Jean-Francois Fauque, Winemaker

We tasted hundreds with dozens making the cut. But of all the glorious red wine bargains from the monumental 2007 vintage in the southern Rhone Valley, this was The One.

We noticed something early on, cellar hopping from Lirac to Menerbes. There was a bevy of rich wines with gorgeous primary fruit intensity, but the wines that most turned our heads had something else: great density and vitality, with an almost chewy texture. Little by little, we picked up small clues, all of which were verified by Chateauneuf oenologist Xavier Vignon in a two-hour conversation this spring. The secret to the chewiness was a healthy splash of the fabulously aromatic, low pH Mourvedre, a variety that in 2007 seamlessly melted into luscious Grenache, creating a rare and monumental form of Rhone Valley fireworks.
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Cherry Ridge Vineyard

Few of our wines have received as many glowing reviews as Dan Goldfield’s Cherry Ridge Syrah. This is that rare California Syrah that seamlessly bridges the New World and Old, marrying all the sweet, ripe, opulence of the Green Valley with the fine mineral verve of Cote Rotie and Hermitage. Maybe that’s why great young winemakers, like Tim Milos at Rubissow, can’t stop talking about Cherry Ridge.

But we’d never seen Cherry Ridge. So before leaving for Napa and Sonoma in August, we made a date for a walk on Cherry Ridge and a tasting of the 2007 release, a wine Goldfield said was nothing short of a miracle.

If you’ve managed to put your hands on previous vintages of Cherry Ridge, get ready. The 2007 is something else. 2007 was a drought year and bud break was early, but while the vintage was dry, it was temperate, allowing for tremendous hang-time. That extra time on the vine is Syrah’s best friend, allowing the big red-fruit flavors to reach sensational maturity without sacrificing balance.

Goldfield may be California’s best kept secret, but spend two hours walking the rows and you’ll never forget this winemaker with a mind that mirrors his body: incredibly fit and lively, jumping from place to place in a Joyce-like stream. A word of caution; the last place you want to be when touring vineyards in Sonoma is where we were — the back seat of Goldfield’s car.
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Harvest at Vineyard 7 and 8

It was the game changer. In 1988, we were at Christophe Roumier’s place in Chambolle Musigny when Christophe’s brother-in-law, Dominique Lafon, showed up with a bottle of 1982 Meursault Charmes. The wine was golden in color, unctuous and rich with a tight kernel of lemon confit fruit. We were skeptical. For us, the color indicated oxidation. The “Charmes” might be delicious with the overcooked poulet roti (Christophe was about 25 at the time, already en route to winemaking brilliance, but he wasn’t much of a cook!), but it would never age. Or so we thought.

Fifteen years later, dining at a restaurant with a group of chef friends, one guy showed up with an old bottle of white Burgundy. It was Lafon’s 1982 Meursault Charmes. We grimaced, certain that the bottle had seen its best days a decade before. The wine was a deeper gold. The aromas were now pure lemon-honey, but not a hint of oxidation. That’s when we first came to understand the counterintuitive nature of batonage (stirring the lees), how that cellar cuisine not only draws out honey, but actually retards oxidation.
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Thorn-Clarke, Barossa Valley

A lot of our customers ask for Australian Shiraz. So why don’t we offer more? Because we find most of these wines “over the top,” even a bit concocted, as if there’s something not quite natural going on. Of course, there are counterexamples, wines from producers like Greenock Creek, Torbreck, and David and Cheryl Clarke’s Thorn-Clarke. For the Clarkes, there’s a flagship wine called William Randell. It’s what Barossa Shiraz ought to be, but rarely is.

What’s going on elsewhere? Overcropping, exceedingly high sugars requiring excessive watering down of the wine to arrive at sensible alcohol levels, and often radical acidification to offset the overripeness. Not at Thorn-Clarke, where things are done the old fashioned way, with wines “made” in the vineyard instead of the lab.
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