Napa Valley Dawn
First light warming the vineyards in the #Napa Valley
Rocking It!
2012 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone North Coast White Rocks! and 2011 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone North Coast Red Rocks!
Fun. Rocks! is fun, fun to make and fun to drink. Isn't wine supposed to be fun?
Each year we start with a blank slate, but not a blank palate, as in our mind, we know the the bright, zesty, mouth-watering flavors we seek. It's all about the pleasure. Well, it's not just about the pleasure, but also the price. Rocks! is made to be enjoyed - often!
The freedom to blend whatever varieties we find to produce the best wine possible is liberating and fun. To keep this freedom, we do not share the exact percentage of the blends as we want everyone savoring the results vintage to vintage, not the statistics. Rocks! is Rocks!, our expression of a wine priced to enjoy every day, that is delicious enough to make everyday meals just a bit more special. Rocks! will make you think, but not too much as its place in the world is to stimulate conversation, not dominate it.
I'm excited to present you with our new package for Rocks!, which I think convey well its spirit. Bright, lively, as fun as the wine itself and topped with a screw cap to eliminate any obstacle to opening a bottle. This last choice was also made with picnics and patio barbecues in mind as they are a natural home for Rocks!.
My love of interesting blends goes back to the now famous Vintage Tunia by Silvio Jermann in Italy's Fruili, which I was among the first American importers of back in the early 1980's. During the same period I was introduced to the many blended southern French wines by Christopher Cannan. No one debated too much the exact blends of these wines they way people do now. They were just enjoyed for what they were - delicious.
While inspired by European wines, you'll find Rocks! distinctly Californian in personality with generous flavors full of the perfect fruit that we grow in this ideal climate for grapes, yet with that bright tang of acidity for which Cornerstone Cellars is now known. I hope you enjoy Rocks! with some hearty comfort food and fun. After all, that was the idea.
White Rocks! is as always brightly aromatic and spicy, perfect as aperitif with appetizers or with Asian or other spicy or sweet and sour dishes. The Red Rocks! is packed with bright red fruit flavors, a generous texture and is just assertive enough to leave even jaded palates satisfied.
Rocks! - the blend is our secret, the pleasure is all yours.
Making Rosé Like You Mean It
In Tavel they make rosé like they mean it. In Bandol they make rosé like they mean it. In America, not so much. At Cornerstone Cellars we mean it too.
Single vineyard Napa Valley syrah, fermented bone-dry and aged in oak for almost six months is a statement. We're serious about rosé. Serious rosé is not cheap and it's worth every dime. Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé is such a wine. You can buy cheaper pink wines, but if you want flavor, not just color, it costs both of us just a bit more.
2012 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé
We confess to being rosé snobs. Corallina Syrah Rosé is a real rosé. That means it's not the leftovers of someone trying to beef up their red wine. In a warm climate like California making rosé by saigneé, or "bleeding" juice out of a red wine fermenter to concentrate that wine, means low-acid, flabby and sweet with those nasty fake watermelon flavors. We're not fans of watermelon candy.
Corallina Syrah Rosé starts in the vineyard as the first step is selecting a single block of syrah vines destined to become Corallina. Conceived as a rosé from the beginning, every farming choice throughout the year is made with only one goal in mind - rosé worth thinking about. Harvest is timed solely around the complexity of fruit flavors as we don't need to worry about ripening the skin tannins. The beautiful Napa Valley climate provides us with luscious fruit with more than enough color so no other skin contact is necessary than the three hours or so it takes the fruit to be gently pressed. After fermentation Corallina Syrah Rosé rests for five months in mature French oak barrels, where the flavors grow rounder, richer and more complex.
Corallina Syrah Rosé is lifted, bright and floral, laced with aromatics redolent of fresh wild herb and spices and touches of wild strawberries and white peaches. It is mouthwatering, refreshing and irresistible. Second glasses are unavoidable.
There is so much joy, pleasure and sunshine in Corallina Syrah Rosé that I had to seek out a label that reflected that energy. In "Wine Dance" by artist Janet Ekholm I found just such an image as the brilliant colors and intermingling of subject, landscape and sky into a harmonious whole is the perfect reflection of our vision for Corallina Syrah Rosé.
I am pleased to present you with our 2012 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé, which tells the story of one year of our lives. It is the full expression of what we seek to share in all of our wines, the essence of vineyard, variety and vintage combining each harvest to create something never to be exactly repeated.
