A Hedonist in the Cellar (8 page)

I have yet to meet the young lady in question, although by her mother’s account she is a beautiful brunette, feisty and high-strung—in the best possible way, naturally—all of which seems appropriate for someone who has a Pinot Noir vineyard named after her. Seventeen-year-old Julia Jackson is the daughter of Barbara Banke and Jess Jackson, of Kendall-Jackson renown. I was fortunate enough to have dinner recently with her mother, her grandmother, and several of the men and women who make wines from the grapes of Julia’s Vineyard, one of the oldest in Santa Barbara County and part of the Cambria estate, which was purchased by her parents in 1987.

Located some fifteen miles from the ocean, Julia’s Vineyard sits on the Santa Maria Bench, which, along with the Santa Rita Hills to the south, has proved to be the coolest and choicest Pinot Noir real estate in Santa Barbara County. The bulk of the fruit from Julia’s Vineyard goes into Cambria’s Pinot Noir, making it the answer to the question “Is there such a thing as a good, nationally distributed twenty dollar Pinot?” The Jacksons also sell fruit from these prized old vines to smaller, artisanal producers, including Foxen, Silver, Hartley-Ostini (Hitching Post), and Lane Tanner. Tasting all these
wines side by side at the Jackson family’s estate just across the road from the vineyard, in the company of the winemakers, provided me with a number of lessons in winemaking,
terroir
, and wine writing, as well as a surfeit of social and sensual stimulation.

Seated to my right was hostess Barbara Banke, the guiding force behind Cambria; she reminds me much more of a first-growth Bordeaux—Château Margaux, specifically—than of a Pinot. A former lawyer who once argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Banke is regal and intellectual, but also extremely warm and approachable (unlike, say, Latour). The Cambria Julia’s Vineyard, served with a pumpkin risotto, seemed to me the most delicate and lacy of the 2002 Julia’s Pinots, an observation that I have since confirmed in a blind tasting, although I might have been influenced that night by the soft-spoken aspect and gamine appearance of wine-maker Denise Shurtleff, who kept reminding me of a thirty-something Mia Farrow. By comparing Shurtleff to her wine, I realized, I was committing the crudest form of the imitative fallacy that afflicts wine writers: the tendency to equate wine-makers with their wines.

But, hell, my dinner companion Lane Tanner made it all but impossible to resist these easy analogies between wine and winemaker. “My wine is basically the other woman,” said the earthy, outspoken forty-something Tanner, whose Web site features a picture of her lying naked in a fermentation tank. “It’s definitely not the wife.” Although I listened dutifully while Tanner explained that she picks earlier than the other Julia’s vintners—this would account for the bright tingle of
acidity—her description of her wine as “the perfect mistress, someone you’d pick up in a bar,” made a stronger impression than the technical stuff, and I know that when I drink her Pinots in the future, early picking and 23-point Brix sugar levels aren’t what I will be thinking about.

The vintners of Foxen (Bill Wathen) and Hitching Post (Gray Hartley and Frank Ostini) were unable to attend the dinner, so my tasting of their wines was untainted by personal impressions. Yet I’m almost embarrassed to say, looking back on my notes, that I found both wines more “masculine” (in the stereotypical sense of the word) and structured than the Cambria and Tanner: a strong note of bacon in the former and a very leathery bouquet to the latter. Tanner, meanwhile, explained that she once lived with Dick Doré, the coproprietor of Foxen Vineyard, who is now married to Jenny Williamson Doré, seated on my right that night, who is Foxen’s marketing director and who used to work for Cambria. And Tanner was once the winemaker for the Hitching Post, the restaurant that features so prominently in Alexander Payne’s
Sideways
, about which everyone was talking that night. Hitching Post also buys grapes from Julia’s Vineyard. Got that?

As I listened to Tanner run through the professional and amorous partnerships and breakups of the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez valleys, my head was spinning. I sympathized with Benjamin Silver, the only male winemaker at the table that night (the Hitching Post boys were in New York for the premiere of
Sideways)
, when he said that as a matter of principle he never dated anyone in the close-knit, not to say incestuous, valley wine community. The boyish thirty-three-year-old
Silver, who lives in Santa Barbara proper, was clearly something of a pet here among the pioneer winemakers of Santa Maria. His Pinot was the darkest, ripest, and most potent of the evening; whatever happens in his love life, I predict a brilliant future for him as a winemaker.

The next morning, sitting on a hilltop, looking out over the blanket of fog that was gradually receding down the Santa Ynez Valley at about the same rate as the early morning fog in my head, I reflected on the lessons of the previous night. I knew I had discovered a great Pinot Noir terroir. All the wines had impressive structure and balance and shared a certain smoky quality. But the personal signatures of the wine-makers were at least as distinctive as those of the soil and climate, which is by no means a bad thing, particularly when the winemakers have such distinctive personalities.

