Why Getting Old Isn't That Bad
There aren't many things in life that get better with age. Cars lose thousands in value once they drive off the lot. Houses get termites. And food? It eventually gets moldy. Wine, in this regard, is almost in a class by itself.
The history behind wine and its aging potential is rooted in the distant past, when we humans were constantly trying to invent new ways to preserve our food. Think about cheese, or smoked salmon, or muesli - these are foods that were designed to last without refrigeration. After all in the Dark Ages, refrigerators were damn hard to find.
Wine was considered for many centuries to be the safest form of drink. In the days before modern water supplies and chlorination, water sources were often more than a little suspect. It wasn't just a matter of taste, either - drink a bad glass and you die. Wine by nature was wisest choice of beverage, as it was cleansed by fermentation (and drinking and driving on a horse wasn't considered dangerous). The fact that some wines stuck around longer was an added bonus.
At some point people began to figure out that some wines actually tasted better with some bottle age. Certain wines tasted a whole lot better after 20 years or more, but not all of them. Wine lovers started to understand that certain varietals, vineyards and winemakers produced age worthy bottles, while others did not. Fast forward to the modern age and we are still trying to figure out what makes one wine age better than another, especially in California, where we don't have the history like that in Europe. What is the secret? Tannin structure? Acidity? Maturity of the winemaker?
I have had the luxury in my life of tasting a large amount of older Californian wines. The best older wines I have tasted include Napa cabs (no duh), but other standouts have been old California Pinot Noir, as well as the occasional shocker like a 1974 Grand Cru Chenin Blanc. A surprising number of Napa cabs that have huge reputations (and price tags) have not aged well at all. Same goes for Zinfandel. To a wine collector this presents a huge challenge. The wine critics don't seem to know what constitutes a well-aging wine, so do we have to make our choices by trial-and-error?
One thing that I have noticed is that many of the wines made prior to the mid 1980's seem to have held up better than their younger cousins. So that begs a question, did winemaking or viticultural practices change between now and then? The answer is yes, some winemakers have altered their winemaking styles to suit the palates of wine critics, who have tended in the past to prefer big, juicy red wines. The drift towards this style has caused many wines to be made in a "drink-me-now" style, where they show lush, plump fruit flavors upon release, causing wine critics to oh and ah and write glowing reviews. The problem with this is that they (and the public) are being duped; most of these wines, like a fresh glass of milk, will only get worse with age.
Over the past few months I have poured Lumen at a number of tasting events, alongside some old Lane Tanner wines. My favorite was pouring our 2013 Pinot Noir alongside a 1995 Lane Tanner Sierra Madre Vineyard - same winemaker, same vineyard, same style - to get a preview of what the Lumen Pinot Noir will taste like in 19 years. Every single one of Lane's older wines are remarkable. They age as well as any Burgundy, and if you put one in a blind tasting, that is what most wine experts would think it is.
And what is Lane's secret? Well, without giving away too much, I would have to say that Lane's wines age well because she makes them in an honest way. They are not "futzed with"; they are made in the same exact style she made them 20 years ago. She has also figured out what vineyards produce the best fruit - and she has told me that Sierra Madre Vineyard is her all-time favorite. The fruit is brought in at an earlier stage of ripeness than most other winemakers, and we end up with a wine that is fresh and lively in its youth, although tightly wound. The wine then develops over the years, and is gorgeous through every stage of that development.
One fun trick I like to perform is to open a bottle of Lumen and drink a glass, then recork it and sample a little over the next few days. I have found that the wines (especially the Pinot) get better and better each day I try them, up to about five days. This can be a good test for age ability in most wines, and I can tell you that most wines won't pass this test.
As we head into yet another holiday season, let's not focus on ourselves getting older, but rather celebrating the fact that Lumen will taste even better next year when we open the same vintage.