Art and Wine
2012 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé with label "Wine Dance" by artist Janet Ekholm
Wine and art seem intertwined, often mentioned in the same breath. Many call winemaking an art, but to me the work is more artisan. Certainly there is art involved in making great wine, yet to anyone who has grown grapes and made wine you know your connection is to the earth. Winemaking is agriculture, you're more a farmer than anything else.
Yet the connection between artist and winemaker cannot be denied. Perhaps it is because our descriptions of what we taste in wine always fall short of truly conveying the complexity of this beverage. Vague references to aromas of wild strawberries or currents and flavors of green apples, black raspberries or vanilla bean do little to really communicate the amazing array of aromas and flavors that seem to explode out of a great bottle. While we fall short, an artist can convey the complexities of life in their work. Certain works of art just speak to you, as do many bottles of wine.
When I saw the paintings "Color of Life" and "Wine Dance" by Oregon artist Janet Ekholm, I realized they could tell the story and convey the personality of our wines far better than mere words ever could. These paintings conveyed my feelings about the wines far better than any tasting note could ever do. I felt such tie between the images and the wines that I decided to bring them together by creating our first artist labels. “Color of Life” for Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Oregon and, in the Napa Valley, “Wine Dance” for our Stepping Stone by Cornerstone whites and Corallina Syrah Rosé.
“Wine Dance” perfectly reflected the joy, pleasure and fun of Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé and was purposely selected with this wine in mind. The mouthwatering flavors are sure to want to make you dance too. Says Janet on “Wine Dance”, “Life, joy and energy radiate throughout. The scene pulsates with the rich colors of a fruitful harvest that has brought about a perfect blending of the soil and sun, and therefore a joyful dance to the wine that will be savored by all.”
2010 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir with "Color of Life" label by artist Janet Ekholm.
No wine reflects the ground from which it came more than pinot noir. “Color of Life” blurs the lines between the women and earth into one, just as pinot noir does with a vineyard. In her arms earth’s bounty reflects the incredible range of flavors one can discover in pinot noir. I chose this label for our Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir as the brilliant colors and bond between earth and wine truly tell the story of this bright, zesty and richly flavored Pinot Noir. “The goddess of the harvest offers her lush cornucopia of earth’s abundance, evoking the promise of prosperity. Fully immersed in the landscape, she is one with nature, representing the bounty and richness we are given each day that bring color and joy to our lives,” is how artist Janet Ekholm describes “Color of Life”. I think she also perfectly describes our Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
Wine and art are perfectly intwined in the beautiful paintings of Janet Ekholm and our Stepping Stone by Cornerstone wines.
Why Syrah?
Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Napa Valley Syrah
Your distributor looks the other way and changes the subject. Retailers look upon you with pity. Such is the conventional wisdom in the wine trade when it comes to syrah: it doesn't sell.
So why are we not only making one syrah, but two? The answer is simple, we love it.
Syrah is one of the world's noble red varieties. It suffers the curse of some other great varieties like riesling, nebbiolo and chenin blanc, none of them come from Bordeaux or Burgundy. These two regions have put their heavy footprint across the world's vineyards and the resulting ocean of wine from cabernet, merlot, pinot noir and chardonnay have engulfed the planet's wine markets and consumer's minds to the exclusion of so many other wonderful varieties.
Not only are we committed to syrah because we love it, we also believe we have found one of the world's best places to grow it, the southern Napa Valley's cooler Oak Knoll and Carneros districts. In my mind, most of the so called pinot noir regions of California are perfect for syrah.
Poor Syrah has also been battered by the market and some self-inflected wounds on top of that. The flood of cheap Aussie Shiraz (the same variety) damaged its reputation among consumers. Then the American wine industry itself scared people away with monster wines pushing or even exceeding 16% alcohol levels. To many Syrah was either plonk or Port.
Those of us who love the elegant Syrah of the northern Rhone Valley know that syrah deserves as much respect as any of the world's finest varieties. The fact of the matter is that the finest wines from this variety come from cooler sites. The image of syrah as a vine for hot climates is just plain wrong. I believe this misconception comes from writers comparing Burgundy to the Rhone. Indeed the Rhone Valley is warmer than Burgundy, but it's not as hot as California.
So we know that syrah can be a hard road to follow, but we could not help our selves. The variety is just too unique and compelling when grown on a cooler site. Our syrah, true to the style of all of our wines, is crisp and lifted with that classic syrah varietal character of butcher shop and dark fruits. On the palate it is substantial, but never heavy.
