NorCal Wine Blog

On Launching Ships with Bottles of Champagne: An Infographic

General Interest

Written by Fred Swan

Created on Monday, 28 January 2013 20:19

We've all seen film or photos of ships being bashed across the prow with a bottle of Champagne just before their maiden voyage. And you may have caught a few bloopers, times when the bottle bounced off the hull but didn't break. Why are ships launched with bubbly anyway? And how do you make sure the ceremony goes off with a frothy bang rather than an embarrasing thud?

Debra Dunham, mother of the late Cpl. Jason Dunham christens the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer named for her son. Photo: US Navy, August 1, 2009

Celebrity Cruises, who knows a thing or twenty about launching ships, created this fun infographic and I thought you'd enjoy it. All credit to them for creating it. All credit to those listed in the... credits for the data Celebrity Cruises interpreted. For the record, I've included the infographic here because it's cool, I've not been compensated by Celebrity Cruises in any way.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check out our comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2013 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.</p

Parallels in the California and Australian Wine Industries

General Interest

Written by Fred Swan

Created on Friday, 25 January 2013 08:00

The January 14  Wine Australia: Next Chapter trade tasting in San Francisco presented an excellent survey of noteworthy wine and several top winemakers from Australia. I was seriously looking forward to it for a month. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to have a cold that prevented me from tasting or smelling a thing.

Despite my ill-timed malady, I attended two very informative tasting seminars. Yes, even with the cold. When John Duvall is speaking about Shiraz, one listens. I can re-taste the wines another time. And other Aussie winemaking legends were on hand, such as Iain Riggs of Brokenwood, along with representatives from the new guard who bring fresh enthusiasm and challenge conventional wisdom even more than usual for Australia.

John Duvall of John Duvall Wines was
winemaker at Penfolds for 23 years.
Photo: Fred Swan, - SF, Jan. 14, 2013 

Some folks who know me only as the NorCal Wine guy were surprised to see me at the non-California tasting. Here’s why I went.

• I’m both very fond of and familiar with Aussie wines. I have visited roughly 80 wineries there and a good portion of my cellar is devoted to Australian wine, reds and whites.
• Australia has a wealth of beautiful wines, a good many of them wholly unique to their region.
• Even if your goal is to be an expert in one particular region, you have to taste broadly. Otherwise, you’ll lack context and develop a hometown palate.
• There are a lot of parallels between California’s wine business and Australia’s. It’s interesting to compare their evolution. 

Here are a few of those parallels:

Old Vines

California and Australia have some of the oldest productive vines in the world, though with different grapes and for different reasons. Some vineyards in Northern California have very sandy soils which are inhospitable to phylloxera. Perhaps more importantly, many old California vineyards were planted with St. George rootstock which is naturally phylloxera resistant. In Australia, soil type is also a factor, but geographical isolation and rigorous quarantine/import laws have been crucial.

California’s best-known old vine variety is Zinfandel. There are vineyards with productive vines dating to the 1880’s. Several old vine Petite Sirah and Carignane vineyards exist too. Planted in 1886, Lodi’s Bechtold Vineyard is probably the world’s oldest Cinsault.

Australia claims the oldest productive vines for 5 varieties: Almeria, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Riesling and Syrah. Some are own-rooted. According to Jancis Robinson, most are in the Langmeil Freedom and Orphan Bank Vineyards in the Barossa Valley. [Almeria is white-skinned grape used almost exclusively for table grapes rather than wine.]

Old vines generate complex, concentrated fruit, but in low volume. Some are also important sources of cuttings for research and propagation. Unfortunately, both countries have scrubbed numerous old vine vineyards in the past 30+ years to make way for higher-yielding vines, more commercial varieties or non-agricultural development. Maintaining the remaining old-vine vineyards is important not just to the local regions, but to the world of wine in general.

[For details on old-vine vineyards in the U.S. and worldwide, see The Historic Vineyard Society and Jancis Robinson's Old Vine Register. The latter requires a subscription.]

