Fall Napa Valley

It finally feels like fall in the Napa Valley. Some actual rainstorms and cool dew on the leaves in the morning. All the grapevines changing colors are beautiful with each variety having its own distinct hue.

Let's Play Two

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The Dodgers and the Mets were in game five of the division championships and it occurred to me that the winner would be facing the Cubs in the NLCS. As a long time White Sox fan I'd spent the better part of the last three decades hating the Cubs. Normally I'd just assume I'd be pulling for whoever they ended up playing.

However, now I've been on the west coast for so long I've truly become a San Francisco Giants fan. To be a Giants fan means having a deep contempt for the Dodgers. So the idea of a potential Cubs and Dodgers NLCS made me face my true baseball fan soul.

What I discovered is that Tony Bennett has won out over Frank Sinatra and my roots are now truly more on the west coast than the midwest, where I grew up. The true measure of this was revealed to me when I realized in a showdown between the Dodgers and the Cubs I'd have to pull for the Cubs. Mind you I might not have been pulling very hard for them, but anything is better than the Dodgers getting to the World Series.

I guess we’re defined equally by not only the team we root for, but by the team we decide to see as evil incarnate.

There are several things that have made the Giants number one in my heart over the White Sox. Without a doubt winning three World Series in six years didn't hurt, but the fact that the White Sox, as they play in the American League, have a DH and the Giants don't has really changed the way I like to watch baseball played. The game is just better without the DH.

The Cubs, Dodgers and Yankees are rich teams in big markets. The (L.A.) Dodgers and Yankees have thrown their money at the game always feeling that anything less than a World Series Championship is failure. The Cubs, on the other hand, have been satisfied to just take the money from their fans and delivered mediocrity knowing they would still pack their quaint ballpark just by coming close to the playoffs every few years. Success at Wrigley Field has been measured by accountants not championships. It’s hard to like a team that has treated its long suffering fans so callously. Just think if they win the World Series this year they can ride that gravy train for another century. If is often joked about the Cubs that any team can have a bad century. But in fact the Cubs have had a tremendous century, they just haven’t won any championships. The lovable losers have been taking it to the bank for a long time now.

It was this attitude that eventually drove my loyalties from Wrigley Field to Comiskey Park and there they’ll stay in Chicago. I was drawn to the White Sox as, like me, they had to win to succeed. I felt closer to a team that had to produce results than one who was living on a type of inheritance and was milking it for all it was worth. It took a lot to drive me away from the team of my youth and the first place I ever saw a major league baseball game, but the Cubs did it.

My mother loves the Cubs and so if they do win I will be very happy for her and the other Cub fans so desperately praying for their beloved Cubbies to finally break the fabled curse. The same goes for the players who will be the real champions if they can pull it off. However, the ownership of this fabled franchise should not be let off the hook. They could have pulled this off much sooner with the resources at their command. The reason the Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908 is not due to the players or fans, but due to the callous economic interests of the various owners over the years.

I was lucky to visit Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. It was an amazing experience for someone who loves baseball and nothing moved me more than the plaque honoring Ernie Banks. Behind me in my office sits a framed scorecard my dad kept when he took me to a game in Wrigley Field on August 24th, 1962, the day after my ninth birthday. Warren Spahn pitched for the Milwaukee Braves and Hank Aaron hit a home run. A young player named Lou Brock was playing center field for the Cubs. Billy Williams was in right and Santo was on third. The Cubs lost. On the front of that scorecard are the autographs of Don Landrum, Ken Hubbs and the incomparable Ernie Banks all scored for me by my dad.

So for my mom, dad, Ernie and that beautiful game in 1962 I will root for the Cubs to make it this time in spite of the suits who have run the franchise so cynically for the last century. Terrible owners have given Chicago the Black Sox and a hundred years of frustration for generations of faithful Cub fans. It’s time to think about the game, not them.

“Let’s play two,” said Ernie, the most beautiful quote in baseball. For the next two weeks, I’ll be a Cubs fan.

The Wine Dance

You hear software and hardware developers often use the phrase, “eating your own dog food.” It simply means if you make something that others use you better damn well be using it yourself. It’s the only way you can truly understand what you make.

As I review the Cornerstone Cellars portfolio now I can see I’ve been following this same dictum.

What American wines do I like to drink? When looking for value and direct pleasure I seem to find Rhône-style wines on my table. What wines do I think go best with my own personal daily style of cooking, which has become increasing lighter with decidedly less red meat? These meals are perfectly matched by Oregon pinot noir and chardonnay. When a special occasion presents itself often a grand aged cabernet sauvignon is retrieved from my cellar.

These preferences clearly come from the entire history of my wine drinking experience. When I seriously begin to immerse myself in wine in the late 1970s the wine world was French and that was the style of wine I learned to love and still do. Balance, elegance, freshness are still the characteristics I value most in wine. Being on a limited wine budget I delved with delight into the wines of the Côtes du Rhône and with great pleasure sought to understand the nuances of Sablet, Rasteau, Lirac and other village wines. Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Hermitage and Côte Rôtie were still inexpensive in those days and I enjoyed them when I could find them. Then there was Bordeaux, which seemed the pinnacle of refinement and breed. You could gather a few wine lovers together and buy and taste all the First Growths from a vintage just chipping in fifty dollars or so each. Tasting the majesty of wines like Lafite, Latour and Mouton forever gave cabernet sauvignon a special place in my heart. The buttons these wines pushed when I was in my twenties they still push today.

