Jolie Laide Interview
Hello /r/wine! You probably know from my previous posts that I love the wines of Pax Mahle. When I found out his assistant started making wine too, I knew I had to try them. I can honestly say they are some of the most exciting new wines I've tasted in years. In the process of begging for an allocation, I was able to talk to the man himself and discuss some interesting topics including skin contact whites, natural wine and more.
I think guys will enjoy the discussion. Sorry it's not the best audio. This is my first one.
Last year's release. Each vintage has new art from different artists.
Click here to listen to the interview or...
Read the transcript on my medium site
or stay on reddit and read it here:
AUDIO STARTS:
MASON: I wanted to thank you for the allocation of Syrah. I know all your wines are in pretty high demand. How much wine do you make? What is your production size?
SCOTT: Yeah, we’re probably just over the 2000 to 2500 [cases] mark as of this year. So, we’re getting there, we chip away at it every year. We started in 2010 with two tons and every year we just add a little bit more.
MASON: Do you have a size you want to max out at?
SCOTT: You know that’s always kind of a funny number depending on who you ask. A lot of people kind of quote that 4000 range as being pretty sustainable. A lot of what we do, those resources are relatively finite, so If it can get into the 3000 to 4000 range that would be pretty amazing. Even getting there might be a struggle but that seems pretty ideal.
“I was always shocked by people’s myopia. They’d drink Chard, Pinot, Cab… It was really limited. It just kind of drove me nuts.”
MASON: Nice. So I wanted to ask you about some of the grapes you work with. Trousseau Gris, Melon de Bourgogne, Valdiguié… these are not the most recognizable grapes. Why do you work with these unique varietals?
SCOTT: It’s kind of a funny thing so I’m going to give you a miniature backstory. Coming from Chicago I’ve literally other than this only just about ever worked in restaurants and in just about every single capacity too, from dishwasher, busboy, bartender and some back of the house stuff, a lot of different positions in the kitchen… The eventuality was in end of 2006 beginning of 2007 the Keller group and the girl that I’d been dating at the time moved us to California. She was working at French Laundry and I was working at Bouchon. It was such a transition coming from a lot of fine dining in Chicago where the wine lists are so worldly and often very Eurocentric — to then, coming to Napa where even the wine bar of Bouchon was 50/50. It was half French and half domestic which even that is very constricting. But I was always shocked by people’s myopia. They’d drink Chard, Pinot, Cab, maybe Bordeaux blend, maybe Sauvignon Blanc — it was really limited. It just kind of drove me nuts.
So, a lot of things were borne out of that, like the the name, Jolie Laide. It’s idiomatic but it’s unconventionally attractive. It literally is “beautiful-ugly”, that is different but good”
So, a lot of things were borne out of that, [like the] the name, Jolie Laide. It’s idiomatic but it’s unconventionally attractive. It literally is “beautiful-ugly”, that is different but good. It’s usually reserved for a woman who looks a bit different but is kind of better for it. It was a term that had just been floating around in my head anyway that I’d read many years ago and it just became so pertinent when we were starting this because for those same reasons. I couldn’t believe that people didn’t like Gamay or Ribolla or Vermentino or whatever it is. You wouldn’t eat the same thing every day or listen to the same music every day. But people choose to drink the same wine every day? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
“You wouldn’t eat the same thing every day or listen to the same music every day. But people choose to drink the same wine every day? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. “
So, when there’s so many people here, be it Raj and Sashi and Ehren Jordan and all the guys who do Chardonnay and Pinot Noir so well.. Why would you want to compete with that? They already do it. There’s not really something missing there. And there wasn’t — well there is, but not as much — focus on a lot of the others grapes and, like I said, just because, yes Gamay had been ostracised from Burgundy a long time ago but just because you drink Pinot Noir doesn’t mean you can’t drink Gamay or try a Frappato. Just because you drink Cabernet doesn’t mean you can’t try a Cab Franc. They’re still great and they’re beautiful and they’re delicious, they’re just not what you’re used to or familiar with or what your friends drink.