Other Parallels

Striking commonalities between California and Australia also revolve around stereotypes that need busting. Both areas are frequently pigeon-holed, their wines lumped into one unflattering style bucket or another. And people, even wine writers who should know better, often treat these regions as if they are small and homogeneous, without varying terrain, climate and soil types.

The Syrah (or Shiraz) Issue

Shiraz put Australian wine on the map. Still, not enough people understand how much diversity that wine offers. It’s assumed most Australian Shiraz is jammy, oaky and high-alcohol. in reality, there's a broad spectrum of styles: fresh and unoaked to long-aged in all new oak, alcohol less than 13% or over 16%, bold and fruit-forward to wines focused on mineral, black olive and garrigue. Try the vibrant 2012 BK Wines "Cult" Shiraz Adelaide Hills with savory red fruit, light tannins and just 10% new oak or the 2010 Luke Lambert Syrah Yarra Valley, a savory and herbal wine one master somm called "a dead-ringer for Cornas."

"Syrah is more expressive of terroir than Cabernet Sauvignon,"
said John Duvall during the Classic to Contemporary seminar.

In California, Syrah is not a commercial star. On one hand, California Syrah is typecast as a jammy wine without nuance, due to both underwhelming wines from well-distributed but undiscriminating producers and overblown points-seekers. On the other, huge contrasts in the character of California Syrah between good producers and regions — based on both terroir and technique — catches casual drinkers by surprise. They don’t know what the wine will taste like and feel safer with the more predictable Cabernet Sauvignon. The good news is that this has kept Syrah prices from going through the roof. It may be the best overall value in California red wines right now.

The Old World Reference Point

Often, when producers from California or Australia do a great job, they are complimented on how much their wine doesn’t taste as if it comes from California or Australia. A top Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir isn’t an exemplar of the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. It’s Burgundian! Syrah that is true to its cool climate source in California or Australia (yes, they exist) is praised for expressing Northern Rhone characteristics. Sure, Burgundy and the Rhone are well-known reference points for quality and for particular styles. But consumers will never get a grip on unique New World sites if we don’t provide the appropriate context.

Chardonnay Gets a Bad Rap

”Chardonnay from California and Australia is buttery, oaky, overly fruity and flabby.” There have been, and are in increasing numbers, Chardonnay of great sophistication from both countries. Some have no oak, more simply use it well. There are wines that grab your attention with crispness, minerality and laser-beams of citrus or green apple despite 100% malolactic fermentation and no supplemental acid. Others showcase a deft balance of perfect fruit, fine cooperage and lees contact. Both categories can age well and include wines that are easy to find and afford.

Penfolds Bin 311 Tumbarumba Chardonnay 2010 is laced with mineral and just 12% alcohol. The Margaret River region in southwestern Australia is perhaps that country's best for Chardonnay. Leeuwin Estate is the most celebrated producer there, but don't overlook Vasse Felix. I've been a fan for a decade and their Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay 2010 is a great wine that might recall Burgundy (if we hadn't just agreed not to do that).  From California, try the Antica Napa Valley Chardonnay 2011, made from Atlas Peak fruit that benefits from both copious sun and cool mountain nights. It's got depth of fruit and nuance, from 30% new French oak and sur lie aging, but plenty of food-friendly acidity.

The Fowles "Ladies Who Shoot Their Lunch" Chardonnay includes touches of Viognier and Semillon.
It's designed to be balanced dinner (or lunch) wine.
Photo: Fred Swan

Bold, Fruity and Oaky Reds

Bold, fruity and oaky isn’t an accusation thrown only at Syrah. It’s also associated with Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and numerous other varietals and blends from California and Australia. Obviously, there are plenty of the wines that do fit that mold. It doesn’t take much effort to find numerous bottles of refinement and at reasonable price points though. And while Australia is not yet well-known for it, there are some amazing things happening there with Pinot Noir. The 2012 BK Wines Skin n Bones Pinot Noir Adelaide Hills is a lovely, floral wine with an undercurrent of red fruit and mineral.