Then there was my total immersion in Burgundy that started in the early eighties when I began importing the wines of Rebecca Wasserman. My time with Becky, both on her visits here and visiting her in Burgundy, built such a deep respect for the growers and terroir of Burgundy that these are among the most emotional of wines for me. Profound pinot noir touches both your soul and your intellect at the same time. It is irresistible.

The one gap here is the great love I have for the wines of Italy, which are as likely to be in my glass as any of the wines mentioned above. However, while I find great examples of wines from Rhône varieties, pinot noir, chardonnay and the classic Bordeaux varieties in the New World, with a few rare exceptions I find the noble varieties of Italy have not produced wines outside of Italy that I find personally compelling. When my palate craves nebbiolo, sangiovese, barbera, dolcetto and the many other Italian varieties I adore, I always reach for a wine from Italy. Obviously, no Cornerstone Cellars Cal-Ital wines are on the horizon.

What does this mean at Cornerstone Cellars? It means we are expanding our “Wine Dance” Rhone Ranger series of wines beyond our Corallina Syrah Rosé to include a whole range of Rhône varieties. It means we have just completed our eighth vintage at Cornerstone Oregon making pinot noir and chardonnay. It means that our Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley White Label wines have evolved into an elite group of single vineyard wines including the greatest of the Bordeaux varieties - cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot.

If you are going to eat your own dog food, you better make some damn good dog food. That’s my goal at Cornerstone Cellars. I simply want to make wines that I love. If I love them I know I can find others that will love them too.

The next step in this voyage will be the introduction of our new “Wine Dance” Rhone Rangers series wines in 2016. Now in the cellar happily completing their fermentations are viognier, marsanne, rousanne, mourvèdre and grenache from El Dorado and syrah from Mendocino. Our new “Wine Dance” whites will be released this spring along with Corallina Syrah Rosé and the first reds will arrive this fall. Along with the single variety wines there will be a red Rhône blend - remember I do love Côtes du Rhône. As with all of the Cornerstone Cellars wines these are limited production, single vineyard wines with only a few hundred cases of each produced.

I’ve always felt a wine is defined at the table. In this case I guess the wines of Cornerstone Cellars are defined by my experiences with wines at my table over three decades. That is the true “Wine Dance” the magical interplay of wine and food.

It is wonderful to be able to share those experiences with you.

Harvest Fun

It always happens. I tell someone we're harvesting or I have a pick in the morning and they say, "have fun!"

Harvest is many things: inspiring, rewarding, fulfilling, exciting, meaningful, exhausting, but it one thing it isn't is fun. At least not if it’s your life and your living. It may be fun to work a harvest or chip in for a few days, but if you have to take that fruit, make wine, bottle it and sell it fun is not part of the equation. Harvest is the worst thing and the best thing that happens to you every year if you want to make wine that means something. Making great wine is not fun, it's an obsession. Most of all it is intensely rewarding, not financially, but somehow, spiritually.

The mental and physical exhaustion that is harvest is what wells up inside of you when someone asks you about how many points your wine received from some critic, but then you remind yourself it's a lot easier to make opinions than it is to make wine.

It's hard to describe the intensity that we focus on our wines. The hours and hours of walking the vineyards and agonizing over every little choice that is made in the sometimes years long path a wine takes from the flowering in spring until it has the Cornerstone Cellars label applied to its bottle.

The experience of each harvest may not be fun, but the memory of it most certainly is as each moment comes back to life with every cork you pull of that vintage for years to come.

Worth it? You bet.

Harvest Napa Valley - Half-Empty or Half-Full? 9/17/15

I couldn’t believe my eyes as the last bin was lifted off the scale and they handed me the weight tag. I blinked in disbelief as I read 2.25 tons. That was less than half of what we picked from this vineyard last year.

Making things even more painful was that this was not just any vineyard, it was our Oakville Station Cabernet Franc block. We just had just bottled the 2013 Cornerstone Cellars Oakville Cabernet Franc, Oakville Station Vineyard and there were only 101 cases from that banner vintage. A small amount of this exceptional cabernet franc is used in the blends for Michael’s Cuvée and The Cornerstone, but we save enough to bottle as a single vineyard as this is one of the most distinctive cabernet vineyards in the world and to not let it sing its own song would be a sin. The 2015 Cornerstone Cellars Oakville Cabernet Franc, Oakville Station Vineyard could end up being less than fifty cases.

This one of those situations when you find out if you are a optimist or pessimist - a half-empty or half-full glass sort of person. The half-empty of this situation is the small amount of fruit harvested, the half-full is what little we got is of exceptional quality. We’ll take the half-full side of this situation as quality is always more important (and more delicious) than quantity.

A little very welcome rain fell on the Napa Valley yesterday hopefully giving the firefighters a little help in their struggle against the Valley Fire. For us that meant no fruit today, but tomorrow we’ll be harvesting Grigsby Syrah in the Yountville AVA.