It is a simple fact that the best value in California wine is syrah. Why aren't you taking advantage of it?
The One Per Cent
It took forty-seven percent to make a difference for Mitt Romney. For us it's the one percent. No, we're not joining Boycott Wall Street. Percentages for us are all about blending and every percent matters.
Winemaker Jeff Keene and I show what a percent can mean at Premier Napa Valley Auction 2013
Jeff Keene and I were working on our final blends for our 2011 reds a few weeks ago and it never ceases to amaze the nuance and complexity that can be gained by the smallest changes. It is on the blending table that the soul of the wine comes together. It requires intense concentration and attention to the smallest detail to bring a wine to the perfect point.
There are many ways to blend: different varieties and different vineyards, same variety different vineyards and every permutation you can think of. Yet it's not how you blend, but why you blend that's the most important thing. Different varieties react very differently to blending. Take varieties like pinot noir and nebbiolo and blend them with other varieties you quickly lose their distinctive character. The only real blending choice is to make a single vineyard or multi-vineyard wine. Then there is cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc, varieties with assertive character that relish the flourishes added by blending their three spirits.
You don’t start off from scratch, you have a general idea where the wines will take you when you put the first rough blends together. Then you begin to work the permutations. A little more of that; a little less of that and the wine edges closer and closer to what you envision for the wines of this harvest. Finally you’re almost there, but there seems to be something missing. It’s tough to describe or put your finger on, but you know there is more to find, more for the wine to give. It is at this point you discover how important just one percent can be as suddenly the wine comes totally alive from just that small touch of the right variety or vineyard.
This time it was our 2011 Cornerstone Cellars Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon, but it happens with every wine. We were so close with a blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot, but Jeff and I just felt something was missing. This time the one percent truly made the difference and when we added a tiny dollop of cabernet franc the wine suddenly became brighter, more lifted and, frankly, perfect. It’s our willingness to reach for our vision of perfection that makes the wines of Cornerstone Cellars something truly special. There are many wonderful wines in the world, but sometimes by reaching for just one percent more moves you from wonderful to something memorable.
January Dawn
A cold January dawn breaks over Atlas Peak
January Dawn
A frosty dawn over Yountville's vineyards in the Napa Valley
Vintage of the Century
It's the vintage of the century!
The pickers take a break as dawn breaks
The hype machine is on for the West Coast. Unfortunately, the noisiest wine press is no longer the one that separates the juice from the skins. Hopefully someday we can get back to the fact that in agriculture there is no perfection, only personality.
Each vintage the weather and soil combine to create a once in a lifetime experience. As with people, the personality you prefer is, well, personal. This, of course, does not apply to the vast majority of wines, which are industrial beverages where the only thing that is important to the consumer and producer is that their wines have no individuality from year to year. Oddly enough, this same rule seems to apply to cult wines.
In the Napa Valley, the weather could not have been kinder to grape growers. Mother Nature’s largess to grape growers and winemakers is not always equal. There’s not an empty fermenter or barrel to be found in the Napa Valley right now due to the bumper crop of grapes bestowed on the Valley this year. More is not necessarily better when it come to winemaking. The growers are already celebrating and headed for some sunny beach. Winemakers still have plenty of work to be done in the cellars with most of the red wine harvest still in fermenters.
It was a vintage Goldilocks would have loved. Not too hot and not too cold, just right. It started with a gentle spring that allowed for textbook flowering and fruit set. Then they just started to come, one after another. Warm sunny day after warm sunny day. Rarely did we hit 100° F for the high and just as rare was the day it did it not hit at least 85° F. The nights were cool dropping down to the low fifties, even nicking the forties. Up and down the temperatures swung wide each day in that dance that makes the Napa Valley such an exceptional place to grow wine grapes.
September arrived and harvest began. First pinot gris and then we started picking sauvignon blanc, almost on the same date we’ve picked the last two years. Then they started to fall like dominos, coming in just the order you’d expect: first the merlot and then the syrah followed by cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon. The even weather allowed us to pick at a deliberate pace able to wait until the flavors arrived at just the right point. By the middle of October we’d picked almost all of our vineyards. The first real forecast of rain arrived at the same time. On Sunday, October 21st we picked our last fruit. At midnight it started to rain.