Anyone who has been to the movies in the last seventy years knows that the two stererotypes that represent fine-dining anxiety in America are the snotty maître d’ and the snotty sommelier (pronounced some-el-yay). Assuming you get past the maître d’, the guy with the silver ashtray around his neck is supposed to be a consumer guide, not a bully or a social arbiter. Waiters with a little bit of wine learning can be far more obnoxious than an experienced sommelier. Should you find yourself in a restaurant with an actual sommelier, chances are the wine list is serious. If you’re having trouble getting over your fear of sommeliers, here are a few tips on how to make him think you are cool:

If sommeliers have a consistent point of snobbery, it’s a slight disdain for or at least weariness with Chardonnay. Tease yours by asking about Austrian Rieslings. All sommeliers love Austrian Rieslings. Then, bring it on home. Ask him to recommend a German Riesling.

Don’t roll your eyes. Get over your Blue Nun/Black Tower prejudice. I’d urge you to try German Riesling because it’s delicious, but I fear you’ll be more impressed if I tell you it’s cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know—what’s
now
and happening. (Do you
really
think clunky square-toed
shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because that’s what fashion dictates, you slut.)

Your sommelier knows that German Riesling in its semidry form currently represents the best white wine value and that it’s the most food-friendly wine on the planet. The classic ′04 vintage affords a great opportunity to get aquainted with it.

Let’s deal with the allegedly vexing problem of sweetness. Many relatively sophisticated drinkers insist that they only like dry white wines. But the fact is that a superripe, low-acid California Chardonnay imparts more sweetness on the palate than many German Rieslings, in which the residual sugar is balanced by a bracing jolt of acidity—which reminds you, if you’ve ever had the experience, of inhaling a small electric eel. After years of going back and forth, the best German makers have learned to balance these two elements—and while superdry
(trocken)
Riesling continues to attract German winemakers playing against their own strengths, it can be mouth-puckeringly unpleasant.

Get over your fear of residual sugar. A touch of sugar is the perfect complement to most Asian cuisines, especially those dishes with hot pepper. Dry whites turn nasty and bitter in the presence of lemongrass or sweet-and-sour sauce. Given the way we eat now, German Riesling is a far more useful food wine than white Burgundy. (German sweet dessert wines are glorious—but that’s another story.)

Concentrate on the
Kabinetts, Spätlesen
, and
Auslesen
—the middle three of the seven official categories of ripeness.
Kabinetts
are light, refreshing, and low in alcohol and range from
dry to semidry—I especially like those from the Mosel region.
Spätlese
grapes are picked later; the wines have more body and richness and are often slightly sweeter. Finally, the even riper, richer
Auslesen
can also be drunk with your more robust starters or even your main course. Sweetness varies in these two categories, generally in inverse relation to the alcoholic strength listed on the label. A
Spätlese
with 8 percent alcohol will have more residual sugar than one of 11 percent. But don’t worry too much about it. Explore.

One of the reasons wine professionals love Riesling is that no grape (other than Pinot Noir) seems to have a greater ability to communicate the differences between individual vineyard sites. (The French call this
terroir.)
Riesling is the carrier not just of its own grapey DNA but the signature of the soil, subsoil, and even bedrock in which it was raised. Germany’s major wine regions present huge variations in geology, providing endless sources of study and tasting debate among well-lubricated professionals. But anyone with taste buds can easily detect, in various combinations, such fruit flavors as lemon, lime, green apple, grapefruit, apricot, and even pineapple in the glass—the latter flavors more likely in the later-harvest
Spätlese
and
Auslese.
But what makes German (as well as Austrian and Alsatian) Riesling profound, like great Chablis, are the permutations of minerality. All have a vibrating, zingy acidity that focuses the other flavors in the wine as well as in your food.

Kabinetts
are excellent aperitifs.
Spätlesen
and
Auslesen
go well with a tremendous variety of food: most Asian food, white fish, pork, chicken, and almost anything in a cream-based
sauce or cooked with fruit. (The Germans even drink them with beef.)

Nowhere except in Burgundy is the name on the bottle so important. The simplest way to be safe is to look at the back of the bottle for the names of importers Terry Thiese and Rudi Wiest. On the West Coast, Old Vine Imports represents some great growers. Some of my favorites include Christoffel, Schlossgut Diel, Donhoff, Gunderloch, Dr. Loosen, Fritz Haag, Lingenfelder, Müller-Catoir, Selbach-Oster, J. J. Prüm, von Simmern, von Shleinitz, and Robert Weil. Or just ask your sommelier. He’ll perk up, as you will when you take that first electric-shock sip.

