Benziger Family Vineyards sits inside an eruption cauldron, part of Sonoma Mountain, in Glen Ellen.  One beautiful early fall day, they took on a group of bloggers and showed us the VIP treatment and gave us a nice education and tasting lesson behind the scenes.

Here at Benziger, the practice [...]]]>

Benziger Family Vineyards sits inside an eruption cauldron, part of Sonoma Mountain, in Glen Ellen.  One beautiful early fall day, they took on a group of bloggers and showed us the VIP treatment and gave us a nice education and tasting lesson behind the scenes.

Here at Benziger, the practice of biodynamics builds up the biological capital every year.  Building a closed ecosystem, the winery has created its own terroir through the careful management of the land, and the balance of nature and farming.  Eliminating the use of synthetic chemicals and starting more natural methods like crop rotation, composting, and natural insect and pest control changed the ecosystem.

We started our day taking a tram tour around the property, where we had several stops where Mike Benziger, Kathy Benziger, and

Next, we wandered down to the insectary, where Colby explained how the introduction of beneficial insects helps keep the farm in balance.  While in the insectary, we sipped on some 2008 Estate Sauvignon Blanc Paradiso de Maria, Sonoma Mountain while a Praying Mantis came to sit atop our bottle.  I tasted lemons, cream, grapefruit, with a whiff of petrol on the nose, as well as chalk and hay.  It had a great acidify and was lively with granny smith apple flavors.  500 cases of this wine were produces from a one acre block that was dry farmed with minimal intervention.  The wine was fermented on native yeast, which I always enjoy because I think it provides such a unique factor to every barrel.  It was fermented in 100% stainless steel barrels sur lie and was delicious!

After the gardens, we moved on to the compost pile.  Yes, the compost pile.  Unfortunately, i didnt’ have any wine with me at the time, but luckily enough, it did NOT smell like my kitchen bucket.  Mike Benziger explained to us that there are no magic tricks when making great wine.  Benziger vines havfe very deep root growth on the property, which in part is caused by a change in the irrigation strategy.  Deep roots allow for more stability int he vines.  According to Mike, biodynamics is the best fine tuning system for nature, to make the best wine.  The compost piles are actually kept separate for each block, and they are put back on the land where they came from.  This adds to the closed ecosystem and prevents any cross contamination from occurring.

Mike Benziger

Our next stop was the water treatment facility, which is a series of ponds that are aerated at the back of the property.  This is a man made wetland, which acts as a natural filter and helps to recycles and resue 2-4 million gallons (yes kids that’s a LOT of water!) annually.

Before we moved in to the cave to taste smoe with, we stopped by the crushpad to see their new sorting table. As it was in the middle of crush, we saw the line in action.  this new vibrating sorting table allows the workers to sort out the duds, so they are only having to pull out the obviosuly flawed items.  The stems and unripened berries are shaken off the table automatically.

At this point I was getting pretty thirsty so I was excited to go in to cave to meet Rodrigo Soto, the newest member of the team, and the winemaker for the Signaterra line.  He is also the force behidn the new sustainableity program called Farmign for Flavors, which Rodrigo envisions as a single philosphi[phy of growing for all Benziger growers.  This program allows a Benziger farming philosphphy to permiate all their growing family members, and produce wine of consistant quality in a sustainable way.

Inside the cave, we were met by Rodrigo, where we tasted some of the new Signaterra lineup.  Signaterra is the new flagship line from Benziger, whose mision it is to make the best wines possible from vineyards that are fully managed by Benziger.  These wines are built to reflect each property, which are farmed with different philosphies, depending on the land, but inclde organic practices, biodynamics and sustainable growing.

We started with the Signaterra Shore Farm Savignon Blanc. This RRV wine was grassy and green on the nose, witkh lemon grass.  I tasted grapefruit, grass, meyer lemon, and a touch of honeysuckle with floral notes.  It was zesty with a slight spritz of lime., gren apple and gree pear.  We also tasted the 2007 Pinot Noir, Bella Luna Vineyard.  This has  spicy plum, black cherry and Dr. Pepper on the nose, followed by black cherry, figs, bleu and black fruit and dark rich vanilla on the palate.  It was a BIG pinot and i really enjoyed it.  On the long finish, I tasetd nutmeg,and white pepper.  I have reviewed this wine previously at the all pinto event, and it’s fun to see both the similariites and differences in my impressions.