MASON: Is there some sort of price advantage to working with obscure varietals? I mean, growers struggle to sell Valdiguie (or maybe they don’t nowadays)- but is it easier to get in and start making wine with those grapes as opposed to Cab or Pinot?
SCOTT: That’s definitely a yes and no question. Sure, the ability to command a high price for some of these obscurities has shifted quite a bit. The first year I bought Trousseau Gris I think we paid $900 a ton or something like that. It literally used to be blended into Hartford Court Chardonnay. As you know, you’re allowed a certain percentage of other varieties or whatever you want to blend in and that whole vineyard was being blended away because nobody really wanted it. It was Pax, who I worked for for many years, he was the first one to start working with the Trousseau Gris. In the year I came over to work with him he said ‘You know you can make a ton or two if you want.’ It wasn’t that I’d worked a couple of harvests and I felt like I know it all I’m going to start a wine brand, it was more Pax is going to let me make a ton or two just as a tangible learning experience. Let’s see what happens if I don’t have someone telling me what to do, just use intuition. So that’s where I began, he said ‘Well what would you want to make?’ and I said ‘Well I’d love some of the Trousseau Gris, it’s so fascinating to me being a lover of Trousseau. But I get it, there’s probably none out there or you have it all.’ And he was like ‘No! There’s ten acres — 40 tons — of it out there. Nobody wants!.’
MASON: That’s amazing.
SCOTT: It’s so funny, and that paradigm has shifted greatly, be it myself and Tegan (Turley) and especially the people before me like Petroski (Larkmead/Massican Winery) and Matthiasson. The fact that we now pay about $2500 a ton and they’ve literally threatened to take it away from us because their waiting list is so long now. That one in particular is one of the few, if only, remaining vineyards of Trousseau. So that one’s a little bit different. But sure, there’s old vine Valdiguie and even more so Zin and Carignan. So those are the ones that are a little bit easier, even those prices have gone up. So, yes is half the answer but the other half is no. Using things like Gamay and Melon it’s such an obscurity that it’s a huge pain in the ass. You have to travel, you have to go to regions that are, y’know, just like any kind of real estate where we’re at, if you can sell Pinot Noir for $5000 to $7000 a ton how am I ever going to convince you to put Gamay in and give to me for $2500 to $3000? So that challenges are not totally insurmountable but they’re definitely elevated for sure. So, this is why you see people like Hardy Wallace. Follow him around he’s all over the place. We go to up to Calaveras, up to several different spots in the foothills. We go up to Mendocino, we go down as far as Chalone. You’re really driving to the places where things are more affordable and/or you have a line on the growers who are willing to be a little bit different.
MASON: Speaking of those growers, when you buy these grapes are you purchasing them by weight or are you leasing by the acre? How does that break down?
SCOTT: Thus far everything for me has been in tonnage, not by acre. We have our dedicated areas and rows, and there’s definitely years like this year — you’ve probably heard from a lot of people — a lot of the fruit hanging was heavier than normal which is usually great news, they say ‘Oh we thought we were going to get you three tons and it turns out it’s five!’, phenomenal that’s amazing, I’ll take it. The two Syrah vineyards we work with Halkon and Hawks Butte, those were planted by Wells Guthrie for Copain originally. I’ve known the owner of the property for quite a while. He also makes wine from the same vineyard of course. When I was a buyer he was selling me wines and I was always a fan — he tends to pick a little bit riper than even we do or than Copain did — but I was always a fan of the Copain versions of those Syrahs. I joking said ‘Hey Paul, should Syrah ever become available’, this is seven years ago — jeez it’s closer to ten years ago this was back when I was still in restaurants — eventually Copain walked away from Halkon because they were on acreage contracts and their yields were so bad that when you do the math you end up paying something like $10,000 a ton versus y’know… They backed out and he switched the format so we pay all just per ton.
We’ve done everything to make it challenging for the consumer. Be it a name that people don’t understand or varieties they’ve never heard of like Trousseau Gris. Then they pour it and they’re like : What the…? This is such a weird color, why is it like this?’
MASON: I wanted to ask about the white wines you make, because Trousseau Gris, Pinot Gris with a little bit of skin contact, I don’t know if everyone understands what that is or what that does to the wine. So I’m just wondering what you like about a little bit of skin contact as far as the wine’s aromatics and texture?