- Will Henry
Blanc Follows on the Heels of Noir
The sheer number of wine grape varietals must be overwhelming for most wine drinkers to contemplate. Even an experienced winemaker can be stumped when you ask them about Italian varietals, which in some regions can number in the hundreds of obscure clones that are only known regionally. And let's not even start talking about Hungary or Croatia. Consumers are more used to choosing between a few flavors of soft drink, not the multitude of options available in the wine section of their grocery store. So with that in mind, here we go again.
Lumen brought in its very first load of Grenache Blanc this morning (pictured above in the vineyard before it was picked). Grenache Blanc is a close relative of Grenache (or Grenache Noir as it is known in France), and like its cousin, originated in Spain but found more fame across the Pyrennees in France. Here in California, it seems to have found a suitable home on the Central Coast, most notably in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. The varietal produces a rich, full-bodied white wine with crisp acidity and bright fruit flavors.
Lane and I fell in love with Grenache Noir last year with the 2013 harvest. This was the first time that Lane had ever worked with Grenache, and its subtlety and mysterious qualities intrigued her. Lane loves a challenge, and Grenache has provided her with one. Grenache Blanc seemed like an obvious next step. It's a great Chardonnay alternative, just like Grenache Noir is a great Pinot alternative.
The first good Californian Grenache Blanc that I ever tasted was in the early 1990's, when my father and I visited Tablas Creek in Paso Robles. Tablas had made a small amount of 100% GB as an experiment, and we thought it was the best wine of the tasting. Later on I had the pleasure of swirling Kris Curran's Grenache Blanc and realized what potential the varietal has here in Santa Barbara County. I was hooked.
Grenache Blanc is a slight genetic variation on its red counterpart, much like Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris are variations on their famous cousin Pinot Noir. Lane and I sourced our grapes from the same vineyard that Curran produced many of her famous vintages: Camp Four in Los Olivos. The vineyard site has perfect conditions for growing this grape, with warm days and cool nights, allowing us to pick with lower sugars than is normally characteristic of this varietal, along with bright acidity.
We know that wine can sometimes be confusing, because there is so much to learn and so much to choose from. It's not always black-and-white. Just trust that Lumen will provide your senses with a pleasurable experience. We will most likely release our new white in the spring of 2015, so don't miss out!
- Will Henry
Introducing California's First Pinot Alternative
Grenache is a very interesting and challenging grape. A wine made from 100% Grenache can have the weight of a Pinot Noir: a medium to light bodied red. I t doesn't normally lend itself to making big, tannic wines. (Side note: a lot of the Grenache that you see in stores is blended with Syrah or Mourvedre in order to fatten it up). This is what attracted me originally to the varietal: it has a lot of the food versatility and grace of a good Pinot, but possesses a completely different flavor profile. A Pinot alternative, if you will.
The first eye-opening California Grenache I had was made by Angela Osborne under her Tribute to Grace label. I tasted the wine on a tasting menu at Cyrus in Healdsburg and it floored me. Hence in 2013 Lane and I set out to make our own version from this fickle grape. The result of our labor - 2013 Lumen Grenache - will be available in January 2015.
2014 marks our second vintage of working with Grenache. We have sourced fruit from two prominent SB County vineyards. Our first load came in a few days ago, from Martian Ranch in Los Alamos. The fruit was beautiful, showing about 24 degrees brix sugar (perfect sugar level for ripe fruit), and beautiful, small, red berries.
Grenache is one of the most widely planted wine varietals in the world. It originated in Spain (under the title Garnacha), where it typically produces a big, rich red wine. Grenache (pronounced gren-ah-sh) is also very popular in Southern France, particularly in the Rhone, where it makes its way into many blends (most prominently in Chateauneuf-du-Pape). There seems to be a growing interest in this varietal in California these days - and we hope to be riding the first wave.
When Grenache goes through the de-stemmer, the differences between this grape and Pinot Noir become instantly noticeable. Grenache has a much thicker skin (unlike some humans), but when the skin breaks, the juice is very light in color. The big challenge is that its skin really doesn't like to break. When we pour it into our bins, they drop like a ton of ball bearings and yield almost no juice. This presents a huge challenge, because our winemaking technique depends on the presence of some juice to punch-down and to inoculate with yeast. What this means for me specifically is that I do a lot of grunting and sweating on top of our open fermentation vats, punching down the cap and hoping to break a few berries.