The High Alcohol Stereotype

Alcohol percentages have crept up globally, and not just in response to the taste of particular critics. Vineyards are healthier, sorting practices more rigorous, winery sanitation more scrupulous and last-minute harvests more practical. But the association of high-alcohol with the wines of California and Australia is made too broadly, often to lazily dismiss those regions in comparison to Old World wines. There are a few wines, producers and regions in both countries well-known for being lean (Ridge Monte Bello, Brokenwood of Hunter Valley). But there are so many more. You can get really good wines from Lodi at under 13% [ex. Alta Mesa Cellars Verdehlo, McCay Cellars Rosé and Uvaggio Vermentino] and from many parts of Australia as well.

Hunter Valley Semillon is well-known for being lean. The 2006 Brokenwood ILR Reserve Semillon is just 11%. Australian Riesling tends to be crisp and light in virtually every region that produces it. The 2011 Henschke Julius Eden Valley Riesling is 11.5%. Frankland Estate has four single-vineyard Rieslings ranging from 11% to 12.75%. And these are just top-of-mind examples.

Cheap, Fruity and Sweet

Some high-volume producers in Australia and California have done their regions a disservice by exporting tanker-loads of cheap, sweet wines with generic fruit flavors. Here in the U.S., a majority of wine drinkers only experience Australia’s vineyards from the mouth of critter-labeled bottles. In the UK, California’s reputation is undermined by the fact that very few of our high-quality wines reach that market. Instead our biggest representative — the top-selling wine overall in the UK — is Blossom Hill, a Diageo-label using San Benito County fruit that tells potential customers, “Life’s complicated enough, and wine needn’t be.” Conscientious producers and regional organizations in both countries are working hard now to see that a greater number of distinctive, artisanal wines find their way to important foreign markets.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check out our comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2013 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

Bill Price Buys Gap's Crown Vineyard in Sonoma Coast AVA

General Interest

Written by Fred Swan

Created on Wednesday, 23 January 2013 20:23

Bill Price, proprietor of Classic Wines, LLC and Price Family Vineyards, LLC has acquired the Gap's Crown Vineyard, along with 268 acres of contiguous land for an undisclosed sum. Gap's Crown is a highly-sought after source for Sonoma Coast AVA Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The land was purchased from Premier Pacific Vineyards, a Napa-based vineyard investment and management firm. Premier Pacific owns 18 other vineyards in California and Oregon.

The Gap's Crown Vineyard holds 106 acres of Pinot Noir (clones 115, 667 and 828) and 32 acres of Chardonnay (clones include Dijon 95 and 124) planted in 2002 and 2007 on rocky, well-drained soil with a clay loam base. It is a hilly vineyard with a northwest facing and ranges from 300 to 800 feet above sea level. It sits at the mouth of the Petaluma wind gap, directly east from the town of Rohnert Park. The vineyard is classified as Region 1 (cool climate) on the Winkler scale due to fresh evening winds that pour into the gap from the ocean less than 15 miles to the west. Warm sunny days develop rich, fruit-driven flavors while the cool nights maintain acidity and retard sugar development, allowing harvests as late as October.

Wines made from Gap's Crown Pinot Noir tend to be rich and concentrated, yet balanced and complex. Producers that have used Gap's Crown fruit in the past include Anaba, Kosta Browne Winery, MacPhail, Patz & Hall, Paul Hobbs Winery and Sojourn Cellars. Under its new ownership, Gap's Crown fruit will still be available to a variety of producers.