SCOTT: That is the challenge when people ask me about the brand. I’ve done relatively everything to make it challenging for the consumer. Be it a name that people don’t know what it means or how to say it, or varieties they’ve never heard of like Trousseau Gris. Then they pour it and they’re like ‘What the…? This is such a weird color, why is it like this?’ It’s kind of all of the things. The people who are savvy totally get it and are more interested, just for the general masses it’s definitely confusing. There’s plenty of wine that have a little bit of skin contact — even things you don’t associate it with like Gruner. Then there’s tons of ethereal, completely skin fermented orange wines. How it works with a lot of those in restaurant, we tend to sit around and say ‘Oh man that’s so interesting. What should we pair this with, where are we going to put it on our tasting menu?’, because we want to expose people to it but it’s such an application wine because of the texture and the tannin. It’s not something you want to drink a bottle of or several glasses of. You want to have a taste of it with a certain dish and move along. So, I like the concept of skin contact, I just want to barely tiptoe into it so that there’s a little more breadth and palette and some visceral texture, but not be so much that you all of a sudden have to break out cheese. If you want to drink it quickly that’s cool, great. But at the same time if you want to be a little more cerebral then there is that sort of mouthfeel and texture to think about.
They ask, “Is this a rosé or orange wine?” and I say it’s technically neither. It’s a white wine with color, but that’s not really a category so you decide where to put it.
Glass of WindGap Trousseau Gris
MASON: Yeah, you’re not making orange wine…
SCOTT: No, definitely not. That’s the other confusion, even when people are writing it on wine lists they say ‘Well where should I put this? Is it a Rose or an orange wine?’ and I say it’s technically neither. It’s a white wine with color, but that’s not really a category so you decide where to put it.
MASON: A little side note, I had a bottle of Wind Gap Trousseau Gris returned by a customer just based on the color. They didn’t even taste the wine which is shame because it’s delicious. I think we ended up drinking the wine ourselves, but maybe these need some sort of explanation…
SCOTT: The first year we made [Wind Gap Trousseau Gris] I went into it with this idea of some skin contact and didn’t know how much color it’d take up at first. Back then we still used to share the same space with Duncan and Nathan from Arnot-Roberts. I was in there stepping on the grapes in bins, and Duncan looked at me and was like ‘What are you doing? Is this a whole cluster cold soaking Trousseau Gris?’ and I just put my arms up in the air and was like ‘Yeah, I mean… I think so? Seems like a good idea!’
Funnily enough I was just at a wedding this weekend and the kid who got married actually pulled out that very wine, the 2010 Trousseau Gris, which was funny to taste so many years later. It was actually still very fresh. I’ve had the ’11 and that’s not the case, but the ’10 was still really intact. After making that wine we put it in bottle, let it sit for a while until finally it was the time to start actually putting it in the market, we pulled the corks and tasted it. It was a very bright, kind of awkward, peachy hue to it, not something most people are familiar with. You hinted at it in your question but it does totally change the texture and it really lifts the aromatics as well, like completely different.
There’s continuity when you taste the Pax version and my version, you recognize the characteristics of the variety but then they become so much different with the skin contact. The first vintage, we tasted the wine before we decided if we were actually going to sell this wine. ‘Is it good? Do we think it’s good?’ and then we’d try and be like ‘Shit, I think that’s really good!’ But we didn’t know. We just thought it was good — but we’d made it — but was it the ugly baby effect or was it really good? So, we’d give it away and taste it with some friends and ‘No, no, no that’s legitimately delicious!’ The confidence was born out of other people trying it. I think the first year was two days on the skins, we’ve done 4 and 5 and gone as many as 7 and then backed up again because we didn’t like that as much, so it’s kind of different every year. We’ve more or less settled on the 3–4 range and that’s just depending on the pragmatics of the winery, logistical stuff. At that point it’s just aqueous, just sugar water, there’s no heat or alcohol yet so we’re not really extracting much. So, if it’s on the skins day 3 and we’re not pressing anything until the next day then we’ll just wait the extra day.
