Tom, if you ever see a bottle of the 2008 Clary Ranch Syrah from Arnot-Roberts, try it. Think you’d be amazed. Less than 12% and it’s stunning. Definitely convinced me that these wines can come around.
Some of the Arnot Roberts Clary Ranch vintages tasted great from release, and I think 2008 was one of those vintages. Not sure it’s really whether they come around.
-Al
Just as you can make wonderful Riesling in Germany at low alcohols perhaps terrific wine can be made in the northern Rhone at low alcohols. But my experience shows that most Northern Rhones hit above 12,5% and usually around 13 or 13.5.
In most of California if you pick red grapes at 12% potential alc., or less than 20 brix., you practically need a steam roller to crush the grapes. Plus the tannins would be far from ripe and ditto the flavors. Of course you could always water back. If you pick red grapes at 20 brix and then use whole clusters, maybe the wine might come around in 20 years.
I think you could make successful syrah here at 12% but the site would have to be exceptional…Oregon might be a better place for this.
Hubert de Montille made 12 and 12,5 Volnay and the wines developed wonderfully. Rhys is trying to do something similar here.
I ended up at a hipster joint last night and ordered the skin contact Vermentino from Ryme. It had a lot of astringency from the skin contact, a characteristic that would have been dismissed out of hand thirty years ago but now is acclaimed as ‘energy’ and ‘salty’…Who is to say what is right or wrong here?? At a place where people are drinking strange brews, a skin contact Vermentino fits right in.
It’s funny that the skin contact whites of the early 80s were rejected by the marketplace. Does anybody remember Rod Berglund’s Gonzo wine?? But now these wines are happening and us geezers are shocked. Of course, my parents generation believed that rock n roll led to juvenile delinquency.
Perhaps Tom and I come from the era of the smooth. We age our wines until they are smooth. Our lives are rough enough without extra tannin. Maybe Tom’s ‘brutal’ is another man’s ‘salty energy’.
I used to by grapes from one of the vineyards mentioned above, and they almost never got ripe, in 2011 it was a disaster.
Methinks that 12.5% abv is the best they can get in a “normal” year…
I looked at the ESJ website about the 12% Syrah. Steve fermented the wine in open top bins, so he lost some alcohol there. Also, he de-stemmed. I am not sure why he didn t let the fruit get a little riper.
I think Steve picks based on flavors and pH, rather than Brix. Syrah has no trouble getting ripe in the Sierra Foothills, so I’m betting he liked what he was tasting in the Barsotti fruit.
In contrast, Clary Ranch is in a coastal area in the Petaluma wind gap that is marginal for ripening Syrah virtually every vintage. Not sure about the exposure, but some of the vineyards in the area are also affected by the wind which can cause the vines to shut down (I think basically to control water loss). Syrah from Clary is going to be a bit green and herbal even in a good year. Depending on your taste, it can work out well some years but not others, because it’s right on the edge.
-Al
In better vintages? I drank a lot of Northern Rhone in the 80s and my impression was that they were higher than that in good years. Of course, in the US market they were marked as table wine or were marked at 12.5% or 13% with the 1.5% margin of error, so it was hard to know.