Tasted at room temperature, the palate offers a honey, chamomile and bright, vibrant lemon quality persisting into the finish with clean acidity. Heritage Field Blend, Bedrock Vineyard, Sonoma ValleyĪromas of lemon drops, salt, mineral, tea, and pineapple with nuances of butter cream. Pinot Noir from Donnelly Creek, Anderson Valley The premiere wines from wilde farm are sourced from three sites: His philosophy matches well with Grossman’s vision of letting distinctive mature vineyards express themselves in their own time by utilizing natural yeasts, neutral oak vessels and treating the wine as gently as possible by not fining or filtering. Pax made an immediate impact as a winemaker in the early part of the millennium with his original eponymous brand and now Wind Gap Wines, a brand dedicated to restrained, terroir-driven wines from up and down the california coast. I call it The Incubator because there were several of us who arrived there in the late ’90s from around the country and made it into the finest selection of domestic wine in the country and possibly the world before we grew our wings and eventually flew off to do other things. Pax and I are both alumni of Dean & Deluca’s Napa Valley Wine Hall (aka, The Incubator) and actually worked there at the same time in 1999. Loren chose well by tabbing Pax Mahle to craft the wines. The brand new wilde farm wine label is owned by Loren Grossman, one of those passionate wine lovers who falls hard for the idea of being a vintner yet approaches it from a very high level and seeks out some of the top talent to help him execute the plan. I learned about wilde farm on the Wine Berserkers website, a chatboard started within the last five years by mostly the banned exiles of another wine board. That is what happened recently with a wine I have only know about for ten days. Through these resources, I sometimes learn of new projects just as they are being released, and because of the relatively simple publishing I do, the wine can get to me, be tasted and written about in a week. I get to talk informally with a lot of winemakers as well as engage with people on wine chatboards. Rather than spending several weeks annually out here, I am always around and can either be walking a vineyard, tasting with a new producer, or picking up samples with relatively little planning or fanfare. Take advantage of the holiday subscription special.Īs a wine critic, I find it very advantageous to be based in the midst of the region I write about most, California. will appear in late December, exclusively at purely domestic wine report. The first professional reviews on the premiere releases of the 2009 - 2011 Detert East Block, representing the non plus ultra of East Block Cabernet Franc barrels. Pdwr EXCLUSIVE | 2009 - 2011 DETERT EAST BLOCK TOM GARRETT | WITH DOUG WILDER IN DETERT WEST AND EAST BLOCKS TOM GARRETT | WITH DOUG WILDER IN DETERT CABERNET SAUVIGNON BLOCK We made an aappointment to meet at the vineyard yesterday and spent several hours walking the property where I filmed a couple video segments. Mondavi the best in all of Napa Valley.Īlong with the release of the East Block sets, Tom wanted to bring me up to date on new developments at the vineyard, primarily the replanting of West Block, but also the careful and deliberate replanting of missing vines in East Block. Along with the Horton property next door, owned by the Garrett cousins (producers of MacDonald Cabernet Sauvignon), the vineyards were considered by Mr. Tom’s family purchased the vineyard in 1953 and until 2000 sold the fruit to Robert Mondavi (Krug, Mondavi and Opus One) on an exclusive handshake agreement. In 2004, the family introduced their premiere release of Cabernet Sauvignon (pictured above) - a mere one acre in the southwest corner of the property separated from the other blocks by a serene creek. The contiguous West Block originally represented a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc and Riesling before it too was replanted to Cabernet Franc. budded with the original clonal material used by previous owner Martin Stelling when he developed the vineyard post-prohibition, 1949. The East Block represents the oldest existing repository of Cabernet Franc DNA in Napa Valley. I have followed Detert since the premiere release 2000 vintage and taste them as often as possible. Recently, Detert Family Vineyards winemaker, Tom Garrett contacted me regarding the imminent release of something special essentially single barrel lots of three vintages,(2009 - 2011) representing the pinnacle of his family’s legendary East Block Cabernet Franc in Oakville.
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