I was driving around Sonoma County’s Russian River wine country the other day. I do a lot of driving, and I enjoy the “down time.” It’s good thinking time. Being in the heart of one of the premier wine growing regions of the world, my mind wandered to some of the great wines I had had during the period we had the Rendezvous. There were three or four that came to mind, one of which we were fortunate to have had on our wine last.
One of the coolest things, for anyone interested in food and wine, is to discover a “great” wine. Another is finding an ethereal food and wine pairing. Sure, there are great wines all over he world, but it’s truly exciting to find them in your own backyard. It’s a bit of validation for why we live where we do.
So, here are the wines that really impressed me.
I’ll start with the “least”--a red wine blend based on syrah. While the wine was phenomenal, the winemaker was the one who left a bad taste in my mouth, so I’m not going to give complete details. He was a producer out of Redwood Valley, and we had one of his wines on our list for a while. It turned out that his wife and I graduated from the same tiny high school back east. The “bad taste” stemmed from the fact that I actually sold his wines wholesale for him, and he left me hanging for several hundred dollars in commissions. Nice job for someone who was also an attorney.
He was pouring his wines at Winesong--a local event which supports the Mendocino Coast District Hospital--our diminutive equivalent of the Napa Valley Wine Auction. At the end of the tasting, he handed me an open bottle of his syrah-based wine. This was on a Saturday afternoon. It ended up on our staff dinner table, where it sat till the following Saturday. There was no doubt in my mind this wine was going to be awful--long over the hill. I don’t even remember what staff meal was that night. I just remember the wine blew my mind. I’m sure a large part of it was my low expectations, but--no--it was good! My impression is that it was the best burger wine one could imagine, which leads me to believe that that may be what we had for dinner. Or possibly what we used to call “staff steak tidbits.” In any event, the wine made a lasting impression on me. And we’re talking a wine that probably retailed around ten dollars a bottle.
The second wine--and these aren’t in any particular order--was a riesling that hailed from Potter Valley. Apparently the distributor had some cases that got lost in his warehouse, and ended up aging there. Gabrielli was the winery. They are no longer around and, by the time the wine made it on our list, the 15 acres of riesling vines had already been pulled out also, in favor of a more profitable grape variety. This was very much more of an Old World riesling than it was New World. It was mind-blowing. Dry, with amazing fruit, minerality, and petrol. For something from Mendocino, it was an OMG wine. We had a friend from the “Old World,” a winemaker from the Russian River Valley who used to come and visit to dine with us. He was very familiar with the great rieslings of France and Germany. He called the wine a “gem.” He was blown away. It was a wine we were incredibly thrilled to have on out list. It was a wine we wanted people to experience, but were very sad when the last bottle sold.
Quite some time before we had the Rendezvous, we were fortunate to be on the mailing list for Williams & Selyem. For those of you who don’t know, they have been--and still are--the producer of arguably some of the world’s finest pinot noirs. I’m guessing that it was to W&S that my mind was wandering while driving the Russian River Valley the other day, which led me to thinking about these great Mendocino County wines. We had quite a few of Williams-Selyem’s single vineyard wines in our personal cellar, some of which we began to offer at the Rendezvous. Of course, as soon as we opened the Rendezvous, they put our restaurant on their list, too. What blew my mind was that here we had one of the top producers of pinot noir in the world--”garagistes” before the word even existed--and when we ordered wine, Ed Selyem would throw it in his pickup at the winery, make the two hour drive to our restaurant, throw it on his shoulder, and pack it in through the back door to the kitchen. It was such a personal thing.
Anyway, I remember Bert Williams having said one time that he thought their wines began to peak about six or seven years out from the vintage. In fact, my experience was that when I was opening an older wine of theirs, there would often be an off-putting volatility giving an impression that was somewhat vinegary. But, if you poured the wine into a good glass and let it sit for a half hour or so, all that blew off and a gorgeous wine would be ready to drink.
One night a couple of acquaintances came in for dinner--Steve and Jodie. Jodie I had known for years. She had worked in the tasting room of Navarro Vineyards in Anderson Valley. Her husband I didn’t know as well, but knew he did vineyard management in the Valley. In tow, they had a magnum of Williams-Selyem Ferrington Vineyard pinot noir. Now, some people consider Ferrington one of the “grand cru” vineyards of Anderson Valley. I don’t recall the vintage, but I’m pretty sure it had at least seven year’s bottle age. They were a party of four or six. Steve told me that he had opened a bottle the previous week at home, and that it wasn’t good. They didn’t drink it. He was hoping this one was better. I told him my experience with Williams-Selyem’s older wines. We opened the wine and poured it. He deemed it undrinkable, similar to the last bottle. So he ordered some wine off our list.
Well, he left the open bottle of the Ferrington Vineyard pinot, which I took home. Several days later, we drank it. It was absolutely mind-blowing. Silky. Velvety. Amazing fruit. Honestly, I’m not one who has ever been able to afford anything like a properly cellared and aged Domaine de la Romanée Conti, or any such phenomenal Burgundy. But it’s hard to imagine topping this wine. Thank you Steve! And thank you Bert and Ed.
Actually, I used to run into Jodie and Steve very occasionally in Harvest Market in town. It was quite some time after they came in for dinner, but I did get to thank him in person, and to admonish him to decant his next bottle, and give it some time to open up.
I’m thinking there may have been a fourth wine, but it escapes me now. It’ll probably come back to me on one of my next road trips. How nice it is to know that Mendocino County can produce such incredibly amazing wines. And what a treat to find them. Now...I wonder how many I have missed. Probably quite a few, especially now that so many more Anderson Valley pinot noirs are entering the “world class” category.
