CWM Wine Club Second Quarter 2020
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CWM Wine Club Second Quarter 2020 The CWM Wine Club is all about discovery and we love nothing more than sharing our new favorites with you. These wines are truly exceptional, each in their own way, and are bursting with loads of personality. Each wine has its story to tell, which is also part of the fun... knowing the background of the people who make these handcrafted beauties. Since we are all staying close to home right now, this quarter’s selection is all from California producers. Stay safe and stay strong. The Drinkward Peschon 2018 Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley is a delightfully fresh, vibrant, non-grassy style of Sauvignon Blanc from the superstar team of Lisa Drinkward and Françoise Peschon (Françoise was named the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2019 Winemaker of the Year). Only 62 cases produced. The Carte Blanche 2012 Pinot Noir, Nobles Ranch Vineyard, Sonoma Coast offers a rare opportunity to experience a cool climate Pinot Noir in its sweet spot of development at 8 years of age and enjoy the added aromatic and flavor nuances that only come with bottle age. Only 250 cases produced. Dry Creek Valley is ground zero for some of the best old-vine Zinfandels in California and the Elyse 2014 Zinfandel was produced from vines dating back to 1913. It is a beautiful wine balancing precise berry and spice character with old-vine intensity. Only 570 cases produced. The Acoya 2017 Red Blend from Napa is a rich and flavorful blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 16% Syrah and 4% Malbec. It is our pick for the best value Cabernet blend on the market. Only 995 cases produced. The Westwood 2014 Estate Reserve Syrah from the Annadel Gap Vineyard in the cool northern tip of Sonoma Valley is a compelling, complex expression of a cool climate Syrah that has dark, powerful fruit, rich spiciness, violets and a velvety texture. Only 100 cases produced. We are extremely excited to offer the ultra-high caliber Freedom Estate 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. Exceedingly complex and penetrating, it offers layers of dark dusty berries, hints of leather, roasted herbs, dark chocolate and caramelized vanilla. Outstanding! Only 325 cases produced. To reorder any of these wines, please contact Greg O’Flynn at 415-567-0646 2113 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94123 or e-mail [email protected] California Wine Merchant Wine Club Q2 2020 Drinkward Peschon 2018 Sauvignon Blanc ‘Allais Vineyard’ – Napa Valley Françoise Peschon, one half of the Drinkward Peschon brand, grew up in the Los Altos Hills south of San Francisco. Her parents had come to California from their native Luxembourg when her father won a Fulbright fellowship to Stanford. In true European fashion, wine was a part of the family’s table at both lunch and dinner. When Françoise enrolled at UC Davis, she already knew she wanted to become a winemaker. The idea of working outside and experiencing the seasons - and tasting wine, of course - attracted her. Luckily, she had one very useful connection: her uncle worked for the palace in Luxembourg and helped her land a job with Château Haut-Brion, which is jointly owned by Prince Robert of Luxembourg and the Dillon family and long considered one of Bordeaux’s finest wineries. The Dillon family also owns the Carte Blanche brand, featured with their Pinot Noir in this Quarter’s wine club. She spent her first year out of college in Bordeaux at Chateau Haut-Brion, an enviable entry on any young winemaker’s resumé. After returning to California, Françoise worked for Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars for six years. She then went to Rombauer, discovered she was pregnant and would need a job with more flexibility. Winemaker Tony Soter, who was using custom- crush space at Rombauer at the time, suggested that Françoise meet with Bart and Daphne Araujo. They had recently bought the Eisele Vineyard, a historic property in Calistoga that had fallen into disrepair after producing some of Napa’s greatest wines in the 1970s from Ridge, Joseph Phelps and Conn Creek. They wanted to revive it, but there wasn’t yet enough work to bring on a full-time winemaker. The part-time offer had obvious appeal for the new mother, and Françoise joined in 1993. The Araujo Estate wines were one of the great success stories of the 1990s, considered among the so- called ‘cult Cabernets’, an elite group of expensive & exclusive wineries that all came to prominence in the same moment. Araujo was always the odd one out, strikingly different from peers like Colgin, Harlan, and Screaming Eagle. The wines were savory, restrained in their weight and power rather than overblown. In 2013, the owners of Bordeaux’s Château Latour bought Araujo Estate. The Araujos then launched a new winery, Accendo, and brought Françoise along, where she