As we moved in to the beautiful special events room, we stopped to sip the Tribute, 3 Blocks and de Coelo pinots but I will need to decypher my notes to tell you about those.  My suggestion is, go see for yourself!  Kathy, Mike, Colby, Rodrigo and Jessica outdid themselves.  On this, my 2nd visit this year, and 2nd visit in over 10 years, I remain impressed and delighted by the wines.

Head up to Glen Ellen, enjoy a tour and a bottle!

Wine, tour, and lunch were provided by Benziger.  No bloggers were hurt in the writing of this article, except maybe David H’s pride by this lovely Brokeback Vineyards pose.  Cheers!

Davis Bynum has quite a history to live up to, as the first winery to produce a single vineyard pinot noir from the Russian River Valley.  Now, three decades later, the winery was sold to the Rodney Strong family of wineries, through Klein family, who has farmed here for 4 generations.

One of the things that strikes me about this winery is that the focus is on nature, and how they can best make world class wine with a minimal impact.  Additionally, the careful management of the vineyards pull out the local qualities in the grapes without homogenizing the fruit to a generic style.

The 2007 Russian River Pinot Noir is a blend of several vineyards, which gives the winemaker the ability to create the best concoction.  It was a big pinot, which is somewhat indicative of the RRV these days.  I found it bold, dark and full of black cherries and strawberry jam, followed by dusty bark, dried cherries and craisnes on the palate.  After leaving it open for a while, I started to taste rose hips, hibiscus and rhubarb with those bright berry flavors that are so yummy.  The juicy finish on this wine lasts a long time, and I found just a touch too much oak make the end a little bitter.  The very last note I tasted was a Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda, which is pretty high praise since when I was a kid and we got to go tot he Holey Bagel, it was my sweet treat in a Coke-Free household.

For $35, I feel it is just a little overpriced but still tasty.  I would also say that if you did buy this, hold on to it for another year as I think it will settle downand become amazing, and therefore well worth the price point.

This wine was a sample provided by David Bynum winery.

A Cellar Rat!  When I first met Alan Baker, aka @thecellarrat, I was in my first year of making a mess wine at Crushpad.  What I didn’t know, or rather, the connection I failed to make, is that he was the same Alan Baker who was the voice behind this crazy podcast that I had [...]]]>

A Cellar Rat!  When I first met Alan Baker, aka @thecellarrat, I was in my first year of making a mess wine at Crushpad.  What I didn’t know, or rather, the connection I failed to make, is that he was the same Alan Baker who was the voice behind this crazy podcast that I had become addicted to over at Cellarrat.org.  Mind you, this was before I was a wine blogger, before I was the “glue that holds the twitter wine universe together”, and before I was Wine Biz Radio’s #1 fan.  Ahhh the olden days.

The months past, and I would see Alan every now and then around Crushpad, like a mad scientist on a mission to create the world’s best wine for himself, and other clients at the same time.  Enter Cellar Rat wines.  I first tasted the Cellar Rat syrah at one of Crushapd’s infamous tasting events parties, where Alan was pouring a touch of pinot and a smattering of syrah.  WOW!  I was blown away by this wine.  Both the pinot and the syrah were outstanding, and somehow, I was lucky enough to get a door prize (thanks Alan!) in a bottle of syrah that I took home and squirreled away for safekeeping and later drinking.

Fast forward 3 years, and Alan is now working with Arista Winery where he can both hone his winemaking craft and work on his social media and broadcasting skills.  I somehow convinced, cajoled, and begged him to let us come up and taste his pinot noir in progress, and so a blogger’s binge was born.