By our standards at Cornerstone Cellars we’re very, very happy and optimistic about the wine that is fermenting as I write this article. What makes us happy? Wines with freshness, life, energy and, most of all, personality. We were able to pick truly ripe fruit at moderate sugar levels, which means moderate alcohol levels with crisp acidity that will make the wines sing. I love it.
In most of Europe’s great wine regions a bad vintage means cold and rain, in the Napa Valley it means too hot and dry. For example, take the highly touted 1997 vintage in Napa. The wines are now falling apart, condemned to death by the same high pH and alcohol levels that got them their good reviews in the first place. There’s a sucker born every minute. This will not be a 100 point vintage in the Wine Spectator, thank God, which means we’ll be able to make some real wine.
So the journalists will want to know if this was a great vintage. Of course it was, just like it will be next year and was last year. It’s not a question that anyone who has grown anything would ask. It is the experience of growing the fruit and making it into wine each and every year that makes for greatness. Letting that individuality speak in the wine every year is what makes wine so fascinating. The greatness of wine is in how it speaks to you. Each of us can rate a wine or a vintage 100 points, but we can only do that for ourselves. No one can do it for us.
There is something to love in every vintage. Every vintage is the vintage of the century, even if just for a few minutes. Andy Warhol said everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Each vintage should at least get that.
It's a Grind
Picking merlot in the Oakville Station/To Kalon Vineyard
It's a grind. Another quarter ton bin of grapes is loaded onto the dumper on the sorting line. Another truck arrives and another twenty bins are added to the twenty or so already there. At our top speed it takes an hour to process two tons or eight bins. We rarely hit top speed. Best guess is another five hours to get through these bins. That's on top of the five hours already in. Then when we finish sorting there's another two hours of punch downs and cleaning.
Its like that every day. It's a grind. Its harvest. The term "romantic" does not enter your mind: at least until it's all over. The only times when the romance of it all fills your spirit are the first day, the last day and the rest of the year. The first day it’s all about the potential, the last day you are a bit awestruck by what you have accomplished. In between it's a blur as you grind through each day. It is very simply the next bin, the next fermenter and the next day.
In the picturesque harvest in the wine magazines it's all about bountiful lunches with happy workers eating hardy meals and quaffing wine from carafes. In a real world working winery its cold cuts, colds, cold wet clothes and hot, sweaty rubber boots. Most of all you are sticky. Head to toe splashed with super-sweet grape juice, which makes you a yellow jacket's dream lunch.
Then there is all that gleaming stainless steel equipment that looks so efficient and high tech. The reality is more like a Rube Goldberg invention as the whole process is a patchwork of things that don't play well with others. Something always seems to break at just the wrong moment, which makes winemakers the champions of jerry-rigging as equipment is forced to behave with beatings and duct tape. For a winemaker knowing how to convince everything to work in the winery is just as important as knowing when to pick. Let's just say that OSHA would not approve of many of these solutions.
The day comes to an end with the best beer (or two) you ever tasted in your life quickly followed by an all to short, but very sound sleep. Then you wake up and do it again, and again, and again until one day the last bin arrives.
Then, as the last bunch of grapes from the last bin drops into the last fermenter the romance hits you again. Instantly harvest is once again the best and most exciting thing that happens to you every year. It is the concentrated essence of everything you believe in and the fuel that fires your flame for the next vintage. It reminds you how lucky you are to be working as hard as you can to accomplish something you love.
We finished the last bin at about 5 p.m. last night. Winemaker Jeff Keene and I shook very sticky and very tired hands. Harvest 2012 was done.
What a grind. I can't wait until next year.
Pre-dawn picking our 2012 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Napa Valley Pinot Gris
Harvest Report: Napa Valley 2012
The vintage 2012 has the potential to be one of the finest vintages in many years, if not one of the best ever on the west coast. There is a true potential to create something special.
In the Napa Valley we have already harvested some amazing fruit at Cornerstone Cellars. Our new Stepping Stone Pinot Gris, picked on September 11th, has just started it's long cold fermentation and the juice could not be more exciting. Packed with fresh peach and melon flavors and explosive acidity the wine is sure to be exceptional. This new vineyard, located directly in front of Silver Oak, is an A+ quality site and will produce a very complex pinot gris. A few days later, September 13th, we picked our sauvignon blanc. To the excellent Talcott Vineyard in St. Helena, this year we have added a new sauvignon blanc vineyard, Ink Grade on Howell Mountain, the same site where we harvest our Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. We are co-fermenting these sites and fermentation is progressing slowly and perfectly. We ferment our whites at very low temperature to maintain all the aromatics so fermentation can take months, instead of weeks as in the red wine. The juice now is packed with mineral-ly, grapefruit flavors and aromas. It's delicious.
