2010 Bedrock Heirloom Wine
Sonoma Valley

The viticultural gods smiled on Bedrock Vineyard in 2010.  While the fierce heat did cause damage to some of the younger vines, the 1888 plantings withstood the withering meteorological assault like the champs they are.  I sourced the Zinfandel and mixed-blacks from three separate blocks- each coming into the winery in the 24.5 brix range.  I picked the Carignane and Mourvedre separately, and for this year, all of the old-vine Syrah-- though picked out vinified separately-- has been added to the final blend.  The final wine is roughly 55% Zinfandel, 25% Carignane, 11% Mourvedre, and 9% Syrah and the numerous other “mixed-blacks” found in the vineyard.  As usual, the wine is dominated by the orange-oil, spice, and perfume of the vineyard.  In the range of power, this wine occupies a middle ground between the elegant 2009 and powerful 2008.  Though delicious now I think this wine will drink best a few years down the road. 400 cases made.

Wine Spectator
Briary and rather rough around the edges, with black cherry and brown baking spice aromas and zesty, ripe blackberry cobbler, tar and roasted sage and anise flavors that finish with rustic tannins. Zinfandel, Carignane, Mourvèdre and Syrah. Best from 2013 through 2017. 500 cases made. 90 points.

• Varietal Field Blend
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 480 cases

2010 Pagani Ranch Heirloom Wine
Sonoma Valley

The first vintage for Bedrock working with this great, highly-diverse, vineyard planted in the 1880’s. Though also in Sonoma Valley, Pagani Ranch is in the northern section of the AVA where the nights are colder and the days are warmer. The result is a shift downward in fruit tone. Rather than the bright, spicy, red fruits that tend to dominate Bedrock and Monte Rosso, Pagani features dark berries, and darker, almost exotic, spicing. Given its coolness Pagani was also the most effected by the August 23-25th heat. Amazingly, Dino Amantite and his family did a remarkably selective pick that yielded less than .5 tons per acre. The field-blend of Zinfandel, Alicante Bouschet, Grand Noir de la Calmette, Petite Sirah, and Lenoir was native yeasts fermented and put down to 40% new French oak from Ermitage and Rousseau. I love this wine, though it is the bruiser of the 2010 Heirloom Wines. Dark, black, and aromatically effusive, this is not a shrinking-violet at 15+ percent alcohol. However, it has remarkable depth, spice, and vibrant acid that balances the fruit. 7 barrels made.

• Varietal Field Blend
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 175 cases

2010 Compagni Portis Heirloom White
Sonoma Valley

In 2009 I took this vineyard not really knowing what to expect.  Yes, I had tried the excellent wines made by my friend Will Bucklin, and  yes, I was besmirched (as I often am by plants from California’s viticultural antiquity) by the nearly 60-year-old, dry-farmed, vines of varieties of many different hues and shades:  However, I was not expecting to fall in love.  For me, the odd combination of field-blended whites yields a wine that offers a glimpse at the white wines of yore in California.  Rose, lychee, and spice come from the Gewurtzraminer, while brightness and enough backbone are given by the Trousseau Gris, Riesling, Berger, Green Hungarian, and whatever else is out there.  For me it has exactly what I am looking for when it comes to an heirloom wine—it is a sporadic, seemingly random, assemblage of varieties that can only be found together here in California’s oldest vineyards and makes a wine more indicative of place than variety, spacing, farming, or anything else.   That said, farming is important, and this winter I decided, as many men do when their emotions get in the way of their better senses, to lavish the vineyard with some viticultural bling.  Decades of minimal farming (and who can farm when getting $1200 a ton!) had rendered a vineyard full of blackberries and poison oak, dead vine limbs fraught with eutypa and bot canker, missing vine positions, and limited vigor.  This winter vineyard manager Phil Coturri, the Compagni Portis family, and I, started a rejuvenation project.  Gone are the blackberries and poison oak stealing the vines water and causing pricks and rashes.  A pyre of the fungus ridden vine arms slowly killing the plants was set ablaze.  In their stead are a set of new wires, a full conversion to cane pruning to increase the number of spur positions and potential clusters (I love concentrated fruit but .9 tons per acre is simply economically unsustainable), and in the fall the first set of cover crops will be put down to add nutrients back to soil and increase friability and tilth.  What does this mean?  It means that Bedrock dropped some serious coin, but that we have taken the first step in making sure the vineyard will be around for another sixty years.  I say this as preamble to the raise in price from $20 to $24 dollars per bottle for the wine so you will know that I am not simply trying to line my pockets—in reality, selling all six barrels of the wine at this new price will only pay for half of the improvements.  Rather, I am hoping you will be willing to join me in preserving this one-of-a-kind vineyard from a bygone age.  As for the winemaking, this is a vineyard where I believe simplicity is key.  The wine was whole-cluster pressed and then fermented in stainless-steel and neutral oak barrels with native yeasts.  The richness of fruit and spice in 2010 prompted me to halt malolactic conversion to retain brightness to leaven the opulence of the fruit.  I am unquestionably pleased with the results.  Six barrels produced.

Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, May/June '11
Bright yellow. Pungent aromas of grapefruit zest, beeswax, candied ginger and bee pollen. Fresh, light and stony, with taut, dry flavors of citrus pith, pear and candied flowers. There's a waxy quality here that reminds me of Savennieres. Shows impressive energy on the long, chewy finish, which echoes the waxy note. This is a field blend of more than a dozen varieties, many of them virtually extinct, but it's primarily gewurztraminer and trousseau gris. 91 points

• Varietal White Field Blend
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 140 cases

2010 Monte Rosso Zinfandel
Sonoma Valley

I have been going to Monte Rosso Vineyard since I was a twelve years old kid.  It was 1993 when my father started receiving fruit from the storied Martini vineyard and I still remember his excitement and awe.  The soils are crimson red, the slopes are steep, and the vines twist upwards from the earth like Medusa’s serpentine follicles.  For nine years Ravenswood made one of the best examples of Zinfandel from the vineyard—a testament both to my father’s skill as a winemaker (mountain Zinfandel comes with its own set of challenges), and to the block from which he received fruit.  Alas, in 2002, following the sale of Ravenswood to Constellation and the sale of Martini to the Gallo family, Ravenswood stopped receiving fruit from the vineyard.  In 2007, when I started Bedrock, one of my first calls was to inquire about fruit.  Though the Gallo family generously was able to provide me with the ancient Semillon that makes up the backbone of Cuvee Caritas starting in 2008, it was not until last year that I was told they might have some old-vine Zinfandel available.  Now, Monte Rosso is a mammoth vineyard—truly a jaw-dropping Gargantua when you consider it was put in on the rocky side of a mountain in the 1880’s with only dynamite and hand-labor—so I had no idea what fruit I would be receiving.  As fine fortune would have it, I was taken to my father’s old block—its beautiful, steep, westerly, aspect and knarled skyward vines looking virtually the same to my 29-year-old eyes as they had 16 years earlier.  The 2010 is the best Zinfandel I have ever made.  Yes, it is rich and ripe, bearing 15%+ alcohol, but it also carries those things that I love most about Monte Rosso—the mountain spice, the almost claret-like texture, the vibrant red fruits. If you are a tannin maven like me you will like this wine young, but as the many wines I have had from Martini from the 60’s and 70’s show, Monte Rosso Zinfandel has an uncanny knack for aging elegantly for many decades.  300 cases made.

Wine Spectator
A knockout Zinfandel, bold and ripe, yet complex, with a distinctive sense of place. Aromas of flowers and brambly wild berry lead to rich, layered flavors of blackberry, toasty vanilla and espresso. Balanced by lively acidity and big but ripe tannins. Drink now through 2017. 300 cases made. 94 Points –TF

• Varietal Zinfandel
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 350 cases

