Thank you for being a part of our wine club. Your support is greatly appreciated.

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Bertram Joseph
6 years ago
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1 Happy holidays and a happy new year! Thank you for being a part of our wine club. Your support is greatly appreciated. Our thoughts have been with California this year. Many winegrowing regions suffered the devastating wildfires. The loss of friends and family members represents the greatest loss of all, and the damage to land, homes, juice and bottled wine shows how broad such a disaster reaches. We are saddened but grateful for the support the area has received. As the year comes to a close, we reflect on the importance of American winemaking and on our good fortune to share it. This month we are celebrating one of our favorite regions in the golden state the Sierra Foothills. East of Sacramento, the microclimate rolling around our country s only alpine lake (Tahoe) is home to several remarkable vignerons making wines of nature. We are looking at the old guard of this region (Steve Edmunds and Renaissance winery) as well as more contemporary projects founded in experimentation and progressive, continental thinking (La Clarine Farm and Clos Saron). We hope you enjoy these first American wines to be featured in the club. We are proud to include them. With appreciation, Cubby, Nathan, Catie, Mac and Katherine

2 Maps!

7 Edmunds St. John, Heart of Gold, 2016

8 Forgive that we are stealing this charming write-up from Chambers Street Wines by Jonas Mendoza it just seems to capture Steve better than I could ever: Sitting across Steve Edmunds at an winemaker dinner at Racines last summer, he lightheartedly joked that his brief stint at the United States Postal Service made him sufficiently miserable to make the professional leap to winemaking. All humor aside, as a bottle of his 1995 Syrah Durell Vineyard Sonoma Valley rounded the table, the convivial conversation soon softened to contemplative whispers. With the small group in attendance focusing their attention on the mature, twenty-year old Syrah in their glasses, Steve Edmunds didn't say much. His quiet attention communicated to everyone that the wine should speak for itself. This wasn't the first time that someone had commented that Edmunds St. John's wines speak louder than the winemaker. Until the early 1980s, Steve Edmunds worked as a buyer for various stores around the San Francisco Bay area. A former home-brewer, he longed to apply his creative side to making wine. Partly inspired by his friendship with Kermit Lynch, who began championing Rhone wine at his Berkeley retail shop and import company, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants, Steve began searching California for Rhône varietals to produce wines in the style of southern France. In 1985, Edmunds and his wife Cornelia St. John combined their names to found Edmunds St. John in a west Berkeley warehouse. Two years later, in 1987, winemaker François Peyraud from the veritable Domaine Tempier (still represented by Kermit Lynch) visited the winery and tasted their Mourvèdre. When Peyraud placed his nose in the glass, his eyes rolled into the back of his head; he sighed and whispered, La terre parle (The earth speaks). Steve is the first to acknowledge that he doesn't have a formal winemaking degree, but simply relies on two decades of experimentation and practice to guide him. As he freely admits, the wine has to find its "own voice" - a precise expression of the vineyard and the season that produced it. Edmunds St. John produces about several wines each year, about several thousand cases total. He has no sales staff, no marketing team, no tasting room, and no vineyards to call his own; instead, he has persuaded a small and dedicated group of grape farmers over the yars to plant and manage vineyards to his specifications, from Mendocino to Paso Robles and the Sierra Foothills. The viticulture and winemaking is simple. Quality fruit from great sites and, preferably, older vines; in the cellar, fermentations with native yeasts, manual punch-downs, used oak, and maturation in used barrels and puncheons (stainless steel for for the whites and Gamay). The wines are delicious young, but are incredibly age-worthy, gaining both nuance and complexity with additional years. It is worth buying a few to drink early on, and few more to stash away for future drinking. But don't take my word for it; let Edmund St. John's wines speak for the beauty of Rhône varietals in California.