MASON: I also wanted to ask about the Gamay, because I’m pretty picky with Gamay especially from places that are not Beaujolais. I wanted to ask you about the vineyard you work with. For me, I really like Gamay that’s made naturally and in very particular soils. I was just wondering about your thoughts on the variety in California?
SCOTT: Fortunately Steve Edmunds worked with Ron Mansfield a long time ago, very specifically because of the soils up there, so he convinced Ron to go to Beaujolais with him and then they came back and went up to the foothills where Barsotti is, so it more synonymous with the northern part of Beaujolais. You call it red but it’s more like pink granite so there’s higher iron levels which is pretty ideal. I think Steve is the one that recognised it so long ago. But going up again with Duncan and Nathan and Raj and looking around, Gamay being a variety I’ve just always loved and being in California and looking around it was Valdiguie which showed up more. People would be like ‘Oh I’ve got Gamay!’ and you’d go visit the vineyard like Frediani in Calisota — who actually just passed away — and be like ‘Is this Gamay or is this Valdiguie?’ and they’d be ‘No that’s the same thing!’ and I’d say ‘Well, no it’s not the same. It’s actually quite different.’ So, Steve Edmunds, I actually called him years ago and asked him if he would meet me. He lives in Berkeley so I drove down to Berkeley and met César which is a couple of doors up from Chez Panisse. Told him how much I loved his Gamay and I would love the opportunity if it ever aros to work with a little bit of it. At the time, he was the only one that was getting it and he pretty much just politely said ‘No way.’ We hung out a little bit longer, I was bummed but I was excited to meet him so I walked him home and got in the car and was like ‘OK, maybe I won’t get Gamay.’ We started looking in Oregon for maybe people who would plant it and then Ron started putting more in so Duncan, Nathan and Raj started taking quite a bit and I actually had to wait for about four years on the waiting list so that production was viable enough for me to take a little bit as well. It’s very interesting, maybe you’ve seen it or I’m sure you’ve read about it or one of the other guys has told you about it, but Ron does this funny thing where — not typical in California as far as I know — where it’s a vertical headtrain, not a headtrain like you’d see in Chateauneuf or something where it’s low, but also it’s not on cordon, it’s head trained but it goes up so it spirals around so it’s about as tall as I am, 5'8" or something. So I was like ‘Ron, explain this to me, why do you farm it like this?’, and the Mansfields they have Goldbud farms they grow all kinds of fruit — wine grapes of course but all kinds of fruit, nectarines and peaches and plums — and he just looked at me and said ‘Well, I’m a fruit farmer, I understand trees. To me this makes sense. All of the things you’re trying to get out of VSP (Vertical Shoot Positioning), it’s facing the fruit out, it’s dappling sunlight.’ and I was like ‘OK, wow this is fascinating this is not something that I’ve ever seen before.’ So he does quite a bit of that up there.
MASON: I don’t think I’ve seen that yet. I need to look that up.
SCOTT: Also going into one of your other questions. Both Duncan and Nathan take from both vineyards — Barsotti and Witters- I only get the Barsotti portion. Both are great, but I’m very content with that. I’m contiguous with Duncan and Nathan, I’m actually just beneath them underneath the hill, so I’m in a little bit of a cooler spot because airflow goes down. They inspired it but we also we pay more per tonne than anyone else in the vineyard for Ron not to spray Roundup. So, we pay $500 extra per tonne because you’ve got to go in and hand-hoe.
MASON: I think that’s pretty important. Getting into the next question, I don’t like to throw the word ‘natural’ around, especially with winemakers because there’s a lot of baggage and it doesn’t really mean exactly the same thing to different people. But, I was wondering if you could talk about some of the techniques you use in the vineyard or maybe in the cellar? From what I understand you’re using wild yeast, do a lot of foot-treading and lower sulphur, I mean these are not industrialized wine production techniques… this is smaller, maybe more natural style wine making. Would you agree with that or how would you characterize it?
