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.
The first thing we do every morning when we arrive at the winery is stick our noses into things. Not into other people's business, mind you, but barrels and bins. As our wines bubble away in the open-top fermenters, they put out all kinds of interesting smells. These scents tell us what is going on with the fermentation, if things are progressing properly, and whether or not there are any potential flaws developing. Later on, as the fermentation slows down and the wines are ready to be pressed, we stick our noses deep into the barrels and take a whiff. A clean barrel smells good, and makes for better wine.
One thing you learn from Lane when you see her make wine is that her nose is her sharpest weapon. After the last punch-down of the day, we leave the wine for the evening and let the yeast work their magic, turning juice into wine. In the morning we go straight to the bins and lift off the cover and stick our noses in. Some mornings you get beautiful fruit flavor, some mornings a slight hint of reduction (lack of oxygen), or maybe if you're unlucky, a hint of VA (volatile acidity, a slight hint of vinegar). These smells tell us if any extra care is needed that day in handling our wines.
We have all had bottles of wine (not Lumen, of course) that taste or smell just plain funky. Burnt rubber, nail polish, wet dog, salad dressing - these are all signs that something went awry during fermentation or aging. But not with Lane. Her nose knows (sorry, couldn't resist that pun). If we have a hint of reduction, we do a punch down with extra aeration and the reduction disappears. We haven't had any issues with VA, because we take such care to regularly mix the cap with the fermenting juice. VA during fermentation usually occurs if the cap is left to sit too long, and the grapes on top start to get a hint of vinegar flavor.
I have learned so much from Lane during this crush. More specifically, my nose has learned so much from her nose. I came home one day last week and popped a bottle of Pinot, and instantly poured it down the drain. I don't do this very often (sign of alcoholism?), but the wine was so reduced I couldn't palate it. Then it struck me - if it weren't for what Lane has taught me, I wouldn't have been able to identify the flaw.
On most days during harvest, a bunch of the winemakers in Santa Maria gather around the lunch table and "brown-bag" a bunch of wines that we have brought to test our palates. It's a fun game of guess the varietal, guess the region, and sometimes, guess the flaw. Today we had a wine that had almost every flaw a wine could have, all together in one sad little bottle. No one could even drink it. We even rinsed our glasses out before tasting the next wine.
The joyful moment came when we blind tasted three of Lane's wines: a 2002 Melville Vineyard Pinot Noir, a 2003 French Camp Syrah, and a 1990 Sierra Madre Vineyard Pinot Noir. They were all glorious, a testament to not only Lane's lower alcohol winemaking style, but also her infallible nose.
Who says wineries don't still foot stomp their grapes? Our Grenache fruit came in today from Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard, the last fruit of the season for Lumen! The berries looked beautiful, and after they went through the de-stemmer there was literally no free run juice - like three tons of sticky ball bearings. This is going to turn into a great wine, but it's awfully hard to start fermentation when there is no juice.
The solution? Will gets to climb into the bins and start a-stompin! The grapes were so cold that after the first bin he had to put on his wetsuit booties (special thanks to O'Neill Wetsuits). Who knew of the added benefit of being both a surfer and winemaker? Yet another melding of two of Will's biggest passions.
What comes next is the even-better part - seeing what legendary winemaker Lane Tanner can do with Grenache fruit. She has never made one before. But this Grenache will not be like the big, heavy, tannic Grenaches that you normally taste from California (which are more often then not blended with a healthy dose of Syrah to add weight and color). Grenache is a light-colored red grape, and when unblended, makes a finished wine that is similar in weight to Pinot Noir. It also has the same food-versatility, and is a grape varietal with a heck of a lot of personality (like Lane). No wonder Lane's favorite grape is Pinot Noir, but maybe after this vintage, that will change.
With most of the Pinot Noir fruit in, both our 667 and 777 clones of Pinot Noir from Sierra Madre Vineyard have fermented and are now going into barrel! Lane is always the first to pick - which means our wines are also usually the first into barrel. This results in wines that are lower in alcohol and also more age-worthy.
The Pinot Noir spent about 10 days in open-top fermenters. We performed punch-downs three times a day, to mix in all that yummy fruit character. The wines all went through a very slow ferment and went into barrel smelling beautiful.
We did bring in an extra ton of Pinot Noir this week from an undisclosed high-end Pinot Noir vineyard from the Santa Rita Hills, which will go into our final blend and add some extra depth and character. Score! That will represent about 10% of the final wine. It is currently fermenting in an open-top bin.
The rest of the Chardonnay also came in this week - 4 tons from Sierra Madre Vineyard, Clone 15. The Clone 15 took a little longer to ripen, but the juice is gorgeous - and will add a nice spicy note to the Chardonnay. The Robert Young Clone of Chardonnay is now in barrel, having almost completed fermentation, with malolactic bubbling away.
Stay tuned for news on the Grenache - word is that it might be picked next week.
[vc_row show_full_width="1" padding_setting="1" desktop_padding="no-padding"][vc_column][vc_column_text]Lane Tanner, Angela Osborne, and Will Henry took a trip out to Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard to look at fruit for Lumen's upcoming 2013 Grenache. This vineyard is near the town of Cuyama, far east of the town or Santa Maria and at an elevation over 3,000 feet - making it the highest Grenache vineyard in California.
Will became fascinated with the Tribute to Grace Grenache, a wine made by Angela since the 2008 vintage. As Will says, "this Grenache is not heavy like most, it is more medium-bodied like a Pinot Noir, and is absolute ambrosia. It is a wine that is much more food-versatile, easy-drinking, and downright delightful than almost any other Grenache in the new world." So Will decided to get his partner and winemaker Lane Tanner together with the master of Grenache from this vineyard, New Zealander Angela Osborne. The two hit it off instantly - and a great wine will most likely result. With Angela's guidance and Lane's longtime winemaking skill, we can't wait to see what Lumen produces!
In the meantime, you must try the wines from Grace. Angela is not only a sweetheart, she makes one of the best wines on the planet. To sign up for Grace wines, click here.
To sign up for the Lumen Wine Club and get on the list for this and other wines, click here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The 2013 harvest began in Sierra Madre vineyard with the picking of Pinot Noir Clone 667 on September 4. Woohoo! As usual, Lane Tanner (winemaker and co-owner) was the first to pick in the area - it's her style, and what you get is a wine that is naturally lower in alcohol but beautiful, graceful, and downright delicious! Nonetheless, harvest came very early this year.
Clone 777 quickly followed the 667, and both are now fermenting along smoothly at the winery. Chardonnay just came in this week - on September 9 - with the Robert Young clone. It is already showing such beautiful fruit flavor - this will make extraordinary wine.
The Chardonnay is now fermenting in oak barrels, and the Pinot Noir in open-top fermenters. Will Henry (co-owner, pictured below) is managing the punch downs in the shortest shorts he can find - ostensibly to scare away VA bugs.
When Pinot Noir ferments, the CO2 rising from the liquid pushes the skins to the surface and forms a cap of grapes and skins. Punch downs are where you break the cap on the open top fermenters, and mix the skins in with the fermenting juice.
More news later as harvest progresses!
Lumen's inaugural release will be bottled next week! The 2012 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, both from a single premium vineyard in Santa Maria Valley, will be released in November for members of our wine club only (California release will be in January). Sign up for The Lumen Wine Club to get details about upcoming releases, events, and to see how you can join our wine club.