It will be full speed ahead now until the end of harvest. Yields will obviously continue to be light, but we’ll keep our glass half-full outlook.

Harvest Willamette Valley 2015 This Feels More Like Oregon 9/15/15

Yesterday at daybreak it was cloudy, cool and showers were threatening. Today more of the same. Finally it feels like harvest in Oregon. It was ninety degrees just a couple of days ago and the crew was working in shorts and t-shirts instead of the usual fleece and flannel garb usually associated with Oregon harvests.

The weather we started harvest in was a reflection of the entire growing season in the Willamette Valley. It was hot. The hottest ever. The Oregon wines from this harvest will reflect that, just as they should. After all, isn’t the point of growing pinot is letting the idiosyncrasies of each harvest and vineyard speak for themselves?

What are the results of this warm Oregon vintage? It means that the grapes are being harvested at brix levels that are considered high in Oregon, but low in the Russian River Valley. In other words they will be big pinots by Oregon standards, but not those of California. What I think they will be are rich, charming wines that will be ready to drink, and should be drunk, young. This is the way nature should work with some vintages better for drinking young and others needing time to reveal their true character. Their rich textures and softer acids will mean a lot of wines getting big points from certain critics. Just remember, sometimes the closer the score is to 100 points the more the likelihood that you should drink the wine young.

Yesterday we were very lucky as our fruit, from the Saffron Fields Vineyard in Yamhill Carlton, arrived at the winery early in the morning allowing us to get a quick start on processing fourteen tons of pinot noir. This is really the maximum amount of fruit the team can physically handle. I assure you your arms and legs are tired after hand-sorting that much fruit. Doing it day after day gradually wears you down and getting out of bed in the morning becomes a creaky, sore process. The day finished with a quick tour of the vineyards remaining to be picked to get samples and determine when they’ll be harvested. There will be a break of a few days now as rain comes through the area. The remaining vineyards just need a little more time to fully develop their flavors.

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Winemaker Tony Rynders crushing pinot noir samples to analyze the juice

Today I’m heading back to the Napa Valley as we’re picking Oakville Station Cabernet Franc at the crack of dawn tomorrow. After that harvest we’ll be sampling our cabernet sauvignon vineyards (that’s all that remains in Napa) to set the dates for their picks.

It seems clear at this point that everything will be picked by the end of September. Crazy, simply crazy.

Harvest Willamette Valley 9/13/15

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Our Oregon crew sorting pinot noir

It’s 6:30 in the morning and it’s time pick the grapes. However there is no picking crew waiting except us. This vineyard was going to be harvested by the four of us. This is the Maverick Vineyard, in the Oregon Willamette Valley sub-AVA of Yamhill Carlton. It’s just a baby and an infant like Maverick does not produce enough fruit to interest a crew of pickers paid by the bucket. The fruit needed to be picked so the four of us picked it.

Then to the winery where over the next twelve hours seven of us hand sorted and processed 15 tons of pinot noir, from our other vineyards, which are now happily cold soaking as we finish cleaning up the mess that only handling ton after ton of grapes can make.

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Winemaker Tony Rynders harvesting Maverick Vineyard

An interesting thing happens after you hand sort that much fruit. The tartaric acid crystallizes on your fingernails making them look like they’ve been painted white. I don’t think it’s good look for me.

You’ll excuse me after fifteen hours of hard work for not being more eloquent, but I’ll give you a more detailed look at our Cornerstone Oregon harvest tomorrow. Good night as another fifteen tons will be waiting in the morning.

Harvest Napa Valley 9/11/15 I'm Down

"I'm down, I'm really down, How can you laugh..."

It's true across the board in the Napa Valley. We're going to make a lot less wine than we have the last several vintages as the crop yield in Napa is down, really down. From what we've seen so far we will be down thirty to forty percent this year and more in some vineyards. That means a drop from 5,000 cases to around 3,500. Ouch! For example last year's 500 cases of Corallina Syrah Rosé will be around 250 cases in 2015.

On Friday we picked three vineyards:

• Oakville Station Merlot, Oakville AVA
• Hazen Merlot, Yountville AVA
• Pokai Cabernet Franc, Calistoga AVA

While there may not much fruit, we got less than five tons from each, what there was tasted wonderful with deep, sweet flavors and bright acidity. Very, very, promising.

Just a word on this week's heat spell, while we could have done without it, September heat spikes are quite normal in the Napa Valley. It did put stress on the vines, but at this point they are focusing the little energy they have left to ripen their seeds, not making more sugar. With this upcoming cooler weather and some judicious irrigation the remaining fruit (which is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon) will be refreshed and brix levels should drop slightly. As we are always intensely concerned about our levels of acidity you can bet we will be picking as soon as possible as extended hang times are not our style.

As I write this I'm on a flight up to Oregon to pick our chardonnay and pinot noir. Our next pick in Napa is scheduled for next Wednesday when Oakville Station Cabernet Franc will come in. After that pick is done we'll be out sampling our Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards and setting the dates when they'll be harvested. It really seems that we'll be done in both states by the end of September.