SCOTT: I would completely agree with everything you’ve just said. The term is so grey area and it’s becoming so cultish and confusing, so I also try and stay away from it. The first harvest I worked — or the first several harvests — was with a group called Realm. I was at the restaurant in Yountville, Bouchon and everyone who came in — tourism aside of course — was in the wine business on some level. Be it Christian Moueix or the Shafers, some who were really great, some people who were not really great. But then winemakers, viticulturalists, cellar masters. So, then there was a few winemakers I was getting to know and wanted to follow along, but it’s tough to follow some of these guys like the Andy Erikson’s and the Thomas Brown’s, they have like 20 clients and they’re all over the place. So, I met Juan Mercado who owns Realm and he said ‘Yeah, come on up to the winery.’ It was the equivalent of what I’d used to do in restaurants where you just kind of sign up and work for free and spend a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I did that for the ’07 harvest, I was still working at the restaurant but any free time I could spare I’d just go to the winery. That next year, the post-harvests they said, ‘We’re in a grape-phase do you want to be our cellar master?’, so I became their first employee. I was like ‘Jeez, you guys are offering me a job but I don’t really have any experience.’ ‘Well don’t worry about it, we have a winemaker. As long as you can listen and follow directions and execute your work orders then that’s all we need.’ They felt comfortable enough with me so I worked with them for a few years as their cellar master.
"In Napa it was ‘pick it really ripe, add a bunch of water and acid’. Everything was inoculated, 100% new oak… I was like ‘OK, this is as much of this world as I can handle, I need to be more inspired and work for people who make wines that I like to drink.’"
It was definitely an introduction to what most people would call qualitative wine making — taking a lot of care, being very protective but at the same time it was very bombastic Napa Cabernet. The people who love those wines definitely love those wines and they get hundred points scores. But it was, Pick it really ripe, saignée bunches it, add a bunch of water which means you have to add a bunch of acid. Everything was inoculated, 100% new oak. I did that for ’08 and ’09 and then 2010 came around and I was like ‘OK, this is as much of this world as I can handle, I need to be more inspired and work for people who make wines that I like to drink and that’s when I started to work more at Duncan and Nathan (Arnot Roberts) and Brocway (Broc Cellars) and Steve Edmunds and all of these people that just weren’t quite big enough to hire anyone. I did a harvest with Pax in ’10, ’11 I was back in Napa, ’12 on I was working with Pax.
Once I got to Pax it was the shared space at Pax, Brian Glad and Duncan Nathan that disproved everything I was taught on the Napa side. Nothing had to be inoculated, they would brown their whites, no stems were taken away, they didn’t really worry about a couple of leaves whereas in Napa of course we had all this big fancy equipment and fourteen women on the sorting table taking every single piece of anything out of the ferment that wasn’t a perfect ripe berry. Coming to Pax we’d jump in the bins, step on it, rotate it, throw some dry ice on it and wait for it to start to ferment. It was a very fast lesson. I mean there’s no right or wrong, it’s just whatever way you decide to go. Having worked with Pax for so many years, and you see it with all the same names — Duncan and Ryan and now Jamie — the continuity or the ideology is similar across the board. We all do things a little bit differently, but I think that’s just like cooking. We could all try to make the same recipe from the same raw ingredients and the thumb print kind of comes out a little bit differently. But it was a fascinating lesson to switch sides if you will.
So yeah, in the cellar nothing is inoculated even if something gets stuck. We don’t have temperature control, we stick things in the sun if we need to get them warm. We’re really not looking for big extractive temperatures anyway so we don’t need to get things really hot. It’s really lo-fi. All the reds thus far have been whole-cluster, we just step on them, we try to mitigate tannins in different ways because we like the flavour of the stems, we just don’t want to beat up the stems too much so we’re just very gentle with them in the ferments.
MASON: And then use sulphur at the end?