2010 Sonoma Valley Old-Vine Zinfandel
Sonoma Valley

Despite the difficulty of the harvest for Zinfandel, I feel that the 2010 version of this wine is actually better than the 2009.  Why?  Because though Stellwagen and Puccini Vineyard, which were slated to be vineyard designates were quite good (to be honest even my father is wondering why I am not vineyard designating Stellwagen), I am just not 100% pleased with the wines.  As a result, I am turning the Sonoma Valley Old-Vine bottling into a “super-cuvee” of sorts.  The backbone of the wine comes from the 1890’s planting of Zinfandel at Stellwagen, with nearly equal parts of fruit from the 1930’s plantings at Scatena Vineyard (actually a crazy field blend of Zinfandel and the obscure Aubun and Abouriou) and younger vines from steep and rocky terraces of Los Chamizal Vineyard.  Add to this a couple dollops of fruit from Kenwood’s Rossi Ranch and a barrel and a half of wine from the 1905 plantings at Puccini Vineyard along with 13% old-vine Mourvedre from Bedrock Vineyard and you have the blend.  The wine saw about 18% new French oak from Rousseau, Ermitage, and Orion.  As many of you already know, I prefer Zinfandels that are classically structured—that are not shy on tannin and leavening acidity.  Though it was impossible to avoid 15% alcohol given the heat-wave in 2010, the fruit got there from being picked sub-24.5 brix and soaking up, rather than being picked at 29 and watered back (a FAR too common practice these days) which makes a major difference in fruit tone (fresh rather than jammy, bright rather than mute).  In short, I hope my Zinfandel’s are close to my fathers from the early and mid-90’s.  I love Sonoma Valley Zinfandel for its spice, its ageworthiness, and its lyricism—if Russian River Valley is Miles Davis’s Blue period, Dry Creek his Bebop, Sonoma Valley is his Sketches of Spain.  This should provide much drinking pleasure over the next 5-7 years. 650 cases made.

• Varietal Zinfandel
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 600 cases

2010 Papa's All Blacks
Sonoma Valley

It is very exciting to feature the first blend put together by my father and me. The idea is to make a wine that will last for decades from those varieties first grown in California. The wine is composed of Zinfandel from the ancient Stellwagen and Monte Rosso Vineyards, along with Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouschet from my family’s Bedrock Vineyard. After native-yeast fermentation the wine was put down to 50% new French oak. This is a massively endowed wine, full of fruit and tannin with still prominent oak. I, personally, would stash this one in the back of the cellar and check it out in 4-5 years when the intricacies of its personality can be better seen.

Wine Spectator
A powerhouse and altogether distinctive, with deep aromas of briary blueberry and smoky tar that lead to layered, appealingly rustic huckleberry, sage and white pepper flavors wrapped in muscular tannins. Zinfandel, Alicante Bouschet and Petite Sirah. Best from 2013 through 2017. 92 cases made. 93 points

• Varietal Field-Blend
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 90 cases

2010 Ode to Lulu Rose
Sonoma Valley

Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, Jun 11
(made from century-old vines and harvested at a very low 20.9 degrees Brix): Pale orange. Nervy and precise on the nose and in the mouth, offering pure red berry and blood orange flavors and notes of bitter cherry and herbs. A very dry, grown-up style of pink wine with impressive depth and energy. Finishes with firm grip and spicy cut, leaving gentle floral and anise notes behind. This wine was fermented with all whole clusters.
91 points

• Varietal Mourvedre
• Appellation Sonoma Valley
• Production 240 cases

2010 Kick Ranch Sauvignon Blanc
Sonoma County

Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, May/June '11
Greenish yellow. Bright, pure aromas of apple, lime pith, quince and herbs. Supple and suave, with lovely inner-mouth perfume and depth to its ripe flavors of lime, fig and peach. Acts like a cross between a Loire sauvignon blanc and a white Bordeaux, with the former's energy and the latter's power. The long finish shows subtle sweetness and excellent clarity. This was fermented in acacia wood barrels, according to Morgan. 91 points

• Varietal Sauvignon Blanc
• Appellation Sonoma County
• Production 170 cases

2010 Brosseau Vineyard Chardonnay
Chalone

When it comes to vineyard stats Brosseau Vineyard has the equivalent of centerfold numbers. The 30-year-old, original Wente-clone, Chardonnay is both own-rooted and dry-farmed. As if this is not enough, the vineyard is located at 1600’ on the limestone and decomposed granite soils of Chalone. The result of all of these factors is that the fruit is expressive and delicious at almost freakishly low sugar levels. In 2010 the fruit came into the winery at 20.6 brix! The fruit was gently whole-cluster pressed and then fermented using native yeasts in 25% new French oak. In order to retain focus and purity malolactic conversion was partially blocked. This is mineral-laced Chardonnay that will do well at the table.