On a recent cool and foggy day, we met up at the picnic grounds of Arista, off of Westside Road in Healdsburg to talk wine, blogging, and fun.  Amongst the hoards were Patrick Llenra (@oenophilus), Marcy Gordon (@marcygordon), Hardy Wallace (@dirtysouthwine ), Ashley Routson (@thebeerwench), Shana Ray (@sharayray), Paige Granback (@thesnarkhunter), Danica Sattui (@danicasattui), and of course Alan & Serena.  Cool and foggy but happy, we set out to taste the latest and greatest.

Patrick Llerna, the birthday boy!

First, we started out with a barrel sample of the 2008 Two Pisces Vineyard.  This vineyard is located just west of Petaluma, and has a wide variety of soil types, giving it a lot of diversity.  With 5 clones planted, I tasted sour cherries in this rich and spicy pinot, with bright raspberry flavors and classic Russian River Valley character, with cranberries and cinnamon.  33% new French Oak gives the wine just enough structure and spicy without going overboard.  Though I rather enjoyed this wine, Alan says he’ll definitely add some bigger fruit pinot in to the final blend, since it already seems to be falling off a  bit.  Tasty tidbit about this vineyard:  This is where our Bus 4 Cellars 2009 Sparkling Wine is coming from!  I’m excited about hte potential in this pinot, and what it means for my fledgling bubble enterprise.

The 2008 Split Rock (also known as Gap’s Crown, but they don’t like us to say that) is in the Sonoma Coast AVA, near Petaluma.  The cool growing region helps develop concentrated flavors that aren’t overripe.  Some of my favorite northern California pinots are from here, like Humanitas and Stomping Girl.  In the Cellar Rat, I found sweet cherry cola, strawberries (Shana’s favorite!), white pepper, and nutmeg.  This tasted of rich dark red fruit.  Yum!

Finally, we had the finished product in the  2006 Wentzle Vineyard Pinot from Anderson Valley.  This is the pinot I tasted at the Crushpad party, and it was even better than I remembered.  This wine was held in a combination of barrels, most notably one new barrel, one zebra barrel, and two neutral barrels, and then blended to created the finished product.  Now if you don’t know what a zebra barrel is, it’s a mad coopers experiment in fermentation where you basically deconstruct one used and one new barrel, stick it back together with every other stave being from one or the other.  You know what I mean, one new french, one used, one new one used, etc.  This is one way to accomplish x% of new oak, without actually using separate barrels and is quite effective for the small winemaker.

This finished wine was lighter in style, and true to what I would expect in the Anderson valley, with black raspberries and earthy mushroom characteristics with just a touch of Dr. Pepper.  The nice thing bout this wine is that it has the bold flavors that I’ve come to love in a California pinot, but its’ very subtle and not overpowering by some of the Syr-Pinots or Pino-syrahs I’ve had from parts south.  The Pinot 2.0 was crushed wtih about 7% whole clusters remaining, and these whole clusters were fermented with native years.  The rest of the juice was inoculated with yeast, and when blended with the whole clusters and the combination of the different oak barrels, it makes for a truly stunning pinot.

If you can bribe Alan, I HIGHLY suggest you get your hands on some of this, because it’s AMAZING and the $42 price tag is worth every penny.  I have great hopes for the future Cellar Rat (or whatever he names it) projects to come, and can’t wait to taste the barrel samples along the way.

Thank Alan for having us up and check back for my notes on the Arista Pinot-Thon soon!

Samples were provided by Alan Baker of Cellar Rat.  No actual rats were harmed in the tasting of this wine.

Early in September, my friend and fellow blogger, Chris Oggenfuss of Vintuba and also Benziger Family Winery tweeted something about a day of pinot up at the farm (winery).  Far be it for me to miss a pinot party, so off I went to Glen Ellen to visit Benziger, something I hadn’t done [...]]]>

Early in September, my friend and fellow blogger, Chris Oggenfuss of Vintuba and also Benziger Family Winery tweeted something about a day of pinot up at the farm (winery).  Far be it for me to miss a pinot party, so off I went to Glen Ellen to visit Benziger, something I hadn’t done in many year  s.I must say, in the past I had been somewhat disappointed in their winemaking efforts, being one of the stops I’d always take out of town visitors.  Sure, the tram tour was cool adn the garden was delightful, but there was something just off about the wine.  Fast forward 10 years and WOW!  I had NO idea that they were up to some awfully good tricks up on that hill past Jack London State Park!

