Organic Wine and Food Matching

Anne-Claude Leflaive. Wine Spectator Magazine. There are many skeptics and wine geeks who do not quite see the value of some of Rudolph Steiner’s original formulas for enhancing the life of vineyard soil; such as “fermenting” cow manure in cow horns, then burying them over winter, and applying them as tea sprays in the spring (other applications are derived from ground quartz packed with rain water in cow’s horns, and flower heads of chamomile, stinging nettle, dandelion, valerian and yarrow). But if you asked longtime winemakers such as Mendocino Wine Company’s Paul Dolan, it is not a question of leaps of faith, it is the fact that these preparations do, indeed, work; reportedly, more effectively than other organic formulations, and certainly far better than synthetic fertilizers.  What is even more sobering is the fact that some of our greatest, most coveted (and expensive) wines in the world – like that of France’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Zind-Humbrecht, and Quintessa an...

  “Trying to uncover what a vineyard is trying to say,” says Steven Canter, winemaker of Quivira Vineyards in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, “is like an archeologist brushing away the sand.”  Plucked by Quivira three years ago from the celebrated Torbreck Vintners in Barossa Valley, Australia, Canter is an American who had come to Sonoma in a roundabout way: first inspired by Kermit Lynch’s earthy, terroir driven imports from France, then wandering the world looking for the vinous meaning of life while picking up jobs as a cellarer in California, Oregon, Italy and South Africa.  The Quivira estate would make a particularly interesting Rubik’s Cube for any winemaker, as it sits on the gravelly, well drained yet fertile loam that has long made Dry Creek Valley a quintessential source of California style Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and Petite Sirah.  Planted and replanted over a course of fifty years, according to Canter, “we could see what people were doing in the ‘70s, ...

It’s good to know there are still visionaries walking among us. In the late 1960s, armed with little more than the determination to grow a Pinot Noir as great as any found in France, Richard Sanford wandered up and down the coast of California before settling on a north facing slope in Santa Barbara (in what is now the Sta. Rita Hills AVA ), with the porous soil, chilling winds and cool, extended growing season that he deemed “perfect” for this fickle grape. Establishing his vineyard (originally called Sanford & Benedict) in 1970, Sanford toiled for years in virtual solitude, because it would be many more years before other vignerons would catch on and start to plant nearby. Call it luck, or call it prescience (in 1970, for one, who could predict Santa Barbara being called the Pinot Noir lover’s “Holy Land” in a multi-award winning movie?). To this day, Sanford’s original vineyard remains a quintessential American Pinot Noir: as spicy, zesty and finely textured...

Steve Beckman I could see for miles and miles at the top of the Purisima Mountain Vineyard, owned and farmed by Steve Beckman of Santa Barbara’s Beckman Vineyards . But the “truth,” according to Beckman, is not “out there,” but in the soil, the grapes, and in the resulting wine; no matter what you may think of the Biodynamic® practices they have been practicing full-on since 2006.  The Beckmans (Steve the vigneron , with his parents Tom and Judy) purchased their 365 acre mountain estate in the mid-section (unofficially called Ballard Canyon) of Santa Ynez Valley in 1996, just a couple of years after establishing their winery on a 20 acre vineyard parcel just over the hill, a couple of hairpin turns away.  Vintages from the late ‘90s, produced from grapes from neighboring properties (like the prestigious Stolpman Vineyards ) convinced the Beckmans that Syrah and Grenache – yielding ultra-deep and concentrated wines when grown in the shallow, sandy clay layered over mounds of ...

There’s a white, chalky flintiness everywhere in Montlouis, a long under-appreciated region in France located across the Loire River from the Vouvray AC ; the latter better known around the world for its soft, flowery fresh, demi-sec (“off-dry”) styles of whites made from the Chenin blanc grape. Montlouis is also planted exclusively to Chenin blanc; but because its best whites are probably its dryer ones, flinty or chalky sensations seem more pronounced in Montlouis; the understanding of which doesn’t require much of a leap after you see its whitish soils, which consist of almost no clay, but rather a predominance of silex (finely ground flint), sand and limestone. Although in actuality, it's the searing acidity of this cold climate grown white wine that mobilizes the sensory quality commonly known as "minerality." Domaine Chidaine in Montlouis. Not to say that each sip of the 2006 Francois Chidaine Montlouis Clos du Breuil (about $23) tastes like wet rocks. The terroi...

Paul Dolan. The first two things I need to tell you about the 2006 Paul Dolan Zinfandel (about $19) is that it’s produced by the former CEO/Winemaker of Fetzer Vineyards – one of California’s pioneers of organic grape growing – named, of course, Paul Dolan, and that it is indeed vinified 100% from CCOF certified organic grapes.  The second thing I need to tell you about the Paul Dolan Zinfandel is that it is not to be taken seriously . Which is not to say it isn’t a fine wine, because it is very fine indeed. But it is also a smooth, easy, fruit driven red wine – redolent of peppery spiced, sweet raspberry-veering-towards-blueberry aromas, and soft, ripe and piquant on the palate – guaranteed to lift the spirit and satisfy the soul if (and only if) enjoyed with a sense of levity rather than gravity. In fact, to put you in the mood, even before you go out and purchase said Zinfandel. The author stuffing cowhorns with manure in Mendocino County (Paul Dolan looking on). Buoyantly...

Domaine Vigneau-Chevreau in Vouvray. Vouvray is like the girl with the Scarlett Johansson sweetness, Bette Davis wit, and knockdown Grace Kelly beauty that made all the boys in high school too dumbfounded to ever ask out (except for the dumb jocks, who’d never get a yes).  Yet Vouvray is a thinking man and woman’s white wine because it takes brains to see through the flowery, intoxicatingly perfumed qualities of the Chenin Blanc (the required grape of this AOC ), and look into the wine’s soul: the effortlessly acidic spine of the fruit grown in the Loire River Valley’s cold yet maritime moderated climate, and the deep, almost poetic substrata of flavor contributed by the soil (layers of flinty stone and clayish limestone over a plateau of solid limestone – the ultimate grape growing medium).  Earlier this month I ran into one California’s more intelligent, and artistically multiplisitc, winemakers named Larry Brooks (a founder of Acacia, former GM of Chalone, and now propri...