tendency to spoilage and bottle variation. I will NOT be producing the latter style of wines and do not want to be associated with their problems! Cucamonga Valley is in the path of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, so at last the vines may have too big of a challenge to withstand. Since a few of the bugs were found in the Lopez Vineyard just a few weeks prior to our first harvest of 2000, I have to ferment these grapes at a friend's winery in Temecula so I will not break quarantine and bring the bug to Sonoma County. I still do this, 5 years later--for about 2 weeks, I actually move in with friends near San Diego (thanks, Bob and Laurie!) so I can do all of the cellar work myself from crushing through the fermentation of these grapes. As soon as I press the wine off the skins I head for home and start testing my next nearly-ripe vineyard up north—a crazy Crush schedule with which Mitch is not thrilled. Harvest of 2004 in this "desert" was extremely late—September 7. The growing season had only had a grand total of 3” of rain for the entire year (!!) which caused the water table from which Lopez vines to drop dramatically. I rather expected this to cause a short crop--which it did at only 0.25 ton/acre (!)--but I also thought it might be early, since there were far fewer grapes to ripen per vine. NOT! I actually made at least four trips down to southern CA to test the vineyard from mid-August thru Labor Day, and we finally picked after my fourth sampling—phew! The fruit plumped up to 26.3°Brix after soaking up the raisins for which Zinfandel is so famous. The flavors in the berries fell in between the raisiny-dessert wine character of the 2000 and more elegant “Asian spice on red fruit” of the 2001, with incredible density and viscosity due to the extremely low crop and dry growing season. We adjusted the acid, added yeast, and waited for the fermentation to begin. Then we did something called "déléstage", which means that we completely drained the juice off of the skins, let the soggy cap sit for an hour, and quickly returned all of the juice to the tank over the top of the cap. This old French technique has recently gained popularity in California, as it is the best way to break up the hard dry cap and get full extraction of color, richer fruit and rounder flavors and body. It works best if done early in the ferment. We did it three times in the first 5 days of the fermentation. I think it really added a lot to the mouthfeel and rich texture of the final wine. I brought the wine home to Sonoma County after we pressed it in Temecula, and we put it into barrels immediately. It spent 10 months in 30% new American oak, 33% 1-year-old American oak, and 37% older American oak barrels. The fruit is hugely jammy razzberry with some dusty Asian/Moroccan spices like cumin, coriander and white pepper. It is slowly developing some lovely creamy milk chocolate, as well as a bit of brown sugar in the finish. With 15.1% alcohol, this is a "humongous" wine indeed, but does not appear awkwardly hot or overtly alcoholic, just big, chewy, and mouthfilling! On its June release, the 2004 Monga Zin® was still showing a bit chewy tannins and had not opened up much in nose or mouth. That has changed now, and the wine has developed a depth of flavor and complexity that has caught the approval of quite a few judges. It has won 5 Gold medals and the Best of Show at the Jefferson Cup Invitational n MO in December 2004. It has at least 5-7 years ahead before that powerful red fruit fades out. Price: $21/bottle, $252/case Techie data for 2004 Monga Zin®
The Wild Thing derives its name from the use of a "wild yeast" fermentation, using only the "native" yeasts of both vineyard and winery-the more politically and technically correct term these days is "uninoculated fermentation." This makes the wines more complex in aroma and more fully integrated in mouthfeel than those made by selected yeast culture additions, which produce technically correct but occasionally dull and one-dimensional wines. The flip side (the reason that NOT everyone does "wild" ferments) is that there is a greater risk of something going awry, such as not finishing all the sugar or producing volatile acidity (vinegar aromas) and off-flavors in the finished wines. With very careful monitoring and a lot of experience, these risks are minimized, and the results show the pay-off in interesting flavors and aromas as well as richer mouthfeel and overall texture. Techie aside: "Wild" fermentation is actually a misnomer--it starts out with true "wild" yeasts, but is finished by some fairly well-domesticated albeit "unselected" versions of the true wine yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae . This is the same as the beer and bread yeast, our real hero of the wine industry, which comes forth from the nooks and crannies of the winery as the original "wild yeasts" die off, around 4% alcohol. The wine yeasts eat up all the rest of the sugar to produce the wine with full alcohol, and without residual sweetness…hence "uninoculated" is the more PC term these days, for real tech-heads! Back to the wine at hand… The fruit for the Wild Thing came from the vines planted in 1956 (they are the same age as me-do I dare call them "old vines?!") in the Cox Vineyard, north of Ukiah in Mendocino County. They were grown organically on gentle hills in rocky soils, with only a few drip irrigations in heat waves as needed for vine health. I had worked with this vineyard in my days at Windsor Vineyards, where I chose to do an uninoculated ferment for the first time and where I came up with the name "Wild Thing" (used on the "wildly" successful 1997 vintage from Windsor). For this reason, I chose to reverse the image of the "Dreaming Girl on the Rock" on our label so that she looks to the left. To me, that symbolizes looking into the past, and this wine is a respectful nod to my past, using the same grapes and techniques, and even the same name as I did in my days at Windsor. The harvest of 2004 was just right for Cox Vineyard. In fact, we were so excited about the wonderful raspberry flavors we were tasting that we brought clusters to our local retailers to taste and to offer to their customers! We picked on September 20, 2004, with rich full red-fruit flavors, not too high sugar (26°Brix, which plumped up to around 26°Brix as the raisins soaked up the next day), and comparable acid (0.72 acid and 3.63 pH) to the previous years. The grapes were destemmed and left to start their own ferment with the indigenous yeasts, which they did started to do only after a full 8 days of nail-bitingly nervous waiting on my part. We did déléstage (see Monga tech page above for definition of this) three times before 15°Brix, and standard pumpovers twice daily otherwise. Once most of the sugar was gone (about 1.5 weeks), we ceased the cellar action and left the tank alone (with me nervously tasting it daily) for an additional week of "extended maceration." This longer skin contact helps to add body and refine tannins, making changes in the mouthfeel that contribute a lot to its young drinkability. We finally pressed it off after a total of 4 weeks on the skins, and then barrelled it down as soon as possible. It was aged in a nice collection of American oak barrels (33% new, 17% 1-yr old and 44% older). While this might sound like a lot of newer oak, remember it is only for 9months, so the overall impression is not over-oaked for the amount of big fruit present. The jammy-peppery fruit flavors married beautifully with the sweetly smoky-chocolatey oak, and the alcohol, a hefty 15.8%, while making a BIG impression, does NOT appear terribly hot. This is largely due to the job the "wild" (and tame) yeasts did in producing fuller body that helps to cloak the edginess of the alcohol--it worked! I decided to continue my blending procedure of the recent years, by adding 10% Carignane to it. This is a red blending grape that has its origins in the Rhone Valley of France, and is frequently planted in old vine Zin vineyards as part of a field blend. In this case the Carignane is planted just across the dirt lane from my block of Zin. It is still organically grown like the Zin, and the vines are about the same age. The Carignane grapes were harvested the same day as the Zin (so we could use the same truck for delivery), and they were a bit less ripe than the Zin because I wanted to use them as the source for our dry Rendezvous Rosé. Once they were destemmed I held them cold with one daily pumpover and then after 3 days I bled off the light red (ok, ok, it’s pink) juice for the Rosé. The remaining red grapes were inoculated and treated like one of my other red Zins, then I barreled them down separately and blended them back into the Wild Thing Zin before bottling. I think the Carignane enhances the bright red fruit character and perked up the acid just a bit as well. We released this wine in April 2006, after it had about 8 months of bottle age. It is delicious in the short term, with a round creaminess in the mouthfeel and bright red berry fruit, but it will improve for at least 5 years from its release date. Try it with any BBQ, tomato sauces, spicy stuff like chipotle or Szechwan glazes on ribs, and it has a special affinity for game and duck. Price: $28/bottle, $336/case Techie data for 2004 Wild Thing:
2004 KarmaZin™ We chose the name KarmaZin for this wine because the grapes came to us as a result of an exchange of favors and trust…good karma returns its own positive energy when honesty and hard work are put forth. We feel so fortunate to be able to follow our dreams and make a life of Zin, and our journey has been blessed repeatedly with gifts of good karma along the way. So, Karma Zin it is! The vineyard, owned by Bob and Carlene Rue, is located on Wood Road, a short stretch of pavement that cuts thru some of the best vineyards in the Russian River Valley, all planted around the turn of the century by a large Italian family--as each of the daughters got married off they gifted the young couple with their own 10-acre parcel to start them out. Other vineyards in the neighborhood are Ravenswood's Belloni Ranch, all 4 of the Hartford Zins, which include the Hartford Vineyard, Dina's Block, Highwire (across the street from Rues) and Fanucchi-Wood Rd (right next door!). So the vines can claim a pretty nice pedigree, as far as old vine heritage stuff...and best of all, they are interplanted in the vineyard as what we call a "field blend." The tradition was to plant several compatible varietals together because each one "brought something to the party", so to speak. Of course Zinfandel was the dominant choice, and in this vineyard it accounts for about 85-88% of the vines. The Petite Sirah adds black pepper spice and some tannic backbone, while the Carignane offers bright acidity and red fruit flavors, with a softer and rounder mouthfeel if it is ripe enough at harvest. Alicante Bouschet's biggest contribution is obvious, both in the vineyard and in the glass--COLOR! As I am sure you know, almost all red grapes have colorless juice, and must be fermented with their color-filled skins to extract their violet and ruby hues. Alicante, on the other hand, is blessed with deep blue-purple juice and pulp, enough to stain your hands every time you sample the vineyard after veraison (once the fruit has turned from green to red prior to harvest)...and in the cellar! Mitch likes to imagine that the original Italian farmer planned it all out very analytically, just how many vines of each varietal he wanted to plant and then followed his plan, but did not keep them in tidy blocks by varietal. I think it involved a bit more serendipity than that--maybe a general plan of what they wanted, but pretty casual in bud selection and storage, so a crazy mixture is what they got. Whatever the story, it works for us--the layers of complexity and various "contributions" from each varietal make a wonderful wine. Many people ask us for the exact percentage of each varietal, but like the original farmers, we cannot give a definite answer. Since each year's crop will be different in terms of crop set and berry weight, the actual juice yield for each varietal will also vary, by as much as 2-3% per year. So be content with estimates--the "other" varietals are present in the vineyard in roughly equal amounts and the Alicante produces a bit juicier berry, so my best guess would be 7% Alicante and 4% each Petite Sirah and Carignane, with a miniscule amount of Palomino (0.25%?) for good measure—or maybe it is 5% of each varietal. We harvest it all together at the same time into half-ton bins and "co-ferment" all of its components so they marry well, and the abundant color of the Alicante is stabilized instead of dropping out as excess. Wood Road is a bit of a warmer "banana belt" for the cool Russian River Valley, but the grapes can still ripen pretty late in the season. In 2004 the cropload was nicely balanced at about 1.6 tons/acre. We picked this crop on September 17, 2004, a month and a half earlier some years. Phew—we dodged that bullet! The sugar soaked up to a full 25.7°Brix after about a day. The acid was 0.75 and pH at 3.53, great numbers to work with! We did one déléstage at about 14°Brix and another at 10°Brix, then returned to gentle pumpovers since the higher alcohol after that point makes for harsher extractions. After 14 days on the skins we pressed it off (a few days after dryness was reached) and went to barrel right away. The wine seemed to have plenty of tannin so I minimized the amount of new French oak (it would just give more tannin extraction!), added some new Hungarian for its cinnamon spice profile, and "fattened up the body" with some sweeter American oak tones. The barrels I liked best throughout aging were the the older ones where the fruit could really shine out and not get smothered by a coffin of oak. Once again we decided to leave the wine in barrels through the Crush of 2005 to get a bit smoother in tannins, and we bottled it in December after blending in about 5% of Zin from Maple Vineyard for a kiss of its sweet rich blackberry fruit and great tannic structure. We love to just drink this Zin for its lush juicy fruit and the layers of interesting spice and earthy richness. Full of freshly-ground black pepper aromas and some nice cedary-spicy oak components, it has a rich creamy mouthfeel despite its firm tannic backbone. This vintage shows a touch of gaminess that I find quite reminiscent of a nice Cotes du Rhone. That wild note is beautifully compatible with game meats, especially duck, or actually with any grilled meats. I also had a nice paring which surprised me—Alaskan halibut with a porcini mushroom sauce. We are still playing with good recipes--if I come across some good ones I will post them on the site! Price: $33/bottle or $396/case Techie data for 2004 KarmaZin:
The Rocky Reserve® is our first true "Reserve" wine (we hope there will be many to come). It is a truly classic Dry Creek style Zinfandel, and I feel very fortunate to have been able to obtain this special fruit. Since we are based in Sonoma County, it is a natural for us to produce Sonoma County Zins. In our opinion (and at the risk of causing more of you to move here!), this corner of the earth is true paradise, both for us to live in and for our Zins, whether they grow in Dry Creek, Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley or Sonoma Valley-you just can't beat the quality of fruit grown here! Each appellation of Sonoma County has its own profile of classic flavors in the Zin-world, its own signature, so to speak. The Rocky Reserve® is named, of course, for the rocky red soils of the Rockpile Ridge Vineyard. Planted in 1997 by the Jacks Florence (father and son), the vineyard is at the 1200-foot elevation with stunning views of Lake Sonoma. Lake Sonoma is a man-made recreational lake created by the Warm Springs Dam at the northern end of Dry Creek Valley, which is responsible for controlling the flooding which used to make Dry Creek a less-than-great place to live. Jack Florence Sr. was the driving force behind getting the area named an official AVA, or American Viticultural Area, by the BATF on April 29, 2004--check out their website, full of beautiful photos by Jack Jr., at www.rockpileava.com for more stuff about that! The steep hillsides and shallow soils make for great drainage for the vines, which in turn offer fruit of great structure and intensity. In addition, sun exposure is vastly different at that elevation--the fog burns off at least 2 hours earlier on Rockpile than down in the Dry Creek Valley "flats." This allows more morning sun and less of the burning afternoon sun, so the fruit is more steadily and evenly ripened. Our 2000 vintage was the very first crop from these vines and the precocious intensity of the grapes showed great promise in harvests to come...and the 2004 follows thru on that promise in spades. As Rich Thomas, "Dr. Vine" of Sonoma County, often says, "Red grapes like red dirt!," and this vineyard proves his point well. The combination of iron-rich red soils and rocky hillside drainage is textbook, and cared for beautifully by the two Jacks, Jr. and Sr., and their vineyard manager, Ulises Valdes. The 2004 fruit came in very ripe at harvest (28°Brix, 0.82 acid and 3.72 pH) on September 10, 2004, and the color was the blackest ink we had ever seen in a grape juice! We destemmed the grapes and added our chosen yeast, then déléstaged twice before we dropped to 15°Brix (see discussion of déléstage on Monga tech page above) and pressed near dryness. We barrelled it down just prior to Christmas of 2004. The tannin structure of this wine caused me to select more French oak for its aging; generally I prefer American oak for my Zins because the fatness of the fruit and fullness of Zin's flavors tend to dwarf the relative delicacy of French oak. "American oak for an American grape," I always say. Usually American oak is the perfect foil, offering rich toasty chocolate for that jammy sweet berry, and a complementary sweet-roundness on the palate that you don't often get from French oak. This fruit is different from my three, however, in its "restraint"--it is full of black pepper and blackberry, but it is more elegant and structured, not the exotic brown sugar and Asian-spiced MongaZin® or the vibrantly fat jam of the Wild Thing® or even the layered juiciness of the KarmaZin--it stays in the box, doesn't "crayon outside the lines" as much, and obeys the rules we hold for respectable wines that will improve with age, and not blow it all out in decadent (if delicious) youth. This is our best aging wine and our most consistent vineyard performer of the three, delivering multiple Gold medals every year. I gave it a lot of great oak, then--68% new and 1-year-old –-36% American, 14% French and 18% Hungarian oak, and the balance (32%) older European oak barrels. Specific coopers used were a wild mix--43% American from several different coopers, but also 19% new French oak, and 6% Hungarian oak from Budapesti Kadar, which I am using because I love what they do to my friend Ross Battersby's Zins at Limerick Lane…I love the variety that all these different woods gives to the wine, like a spice rack available for tweaking the aroma and mouthfeel of the growing wine; this is the real joy of winemaking for me, to have a number of little lots that all work together as I blend them into a work of true synergy and harmony, with no one single component sticking out obtrusively, all married happily and contributing their gifts to the "relationship." So…back to the Rocky Reserve®…it is a classic Zin, crammed with the inky blackberry fruit and black pepper spice for which the Dry Creek Valley is famous, with lots of interesting vanilla and spices from the variety of oaks. It is well structured for longer age, but can be consumed with delight in the near-term as well! Price: $33/bottle or $396/case Techie data for 2004 Rocky Reserve® :
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2004 Wild Thing™
2004 KarmaZin™
2004 Rocky Reserve ®
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