SCOTT: That kind of depends on the wine and it depends on acid and pH of certain wines and/or the VA where it stands post-primary. We don’t sulphur anything coming into the building unless it was needed like a year like 2011 where there’s a lot of mold or rot or something. Then maybe you’d have more to worry about, but most of our stuff comes in really clean. We generally hopefully get out to the vineyard and drop anything that shouldn’t be coming in. We’re not really worried about a couple of leaves here and there, it’s not a big deal. We just foot-stomp everything, let it run. It’s usually pumped down for the first half generally, then we switch the pumps over just to be more gentle on the stems. Depending on the vintage, our rooms are pretty cold so often malolactic doesn’t complete until the spring which we’re totally comfortable with. Usually things aren’t getting sold until the spring, after malo. They usually get hit once, then double checked once they go back up for bottling in the fall — or call it end of summer, usually we’re bottling at the end of July in preparation for the next harvest. Which is also twofold, 1) we want to get a lot of preserved freshness so we like to bottle young, but the other half of that is we also need those barrels back — we’re definitely restricted on space. Less time in barrel means less time to get stale, less total sulphur going into the wine because we’re not monitoring sulphur and continually adding sulphur.
MASON: Besides the sulphur, are there any other techniques you’re using to mitigate VA, are you topping a lot?
SCOTT: For sure. Jaimee and I like to top more than Pax, and that’s not one’s better than the other, I think we just have less experience so maybe we’re a little more protective. But she and I definitely tend to be in the two to three week turn, a lot of people are in the kind of month or so turn. We do a fair amount of carbonic, Pax does it a bunch on just about everything these days. For gamay we start it, we force in the carbonics for the first part and then we open it and step on it and let it sit whole cluster so it does have some time on the skins and stems so there’s some extraction. Maybe one of the techniques that’s possible different to some people is we often do use the piet d’coup where we’ll put — for the Gamay example — we’ll put it into whatever vessel it fits into whole. We’ll rotate it with a forklift or a shovel if we have to and then we’ll take something else that’s fermenting, and it’s usually something that’s in that phase where it’s about from lag to log where it’s 22 to 20 in a 19 range, that’s where we start ripping. We put a gallon or two of that into the bottom of the fermenter so that there’s something already fermenting and creating CO2 so that as that sugar gets released there’s something there to eat it. Otherwise, we had found in years past that we kind of had this long waiting game. At the beginning of this harvest we had ferments that didn’t start for almost 9 or 10 days. So, putting grapes into a vessel and then sealing it with nothing happening? That can lead to VA (Volitile Acidity), so we wanted that kickstarter so we dip something into the vessel with the grapes, throw some dry ice and CO2 in there, seal it then stick it out in the sun. As it’s releasing a little bit of sugar it’s mixing with whatever was fermenting at the bottom and it really traps a bunch of CO2 in there and it forces everything to ferment. So, depending on the weather — there’s no way to open it — you kind of have to roll the bones. Depending on the weather outside, if it’s not that hot or it is hot we kind of open it in the five to seven day range, and usually things are fermented about halfway or three quarters already in the berry. They’re kind of like boozy candies at this point, there’s a little bit of sugar but they’re mostly alcohol. The colour looks a little bit funny from that because we haven’t crushed a lot of the skins so a lot of the fruit looks almost a little it greyed. But then you step on it and it just releases the rest of the sugar and it just takes off. It has so much heat and momentum and the sugar hasn’t really been released yet so when you do it just it rips to dryness in a couple of days.
MASON: That’s cool. I met Pax a couple of days ago and I asked him a lot of these same questions. I’ve been drinking his wine and the Wind Gap ones for a long time and I love them. Then this year I tried your Syrah and was pretty blown away; and the Mondeuse from Jaimee I also thought was amazing. Is there anything unusual you’ve picked up from working with Pax or is there anything you do different with Syrah than some of the other producers that you’ve mentioned that you’ve learned from?
SCOTT: I think one of the things I’ve definitely learned from Pax that this carbonic game we’ve been playing with, he’s obviously had way more wine to make over the years than I have, so a lot of that experimentation was happening on his wines. Eventually we came to a point where we really liked the results and it’s really a trip to see when you open a tank that’s been lots of carbonic you wouldn’t think there’d be any colour, but then the juice in the bottom of the tank is so vibrant. I think technically, scientifically you shift your pH and lose a little bit of that acid forcing things into carbonics but thee colour is so vibrant. But then also working with Syrah from colder sites, it leaves us in a position when we’re picking early at the colder sites so when we say ‘Pick early’ we mean pick early by brix level, not necessarily by date. Being in a colder site we get more hang time, we just don’t balloon full of sugar. Generally that means we have a healthier pH, a lower pH to leave all the stems in because obviously with all the potassium it shifts your pH up quite a bit. With all the whole cluster if we’re still finishing up at a 3–7 pH and has all that bright, violent aromatic with all the pepper and the things we adore about Syrah — not everyone loves that but we’re headstrong and completely adore it so we keep doing it that way.