Harvest 2015 Rhone Rangers 9/9 9/10 2015

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Kari checking on Corallina fresh from the press

Today and yesterday we’ve been Rhone Rangers as on Wednesday we brought in our first marsanne and rousanne from the David Girard Vineyard in El Dorado. As exciting as that was, today is always a special day for us as we harvested our Crane Vineyard Syrah for what has became a very special wine for us - Corallina Syrah Rosé.

In what as become a rather innocuous wine category as rosé became more popular, I’m very proud that Cornerstone Cellars is known for making a rosé with true character. I’m glad the media agrees with us making Corallina Syrah Rosé the top ranked rosé in California http://cl.ly/d3uE

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Gorgeous Corallina juice

The only problem with the 2015 Corallina Syrah Rosé will be there won’t be very much of it. Due to poor fruit set we are looking at about a 40% drop in production. No worries, we’ll be sure our friends get their Corallina first! As always we seek to make Corallina better every year and this will be the first vintage that is 100% barrel fermented. This will make the wine even deeper and more complex. The juice this year is particularly deeply flavored and colored and I expect the 2015 to be a dramatic rosé.

The marsanne and rousanne are part of our new expanded “Wine Dance” series of wines made from classic Rhone Valley varieties. Joining Corallina Syrah Rosé will be this rousanne/marsanne blend, a viognier, a grenache and a mourvedre from El Dorado and an old vine syrah from Mendocino. These are our “Rhone Rangers” and you’ll be introduced to these new releases in 2016. The style is ultra-traditional with no new oak used to maximize the bright, fresh fruit flavors of these wines.

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Munching on marsanne

We co-fermented the rousanne and marsanne and the juice had this glorious, rich honeyed character that is sure make an expressive and delicious wine.

Tomorrow will be a very long day. We’re hitting the vineyards at 5:30 a.m. and will be picking two merlot and one cabernet franc site here in the Napa Valley. I’m sure the sun will be down before we get everything in the fermenters.

Harvest Napa Valley - 9/8/15

It was almost cold at 6:30 a.m. when dawn started to break and I considered heading back to my truck to get a jacket. But by 9 a.m. it was already hot. Winemaker Kari Auringer and I were out to sample the fruit in all of our Napa Valley vineyards and to start to pick harvest dates. By 2 p.m as we finished it was pushing 100 degrees.

Some wine regions worry about rain and hail. In the Napa Valley this year we are worried about the heat. It has always been my belief that the problem vintages in the Napa Valley are the hot ones, not the cool ones. This has been a odd year, as they all seem to be these days. We started with a very early bud break due to the warm, nonexistent, winter, which was followed by a cool, damp spell at flowering. This meant an uneven fruit set and a lot of unripe bunches needed to be dropped before veraison completed. This, of course, means a smaller crop for us this vintage. Fortunately, what’s left looks great. Summer itself was mild by Napa Valley standards, but as we approach harvest a serious heat wave is upon us.

The results of our vineyard tour is setting things in motion for what is sure to be a hectic vintage that could even be over before the end of September. Crazy. This Friday we will be bringing in merlot from two vineyards and cabernet franc from another. The Oakville Station Cabernet Franc should follow the middle of next week and cabernet sauvignon looks to be about two weeks out, but who knows with this heat.

This late season heat spike is forecasted to be over by Saturday so our remaining sites will be able to finish ripening in a more civilized environment. Just what we like, letting them coast over the finish line.

Saturday I’m headed up to Oregon to start our chardonnay and pinot noir harvest. Strange as it seems, up to now, Oregon has had more days over 90 degrees than the Napa Valley. Things seem a bit upside down when it comes to the climate these days. I’ll update you on Oregon this weekend.

A New Cabernet for Cornerstone Cellars: Michael's Cuvée

Essentially all wines are cuvée blends to one degree or the other. Unless a wine comes from a single barrel or tank that passed from fermenter to bottle with no additions all wines are are blends. They’re either blends of barrels or vineyards or varieties or all of the above. The important thing is why you make a cuvée. Like so many wine terms, reserve for example, there is no legal restrictions in their use so it is only the integrity of the producer that gives these terms their meaning.

We have the privilege of working with some of the finest vineyards in the Napa Valley, which means some of the finest vineyards anywhere in the world. They are so exceptional that we have decided to bottle them in small single vineyard lots in order to let their beautiful personalities clearly sing in their own voice. The first of these single vineyard wines will be released this fall.

However, sometimes even the finest singers love to sing with others finding a new harmony and complexity in blending the textures of their voices. It’s the same for winemakers, we can’t help but explore the new layers and personalities that can be created by blending.

It is in this spirit that our Cornerstone Cellars Michael’s Cuvée was born. A selection from our finest vineyards and varieties, Michael’s Cuvée is a unique expression of the best of each vintage brought together in a new and distinctive harmony. Such an important wine could not have just any name and so we chose a name deeply and emotionally tied to the entire history of Cornerstone Cellars. Michael’s Cuvée is named for founder Dr. Michael Dragutsky, whose spirit and passion have fueled Cornerstone Cellars since our founding in 1991.