In addition to ownership of the Durell Vineyard and other vineyards, plus stakes in four wineries, Bill Price is chairman of both Kosta Browne Winery and Gary Farrell Winery. 37 vneyard acres will be leased from the newly formed Gap's Crown LLC to Kosta Browne Winery which will use it as the basis for a new estate-vineyard program. "It has been the backbone of our Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir program and contributed to our 2009 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir being awarded Wine Spectator's #1 Wine of the Year in 2011," says Michael Browne, founder of Kosta Browne Winery. Bill Price was unavailable for comment today.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check out our comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2013 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

Falcons are for the Birds - Of Falcons, 49ers and Vineyard Bird Abatement

General Interest

Written by Fred Swan

Created on Thursday, 17 January 2013 22:06

This weekend, the San Francisco 49ers face Atlanta for the NFC Championship. Northern Californians are normally both good-natured and nature-loving. At the moment though, we are decidedly hostile toward Falcons. We don’t like their uniforms or the way they fly across the field. We don’t want to see Matt Ryan air one out or their defense challenge our air superiority. We’ll cheer for the 49ers to ruffle, perhaps pluck, their feathers. Falcons, boo!

But, after this week, we should go back to liking falcons. And not just for their handsome profiles and breath-taking aerobatics. Trained falcons protect vineyards from grape-stealing birds.

Falconry experts Jim and Kathleen Tigan operate Tactical Avian Predators. For ten years, Jim has used his trained raptors to rid clients of troublesome starlings. The service is used by pet food manufacturers and oil companies, blueberry farmers and golf courses, car builders and even the city of San Francisco.

The customer closest to the Tigan’s heart is Hahn Family Wines in the Santa Lucia Highlands. After nearly a decade working with them, Jim Tigan says it feels like family. The feeling is mutual. “I think the world of Jim Tigan and his falcons," Bill Leigon, president of Hahn Family Wines, told me.

Jim Tigan releases a falcon at Hahn Family Vineyards.
Photo: Tactical Avian Predators

During the most crucial part of the year — a six week or longer period beginning just before veraison — the Tigan’s essentially move their household from Reno, Nevada to the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA vineyard. “We pack up the trailer, the dogs and the cats and work the thousand-acre vineyard seven days a week, sun up to sundown,” Kathleen tells me. The Tigans keep in close touch with Hahn director of vineyard operations Andy Mitchell. He tells them when and where there will be green drops or other harvest activities and where the grapes are becoming ripe. The Tigans target falcons on those areas to ensure there are no easy meals.

Starlings will rapidly devastate a vineyard. They are very intelligent and social birds, traveling in massive flocks. Starling scouts in squadrons of ten to forty birds go in all directions looking for those feeding grounds with the sweetest grapes. The scouts report back, then tens of thousands of shiny black fruit-eaters descend into the best vineyard. A single starling can eat a full bunch of grapes in just five minutes. When a starling gets full, almost spitefully, he’ll start peeling grapes and plucking out the crunchy, nutty seeds. If one bird can ravage a cluster in minutes, what will thousands of birds do to a vineyard’s yield?

Starlings aren’t the only birds that plunder vineyards. Finches and linnets are becoming an issue. They are still much less problematic though and are also protected species, so dealings with them need to be especially gentle.

Falcons hunt small birds by nature, zooming in and striking like an air-to-air missile. But the highly-trained falcons almost never injure or eat the enemy. They clear the skies through intimidation. Super-fast and maneuverable, they dive at a flock then bank and rise only to dive again. The starlings, not aware that these falcons don’t have murderous intent, head for a safer buffet. After several days of nerve-wracking fly-bys, the grape-burglars stop coming back. The falcons have established a no-fly zone.

There’s more to pest control falconry than wearing a cool leather gauntlet and watching your birds do their thing. The hours are long and physical. Jim starts at the crack of dawn with three birds and a dog. While his falcons circle, Jim and dog constantly walk the rows, looking for birds in the canopy and flushing them out. Eventually, it gets too hot for falcons, dog and falconer. They head back to the trailer until late afternoon when it’s cooler. Then, both Jim and Kathleen go out. They’ll take two dogs and six birds. Eventually, Jim heads in, leaving Kathleen and her team to take the late shift, working until dark.