“I think most people would probably say I’m crazy but if the wine itself and the vineyard itself has that much character on its own, adding all that oak just totally diminishes it.”
MASON: That’s what I think is amazing about your Syrah. It’s what, 12.3% or 12.8% alcohol?
SCOTT: Yeah, it depends on the year.
MASON: And then there’s an intensity to them but there’s also a sort of real sense of the varietal character and the terroir character that you don’t get in a lot of new world wines. Or at least I don’t, from tasting a lot of Syrah from California sometimes they’re pretty oaked and pretty big. Some of them are really good but you don’t get that… I want to say ‘old world’ but it’s just a sense of place that you don’t normally see. It’s amazing to taste your wines because I feel like you get that when you try them. Sorry that’s not really a question, more a comment!
SCOTT: Well no that’s amazing, it’s always great to hear. 2 or 3 days ago we opened a 2017 Bedrock from Bien Nacido. Obviously we’re good buddies with those guys and I traded some wines with Cody and he was like ‘Man you have to try this Syrah, this might be one of the most ringer Syrah’s we’ve made in a while!’, so we finally opened one the other day and the wine behind it is delicious, I didn’t even look to see what the alcohol was… Oh, it’s actually 12.5, there you go! But, they’re just in a more populous style where they like a little more oak and they’re a little more gratuitous in that. But like I said the wine behind that is so delicious and has so much character that it’s definitely marred by oak. I think most people would probably say I’m crazy but the wine itself and the vineyard itself has that much character on its own, adding all that oak just totally diminishes it. Halcon Vineyard & Hawks Butte, Halcon in particular is high elevation, it’s super rocky, this really cultured soil.. We don’t have to spray much sulphur in the vineyard at all because we’re above the fog line and it’s really windy. There’s all these great things about it that brining that it in and throwing a bunch of oak on it just doesn’t make much sense. The longer that I’ve been working with Pax on this side, we’ll have all the Syrah’s down and be putting stuff up to tank in like Golden Glens or Sonoma Coast or what have you, and the three of us will be dipping into barrels and I’ll be like ‘Shit, this one’s pretty oaky. Where’s that from?’, and we’ll check the barrel to see what it is and it’s like a 2008 — it was a new barrel in 2008 and we’ve used it ever since. Being so isolated from new oak all the time it really shows up a lot, I guess we’re sensitive to it.
MASON: Speaking of amazing vineyards for Syrah, are there any other vineyards you’re looking at in the future or maybe styles of wine? Sparkling wine? Do you make a Rose?
SCOTT: Being so small — it was started just as me and it was all out of pocket. My girlfriend we live together, she’s a winemaker on another property. It would be totally unfair for me to say it’s just me because it’s totally not, especially on the back end of things. As we’ve grown, she’s watched me get busier and busier over the years and she’d say things like ‘Let’s go to the beach.’ or ‘Let’s go here.’ and I’d be like ‘Honey, I can’t. I have to be on the computer.’ So, she was like ‘You need help!’ and she just absorbed right into it. And it wouldn’t be here without her, for sure.