As befitting the first release of such an important wine, the 2012 Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Michael’s Cuvée is a true statement wine. Combining some exceptional vineyards with an extraordinary vintage we have crafted a memorable wine that will evolve for many years to come. The 2012 Michael’s Cuvée is 91% cabernet sauvignon with 9% merlot. The blend was selected from the Oakville Station Vineyard (To Kalon) 57%, 28% Kairos Vineyard in Oak Knoll and 9% Ink Grade Vineyard on Howell Mountain. Less than 250 cases were produced.

The 2012 Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Michael's Cuvée is a classic, powerful, but elegantly structured Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Deeply colored with rich, cassis laden aromatics, it is youthful and concentrated at this point and will develop even more complexity and elegance as it ages over the next decade or more. While voluptuous and richly textured it is still bright and fresh with a long, smooth finish.

A Muscular Rosé

Where is the line between red and rosé? As it all things wine, it’s all up to your palate. I’ve always loved wines that almost cross the line from rosé to red. So many rosé wines these days seem to do their best to avoid any personality at all and their only mission in life is to be pretty in pink.

One of my favorite recent wine discoveries is the Rouge Frais Impérial of Domaine Comte Abbatucci in Corsica, a light red that exudes the freshness of of rosé and enjoys the chill just just as much. Then there is the richly flavored Domaine de la Mordorée Tavel with a depth and complexity many a red only attain in their dreams. These are wines that are deeper in character than they are in hue.

For our first Rocks! Rosé we’ve made a wine inspired by wines like these, not the wimpy, barely pink wines that are flooding the market these days. The 2014 Rosé Rocks! by Cornerstone is a muscular rosé. Richly colored, flavored and dry-as-a-bone our Rosé Rocks! has the guts to take on real food. This vintage’s blend includes sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and syrah.

A muscular rosé like the 2014 Rosé Rocks! by Cornerstone is the ultimate match for grilled steaks, chops ands sausages on hot summer days and you’re unlikely to find a better companion for cheese and sausage pizza. If the meal seems to call for a red wine, but the weather report calls for something chilled our 2014 Rosé Rocks! by Cornerstone is the perfect choice!

Rocks! by Cornerstone: Blending Creativity The Blend is our Secret, The Pleasure is All Yours

Blends are stylish now, but when I learned to love them in the early 1980s they were anything but fashionable. In one region they were controversial newcomers in the other just the way things had always been. The first time I tasted Vintage Tunina with Silvio Jermann it blew me away. Tunina was exciting, new and Silvio was breaking the rules and created something totally new in Italy. However, he was also building on Fruili’s past. Then there were the southern French wines that I was introduced to by Christopher Cannan. Often the exact percentages of these blends were not exactly known even to the producers, who were making the wine that the vineyards gave them. A mix of varieties was a practical thing that helped protect the grower from the vagaries of vintages. Some years there was a little more of that and a little less of this, but the wines tasted good and the local consumers where not obsessed with percentages and pH and just wanted a good glass of wine.

So when I decided I wanted to make a “house wine” that met the standards of our Cornerstone Cellars club members blends were the natural direction for me to go. It sounded like fun to create some wines that were not tied down to varietal labeling restrictions and just let our creativity go wild. So Rocks! was born and we could not be happier or more surprised by the success of what started out as such a small project. If anything the wines are better than ever. As Rocks! grew many more wines became available to us and the blends became more complex, delicious and fun. All are ready to drink tonight and at just $15 these wines are all exceptional values. We wanted to create wines that were good enough to satisfy our demanding Cornerstone Cellars customers for those days and meals when something simpler, yet still delicious was the right choice. We are confident they do indeed rock!

2013 Red Rocks! by Cornerstone - Not your simple, fruity California red, Red Rocks! has backbone, depth and just enough of a earthy touch to give it complexity. This wine will make your friends believe you brought out the expensive stuff for them. Steaks, chops, burgers and sausages are the perfect compliment for a wine with this much breeding. In the blend: cabernet sauvignon, syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah, pinot noir.

2014 Rosé Rocks! by Cornerstone - A very dark rosé that almost touches being a light red. Unlike almost any rosé in this price range it is bone dry. Ideal for those nights that are too warm or just too relaxed for a big red, Rocks! Rosé is the most versatile of wines matching perfectly with steaks, pizza or salmon. In the blend: sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and syrah.

2014 White Rocks! by Cornerstone - Lifted, bright, zesty and exploding with aromatic fruitiness, White Rocks! was crafted with picnics and parties in mind. With just the right amount of refreshing fruitiness to enjoy on its own as an aperitif it is also the perfect compliment to those dishes with just a bit of heat. Ideal with Asian dishes, BBQs and chips for that matter, White Rocks! is a refreshing quaffer! In the blend: chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, viognier, orange muscat.

You Like Tomato and I Like Tomahto

You like potato and I like potahto

You like tomato and I like tomahto

Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto

You say 92 points and I say 92 points

A tomato is a tomato no matter how you say it, but it doesn't matter how you pronounce 92 points - your 92 and my 92 are not the same things. Let's call the whole thing off?

Unfortunately, we can’t call off the 100 point wine rating system at this point. It’s now too entwined in the marketing system to simply go away any more. Without a doubt it has done some good things, but overall it has been far more damaging to the cause of balanced, retrained wines to justify the few good things it has accomplished. In all honestly, we all would have to admit, those good things would have probably happened anyway.