The red wine harvest started last Monday and Thursday, with merlot from Oakville Station/To Kalon and Ink Grade Howell Mountain. Merlot is the earliest ripener of the Bordeaux varieties. To say that this first fruit has lived up to our high expectations of this vintage is an understatement. The color is rich and dark and the juice is full of the velvety plum flavors that define great merlot. These tanks are now all yeasted after a cold soak of several days and fermentation is just starting to really roll.
With temperatures spiking into the 90s this weekend we could not have hoped for better weather to push the cabernet sauvignon to perfect ripeness. Over the next several weeks things will go into overdrive as we rush to bring in this perfect fruit before the rains and birds arrive.
- Upcoming scheduled picks:
- 10/1 - Oakville Station/To Kalon Cabernet Franc and Block 2 Merlot
- 10/3 - Ink Grade Cabernet Sauvignon, lower block 5
- 10/4 - Ink Grade Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and Stewart Ranch Carneros Merlot
- 10/5 - Losey Vineyard Riesling and Atlas Peak Syrah
In Oregon the quality of the vintage looks equally sensational. Harvest should start in about two weeks, which should let me finish here before I have to head up there. While in Napa we have the staff at Laird to support us, in Oregon its totally hands on wine production with harvest meaning about three days of concentrated harvesting for Cornerstone Oregon. As the pinot noir and chardonnay must get into the fermenter as quickly as possible that means days that begin long before dawn and you finish only when that day's fruit is all processed - often long after dark. We have no scheduled pick dates in Oregon yet, but the upcoming week will give us a good idea when crush time will arrive.
Our biggest challenge after this heat spike may be that all the fruit will ripen at once, which will test our logistical systems (read Jeff and my backs) to be be sure we don't let any of this great fruit get even one more day on the vine than it should have. We want perfect fruit in such a perfect year. You can't waste such a gift.
One, Just One, Green Grape
It was just one green grape. It was one green grape too many. It's always something.
It has been a picture perfect vintage. A lovely spring, with warm, dry weather for flowering and fruit-set. A “three bears” sort of summer: not too cold, not too hot, just right. So why was it there? As you passed through the vineyards you could not miss it standing out like a sore green thumb in the middle of a bunch of gloriously deep purple cabernet sauvignon, there would be one, just one, green berry.
No big deal, right? How could just one unripe grape on some bunches make any difference when all the others were perfectly ripe? One green grape is a very big deal if you want to make wines that are special.
Also there was another issue. Everything else this vintage has been perfect. The gorgeous weather has produced fruit capable of making wines from this vintage something very special indeed. When Mother Nature gives you such a gift you must take advantage of it. There is a sense of duty, responsibility, to take this gift and do everything in your power to make not only great wines, but memorable ones.
What could we do? For us there was no choice. Out into the vineyards went our crews with one mission: to remove one-by-one those individual green grapes. Armed with scissors they went down the rows with the precision of a Bonsai gardener. Was this expensive? Certainly, but this is the price you pay to go beyond good, or very good, on to greatness in a wine. For us there was no choice.
We’re getting pickier and pickier every year as finicky is a virtue when it comes to winemaking. Not satisfied with just dropping any less than perfect fruit in the vineyard, we are going beyond just sorting out any bunches that don’t meet out standards and this vintage will be sorting individual berries on a special sorting table specially designed for nit-pickers like us. Note this is not a job we farm out, Jeff and I do all the sorting ourselves.
I'll spare nothing, not only in this glorious vintage, but in each-and-every vintage to make wines that I love to drink and, most of all, that I am proud to share with you.
A perfect bunch of cabernet framed by the light of this morning's dawn
Napa Harvest 2012: Day One, Pinot Gris
The bins are almost full of pinot gris as dawn breaks on the first day of Cornerstone Cellars harvest 2012. The vineyard is in Oakville just north of Silver Oak.
Napa Harvest 2012
The harvest crew takes a break while waiting for the tractor to bring more bins. This is the first day of the Cornerstone Cellars 2012 Napa Valley harvest and they're picking Oakville Pinot Gris.
