This isn’t about serving the lowest common denominator- It is to help people determine that if some of the Pinots they drink taste like Robitussin and others more like Orange Theraflu- exactly where they are from, and what style of meds they prefer.
I do think the Sonoma Coast is in more need of a dialing in over the RRV, but that one needs to also include elevation- The “cool climate” impression can vanish really fast above the fog line
Steve isn’t suggesting we become France (at least not in this article) and chop up the RRV into different appellations similar to Burgundy. He is suggesting we create more sub-appellations under the RRV, similar to the Italian system where you have Tuscany as an appellation and Brunello, Chianti and 27 other regions that define the wine further. I agree with him that if we were to choose to create another layer of classification, this would be the best approach. I don’t agree we truly understand the RRV well enough to define those other areas correctly or those areas are all that distinct. In Italy, we all know Chianti and Brunello but how many of the other 27 DOCs can you identify and how valuable is that additional designation to the consumer?
As a side, as a sign of how things in America work, Gallo has the most say in the defining of the appellation anyway. They lobbied in the change in 2005 that added 25% more acres and are probably going to successfully lobby in another addition of the acreage in Windsor, where they happen to own a couple large vineyards. Sadly, most of the organizations that promote RRV growers and producers are not opposed to it because they are sustained by Gallo money. If you want a valuable additional layer, let’s start with a ‘Political BS’ designation. That would be most helpful to the consumer…
Regards,
Steve
Like everyone else I’d like to see the SC designation focused upon and changed. The part of Sonoma Coast AVA that is actually E of 101 down near Lakeville Rd has nearly nothing to do with what is happening out by Occidental and Freestone.
Some of my favorite roads to roll on, microclimates are really crazy and noticeable to all but the most obtuse.
A quick note regarding just a couple of points before I attempt to address some of the more important points in Steve’s blog.
First, their are no sub-appelations in the US. Actually, that is not true. Counties are sub-appellations of the state and the country. What is being talked about here are AVA’s. Appellations are geo-political units, i.e. states and counties. American Viticultural Areas are a different thing. The exist because they were created by the government. AVA’s are created by an individual or group of individuals that have petitioned the TTB (formerly BATF) for their establishement. The petition has to follow some very strict guidelines to prove their merit. However, as John Holdredge might say, it isn’t always the facts but the argument that has more power.
Secondly, Gallo had no say in the addition to the area of the RRV a few years ago. The original boundary lines simply followed roads and other features that could be found on the approved scale USGS map (per the BATF) and were drawn there because there weren’t any vineyards of not on the other side. The petition and its subsequent approval simply added acreage that fit the criteria of the original petition, in particual, soil, drainage and fog. Gallo was opposed to the boundary change because it did not include their Two Rock Vineyard a few miles south in the heart of the Petaluma Wind Gap. They had to be convinced to sit on their hands or the petition might still be in the hands of the TTB (as is their subsequent petition to extend the boundary south to include their vineyard, a petition that was forcefully opposed by the members of the board of the Russian River Valley Winegrowers board, as private growers and wineries, along with much of the rest of the membership).
Rod Berglund
Joseph Swan Vineyards
I talked to Steve briefly today about the AVA but we didn’t have time to delve into the finer points. This is a topic that will probably be argued about for years. Other than a few basic facts that can’t be changed, I doubt that there will ever be a winner to these arguments.