When it comes to giving wines a number rating it’s all to true that my tomato and your tomahto can have little or nothing to do with each other. Then there is the simple scientific fact that humans are not perfectly calibrated wine rating machines. Your tomato one day can easily become a tomahto the next day depending at such basic variables as mood, weather, time of day and the wine you tasted just before all have a measurable impact on the ratings we give wines. Anyone who believes that they can reliably taste and give accurate number ratings to hundreds of wines over a few days is not only lying to themselves. That is if you choose to believe the scientists who have proven over and over again that humans do not possess the the tools required to accomplish such feats. I wonder if the people that deny such clear scientific facts are also climate change disbelievers?

So why do people like me, who think the 100 scale is a bunch of hooey, pump out those scores to the market when we get them? I think for most wineries there’s a sense of desperation in the hyper-competitive wine market we live in today. Do we feel a bit dirty after sending out a press release pimping some 90+ point rating? Of course we do. However, as long as we stick to our ethical guns when it comes to winemaking, I hope we can be forgiven this moral shortcoming in our marketing. The sad truth is that the wine industry itself is more to blame for the proliferation of the 100 point scale than the media people that conceived it. It was our hammering away with shelf-talkers, case cards and advertisements that truly popularized the 100 point system to begin with.

So the next time you get a press release from me touting some score, please forgive me for I am weak. No matter if it’s a tomato or a tomahto you’ve got to find a way to sell it. In my heart I always believe once I get someone to taste our wines I’ll have a new customer. If I have to get down in the pointy mud once in awhile to accomplish that I’m willing to do it. A simple case of the ends justifying the means. As long as I’ve put my heart and soul into the wine itself I can still sleep well at night.

I can’t wait until we find a way to call the whole thing off.

Apple Watch

I have a new Apple Watch. It’s a bit buggy, a first generation piece of hardware that will be out of date in a year. It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever owned.

My first computer was an Apple IIe in 1983. It did not have a hard drive and you had to boot it up with floppy discs each time and then put in more floppies for each program you wanted to run - one at a time. While it seems primitive now, at the time it seemed a miracle.

This Apple Watch is what the Apple IIe was to me then, it’s a miracle on my wrist. Having experienced the evolution of that Apple IIe into my Retina MacBook Pro I can see that the Apple Watch is indeed a time machine as it is letting us look into the future.

After a week wearing it the novelty has worn off and it has simply become an incredibly useful tool - an unobtrusive one at that. It is staggering to think what it will do in five years. When I compare my iPhone 6 Plus to my original first generation iPhone and the progress that has been achieved in such short time, my imagination soars for what might be possible.

For the next several decades after I got my first computer it always seemed like I had to wrestle technology to get it to work and then patch together solutions that still usually fell short of what I wanted it to do. These days my phone, tablet, laptop and now my watch are all perfectly in sync. In fact they are no longer independent devices, but just different interfaces for working with the same data and contacts. When I have a real problem I am almost shocked as they happen so rarely.

I am perfectly happy with this cocoon of technology that Apple has built around me for the simple reason that it “just works” for me. For the first time in my life all my gadgets are doing all the things I had always wanted them to do. We are now entering an age when our devices will start not just doing what we have always wanted them to do, but will start doing things for us that we never thought of and that is very, very exciting. The Apple Watch is just the beginning of a whole new age.

The Apple Watch is an amazing time piece as not only does it tell us the time now, but also shows us what time will be in the future. With all it’s shortcomings as a first generation device, I find it fun and exciting to be there at the beginning of a new era. The future is indeed bright.

Now when I put on my old watch is seems lifeless. Once you’ve touched it, you have to get back to the future.

Real Rosé

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Real Rosé. Not a afterthought, not leftovers, not for fashion and most decidedly not a saignée, Corallina Syrah Rosé is Napa Valley rosé with a purpose. It is a wine made as mindfully as we make any other wine.

While a saignée may be a wonderful idea in the coolest years in the coolest regions like Burgundy and Oregon it is a very strange concept in a warm region like the Napa Valley. Do you really think its a good idea to concentrate Napa Valley wine more than Mother Nature already does? Yes, I know Robert Parker thinks so, but I don’t.

So Corallina Syrah Rosé is a mindful rosé and we keep these Oak Knoll AVA Crane Vineyard vines in a state of serene rosé-ness throughout the growing season. Each of these syrah grapes are in a state of serenity and inner pinkness from the moment of bud break until, just twelve months later, they become Corallina Syrah Rosé. This is fruit destined to be a rosé all the way from flowering to bottle.

As these syrah grapes arrive at the winery already having achieved enlightenment, it is our job to ensure that when you and Corallina come together that Nirvana is the result. To be sure this is the case we keep our hands off Corallina as much as we can.