still consults to this day. For her terroir-driven work with Araujo & Accendo and notable others, including Vine Hill Ranch, Françoise was named Winemaker of the Year by the SF Chronicle in 2019. Additionally, twenty years ago, Françoise started the ‘Entre Deux Mères’ project with Lisa Drinkward. (Lisa and her husband, Les Behrens, own the Behrens Family winery where these wines are also made.) The name, translated to ‘between two mothers’, is a play on ‘Entre Deux Mers’, (‘between two seas’) which is an appellation d’origine controlée region in Bordeaux for white wines based on the Sauvignon Blanc grape. Counterintuitively, Françoise & Lisa were making exclusively Cabernet Sauvignon for years. Fast-forward to 2017, when they met Morrow Elias, a geologist-turned- farmer who owned a vineyard in Rutherford behind Cakebread Cellars. The vineyard was originally planted to Sauvignon Blanc, but Morrow grafted the majority over to Cabernet Sauvignon back in the 1980s. Not all of the vines took to the graft, so there are now approximately a hundred Sauvignon Blanc vines from the original plantings still mixed in. Those vines are marked with orange string - Françoise compares harvest to an Easter-egg hunt. Lisa and Françoise picked the grapes themselves for their inaugural vintage, producing only 60 cases in 2017. Using similar methods of hand-harvesting and basket-pressing the grapes for the 2018 vintage, Françoise & Lisa produced a mere 62 cases. With Morrow nearing the age of ninety, however, this vintage of Drinkward-Peschon will be the last produced as the vineyard will no longer be farmed. A watercolor of Morrow is depicted on the label – sitting on his tractor in his vineyard (with a can of Tecate). CWM is honored to present this limited, last-of-the-vintage Sauvignon Blanc to its Club members this quarter! Tasting notes: This extremely limited Sauvignon Blanc reveals citrusy aromatics of grapefruit peel and sweet Meyer lemon. There is an intriguing hint of toasted almonds and burnt matchstick. The finish lingers, with a pleasing concentration of fruit and minerality. Only 62 cases produced! 100% Sauvignon Blanc Aged in French oak (new and neutral) Alcohol 13% California Wine Merchant Wine Club Q2 2020 Carte Blanche 2012 Pinot Noir ‘Nobles Ranch Vineyard’ – Sonoma Coast Nicholas Allen, owner of the Carte Blanche label, has a rich, wine-soaked family legacy. His great- grandfather, Clarence Dillon, found success on Wall Street and subsequently bought one of the pre-eminent properties in Bordeaux: Château Haut-Brion. This Château dates back to the 1855 Classification, when Emperor Napoleon III requested a classification system for France's best Bordeaux wines that were to be on display for visitors to the Paris Exposition. Haut-Brion is classified as one of only five ‘first-growths’, called Premier Grand Crus Classé, in the entirety of Bordeaux. The family wine company is now called Domaine Clarence Dillon, and encompasses Château La Mission Haut-Brion (purchased in 1983) and the Clarendelle estate in addition to Haut-Brion. In 2010, Domaine Clarence Dillon and the family became founding sponsors of La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, the largest museum celebrating global wine culture in the world. In October 2018, the Domaine was invited to join Primum Familiae Vini, an international association of twelve of the world's finest wine-producing families that also includes Italy’s Antinori family, in which wine production goes back to 1385. With so much exposure to his family’s tradition of wine, Nicholas decided to create his own label in 2007. Devoted to the notion of terroir, he came to California with a desire to work with a ‘clean slate’ to forge a unique, world-class wine in Napa Valley, hence the name Carte Blanche. It represents his commitment to crafting limited-production luxury wines inspired by the classical French winemaking tradition. Nicolas did want to keep some familiar aspects to his new label, and therefore hired French winemaker Luc Morlet for the Carte Blanche project. Luc was born in Epernay, France to a fifth-generation winegrower family, and grew up learning about the practical and technical aspects of winemaking at his family’s Champagne estate. After leaving Château Dauzac in Bordeaux in 1996 for Napa Valley, Luc succeeded John Kongsgaard as the winemaker at Newton and then worked at the prestigious Peter Michael winery in Knights Valley. In addition to his work at Carte Blanche, Luc has been making wine for Staglin and, since 2006, his own label, Morlet Family Vineyards. Together, Nicholas and Luc selected specific vineyard sites to create wines of precision and balance, garnering much acclaim for their joint releases. One of those sites is Nobles Ranch Vineyard located on the Sonoma Coast midway between Jenner to the south and Sea Ranch to the north. It sits high on a rocky coastal range, taking in much of what the Pacific Ocean and sun have to offer.