Steve is absolutely right. It is a big area. It is essentially the middle of a fairly large county with incredibly diverse geography and climate and more soil types than France. He is also right about the climatic variation. However the variation that he talks about is one of the things that defines the AVA and that is the fog. Not the fog that hangs along the coast all summer long but the fog that flows in and out like the tide. As the heat of summer arrives the Pacific Ocean provides natural air-conditioning to us. The cold air is pulled in by the warmer interior valleys. But. like the fog I compared it to, it ebbs and flows. Those areas of higher elevation and furthest from the coast lose it first. As you get closer to the coast or if you are in a “fog hollow” it persists longer. But, it is our fog (absent the wind that defines the Petaluma Wind Gap’s northern boundary or much of Carneros) that really defines the boundaries. However, when he (almost) dismisses the soil he loses me. Not all soils in the RRV are well drained. And, not all well drained soils are the same. We have an amazing diversity of soil types due to our young and active geology. Within a few hundred yards of our vineyard are three different soil types (actually groupings). The hill above our winery is split down the middle by an earthquake fault. The eastern side is mostly derived from the Franciscan Formation (melange) that is a mixture primarlly of shale and sandstone that was pushed up against the continental shelf due to subduction. The western half is sandstone from the Wilson Grove formation of about 3-5 million years ago (when volcanic ash settled on the floor of the Wilson Grove Sea, which was later uplifted and eroded) which is responsible for the famous Gold Ridge soils. The vineyard immediately to our east is mostly Goldridge but the lower part has more in common with the valley floor or Santa Rosa plain. It is a mixture of material that has eroded off the the Franciscan, Wilson Grove and Sonoma Volcanics to the east, material that has been ,and continues to be deposited, over the last few million years. If I had to put the vineyards on Trenton Hill in an area I would have to put them into Laguna Ridge. But are they all really? I think that ours is (and since, as far as I know, I am the first person to use that to describe this area I can do what I want!) along with the upper part of Trenton View. The bottom of Trenton View? It has elements in common with both Laguna Ridge and the Santa Rosa Plain. All on four acres. And the vineyard on the little hill above? It is warmer than here, more like the Middle Reach and shares a similar soil with some of the vineyards along the west of that area (but not in the lower areas which are alluvial, like Rochioli’s wonderful gravel bench), but is still physically a part of the ridge geographically. The rest of the ridge going south is either Goldgridge or related Sebastopol soils like much of Dehlinger’s. Then you have Green Valley. Like Laguna Ridge, the soil is mostly Goldridge. Except where it isn’t. It tends to be cool, sometimes cooler than where we are except where it isn’t. Except that we usually don’t have much frost damage in the spring due the air drainage from the top of the ridge down toward the valley floor.
You go a short distance north and you come to the middle reach. so named because it is between the upper river (generally considered north of Fitch mountain where the
river snakes east around Fitch Mountain at Healdsburg before heading south until it heads west toward the ocean. Here, since it is further from the fog intrusions, it is marginally warmer than further south but cooler than Alexander Valley and Dry Creek to the north. The northern boundary can probably be determined by the upper AVA boundary but what about the south? I think that our Great Oak Vineyard, near Gary Farrel is similiar but is it? Should it stop at Porter Creek? Moshin? Gary Farrel? Williams-Selyem’s Drake Vineyard? Then of course there is Green Valley, supposedly cooler than the rest of the RRV (again not a sub-AVA but one in it’s own right even though it is now included within the boundaries of the RRV and officially know as Green Valley-Russian River Valley as opposed to Green Valley-Sonoma. As I mentioned before there are plenty of contradictions here as well. Sebastopol Hills? Probably makes as much sense, or possibly more, than most of the others. But how do you define it? Will it include the area to the south that Gallo wants to add? It is south of Sebastopol. But then so is Petaluma.Actually, the only one that I think would be easy would be the Santa Rosa Plain. Pretty consistent climate, similiar soils, but where do you stop? Does it take in the Windsor Hills or are they part of the middle reach? Side valleys? What elevation?
Steve also talked about changes in winemaking. First, there are a lot more people making pinot noir from the Russian River Valley than there were 10 years ago. And, a lot of these wines are from new vineyards, often planted in cooler pockets, from an ever expanding range of clones and selections. It takes time to plant a vineyard, learn how to farm it to its full potential and how to make the best wine possible. While the desire to make off-the-charts, full-blown pinot noirs has not disappeared, the opportunity to make balanced, elegant wines of, as he puts it “are so transparent, they offer tastes and feelings of the earth in which they were grown” is more readily available as new vineyards have matured along with our understanding of them. It is stil a work in progress.
I guess that my point is that from an intellectual standpoint is fun to talk about the sub-regions of the RRV. I know that we talk about it all of the time. It is part of the discovery process. However wer are no closer to defining the boundaries than we were 10 years ago. Are there differences? Without a doubt. Do we want to communicate that to the wine drinking public? Absolutely. Are they mutually exclusive? Not any more than Chambolle Musigny, Vosne Romanee and Nuit St. George are. They are all part and parcel of the Côte d’Or and Burgundy as whole. Our sub-regions do not separate us, they are part and parcel of what defines us. We aint got no boundaries. We don’t need no boundaries. We don’t have to show you any stinking boundaries!
While I would like to see smaller AVA’s up there, Rod is correct in saying that we don’t know what they are just yet. I think sub-appellations are a very bad idea. The whole ‘Green Valley of Russian River Valley’ designation is a sad joke to me. It makes me think of blatant marketing over reaches like the ‘Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim’. I also think that any concerns over ‘confusing’ customers is also about brand name recognition use in selling wine versus actually wanting to describe those designations as possible different than a near by area.