Mere hours after harvesting the cool fruit arrives at the winery and immediately goes into the press. This is whole cluster pressing and a key part of Corallina’s centered personality. In California saignée is the shady ying to the sunny yang of whole cluster pressed rosé. The whole bunches of grapes that will be Corallina go into the press and over a slow, three hour press run these syrah grapes gradually reveal their pink soul. The juice goes immediately into a stainless steel tank where slowly, very slowly due to the cool temperature, it ferments to complete dryness. Then the new Corallina is racked into mature French Oak barrels for five months of meditation before it fulfills its destiny when the Corallina Wine Dance label finally adorns its bottle - just in time for summer.

Inner wine peace cannot be achieved with mass production so only 500 cases or so of Corallina Syrah Rosé are produced each harvest. This year Mother Nature gave us a Corallina with 13.8% alcohol, TA 0.54 and 3.50 pH - isn’t that riveting. More importantly she gave us our most delicious Corallina yet and we could not be more grateful and humbled by her gift.

Finding Nirvana will be a bit easier this summer due to the 2014 Cornerstone Corallina Napa Valley Syrah Rosé.

Moving Day

Big news! Cornerstone Cellars is moving! We’re moving from our current address of 6505 Washington Street to our new address of 6505 Washington Street. Okay, that’s not very dramatic news as we are moving all of about twenty feet across the parking lot, but it’s big news for us and good news for you. We’re moving into the space right behind our current Yountville tasting room and will be closed from March 23rd to April 1st (no kidding) as we prepare an exciting new tasting experience for you in our beautiful new space.

On top of this there is truly exciting news for our old space as soon a dynamic new culinary partner will occupy our old tasting room featuring charcuterie, cheeses, bubbly and exclusive designer fashions and jewelry that you won’t be able to resist.

In addition to our exciting new neighbor, Cornerstone Cellars will be expanding our offerings from Yount Street Glass. Their handcrafted jewelry and gifts from recycled wine bottles could not be more fun or beautiful and we are excited that our new spacious tasting room will allow us to expand our offerings of their selections. With our new neighbors, more Yount Street Glass and an ever more exciting selection of wines from Cornerstone Cellars we are sure you won’t be able to resist visiting all of us in Yountville ever more than you do now.

While it’s true that you’ll have to walk a few more steps to get to Cornerstone Cellars, we know you’d find those few steps so entertaining you’ll never know you took them.

We can’t wait to welcome you to the new Cornerstone Cellars!

Evolution

Wine growing is an unending evolutionary process if you want to make great wine. You need to experience a vineyard over a number of harvests and then taste the wine as it develops over the years to really understand its true character. Only time can show you what a vineyard can deliver then you can decide if it merits the status of a single vineyard bottling. I've always felt the vineyard should convince me instead of me convincing the vineyard.

Over the last years we have been working with an elite set of Napa Valley vineyards that have clearly established themselves as worthy of that distinction:

• Kairos Vineyard on the edge of Oak Knoll and Coombsville
• Grigsby Vineyard in the Yountville AVA
• Oakville Station Vineyard in To Kalon
• Red Lake Vineyard on Howell Mountain

We are now confident enough in these vineyards to to begin the presentation of an exceptional group of single vineyard wines under the Cornerstone Cellars White Label. Our White Label will become synonymous with this group of distinctive vineyards, which will be introduced over the releases of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 vintages. Only a few hundred cases will be produced of each wine. Those wines will be:

• Cabernet Sauvignon, Kairos Vineyard, Napa Valley AVA $90 SRP
• Cabernet Sauvignon, Grigsby Vineyard, Yountville AVA $90 SRP
• Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Station Vineyard, Oakville AVA $100 SRP
• Cabernet Sauvignon, Red Lake Vineyard, Howell Mountain AVA $100 SRP
• Merlot, Oakville Station, Oakville AVA $75 SRP
• Cabernet Franc, Oakville Station, Oakville AVA $80 SRP
• Syrah, Grigsby Vineyard, Yountville AVA $60 SRP
• The Cornerstone, Oakville Station, Oakville AVA $150 SRP

As a passionate believer in terroir and wines with a sense of place it has always been my vision to evolve our Napa Valley wines at Cornerstone Cellars and arrive at this point in time. While place has always been an obsession to those who love pinot noir (including me and why we are making wine in Oregon) there is an equally compelling argument that those with a passion for the classic Bordeaux varieties should also cling to that connection to the soil in their wines. For some reason terroir seems to be the property of Burgundy, Rhône and Piemontese varieties, but what is true for them is just as true for those who were born in Bordeaux. It matters where the fruit is grown.

I get why cabernet and merlot suffer from this prejudice. The world is covered with hundreds of thousands of acres of these varieties simply because they are famous and have shown easy adaptability to many climates and soils. Unlike varieties like pinot noir, nebbiolo and viognier they have proved able to produce vast oceans of industrial wines under their names as they are more forgiving in the vineyard and capable of producing massive crops of grapes.

It is my goal with these new wines to show there is a sense of place in the Napa Valley as compelling as any, anywhere. Many of the most expensive wines in the Napa Valley are totally devoid of terroir and I think that is wrong and a waste of some of the finest cabernet sauvignon dirt on the planet. It my own very small way I want to show that great Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards deserve as much respect as great vineyards everywhere. However as you would expect from Cornerstone Cellars these new wines are not boiled down concentrates that masquerade as wines, but elegant wines that allow the nuances and shades that these unique vineyards bestow on these wines to show themselves in all their glory.

