Two Jacksons & a Pinot

Pinot Noir is one of those grapes that makes a wine people love…or not. There seems to be little common ground for the people on this particular wine. Pinot Noir grapes tend to be tiny little things with a thin skin (I’m thinking my mother); fussy about weather, dirt, and kind of prima donna-ish. Compare that with over-achiever grapes like Syrah or sturdy Cabernet, and Pinot ends up being more expensive to grow and produce and therefore to buy a bottle requires some serious cash. However, in my endless quest of all things wine I discovered two Pinots that defy price points. May I present the 2013 Vista Hills Estate Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley, Oregon and Fossil Point from California’s Edna Valley in San Luis Obispo County - just 20 bucks each.

The Vista Hills Vineyard from the Dundee Hills region is a dynamic spicy pepper number, a little earthy mineral quality, muted on the fruit and with a moderate acidity. Conversely the 2013 Fossil Point from the Edna Valley is indicative of the California Central Coast, bright and lively with more noticeable strawberry and black cherry and a solid through-line of acidity. Let me be honest, these are not mind-blowing wines. But the larger issue is that they are solid values; well crafted and worthy of your $20 if even just once precisely because they are so well made and demonstrate exactly how a wine can deliver quality, value and integrity. I sample high end wines from across the globe but most people I talk with ain’t willing to drop $80 for a bottle of wine for dinner; they want a bottle of wine that doesn’t equal a car payment. Search these baby’s out (the Vista Hills in more likely to be found in Oregon restaurants) and enjoy them, remembering that not all wines need to be expensive.

Label Me This: Going Custom on Your Next Bottle of Wine

The wine industry is always looking for new ways to market its wines. What better way to do that than with the ever popular front label, the very thing people see first? Imagine showing up to a party, a wedding, a business function, whatever, and having your own custom wine to show off? As National Public Radio reported in 2013: “We're all guilty of it. Even if we don't want to admit it, we've all been suckered into grabbing a bottle of wine off the grocery store shelf just because of what's on the label.” (see that story here: NPR) Two Central Coast wineries; Terravant in Santa Barbara, and Broken Earth in Paso Robles, are making inroads into a whole new category of wine labels.

At Broken Earth you can choose from Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet, or a Cabernet/Merlot blend on which to put your own custom label with your own text, font, photo or anything else you desire. Using a state of the art German printer you can have your picture taken and within an hour take home a bottle of wine with your mug on it. “The idea of our private label program, well, no one else is doing this,” winemaker Chris Cameron tells me. Originally designed to print touch pad screens for ATM machines, Broken Earth’s printer provides customization with massive potential from single novelty labels to custom wedding labels to golf tournaments to anything you can dream up.

Scratchpad from Terravant are newly released wines with a kind of interactive label.  Each bottle of wine comes with a charcoal pencil, which allows you to sketch directly on the label, then take a photo of their design and share it on social media outlets. The Scratchpad wines include a Central Coast Chardonnay ($13), a Central Coast Sauvignon Blanc ($11) and a Central Coast Pinot Noir ($15). “This is an interactive label that encourages consumers to post their doodlings and messages online to the Scratchpad Facebook page and on Instagram,” says Eric Guerra, Senior VP of Marketing & Sales. “The goal is to encourage consumers to express their creativity, designing their own label with unique drawings or artwork.”

An frankly, wine should be fun, and to create a custom label, either by drawing directly on the bottle or using a special photo you took, all that does is to make the enjoyment and sharing of wine that much more cool. Who knows, you might just create the next great work of art.

TERRAVANT WINE COMPANY

BROKEN EARTH WINERY 

My, My, Malibu

"The only wine I grew up with was once a year – Manischewitz,” Elliott Dolin tells me as we stand in his vineyard in, uh…Malibu. “Until I was about 36 all I knew was that there was red and white wine.” Poor fellow. Today Dolin has Chardonnay planted in the Malibu hills and the Malibu area is slowly refining their winemaking and skills. Dolin, a former studio musician whose weapon of choice was the electric bass, performed originally in The Manhattan Transfer.

Elliott and me discussing his property

He fell in with a group of friends who were wine collectors, where his education by experience took hold and at their routine gatherings they each would bring a bottle of wine to share, discuss and drink (I like this idea much better than a book club). “Any fool can go and buy the most expensive bottle,” he says, and he learned from his friends about the subtleties of wine. Elliott Dolin grew up in northern New Jersey, and his music career of necessity brought him to L.A. He started taking wine appreciation classes at UCLA, and planted his vineyard, all to Chardonnay, in 2006 on a slope below his home, as I’ve mentioned before, in Malibu. I drive this point home because, though there are actually quite a few vineyard sites in Malibu, it’s still such a novelty as to seem amusing. I tasted though a series of Malibu wines at a media function a while back and the overall quality was suspect. Nice people, but the wines were iffy. Then I stopped by Elliott Dolin’s place in January, 2014. I was gleefully surprised by what he was accomplishing. “We would like to put Malibu on the map, but we can’t plant anymore here, the land values are too great,” he tells me, therefore they need to source grapes from other areas, and Dolin has done well for himself, having secured fruit from two top Central Coast sources; Talley Vineyards in Edna Valley and Bien Nacido, Santa Barbara’s premier grower. Winemaker Kirby Anderson (formerly of Gainey Vineyards and who I learned much from before I started writing about wine) is turning out some terrific juice including a 2012 Pinot Noir Rose ($22) with mild strawberry good acids a hint of lemon curd.

But it is the Dolin Malibu Estate Vineyards 2011 Chardonnay, that is the wine to ponder over as it clearly suggests that the area can indeed turn out some fine grapes. Dijon clone 96 is the heart of this wine. Using 25% new French oak, this wine has terrific focused lemon citrus, a slight tang, and an earthy, wood quality - not oak but roasted wood – and bright acidity, all harmoniously balanced. An unforeseen delight – go get some. DOLIN ESTATE

ORIGIN: Malibu, California

PRICE: $39 - 750/ml

ALCOHOL: 14.4%

BOOZEHOUNDZ SCORE:  90 POINTS

Hey There, You with LaZarre in Your Eyes

Rosé gets a bad rap. Guys think it’s a girlie wine and girls simply gush over its pretty color. OK, knock it off, all of you! Rosé should be one of the terrific wines in your wine drinking rotation. When made correctly it has acidity, minerality and clean, light flavors. Oh wait, that means I’m talking about Adam LaZarre’s 2012 Vin Gris. This is Adam’s first ever rosé and it undoubtedly proves why I included him on my Into Wine Top 100 Most Influential U.S. Winemakers list. The guy knows how to make balanced, tasty wine. For this little jewel there's a nice little acidity perfect for food with flavors of cranberry pomegranate and to a lesser degree, strawberry. It has an almost earthy, smoky quality to it and it’s lean and clean. Adam only made 44 cases of this (damn it) and this is a rosé which will change your perception about just how good it can be. It’s all Pinot Noir and it’s a barrel aged so there’s a deftly nuanced oak note here. Buy this, drink it, then tell Adam to make more next time! LAZARRE WINES

ORIGIN: Monterey County, California

PRICE: $18 / 750/ml

ALCOHOL: 13.5%

BOOZEHOUNDZ SCORE:  90 POINTS