Sonoma Coast could use some carving or at least more areas within like RRV. RRV could probably use some trimming with new, connected AVA’s coming out of it. What those are is very tricky though and as long as the concern is about how to sell the wine versus trying to find distinctions of micro-climates or so called terroir, then we will stay closer from finding any sort of meaningful boundaries.
I understand why these sorts of things are not possible right now. But the resistance from producers for other reasons is a bit perplexing.
Complicating all of this of course is that since the AVA’s are not decided by any sort of actual differences of the wines we end up with divisions decided more for political and economic reasons rather than those of actual distinction in the final product.
[ Rod
Very well stated…Bravo …
In recognition of Mr Berglund’s (and others’) prescience I submit, for you consideration, some data-driven assertions that the Russian River Valley is composed of 6 identifiable sub-regions:
Forbes
“UC Davis Study Confirms That Russian River Valley Vineyard Neighborhoods Have ‘Fingerprints’”
by Jill Barth
October 30, 2020
"…The growers and winemakers here identify these neighborhoods through the diversity they represent, covering ground from Sebastopol to Santa Rosa and Forestville to Healdsburg. There are six of them, each distinct from the next, but with a commonality too, a tether that binds them to the Russian River Valley (RRV). They are: Middle Reach, Santa Rosa Plains, Laguna Ridge, Green Valley, Sebastopol Hills and Eastern Hills.
"In the RRV universe one finds a selection of soil, altitude, temperatures, climatic influences and more. Unlike delineated appellations, these neighborhoods aren’t under boundary lines—instead they blur around the edges, sharing atmosphere.
"…In 2015, Dr. Roger Boulton, the Distinguished Professor of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California at Davis, heard about the neighborhood project, which had been clearly established by the local winemaking community. Boulton suspected that sensory characteristics—ones could consistently identify a particular Russian River Valley neighborhood—could be further quantified using some new lab equipment.
Dr. Boulton prepared an elemental analysis to try to prove that these characteristics were more than just taste or smell impressions. As Boulton says, he conducted a study that ‘removes the subjective interpretation and provides a science-based characteristic that is in the wine itself.’
"Dr. Boulton’s study stated that the elemental composition of each neighborhood would impress a ‘fingerprint’, a reproducible characteristic of each wine. ‘Sensory responses by contrast can differ considerably between tasters, for several known reasons, and will often not be the same.’
"…So what exactly did Dr. Boulton do in that lab? Over the course of two vintages (2015 and again in 2017) he gathered samples from up to 18 RRV wineries. These were fresh Pinot Noir samples, red wine fermented on skins for more extraction. Pinot Noir seemed the obvious choice because it’s a signature variety for the region, is known to be transparent (or a clear conductor of terroir) and it’s also said that Dr. Boulton loves it.
"‘There are many elements involved, 62 were quantified and about 30 of these differ significantly across the sites and these were then used in the separation pattern,’ says Dr. Boulton. ‘These are chemical components which have a unique combination for each wine in the study. When all of the wines are considered, their patterns can be used to group them based on the neighborhood that their grapes came from. It is a chemical signature that is related to the origin of the grapes.’
"…Rod Berglund is the winemaker at Joseph Swan Vineyards in Forestville and he says that while the growers knew these differences, they were seeing (or tasting, smelling, or touching) them from a sensory standpoint. When the study was released, it wasn’t exactly new information, but a confirmation: ‘Like opening a bicycle for a Christmas present, when we thought there was a bicycle inside.’
“He says that in growing regions such as Burgundy, these pockets of place are considered a point of truth because the farming knowledge and terroir awareness has been passed down for ages. ‘We don’t have the benefit of centuries of history,’ says Berglund. ‘But second and third generations farmers knew.’…”.
Molecules 2020, 25(11), 2552
“The Use of Macro, Micro, and Trace Elemental Profiles to Differentiate Commercial Single Vineyard Pinot noir Wines at a Sub-Regional Level”
by Courtney K. Tanabe, Jenny Nelson, Roger B. Boulton, Susan E. Ebeler, Helene Hopfer
Interesting!
I couldn’t agree more. What part of the RRV plays an important role in what wines I purchase from
the AVA. Living here and driving through it daily I can come across multiple weather patterns in the at the same time depending on where I am and we’re talking a matter of a few hundred yards and the weather is different.