Each of these new wines will have a reason to exist. That reason will be the vineyard itself. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to them. You will see the first release of these new single vineyard wines this September with the 2012 Cornerstone Cellars Merlot, Oakville Station. This will be followed by a complete rollout of the new wines in 2016 with the releases of the excellent 2013 vintage.

In addition to these limited production single vineyard wines we will continue to offer extraordinary values in our Black Label series, which will grow to include a merlot. We will also be introducing a new luxury cuvée with the 2012 vintage. I have named this new wine Michael's Cuvée in honor of our founder Dr. Michael Dragutsky, who launched Cornerstone Cellars in 1991. This wine will be exclusively selected from the same vineyards that give us our single vineyard wines and will combine the best characteristics of each vineyard to a whole that is truly the sum of all its parts.

So we continue to evolve at Cornerstone Cellars. Evolution is slow in the world of wine, unlike the tech world where iterations are a daily occurrence, in the world of agriculture we only get one harvest a year. With each vintage we take another step. We may progress one step at a time, but we know where we’re going.

$217 a Gallon for Grape Juice

A recent article on The Drinks Business quotes Tor Kenward saying he was paying $26,000 a ton for Beckstoffer To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon fruit. That's $217 per gallon for grape juice or about $43 a bottle for just the grapes.

Certainly this is an extreme example, but it is symptomatic about what is happening in the Napa Valley. Over the last several years the prices of grapes has been moving inexorably higher with no signs of slowing down. The Napa Valley average for cabernet sauvignon now approaches $6,000 a ton and that's for the fruit you don't want. That average includes all the truckloads of grapes going to the big producers like Beringer and Mondavi. The grapes someone like me wants start at $7,500 a ton and moves up quickly for anything with a sub-appellation.

The old rule-of-thumb used to be that you could estimate the bottle price you needed to get to make money on your wine by from the cost of the fruit. For example pay $6,000 a ton and you would need to sell your wine at $60, pay $9,000 a ton and you would need to charge $90 a bottle. Estimating this way is surprisingly accurate.

The rising prices for cabernet sauvignon means that the ongoing squeezing out of non-Bordeaux grape varieties in the Napa Valley will only be accelerated. If you were a farmer would you plant a crop that brought in $28,000 an acre or $14,000 an acre, but cost you the same to produce?

You can see what road the Napa Valley is heading down. Before too long $100 a bottle will be the entry level Cabernet Sauvignon wines. This is very disconcerting for a winemaker whose goal in life to to have people drink their wines. I'm afraid soon they will only be wines for label drinkers not wine drinkers. A frustrating reality for someone who believes wines are for pleasure, not worship.

You can't argue with the numbers. It looks like its time to look beyond the Napa Valley for exceptional fruit sources. We've been in Oregon for years now, but that was for a different reason, as I felt California was not the place for the type of chardonnay and pinot noir I wanted to make. I went to Oregon for quality reasons not economic ones. Yet spending time in Oregon only reminds you how prices in the Napa Valley, for everything not just grapes, have passed into fantasy land.

All I'm looking to do is live in the real world of wine, where real people drink and enjoy my wines without having to feel guilty about how much they spent. More and more as I get older I seem drawn to simpler pleasures and the wines at my table more often than not come from places like Beaujolais, Chorey-les-Beaune, Côtes du Rhône, Corsica and Spain. Simply delicious wines that enhance my meals and my life without doing any damage to my conscience. That's not to say I don't love the great bottles when they come my way, but greatness is not defined by what the wine costs, but by how the wine tastes. The simple fact is that the most hyped and expensive wines in the world rarely live up to expectations and you can always, and I mean always, find wines from the same region that equal or exceed these unicorn wines in both quality and value.

To return to the example of the $217 a gallon grape juice, this liquid gold comes from To Kalon, which is more a district than a vineyard due to it huge size, some 690 acres. Compare that to Chambertin at 33.5 acres, Clos de Vougeot at 122 acres or even a big estate like Château Lafite Rothschild at 265 acres. At four tons an acre To Kalon would produce 2,760 tons of fruit, which would produce almost 2,000,000 bottles of wine. To Kalon is a blessed district producing some of the finest cabernet sauvignon in the world, but a rarity it is not.

So what does this mean for Cornerstone Cellars? First it means that we have to work harder than ever to ferret out those truly distinctive small blocks of vineyards owned by growers with more pride than ego. We have four such sites that are truly extraordinary: Oakville Station (which is actually in To Kalon), Red Lake on Howell Mountain, Grigsby in Yountville and Kairos on the edges of Oak Knoll and Coombsville. These vineyards are the cornerstone of our White Label selections. For our Black Label and Artist Series wines we are casting a wider net in order to find the finest vineyards regardless of appellation. Sonoma, El Dorado, Santa Barbara and on and on, the possibilities in California are almost without limit and we'll explore then all. No matter what we will continue our vision of making fresh, acid-driven wines that come to life on your palate.

After all, we may start out with grape juice, but what we end up with is very, very special and, in our case, very, very personal. Personal means personality and it means that Cornerstone is for pleasure, both yours and ours.

See you at the dinner table.