9 In addition to perfectly elegant, age-worthy reds, Steve Edmunds produces one of California's lightest, purest white wines from Vermentino and Grenache Blanc. Heart of Gold exudes fresh white florals, mineral water, and tingly orchard fruit aromas; flavors are bright and defined, graceful and deeply mineral, with gentle rays of citrus pith and crisp pear, golden apple, and yellow peach. Acidity is abundant and well-integated. Suggestions for pairing: Roasted delicata squash rings Grilled fish shrimp too Steamed pacific salmon Escarole and winter citrus salad

Germany in the music business, and had caught the wine bug

10 La Clarine Farm, Mourvedre Cedarville, 2016 Hank Beckmeyer and his French wife, Caroline Hoel, had been working in Germany in the music business, and had caught the wine bug while traveling throughout Europe. Hank was in the band Half-Japanese.

11 Influenced by the ideas of Japanese farmer-philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka and Austrian philosopher-spiritualist Rudolf Steiner, they moved to the United States and purchased a property in California s Sierra Foothills in La Clarine Farm s winemaking approach is minimalist: neither industrial yeasts, sulfur dioxide, nor new oak are used in the cellar. We hosted Caroline and Hank earlier this year at the shop. They are lovely people both soft-spoken, but vocal where they are passionate. They also have a dairy and keep goats. Their wines have converted many of our old-world-only friends. True terroir-focused folks, they make wines that show off their elevation and their rocky origins. Cedarville Vineyard is organically farmed, lies upon a south-facing exposure on decomposed granite soils, similar to those in the heartland of the Northern Rhone. With a light yet bold texture, this Mourvedre impresses with fresh black cherry fruit flavors. The Rhone connection brings to mind another favorite producer of ours, the Japanese-French Hirotake Ooka. Both of these producers show an unparalleled ability to incorporate beautiful floral aromatics in juicy, jumpy and earthy varietals. This is a taste treat. Suggestions for pairing: Mushrooms on toast Merguez Fried chicken Omelettes for dinner

12 Clos Saron

Way up in the northern reaches of the Sierra Foothills, Gideon Beinstock and his wife, Saron Rice, produce small batches of wines that are unlike anything else coming out of California.

13 Way up in the northern reaches of the Sierra Foothills, Gideon Beinstock and his wife, Saron Rice, produce small batches of wines that are unlike anything else coming out of California. Using traditional techniques and strict organic methods both in the vineyard and the cellar, they make tiny amounts of Pinot Noir from their 2.2 acre home vineyard as well as a variety of unique blends from 5.5 acres of nearby leased vineyards that they farm as well. The vineyards are densely planted, about 2500 vines per acre, and are dry farmed wherever possible; yields range from as low as 1 ton per acre and maxing out around 2. Because their area is free of phylloxera, their vines are all own-rooted and some are over 35 years old. Their vineyards are harvested in repeated passes through the vines (typically from 3 to 8 times), picking only clusters as they begin to soften, to determine perfect ripeness. The grapes are foot-stomped in open-top bins allowing the vineyards' indigenous yeasts to conduct the fermentation. For the blends, the grape varieties are all co-fermented as Gideon believes the results are better integrated. The wines are then aged on lees in 5 to 25 year old French oak barrels for as long as he feels is needed before being bottled,

14 unfined and unfiltered, with minimal use of sulfites. Production is often around 100 cases or less per wine. Over the past 35 years, Gideon has been involved in almost every aspect of the wine industry: sales, writing, purchasing, educating, and a 16 year long stint as winemaker for Renaissance. It is at Clos Saron, though, where he has tapped into something rare: wines that are challenging, surprising, and yet instantly gratifying. They happily defy description and convention without forgetting that, at its core, a wine should be a pleasure to drink. Suggestions for pairing: Duck breast with huckleberry sauce Squab with mushrooms and pears Butternut squash and sage latkes

PRIEST RANCH WINES ESTATE FARMED WINES OF UNCOMMON QUALITY AND CHARACTER

PRIEST RANCH WINES ESTATE FARMED WINES OF UNCOMMON QUALITY AND CHARACTER Priest Ranch embodies the essence of Napa Valley, from the trailblazing mindset of its establishing pioneers to today s spirit of