The Martian Ranch Grenache will certainly be a beauty. The property is located just above the town of Los Alamos, in a site that is relatively cool for Grenache, but warm enough to adequately ripen the fruit. The site is biodynamically farmed and the yields kept very low. 2014 will mark our first from this vineyard, so stay tuned for more notes from harvest!
Why Smaller Can Sometimes Be Better
The quality of a wine is not always dictated by the sweetness of the juice. Many winemakers make decisions on when to pick by simply measuring the degrees brix (percentage of sugar) in their grapes, and generally pick when the sugars are at their highest possible level. Lane and I, however, pick when the flavors of the grape are at their peak, regardless of sugar content. That's not to say that we ignore sugar - we do test for it, as well as acidity - but our main decision to pull the trigger is based mostly on what our palates tell us.
The 2014 Chardonnay has now gone from vineyard through the crusher to barrel, and has completed its fermentation. As I mentioned in our last newsletter, we brought in two clones of Chardonnay from Sierra Madre Vineyard this year: Robert Young and Wente 15. Robert Young looked as he always has - handsome, debonaire, and a bit plump - but the Wente 15 clone behaved completely differently. What was most striking was how small the berries were. And small berries make for better wine.
Why, you may ask? Because more skin means more flavor. So many flavors are locked up in those crunchy little grape skins. If the skin-to-juice ratio is high, so will the concentration of flavors in the wine be. Wente 15 has such small berries this year, the skin-to-juice ratio is off the charts.
We expect a rocking good year for the 2014 harvest. All of our Sierra Madre Pinot came in over the last two weeks as well, and is fermenting away in open-top bins. Needless to say, it looks (and smells) awesome, but more on that later. The 2013 vintage is almost ready for release as well, so look for stellar new Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as a few new surprises! Stay tuned…. more harvest stories to come!
- Will Henry
Lumen Crush is On!
The first fruit of the season came roiling into the winery on August 19, when we picked Chardonnay Wente Clone 15 from Sierra Madre Vineyard in Santa Maria. Following it this week were both Dijon clones of Pinot Noir, 667 and 777, also from Sierra Madre - marking one of our earliest harvests ever here in the valley. This morning was cool and foggy, and looked like normal harvest weather. But for most of the year, the weather was far from typical. What has been fun is how it has illustrated the variances between clones of viits vinifera.
Vines come in all shapes and sizes. Each varietal of wine, such as Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, has numerous different clones that behave uniquely according to soil type, climate, and rootstock. The origin of some of these clones is as muddled as the family tree of a mutt at the pound. There's no telling who its parents were, or how it got here. Some clones came over in vintner's suitcases - others came in through the front door (i.e. legally), or were brought over long before the USDA was even an agency. Differences in clones can range from subtle to drastic. We usually pick and ferment our clones of Pinot Noir separately, because they yield such different wines. They can be next to one another in the same exact vineyard, yet taste as different as two wines from across the world.
Last year we brought in both clones of Chardonnay - Wente 15 and Robert Young - at exactly the same time. Yet this year we left the Robert Young clone hanging for an additional two weeks. The clones ripened very differently from each other this time around. No one is exactly sure why this year's harvest has been so different. One theory is that we have had unusually warm nights, which perhaps has caused acidity to drop in the fruit without a consequential lift in sugars. In a normal year, sugars will go up as acids drop. We try to pick when both are in good balance, and the fruit is super tasty. This year, the acid dropped out far too quickly, the sugars lagged behind, and we had to pick on flavor alone. Thankfully, our taste buds work pretty well!