The Cornerstone Oregon pinot noir blocks in the Clay Court Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountain AVA
Why We Are In Oregon
The Napa Valley is one of the few perfect places on earth to grow cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc. Oregon’s Willamette Valley is one of the few perfect places on earth to grow pinot Noir and chardonnay. One thing I know for sure is that if you have a cabernet vineyard next to a pinot vineyard, one or both of them are in the wrong place.
So although we had been in the Napa Valley for two decades when we decided to make pinot noir we knew we had to look somewhere other than our home. After all, it is more important where the vine puts down roots than were we had put down our roots. Our vision is to go where the variety loves to be, not to force the variety to grow in a place just because we were there. After all, nothing is more important to a wine than the soil that gave life to the vines. That essence flows from the soil through the roots to be mixed with sunshine to create wine.
Cabernet and pinot need just the opposite things as, for that matter do sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. Cabernet sauvignon is a slow ripener you need to speed up and pinot noir is a fast ripener you need to slow down. The Napa Valley is just not a great place to grow pinot noir and the Willamette Valley is no place to try to ripen cabernet sauvignon.
Cornerstone Cellars is famous for our distinctive Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine of great longevity and breed and I wanted our pinot noir to be equally distinctive. That goal could only lead us to Oregon. In Oregon pinot noir and chardonnay have found a home as regal as their home in Burgundy, just as Bordeaux's cabernets, merlot and sauvignon blanc brought their blue blood to the Napa Valley.
Then there was Tony Rynders. How could I pass up the opportunity to work with one of the most dynamic winemakers anywhere? Tony’s talents led Domaine Serene to fame during his decade as winemaker there and before that he made his mark as red winemaker at Hogue Cellars in Washington. When Tony left Domaine Serene to strike out on his own I knew the time was right for Cornerstone to follow our dream to make pinot noir.
We make three wines at Cornerstone Oregon. Our Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay is a lean, mean fighting machine type of chardonnay. No sweet oaky fruit bombs for me. If you love classic Chablis, you’ll love our Oregon Chardonnay. The Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a classic, age-able pinot noir with great structure, depth and breed. Our newest Cornerstone Oregon wine is the Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. Every vintage, as you taste through the barrels, certain ones just seem so pretty and drinkable right now so we figured why resist them? Our Stepping Stone Pinot Noir is a barrel selection of those charming wines, while our Cornerstone Oregon Pinot Noir is a barrel selection of wines destined for greatness. One is pure charm and the other a true aristocrat.
Now as we approach our fifth vintage in Oregon our roots have grown deep in both the soils of the Napa and Willamette Valleys where with each vintage they get deeper every year. Soon they will be as deep as our roots on Howell Mountain. Great wine comes from deep roots.
Hard Chard
Firsts are always hard and hard this one certainly was, which always makes the experience even more delicious. In this case it also makes the wine more delicious. This September we’ll be able to share this experience with you.
It was with a surprising sense of satisfaction that I picked up the first bottle off the bottling line. It was, of all things a chardonnay. I confess I have little affection for most renditions of this variety in the New World. However, winemaker Tony Rynders changed my mind and I am sure this chardonnay will change yours.
The hard part I was referring to in this wine was a backbone. A concentrated minerality and racy acidity that will hurt the teeth of those that love oaky, sweet chardonnay. That is the way I decided to make it. I would never dream of making a spineless chardonnay. Cornerstone has never been about spineless wines and I have no place for them at my table.
So this September I will be extremely proud to introduce you to the 2010 Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay. Less than two hundred cases were produced. It’s a lean, mean machine and I wish I could wait another year to release it as it certainly needs a few years in the bottle to show all has to give. I can only hope that some of you will lay some bottles away in your cellar.
How did it get here? Well, first of all there was a challenging vintage to deal with, but that’s something winegrowers in places like Oregon and Burgundy deal with seven vintages out of ten. There was a lot of mold when the fruit came in, but we hand-sorted like madmen and delivered only the clean bunches to the fermenter. Starting the fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine was racked into mature French Oak barrels to continue and finish fermentation. Those barrels were home to our chardonnay for the next fourteen months where it mellowed and broadened its flavors and, most of all, its complexity. Only 80% of the wine went through malolatic to preserve its perfect tightrope of acidity. In fact, nothing in the cellar was allowed to pilfer anything from the wine.
