Annahala (Hayley) Vineyard Pinot Noir

If you check out our website (http://www.calicaro.com/) you will see that we have two '08 Pinots listed for sale upon release this fall- one from Sonoma Coast and one from Santa Lucia Highlands.

While we haven't listed it on the website, we are also going to have a tiny bit (10 cases- 119 bottles) of Annahala (Hayley) Vineyard Pinot Noir as well. The Hayley Vineyard Pinot is '07 vintage (a stellar year in N Cali), is a single vineyard bottling from this first rate Anderson Valley vineyard located between Boonville and Philo. Hayley had 10 months in the barrel and now has had some bottle age as well before release. We are labelling the wine now and should have some ready to ship in a month or so.

We held this back because it was our first time at bat and wanted to see how it developed before offering any for sale. It has our name on it and we wanted to be absolutely sure it was done right. I am happy to report that I opened our first bottle in early March and it was tasting great.

Really fresh, pure and light on its feet, complex lifted aromatics, great concentrated red fruit flavor profile of raspberries, strawberries and cranberries. Lighter oak (33% new Francois Freres) than our other wines, nice acidity (will be excellent with food) and just a hint of effervescence. This Pinot tastes like a spring day. We opened it at a restaurant introduction and it was liked all around.

We're only going to sell a small amount as we want to hold some back for wine festival pouring, restaurant and distributor introductions, charity donations and for ourselves and very special friends!

If you want some too, shoot me an email info@calicaro.com or give me a call (864.483.9972) and we'll try to set some aside for you.

And if you're wondering why the parenthetical name- it is because Annahala is a registered trademark owned by Premier Pacific Vineyards- the vineyard owner. So we are calling our little block of this vineyard "Hayley", and that is the name that will appear on the label.

Cheers,
Dave

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Drinking Wine From a Brown Bag

Last night we hosted a small group for a Pinot Noir Shootout. We kicked in a bunch of Cali Pinots and folks brought more. We bagged and numbered them and folks voted for their top 5 of the 11 that were blind tasted.

Midway through our friend Mike leaned over and said he felt like Thomas Hayden Church in Sideways. Mike is of German heritage - he loves good beer and has a great collection of beer steins. So this whole wine thing is kinda new to him. But nevertheless he said if he had to drink wine he definitely felt more at home doing it out of a brown paper bag.

We also did a blind Mystery Wine tasting. The mission is simple: guess what it is.

Here is the complete list of wines tasted. Note we did not serve any Calicaro as still in barrel:

Aperitif:

Manifesto 2007 Sauvignon Blanc Suisun Valley CA

Mystery Wine:

Whetstone 2007 Viognier Catie's Corner Vineyard Russian River Valley CA (only one person got Viognier- several thought it was a Roussanne)

Pinot Noir Shootout Wines:

Siduri 2007 Pinot Noir Sonoma County CA

Freeman 2005 Pinot Noir Keefer Ranch Russian River Valley CA

Pey-Lucia 2006 Pinot Noir "Frisquet" Santa Lucia Highlands CA

Lucia 2006 Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands CA

Loring Wine Company 2007 Pinot Noir Clos Pepe Vineyard Santa Rita Hills CA

Ketcham Estate Pinot Noir 2005 Russian River Valley CA

August West 2006 Pinot Noir Graham Family Vineyard Russian River Valley CA

Schug 2006 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast CA

Edna Valley Vineyard 2006 Pinot Noir "Paragon" San Luis Obispo County CA

Flying Goat Cellars 2003 Pinot Noir Dierberg Vineyard Santa Maria Valley CA

Pisoni 2005 Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands

Our friend Scott also brought a very nice Domaine Chandon Pinot Meunier and an exceptionally good 2005 Nicolas Potel Savigny-les-Beaune.

Very nice. Winner was the Ketcham Estate Pinot. Second place was the August West. Third the Pisoni. Close behind were the Siduri, the Freeman, the Loring, the Pey Lucia and the Flying Goat. All of the wines were very good and it was hard to pick a winner. All wines received multple votes.

The Pinot Noir Shootout winner gets 2 bottles of Calicaro this fall!

Cheers,
Dave

Judging the Judges

Eric Asimov, chief wine critic of the NY Times, recently wrote an article hailing a so- called new style of lighter, more delicate Cali Pinots, comparing them to the traditional Burgundian approach to winemaking.

So far so good. I think virtually all winemakers are glad that the marketplace is sufficiently large and diverse as to support a wide range of varietals and a wide range of styles within those varietals.

However, Asimov went on to cast some aspersions toward the richer, riper, more robust, dark fruit style that Calicaro and many other Pinot vintners often like to make.

Again, I'll give Asimov some leeway here. As in all trends, one can find examples where things went too far, with high alcohol levels producing a hot finish and wines bearing too much resemblance to cough syrup or cherry coke flavored vodka.