Clone 15 Chardonnay had unusually small berries this year, which will certainly help, because the skin-to-juice ratio will be unusually high. This will mean super-concentrated flavors from Clone 15. Robert Young clone looked pretty much normal, however. Go figure. This is why we use a variety of clones every year; because in the end, we end up with a more consistently good bottle of wine.
We will send you more news as harvest progresses!
- Will Henry
SMV is Ripe on the Vine
When Lane puts on her magic yellow boot, we know it's almost time for harvest. Lane has donned this fine piece of footwear ever since 1982, early in her wine career, and damn near the infancy of Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir. "I lost the other boot somewhere along the line," she says with a smile, "but thankfully I only need one." And what is the boot's purpose, other than the obvious fashion statement it makes? This boot crushes grapes. When it comes out of the closet, it means we are awfully close to pickin' time. Lane uses it to make juice from fruit samples in the vineyards, which we test for sugar content and acidity. It's a pre-crush crush of sorts.
The Sierra Madre Vineyard Chardonnay checked in at 21 degrees brix yesterday. What that means that is that we could see the earliest harvest on record in the Santa Maria Valley this year. "Clone 15 already has a gorgeous flavor profile," states Lane, "and I think we could be picking as early as this coming weekend." We thought last year's harvest was early - picking started on Labor Day Weekend - but this year is something else entirely. The grapes are sweet and ripe almost a month earlier than normal.
The most common question we hear is: why did the grapes ripen so early this year? Does it have anything to do with the drought?
The answer is really quite simple: harvest is early because we barely had a winter last year. The winter of 2013-14 was so dry and warm that bud break came a month early. (Bud break is when the vines come out of their winter dormancy and shoot buds out of their bark). The early bud break resulted in early flowering, and once flowering occurs, the vines basically are setting their clock for harvest, assuming there are no abnormalities with summer weather patterns. Given that the 2014 summer season has been warm and fairly normal, harvest is already upon us.
"The earliest I have ever picked is August 21," says Lane. "Unless something weird happens, that record is about to be broken."
The fruit looks healthy, and the crop slightly smaller than 2013. With our 2013 wines now in bottle, our barrels stand at the ready. Two new wines are in the mix for release this fall: 2013 Lumen Grenache, and the 2013 Lumen Sierra Madre Vineyard Pinot Noir, made from our best barrels from our favorite fruit source.
With Lane's boot leading the way, we will be bringing in new fruit from Camp 4 Vineyard and Martian Vineyard this year, so look for it down the road in our Grenache and Grenache Blanc.
Wish us well during the 2014 harvest, and thanks for putting Lumen in your glass! More updates to come...
- Will Henry
The first glass of wine that I liked was a White Zinfandel. As hard as that is to admit, many people come to love this beverage (and yes, it is just a beverage) by starting at the bottom. That glass of White Zinfandel appealed to me at a young age because it was sweet and fruity. Nowadays I can't even put the stuff in my mouth without gagging. The lesson here is that as we drink more wine, the more our palates mature. And yes, that's a fantastic excuse to drink more wine!
I have a friend, let's call him Scott, who has been collecting wine for the past 20 years. Scott became interested in wine in the early 90's, and he used to pick my brain a lot about what wines he should start collecting in his cellar. He had plenty of disposable income and wanted to build, in his words, "an amazing collection." But as Scott began to learn more and more (and drink more and more), he sought my advice less and less. The only problem is that he turned towards the 100-point system and the wine trade journals for advice, and began collecting wines that scored above 95 points, or had some kind of cult reputation.
I went to visit Scott over the Christmas holidays this year, 20-plus years after he started his collection. He could hardly wait to pop the corks on some of these old bottles he had been cellaring, to show off some of his prize bottles with old friends. I was excited, too. After all, many of these bottles were ones I had never tasted, because when a wine gets a high score like that, it tends to sell out quickly. I brought along a few of Lane Tanner's old Pinots and Syrahs for comparison's sake, just for kicks.