In a strange twist of conventional wisdom, our Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay is a better oyster wine than our Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, which finds its soul mates in crab and lobster. What these two white wines have in common is they will both age beautifully. This is our goal. To let each wine express its true spirit and find the match at your table that nature intended. That nature is something you’ll find subtly expressed in all our vintages after 2008. This is just a start as we will push ourselves each vintage to ever higher expressions of vineyard, variety and vintage. I believe that the Napa Valley is a perfect place to grow sauvignon blanc and that the Willamette Valley is a perfect place to grow chardonnay. Our vision is to go where the variety loves to be, not to force the variety to love where we put down roots. After all, nothing is more important to a wine than the soil that gave life to the vines. That essence flows from the soil through the roots to be mixed with sunshine to create wine.
To understand my hesitance to make a chardonnay you have to understand my background. In the early eighties I was importing the wines of Domaine Comtes Lafon through Becky Wasserman, who I represented in the mid-west. At that time Dominque Lafon had yet to take over the estate from his father and was working for Becky. Over a two year period, on his many visits to Chicago and mine to Burgundy, I was privileged to drink a lot of great chardonnay (and a lot of other things) with Dominque. It is on this foundation my viewpoint on chardonnay is based. As a side note, just to highlight how different the wine world is today, in those days we had winemaker dinners promoting the wines of Comtes Lafon, which actually included their Le Montrachet. Times have changed, now you’re lucky and a lot poorer if you can get an allocation of Lafon. The point is, if your early reference point is Lafon Le Montrachet your future enjoyment of chardonnay may be impaired.
Certainly I am not trying to compare our Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay to Lafon Le Montrachet, but I will say that if you love Premier Cru Chablis you will pleased by our 2010 Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay. The reason I can say that with confidence is that I am pleased, which is something not easy to do.
I’m pleased to introduce you to something new from Cornerstone: Cornerstone Oregon, Willamette Valley Chardonnay. See you in September.
Light on Your Feet
Alder arrived at our table to taste our barrel sample of 2010 Cornerstone Cellars, The Premiere Cornerstone about halfway through his grind. Taking a sip, he smiled, looked up and said, “light on its feet.” My heart almost lept out of my chest. He got it. He understood the wine.
Now understanding a wine may not seem like a big deal to you, but if you have ever stood in a room pouring wine to tasters whose palates have been hammered into submission by tasting dozens of wines before yours, you know what I mean. All to often tasters arrive at your table with the looks of a punch-drunk fighter their teeth and lips wine-bloodied by roundhouse punches from a room full of bloated heavyweights. In big tastings the Mike Tyson’s of the world get more attention than the Sugar Ray’s. The heavyweights are always the champs in these tasting marathons and wines with quick moves, balance and finesse are lost to palates pounded into submission by knockout punches of tannin and alcohol.
The wines of Cornerstone Cellars are crafted to be light on their feet. This does not mean light as in thin, but light as is deft and nimble; powerful wines that are under control and in balance. Wines that you can taste every nuance of from the first sniff to the long, lingering aftertaste. Make no mistake, our goal is still to knock you out, we just don’t want to knock you into oblivion. A knock out punch from Tyson or Sugar Ray will still put you on the deck.
Not far behind the “light on its feet” comment from Alder Yarrow came some equally encouraging and rewarding notes from other wine writers. Joe Roberts at 1WineDude said of our the 2010 Premiere Cornerstone, “a mid-palate to die for.” Meanwhile Fred Swan at NorCalWine noted the, “very long finish.”
To recap, three palates I respect (read no axe to grind) noted that the wine was, “light on its feet”, “a mid-palate to die for” and a “very long finish. In other words a complete wine from start to finish. “Completeness” is a concept to often ignored in a system that honors the first sip more than the last.
I think this is perhaps the essence of winemaking, that expression of your personal vision of completeness. For some, if not most, it is an expression of economic completeness, that is making a wine that sells and gets good reviews. For others, certainly the minority, to be complete means to make a personal expression even if it’s a harder sell, or, in the case of Premiere Napa Valley, not getting the mega-bids. On the other hand, wines made from commercial inspirations are always at the mercy of the critics, while those whose foundation is built on passion will find a loyal base of consumers that share their vision of what makes a wine meaningful.
Our Premiere Cornerstone lot at Premiere Napa Valley is the prototype for that vintage’s The Cornerstone, which is the expression of what our vision tells us is the pinnacle of Napa Valley winemaking. A sip of the Premiere Cornerstone is indeed a preview of what to expect in The Cornerstone itself. Our inaugural vintage of The Cornerstone, the 2009, will be released this September.