The Spotlighton Pinot Event focused on 5 premier offerings of pinot from Benziger, paired with some simply divine cheeses.  Chris generously comped me my tasting tickets, and the staff were gracious and welcoming and poured and poured and poured!

The star of the event was Signaterra, Benziger’s new project headed by Rodrigo Soto, a Chilean import who is working wonders. Signaterra wines are the next step for Benziger’s farming philosophy (more on that in another post) and new journeys in wine from premier Sonoma-appellation vineyards.  Signaterra’s magna carta is about integrating the right resources of the Earth, the inescapable forces of Nature, and the attentiveness of Man into a distinctive wine.

2007 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir – The cool climate of the Sonoma Coast and Carneros vineyards kept sugars low and complexity high, while a long growing season stretched the harvest over three months.  The net yields were lower, with more concentrated flavors of bright juicy raspberry, dark spicy notes of cola bark and spicy earth with stewed figs.  There were also lovely flavors of deep dark cherry.  I also felt a slight spritz that needs to mellow slightly, and it looked like it was unfiltered.  I really enjoyed this wine and for $26 it has fabulous QPR and is an absolute BUY.

2007 Signaterra Giusti Ranch Pinot Noir – is from the Russian River Valley, and earned my #1 spot in this tasting.  It was rich and luxurious, with dark figs and black fruit, followed by black cherries, black raspberries and cola syrup.  The rich fruit had a back note of cinnamon, and a hint of mushroominess forest floor.  It was $49, but wroth every penny and is a STRONG BUY.

2007 San Remo Vineyard Pinot Noir – is another Russian River example.  This vineyard is in the heart of the Russian River region, and this area is known for it’s bold and elegant pinots, and the cool climate is perfect for Pinot.  The granite soils offer excellent drainage, and is currently practicing sustainable farming techniques.  The winds that sweep through the valley reduce the vigor of the vines, and keep the yield low, producing intense clusters.  This wine had a lot of bright cherry, earthy mushrooms, bright red fruit, and nutmeg, with a tinge of rhubarb and cranberries.  It was a big pinot but still delicate, and a slightly bitter finish of nutmeg.  This wine was completely different than the Sonoma Coast Pinot, and it was my 3rd place wine.  If you are feeling a splurge, go BUY this at $49.

2007 Bella luna Vineyard Pinot Noir – is a classically cool climate pinot.  It had bright raspberry fruit, a dusty layer of spice, and an earthy finish.  Bella Luna is in the redwoods, and is a cool region.  It’s on the extreme Sonoma Coast, less than 10 miles from the pacific, which keeps the acids in check adn guards against the high temperature swings inland.  This wasn’t my favorite, but you should try it for your self.

2007 De Coelo Terra Neuma Pinot Noir – more of a classically Burgundian wine, this was the last of the pinots I tasted.  It was quite a departure from the bold cherry juice of the Signaterra, and the bright raspberry spice fo the Sonoma Coast, and is Benziger’s flagship reserve wine.  The rocky soils that are spitting distance from Bodega Bay are idea for Pinot Noir, which loves the cool foggy temperatures.  in the Terra Neuma, i tasted sweet Bing cherries, a touch of rosemary, nutmeg and bright red fruit all with a subtle earthiness and mroe restrained flavors.  this wine is a splurge, but if you’re upf rot eh $69, it would be a great wine with cranberry sauce at your Thanksgiving Table.  BUY

The lesson here of course, is have an open mind – go back and visit a winery you haven’t been to in a while.  Try the wines again.  Things change, things mature.  The focus on the Benziger efforts after the sale of the Glen Ellen label, have produced outstanding results.  I can’t wait to go try some of the other wines and this will be a regular stop (avoiding the busses of course!)

Thanks again to Chris and Benziger for a fun filled Pinotlicious day!  For more on Benziger, Signaterra, and thier wines, stay tuned for The Benziger Blogger Follies!