We sat down at the dining room table over a nice meal, and Scott brought one treasure after another out of his cellar for all of us to swirl and appreciate. At this moment things became increasingly tense for me. Scott wanted my opinion on how the wines were tasting, and was hoping to hear how great I thought they were, but here was the rub: I didn't like a single one of them. The wines were awful. These wines that Scott had spent a small fortune collecting - that were fat, silky and lush in their youth - had become flabby, oxidized and uninteresting in their older age. To top it off, they weren't even that old. I was shocked, and struggled for something nice to say about the swill in my glass.
Lane's wines ended up stealing the show. The reason is simple: Lane doesn't like making wine from overripe fruit. So many Pinot Noirs these days taste like Syrah or some other varietal, because they are over extracted and made from extremely ripe fruit. When I asked Lane why she likes to pick earlier than everyone else, she said. "because it makes the wine taste more alive." At Scott's house, after tasting one of her Pinots that had more than 25 years of age, I was convinced. Not only was the wine still tasting young, it had developed layers of complexity that were not present in some of her younger wines. (And even better, this wine was from Sierra Madre Vineyard, our favorite). Here was a wine that tasted lively and fresh when young, and still was alive and kicking after 25 years in the bottle. It also was a perfect complement to our meal.
One of the greatest things about Lane Tanner is that she never changed her winemaking style to suit the critics. She stuck to making Pinot the way she liked to drink Pinot - tasting fresh and alive - and because of that her wines have stood the test of time. Now her style of winemaking has come back into vogue, and I (like many other wine fanatics) couldn't be happier.
Just last week I received a phone call from my friend Scott. He told me that he didn't think he chose wisely when he bought wine in the 90's, and seemed a bit embarrassed about our tasting over the holidays. "It's a learning experience," I told him. "No one really knew back then that these big, high alcohol wines wouldn't end up aging very well." Then Scott paid me a huge complement: he ordered Lumen.
- Will Henry
One of my father's favorite sayings is that most wines are consumed on the way home from the liquor store. He is saying that tongue-in-cheek, of course, but says it to make a point: while many wines are meant to be aged, few are actually consumed more than a year after they are bottled, and most are consumed within a week of being purchased. Most wine consumers, when they are out shopping for a bottle to go with their meal, are not expecting to cellar the wine and serve it with a meal a few years, or decades, down the road; they want it with their salmon TONIGHT. Along the same lines, most restaurants do not cellar wines for extended periods of time. They have current vintages on their list, not thinking forward a few years to when the wines might be drinking best. Boom boom, sell 'em fast and make more money.
Perhaps this is one reason why wines have become increasingly jammy, overripe, and easy to drink upon release. Perhaps it is also why so many wines that get big scores these days do not age well in the cellar. Or perhaps Robert Parker really has had the influence on winemakers that the industry seems to think. One will never really know (and maybe many of you don't really care).
One of the greatest things about working at Lumen has been the pedigree of our wine. Our 2012 Pinot Noir, while the first release under the Lumen label, is a wine that has over twenty years of history. That is a history between winemaker and vineyard - namely Lane Tanner and her favorite Santa Barbara County vineyard, Sierra Madre. Those of you that have had the opportunity to taste old vintages of Lane's Sierra Madre Vineyard Pinot Noir know exactly what I am talking about - they age incredibly well, and get better with time.
One test that is fun to do is to open a bottle of wine, pour a glass, then recork it and leave it open for another few days. Taste the wine every afternoon or evening after work, and see if it changes. If you try this with either the Lumen Pinot or Chardonnay, you will be amazed not only at how long it lasts, but also with how much complexity it gains after being open for a day or two.
Since we bottled the 2012 in August of last year, Lumen Pinot Noir has gone through an incredible metamorphosis. It was good upon release, but it is tasting great now - and over the next ten years it will most certainly improve. The only problem is that we are almost sold out of the wine. 500 cases came and went in less than 8 months, and the 2013 will not be out until September.