We could not be more proud of the how we have evolved the wines at Cornerstone Cellars into wines that offer a complete experience. There could be no better representation of this than our 2010 Premiere Cornerstone. It’s wine with a beginning, a middle and a long lingering ending: a complete wine. It will knock you out.
Cornerstone Oregon in Enobytes!
2009 Cornerstone Willamette Valley Pinot Noir
Posted on 06 February 2012.
Craig Camp may no longer reside in the Willamette Valley but his presence undoubtedly still exists in the wines he is making with Tony Rynders, formerly of Domaine Serene for the California winery Cornerstone. This 2009 Pinot Noir is another great example of how the vintage has been way underrated. With just a little over two short years from harvest, this wine has settled into a smooth well-produced package that exemplifies the vintage. 2009 may have not received the accolades the 2008’s did but in time these wines just may surpass the opulence the much ballyhooed previous vintage has already obtained. This Willamette Valley wine expresses aromas of raspberry and blueberry with a hint of fresh ground cinnamon stick. On the palate, flavors of dark berry and hazelnut are offered up with a vibrant acidity that is balanced by well-integrated tannins. The finish is plush, pleasant and long enough to make this a memorable wine to savor alongside a braised lamb shank elegantly prepared for an intimate Valentines dinner. If your retailer or favorite restaurant does not offer this wine, get it online. I would get it soon because this one will not be around for long.
Rating: Excellent (91) | $50 | 13.9% ABV
Pictured above the 2011 Cornerstone Oregon Harvest
5000 Wines a Year
I saw a comment recently from a wine writer noting that they tasted over five thousand wines a year. I could only think how sad. Was this some sort of punishment? Did someone commit a crime? What a pity to turn such a pleasure into such a grind.
Another comment on a forum noted that the writer first scored the wine 88 points , but that it had mellowed into a 89 point wine after about thirty minutes. It improved by a point? I could only think how sad it is to force flavors and aromatics into one point increments. Again pleasure becomes a grind.
While I was attending a wine faults seminar by the University of California at Davis the professor passed off the answer to a question as obvious when someone asked the equally obvious question. “Professor I’ve noticed that the sample with the VA was very strong at first, but now that I’ve gone back to it several times and it gets harder and harder to pick up,” said one of the winemakers in the seminar. The professor almost off-handedly commented that was just how your nose worked. It could take twenty minutes or so before it reset itself.
So, as the Ph.D. from Davis noted, if you get a nose-full from a a wine loaded with VA or Brett or a long line of wine faults you will be severely disabled aroma-wise for a signifiant period of time. Then there is simple palate fatigue on top of that.
What does this mean? It means that the people that taste five thousand wines a year or those that nudge a wine by a point after a half hour are just kidding themselves. It can’t be done, we’re humans not machines. Your senses lose the ability to accurately judge wines even after just a dozen or so. The idea of defining the difference between 88 and 89 points as a relative quality value is simply a joke. Mother Nature did not give us the tools required.
This, of course, extends to all the major wine publications and wine competitions. What they claim to be doing can’t be done. Fact and end of story.
In addition to the fact that they’re totally inaccurate as an indicator of quality, marathon tastings and pointy nit-picking just take the joy and pleasure out of wine. They are also a slap in the face to the intellectual side of wine appreciation.
One thing I appreciate about wine bloggers over the traditional wine press is that instead of pounding through dozens of bottles and pumping out points, most take a more thoughtful approach. Wine blogs are full of tales of wines at the table, which is the only place you can really get to know a wine. Wine writing about the experience of the true pleasures of wine tells you more than any point ranking or gold medal ever can or will. There are so many good wine blogs out there these days that they cover more than enough wine to fill anyone’s needs. What you won’t find in the blogs are reviews of Screaming Eagle or Lafite, but let’s face it, if you’re buying those wines you don’t really care about reviews anyway.
My mind keeps drifting back to the person tasting more than five thousand wines a year. It sounds so terrible to me. I’m more than happy tasting a few hundred or so a year. It also means I get to enjoy wines that I really love more than once. I think it often takes a few bottles, consumed over a period of time with different foods, before you really know a wine.
I doubt there are actually five thousand wines in the world that I want to try. Someone else will have to take that punishment for me. No thanks.