One of the distinguishing characteristics that set wine professionals apart from the drinking public is a fondness for the Rieslings of Alsace, Germany, and Austria. At tribal gatherings the pros frequently bemoan the resistance of the punters to anything that comes in a tall, thin bottle. “Whenever I notice someone ordering Riesling, I find that I end up talking to him,” says John Slover, a sommelier at Cru, chef Shea Gallante’s foodie and wine-geek mecca in Greenwich Village. When I dined there with British wine critic Jancis Robinson, I challenged her to pick a heroic white from a wine list that looks longer and thicker than my last novel; she eventually opted for an F. X. Pichler Riesling from Austria’s Wachau district. For the past few years, Austrian Rieslings have been the hottest insider’s secret in the wine game.

In the preceding chapter I declaimed the glories of German Riesling, but I have found that even those who remain resistant, and sugarphobic, almost always warm to the unique charms of the Austrian juice. Austrian Riesling is generally much drier and more full-bodied than its German counterpart, reflecting warmer weather, while slightly more racy and minerally than the Alsatian stuff. Another way to put it: Austrian Rieslings have great bone structure, but they also have
flesh on their bones. The best examples have the precision and mystery of an early Charles Simic poem.
Purity and precision
are two words that recur in tasting notes. Think of a samurai sword. Then imagine it simultaneously slicing a lime and a peach. Anyway, I did the other day when I tasted a ′99 Hirtzberger.

One prominent critic detects “stones, gravel, and underlying minerals” in a 2000 Nigl Riesling. This splendid redundancy (gravel
is
stone, dude) illustrates the signal feature of great Austrian Riesling: minerality. Tasters like Slover can parse out the traces of granite and gneiss that impart a smoky, tarry taste to a Wachau Riesling, or the limestone and loess underlying vineyards in nearby Kremstal. Any of us can detect the general note of slaty stoniness, which may remind some of drinking directly from a mountain spring.

As far as dry Riesling is concerned, there are three wine regions in eastern Austria that need concern us: the Wachau and the Kremstal, where the best vineyards rise above the Danube River, and the Kamptal, farther north along the river Kamp. Wachau is the most celebrated region for Austrian whites, with vineyards as steep and picturesque as those of Côte-Rôtie and the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. It’s home to the Big Four: F. X. Pichler, Hirtzberger, Prager, and Emmerich Knoll. Close on their heels are Alzinger, Jamek, and Rudi Pichler. Also located here is one of the world’s few great wine cooperatives, Freie Weingärtner Wachau, whose excellent wines are a relative bargain.

Wachau has its own classification system of ripeness. The lightest, lowest-alcohol wines are called
Steinfeder. Federspiel
is
riper and richer. The highest classification,
Smaragd
, named after a local emerald-green lizard, is roughly equivalent to a German
Spätlese; Smaragds
are full-bodied, rich, and powerful, and can stand up to all manner of spicy dishes and oily fishes.

The Kremstal, to the east of Wachau, also produces some brilliant wines. The soils here are more limestone and clay, as opposed to the gneiss and granite that underlie the hillside vineyards of Wachau. Nigl and Salomon are my favorite producers. The Kamptal region, best known for its Grüner Veltliners, also produces great Rieslings—especially those from Bründlmayer, Hiedler, and Hirsch. Sadly, there is no universally observed classification system that I can discern in these two regions—generally the best wines are named for single vineyards, like the great Zöbinger Heiligenstein, in Kamptal. Alcohol content is a good guide to body and power—not that you will be able to determine this from a wine list. The words
alte reben
— “old vines”—are probably a good sign. And once in a while you will see the German designations of ripeness—
Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese
, etc.—on a bottle.

The easiest system to follow is to seek out the wines of importers Vin Divino and Terry Theise, the latter a self-described Riesling “wacko” (his company motto is “We spit so you can swallow”). Most of the makers listed above also produce fine Grüner Veltliners, Austria’s unique peppery contribution to the wine world. Theise informs me that the Austrians tend to start a meal with Riesling and move on to Grüner. He believes that German Riesling is more compatible with the sweeter dishes of the “modern eclectic multiculti” restaurants. But many new-wave chefs and sommeliers declaim
the versatility of the drier Austrian product, and let’s face it, some of you will never be converted to the German team.

Austrian Riesling is a natural with the Austrian-influenced food at David Bouley’s Danube in New York; it can also get down with many spicier Latin and Asian fusion dishes. “It’s the king of wines,” says chef Jonathan Waxman, who goes so far as to recommend it with slow-cooked spring lamb. “It can go the distance from white wine food to red wine food.” The worst thing I can say about Austrian Riesling is that it doesn’t come cheap. A great bottle from F. X. Pichler can cost as much as seventy-five dollars. But you can catch the buzz with examples in the twenty-dollar range from Domäne Wachau or Salomon. The qualitative distance between the good and the great is relatively short. Impress your sommelier or your wine merchant by calling out for a Wachau or a Kamptal Riesling. And prepare to impress yourself.