Now is the time to get the last of the 2012 at a fantastic price. For the remainder of our inventory, we are offering 10% off - and extending the offer to all of our wines. Simply place your orders before the end of June to get this deal. Simply use this code at checkout: IGGV1B4. And remember, wine club members 20-25% off of all of their purchases - so this is a great time to join.
Drink one tonight, but try to keep a few around for the coming years. You won't regret it!
- Will Henry
The above shot was taken in September at the Eastern edge of the Santa Ynez Valley, while I was driving up to the winery in Santa Maria during crush. I live in Santa Barbara and have to drive over "The Pass" on the 154 to get up to where we stomp grapes. What I love about the drive is that every day it's a lesson in microclimate. On my way northwards I pass through so many of them it's astonishing.
The weather on one side of the hill is often the complete opposite of the weather on the other side. One thing that makes Santa Barbara County one of the best place to grow grapes in the world is this abundance of microclimates. It also one of the coolest climate wine growing regions in the state. It often surprises people when they hear this. After all, SBC is hundreds of miles south of Napa Valley, so how could it be cooler?
What makes SBC so unique is the east-west direction of the valley that opens to the cool Pacific Ocean. Napa doesn't have that (and is why I frankly don't like many of their wines - but more on that later). Even coastal Sonoma, while also a cool climate region, doesn't have the kind of opening to the west that Santa Ynez and Santa Maria have. And that is what makes Lumen so cool. It's the fog, dude. It's also the way the rest of the day goes, too. The fog generally clears around midday, then you get a couple of warm hours of sunshine until the afternoon sea breeze kicks in and cools things down again. There couldn't be place better suited to ripening Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Driving over The Pass always gives me an idea of what the day is going to be like in the Santa Maria Valley. If the fog is all the way at the eastern edge of the valley, I know the day will be cooler, because the fog will clear later. If the fog starts closer to Los Alamos, the day is generally a warmer one. But the fog during growing season is almost omnipresent. And this is hands-down the BEST climate for going cool-climate grapes in the world, in my opinion.
So what is so special about cool-climate fruit, you may ask? Well for one, it tastes better. The flavor profiles of Santa Maria Valley are completely distinctive from that of Santa Rita Hills, for example. Often you can taste the difference between two Pinot Noirs made by the same winemaker from vineyards that are just a few miles from one another. And hey, variety is the spice of life, right? Secondly, cool-climate fruit has better acid. (Yes, so did my friend in college, but that's not the kind of acid I'm talking about.) Acid is the backbone of any wine. It is present in all grapes but diminishes as the days grow hotter and the fruit ripens. In places where the fruit ripens very quickly due to excessively high temperatures, acid can drop faster than sugars go up, and you end up with a flabby wine. It will taste like raisins and overripe fruit, but can't stand up to a good plate of food. It will be fat and jammy, but honestly, not all that interesting. Like a boring date.
What a lot of wineries have to do is acidify. Yes, that's right, they add acid to the wine so that they can mask the fact that the grapes didn't have enough when they were harvested. But we at Lumen don't have to do that. Our wines come from cool-climate vineyards, and their natural acidity makes for a stunningly fresh, gorgeous, and food-friendly wine. Both our 2012 wines come entirely from Sierra Madre Vineyard, which has always been known for having a very high natural level of acid. Plus, we tend to pick earlier than other folks, so we end up with a wine with great structure, slightly less alcohol, and more character. And that, my friends, is the kind of wine you want to drink with a good meal or share with friends. It is also the kind of wine that makes for long-term aging, if that's what you're into.
I have grown to be less-and-less of a fan of warm-climate wines as my palate has progressed. I used to love big, jammy Napa cabs. But I realized that I couldn't eat steak every night, and that Pinot Noir matched up so much better with so many more of the meals I liked to eat. Also something like a lighter-style Grenache, or even a rosé - these are the wines I now most frequently gravitate to. Now most of my Napa cabs are collecting dust in my cellar.
Lumen has just hit the open market and is taking off like a rocket on launch day. The wines are amazingly affordable for the price, so please get them while they last, and share our story with your friends.