Peregrine Falcon. Photo: Ltshears

Jim Tigan uses four types of falcons to handle the various sizes of pests and different terrains. They also vary in their tolerance to heat. Peregrine falcons are astoundingly fast and can weigh up to three pounds. Saker falcons are a desert species renowned for their heat tolerance. Their size is, on average, similar to that of the largest Peregrines. Barbary Falcons, in the Peregrine family, are medium-sized with a very broad range of tolerated temperatures. They are fast but also highly maneuverable. They like high-altitude flying and love a good chase. Whereas the Peregrine and Barbary like to dive from great heights, the Lanner Falcon prefers low-altitude, horizontal pursuits.

The Grolier Encyclopedia tells us that Peregrine Falcons are the fastest living things on earth. In a dive, they can exceed 200 miles per hour.

Of course, most growers use other means to deal with thieving birds. Some cover vines with netting. Others tie shiny mylar strips to them. “Bird cannons” can be fired off periodically, frightening birds away with booming sound. In non-food businesses, such as oil fields, poison is sometimes used. Scarecrows don’t cut it. Strips and nets are practical and cost-effective in a small vineyard but become massively labor intensive and costly over large acreage. And you never know how much mylar is enough.

One year, driving back and forth to the vineyard each day, Jim saw a small boutique vineyard become an attraction to starlings. He’d honk his horn and try to scare them off, but had to get on with his own work. In the end, birds devastated that crop. “The next year when I came back to SLH,” Jim recalls, “there was at least one mylar strip on every single vine. The vineyard was so reflective, air traffic controllers might have had to re-route planes.”

Tactical Avian Predators’ fee works out to around 60 cents-per-acre for each day of work in big vineyards. Due to fixed costs of the business, price-per-acre would much higher for a small plot. “While a bit more expensive than netting or bird cannons, the use of falcons in the vineyard maintains our commitment to the environment and our commitment to a more humane treatment of the starlings. We see Tactical Avian Predators as an integral partner in our Sustainability program.” Bill Leigon explains. “Not only is bird netting a petroleum product, it can trap birds by the neck when they try to eat the grapes. A bird trapped in the netting can easily break its neck.” Tactical Avian Predators is a certified-green wildlife control company and Hahn Family Winery is SIP-certified.

Jim Tigan’s interest in falcons started during what he calls his “senior year of 4th grade,” (made necessary by dyslexia). He discovered My Side of the Mountain a book in which a teenage boy runs away to the Catskills, lives in the wilderness and, after reading up on falconry, captures and trains a peregrine. Jim captured his first falcon while in high school. After graduation, Tigan spent 13 years in the Coast Guard. While with the Coast Guard, he founded the Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center in Sitka, Alaska. When an injury forced his retirement from the service, falconry became his primary focus. Falcons became his business when Pedigree Dog Food asked him to see if his birds could get starlings out of the factory.

Starling-abatement at big vineyards is all-consuming, but it’s seasonal. Companies like Tactical Avian Predators look to work for a variety of businesses with different seasons. For example, Pacific Northwest blueberry farms and Lodi grape growers would likely see peak starling activity at different times than the Santa Lucia Highlands. And not every gig is starling abatement. Tactical Avian Predators also does educational demonstrations. One of their competitors works for the Seattle Seahawks, his trained falcon serving as their mascot.

A study, reported in Science, found a falcon’s visual acuity is 2.67 times better than a human’s. We should train falcons to be referees!

That brings us back to this weekend. Who will falconers Jim and Kathleen Tigan be rooting for? The 49ers! As Reno-residents with ties to wine country, they see San Francisco as the home team.

They are also hugely enthusiastic fans of 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The run or gun phenom was born in Milwaukee, but his family moved to Turlock when he was four years old. He went to college at the University of Nevada, Reno and was very popular there for both his multi-sport skills and his personality. Reno residents consider him a hometown hero.

If there had been the slightest chance of the Tigan’s pulling for Atlanta due to their falcon affinity, marketers blew that. “Their mascot isn’t even a real falcon,” Kathleen exclaims in disbelief. “They’ve got some guy walking around in a stupid stuffed-bird costume.” So, go Niners!

An embarrassment to falconers.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check out our comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2013 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.