But Asimov paints with far too broad a brush, not just taking up for his favored small list of brands but also choosing to denigrate all the rest of the Cali Pinot world. He takes a stance of moral superiority about a matter that is entirely one of palate preference. And no, in case you're wondering, he did not take any swipes specifcally at Calicaro or any other wine brands, instead suggesting that almost all of the Cali Pinot market seems to fall into this category, with only his small list having seen the light and found their way to true Burgundian Pinot salvation. This is riduculous. Many of the more robust style are wonderful balanced delicious wines and consumers and other critics love them.

The wine bulletin boards went into a frenzy about this. Pinot lovers are a notoriously temperamental and thin skinned variety, just like their favorite grape. Erobertparker.com's thread on the subject has had about 19,000 viewings and about 600 postings, many expressing outrage and, invitably, some taking up for Burgundy and Asimov.

Yours truly posted a number of times. My point was that we all have style preferences. Let's just acknowledge that and agree that one style has no inherent superiority over another style. Judge against others in that style and forget the rest. In other words, just because Burgundy is traditionally a lighter and more demure expression of Pinot Noir does not mean that the more rubust Cali style is inferior or unworthy. Clearly, the market agrees with me, as the richer, riper style has become more popular in the last 15 years.

And why judge Cali Pinot against Burgundy anyway? Isn't the idea of terroir to express the place where it comes from, and clearly the favorable Cali climate allows for riper fruit than Burgundy?

Shouldn't we judge wines against others of the same style rather than different styles, and just acknowledge that they are different styles and will appeal to different groups of people based on their palate preferences?

This idea started a whole new thread, which has now taken off with alot of postings.

So here's the question: should a critic judge subjectively according to his or her palate? And if so, should the critic provide full and frequent disclosure of his or her palate preference so the consumer can tell whether their palates match up?

Or should the critic reach for a measure of objectivity and professionalism, judging a wine as objectively as possible against quality parameters applied equally to other wines made in the same style?

Or is there room in the marketplace of ideas for both approaches?

Cheers,

Dave

Weather Update

The inexplicable and semi- perverse laws of the universe apply-

Bring an umbrella so it won't rain.
Cabs everywhere until you need one.
I write about the dry conditions in N Cal and the heavens open up, the rain falls and the creeks rise.

So the growers are now ecstatic because they really needed the rain. And we winemakers aren't complaining either. While we high quality winemakers like low crop yields and dry conditions can promote that, we had reached a point after 3 drought years where it was possible that growers could not even supply enough fruit to make wine. And while we have had alot of rain in N Cal in the last few weeks it really just brings it back up within the low end of the normal range. So now it looks like growers will be able to supply fruit but yields will still be small.

We are now waiting for budbreak. This should come within the next few weeks. And, with any luck, we won't have any post budbreak freezes that could dramatically reduce the crop.

And maybe I shouldn't write about that, for fear of triggering one of those inexplicable universal laws!

Cheers,
Dave
Calicaro Wine

Calicaro Barrel Sample Tasting at Soby's

We received four barrel samples of wine and one finished wine this past Wednesday. On Thursday I took them in to Soby's, a great restaurant here in Greenville, and popped corks for a tasting with the Soby's and Devereaux's management and with a possible wine distributor.

All of the barrel samples showed really well, especially considering they had been in barrel for only a few months and had then traveled cross country. Things went really well. Everyone liked the wines, some of them alot. Soby's asked me to stick around and pour for their wait staff at their evening "lineup" which is a meeting at which they talk about the evening menu specials, etc.

For me, and many others, the killer sample at this point was the 667 clone from a Francois Freres barrel for our "Paris Mountain" Lone Oak Pinot. Velvety tannins, sumptuous dark cherry and berry flavors, long finish. It was already tasting like a finished and ready to drink Pinot.

Another favorite was the Annahala (Hayley) Vineyard Pinot from Anderson Valley, our only finished wine at this point. This was bottled in 08 and now has about about 6 months of bottle age. Wonderfully fresh taste and feel, light on its feet, zingy acidity, red fruit, especially raspberries and cranberries showing. It tastes like a spring day.

The Sonoma Coast samples were a 667 clone in a Francois Frere barrel and an 828/115 clone co-ferment from a Remond barrel. Both excellent also but not quite tasting like finished wines at this early point.

We finished off with the Napa Cabernet from a Taransaud barrel. Big, dark, more extracted of course than the Pinots, with plenty of solid structure but not having that maximum-pucker-I'll-tell-you-when I'm- ready-which-will-be-about-15-years-from-now feel. We could tell already that this will be drinking really well upon release after another 18 months or so in French oak. Just the way we like 'em.

Cheers,
Dave
Calicaro Wine