That being said, all of our — because we’re so small — when people call me — and it happens every year whether it’s Pax or myself — ‘Hey there’s some extra Cab Franc’ or ‘Hey there’s some Rielsing in Henderson Valley.’ Being some small and out of pocket, you can’t really just wildly jump into thins. You have to be very conscious and concise in what you’re going to take on. They year we started making Rose was ’15 where in ’15 everybody was coming up extremely short across the board and we were already taking a bunch from what we colloquially call ‘Buddah’s’ in Mendo where Hardy and Pax and Michael Cruse and everyone pulls a bit of stuff from there. And that year I was so short on fruit there was some Syrah decline, some really old vines with Syrah and it’s literally like every 4th vine is still alive. So what happens to that? ‘Well you can have it if you want, it’ll probably be a tonne, tonne and a half, it’s just so old and in bad shape and virused means it doesn’t get very ripe.’ We picked that and masked it with some Carignan and made some Rose out of it just to no be down a SKU. So that was the first year we made a Rose, kind of as a Hail Mary. And there’s all this old vine Valdiguié out there, so the last three years we were like ‘Let’s try Valdiguié for Rose.’ So, we do make one, but it wasn’t really something we went in saying ‘We need to make a Rose!’, it’s just the fruit was there, it was available and the fruit was good so we do it. But there’s so many other things — like the Gamay or the Melon or the Syrah — not to say they have more purpose or poignancy or anything… I’m not sure what my point is, we do make one it’s just another SKU in the system.
Sparkling is most certainly something I want to play with, but it’s something I want to really understand and do correctly, so I haven’t done it yet. We’ve made a few Pét-Nats from around the cellar over the years, we never quite nail the grams per litre correctly. They’re either too gassy or not gassy enough, sometimes pretty turgid and sometimes pretty reductive. It’s even things I’ve talked to Cruse about. Cruse makes sparkling wine for all kinds of people of course and he was like ‘I’ll do it for you but it’s going to cost you a bunch of money.’ and I was like ‘No… that’s just not really the way I want to do it.’ Sparkling is something I’d definitely like to do if I could afford it. When it comes to drinking, if I could just drink champagne all the time I would, I love the searing acid, I love all the soil and the mineral, that to me is like all the time. I love Syrah and all those other things too but at a dinner party you almost have to remind me that red wine exists because I like light, crispy — anything that shows true soil or whether it’s reduction and people call it true soil, that’s a confusing topic as well.
We’re working with a couple of people. It’s tough to do when you’re smaller, but now that things are becoming more financially viable there’s varieties that you’re seeing more and more. Pax and Jamie and Raj are bringing more and more stuff over. Pax I’m sure told you about the vineyard he just planted which has all kinds of cool things like Gamay, Poulsard, Trousseau and some Savagnin and Mondeuse. So more and more of that is happening. Sashi has kind of a library block of things they keep bringing back from Europe. There’s other varieties that I like a lot. We’re working on getting some Aligote cuttings from Oregon and getting some into California. The only stuff we really found here in California was really virused and you can’t really move it around — which is admittedly also true of the Melon that we take. The shelf life of that is probably not very long unfortunately. It’s amazing soils for the variety but it’s too vigorous. So 1) we can’t move it around and 2) it’s not very prolific. The family that bought that vineyard two years ago, they love having it there and they want to keep it there as long as they can, but at the same time financially it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
MASON: Well awesome man. I have a million more questions, but I have to write this stuff down so I don’t want to keep asking and have a bunch of stuff to transcribe. Thanks again for the time, this was awesome.
SCOTT: My pleasure. I’m not sure if I said this in the email but Paul’s been on me to get out there (in a good way not in a bad one). My excuse before was having two jobs that didn’t really afford me a lot of travel time because when you see Pax in Colorado and New York and LA that’s usually because I’m in the cellar and he’s not. Now that I technically don’t work for Pax anymore that also severed one income so I’m not doing a whole bunch of travelling, more just tipping away at and growing this. That being said, I think Paul’s working on getting me out there in the spring sometime.
MASON: The more wine you allocate the more we can sell. Paul does an amazing job and I’m excited to get this on the list. If you ever do come out we should definitely hang out. You should come and check out the store.
SCOTT: I think we’re working on it for the spring. The only trips of course are New York and LA are very important markets and that’s where I sell the most wine. I’m from Chicago so we’re working on maybe doing a bounce in Colorado on the way to Chicago sort of trip.
MASON: Well cool, thanks again. I’ll send you this when I send it out through the mailer.
SCOTT: Thanks man, I appreciate the support, it means a lot.
ENDS
Submitted March 26, 2019 at 07:36PM by masonba https://ift.tt/2FxG0PU
No comments:
Post a Comment