• Varietal Chardonnay
• Appellation Chalone
• Production 92 cases

2010 Cuvee Karatas
Sonoma County

This is the third iteration of this, the “flagship” white wine at Bedrock. As usual it is a blend of the 120-year-old Semillon growing high above Sonoma Valley at Monte Rosso Vineyard and Sauvignon Blanc from Kick Ranch. Both lots are barrel-fermented in mildly-toasted Bordeaux barrels, of which 85% were new. The rich, fig and tobacco-laced Semillon is put through malolactic, while the aromatic, stone-fruit rich, Sauvignon Blanc from the rocky hillside of Kick Ranch is not to lend brightness and cut. The 2010 is a hypothetical crossing of the very rich 2008 and the bright 2009. I anticipate that this wine will improve over the next decade.

• Varietal Semillon-Sauvignon
• Appellation Sonoma County
• Production 225 cases

2010 Sonoma Coast Syrah
Sonoma Coast

The cool 2010 vintage has led to the most aromatically enticing and delicate Sonoma Coast Syrah to date. The wine’s backbone is from Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, which came into the winery late in October at 23.4 brix. The remainder of the wine is composed of Griffin’s Lair Syrah, a trace of Old Lakeville, and a smidge of Hudson for depth. All of the lots saw some percentage of whole-cluster, and I would merit a guess that the wine is roughly 33% whole-cluster with 20% new oak. Aromatically effusive, the wine smells of violets and cracked pepper. Currently, the wine is still tight and demands a good decanting prior to consumption.

• Varietal Syrah
• Appellation Sonoma Coast
• Production 300 cases

2010 Kick Ranch Syrah
Sonoma County

As usual this is the most forward and immediately alluring of the Syrah’s.  Vinified with 5% Viognier and no stems, it is a forward, anise and violet, laced Syrah that is as aromatically compelling as it is delicious.  Composed of two clones (470 and 383) from Dick Keenan’s superbly farmed ranch I find this wine to be one of the more soul-satisfying Syrah’s I make even if it is not the most ageworthy or dense.  6 barrels made.

The Wine Advocate

• Varietal Syrah
• Appellation Sonoma County
• Production 140 cases

2010 Griffin's Lair Syrah
Sonoma Coast

• Varietal Syrah
• Appellation Sonoma Coast
• Production 125 cases

2010 Hudson Vineyard T'n'S Blocks
Napa Carneros

Starting in 2010 I will be splitting the Hudson Syrahs into two bottlings based on the two distinctly different parts of Hudson Ranch.  The Hudson T’n’S is composed of two beautiful blocks of Syrah (and a dash of Viognier) from the south ranch.  T, planted in 1993 for my good friend and partner in Abrente, Michael Havens, is composed primarily of Syrah Noir clone.  S, planted more recently, is Alban-selection.  In 2010 I cofermented the two blocks together after picking at 24.1 brix (as usual I was the first to pick out of the vineyard which seems to be becoming a theme).  For structure and spice I included 40% whole-clusters, which were foot trod and added to the bottom of the open-top fermenter.  Fermentation, as always, was done with native yeasts.  The wine was transferred to a variety of new demi-muids (600 liter barrels) and older French.  The wine stayed on lees until racking for bottling in December of 2011.  As with most of my Syrah’s this is an ageworthy wine, that is going to need some time to unwind and come into itself.

The Wine Advocate

• Varietal Syrah
• Appellation Napa Carneros
• Production 175 cases

2010 Hudson Vineyard: Pleine de Chene
Napa Carneros

The last year for “pleine de chene” as this will just become Hudson Vineyard North moving forward.  The reason?  To be honest I just do not enjoy the 2008 and 2009 Pleine’s all that much- and though they were great as an academic experiment I want to love the wines I make.  As such, even though this is called “Pleine de Chene” it only received 60% new French oak rather than the normal 100% new.  The north part of Hudson Ranch is off of Henry Road and is shielded from some of the bay influence by the last ridge of the Mayacamas range.  As such, the nights here are colder and the days a little warmer.  The result is a wine that is more primary, savage, meaty, and rich than the more floral and violet-laced T’n’S.

The Wine Advocate

• Varietal Syrah
• Appellation Napa Carneros

2010 Bedrock Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
Sonoma Valley

• Varietal Cabernet Sauvignon
• Appellation Sonoma Valley