VIEW FROM THE CELLAR By John Gilman May-June 2016 Number Sixty-Three Mount Eden Vineyards’ Utterly Brilliant Santa Cruz Mountain Wines. (pages 1-32) Recently-Tasted Right Bank Gems (2008- 1947, With Right Bank Vintage Guide). (pages 33-59) The Méo Family’s Superb Example of Clos de Vougeot. (pages 60-68) Taurasi- Today’s Answer To What Italian Region Will Replicate, In the 21 st Century, Barolo’s Buying Opportunity Of Thirty Years Ago? (pages 69-94) A Very Deep Vertical of Château Beaucastel’s Hommage de Jacques Perrin. (pages 95-100) The Bi-Annual Champagne Report- Summer 2016. (pages 101-162) Coming Attractions Round Two of Kalin Cellars- America’s Great Iconoclast Traditionalist. A Vertical Report on Domaine Dujac’s Stellar Clos de la Roche. The 2015 Vintage In Beaujolais. Checking In Again On the Underrated 1981 Bordeaux Vintage at Age Thirty-Five. Richard Olney’s Extraordinary Life In Wine. The 1986 Bordeaux Vintage Starts to Seriously Stir at Age Thirty. The Very Promising La Ragnaie Brunello di Montalcino. The Annual Loire Valley Report, More Mâconnais Wines, Ric Forman, Gérard Boulay’s Lovely Chavignol Sancerres, A Taste For Campania’s Beautiful and Ageworthy White Wines, Château La Lagune, François Cotat, The Hill of Corton, Cathy Corison, Château Ausone, More Off the Beaten-Path Italian Wines, Bruno Paillard, Old German Wines in Bottle, The 2015 Burgundy Vintage and Château Musar. View From the Cellar is published bi-monthly by John Gilman, who is solely responsible for its content. Electronic subscriptions are available for $120 per year ($220 for two years), available at www.viewfromthecellar.com. Inquiries may also be emailed to [email protected]. Copyright 2016 by John B. Gilman, all rights reserved. Content may be utilized by members of the wine trade and/or media as long as either View From the Cellar or John Gilman are fully credited. Please do not share. Mount Eden Vineyards Another Superstar From the Golden Age I have long been a fan of Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, whose wines have always had an excellent track record for long-term aging and very positive evolution in the bottle. The wines here continue to be made very much in the old school style that has made Mount Eden one of the most highly sought after wineries in all of California throughout its long history, but this is another of those superstars from the decades of the 1970s and 1980s that does not seem to get all the credit that they deserve these days, despite their unwavering commitment to outstanding, classic and cellar-worthy wines. But in spite of travelling a bit below the radar, the wines here at Mount Eden Vineyards remain utterly superb and should be on everyone’s short list of must have estates from this outstanding region of California, as Mount Eden remains one of the greatest producers in the United States today. Mount Eden is equally adroit with all three grape varieties that it has produced since its earliest days, with the chardonnays, pinot noirs and cabernet sauvignons produced here amongst the very finest examples of their respective wines in America. The winery is one of the oldest and home to some of the most historic vineyards in all of California, as this isolated Santa Cruz mountain retreat, poised two thousand feet above sea level, was first opened in Saratoga in the 1940s by one of the state’s seminal wine figures, Martin Ray, prior to its changing ownership and becoming christened as Mount Eden 1 Vineyards in 1972. Martin Ray first purchased the mountainside parcels and planted the vineyards that would become the backbone of Mount Eden all the way back in 1943, when his first chardonnay and pinot noir vines went into these mountainside slopes. Cabernet sauvignon vineyards would follow here a few years later. Martin Ray was the son of a minister and started out his career as a young man in the 1920s as a stockbroker in San Francisco. He was originally from California and spent most of his formative years in and around Saratoga, which was then home to one of California’s finest, pre- prohibition wineries, Paul Masson’s La Cresta Vineyards. Paul Masson had come to California as a young man from the Burgundy region of France in the late 1800s, and after returning to his native land to finish his college education at La Sorbonne in Paris, he had returned to California to try and forge a career as a winemaker in the hills south of San Francisco. This was in the early 1890s and the vineyards of Burgundy were still in the midst of their struggle against phylloxera. He was befriended upon his return to California by Charles LeFranc, the owner of Almaden Vineyards, who hired Paul Masson to be his winemaker. Paul Masson would also marry Monsieur LeFranc’s daughter a short time after his return, but tragedy struck not long after their marriage, when Monsieur LeFranc was killed in an accident involving a runaway horse. At a very young age, Paul Masson was forced into the position of the director of Almaden Vineyards. He continued on in this role for the remainder of the decade, but always dreamed of owning his own vineyards and winery. This would come to fruition when he purchased a ridge top in the Santa Cruz Mountains up above Saratoga in 1900, planting just over twenty-four hectares of vineyards to pinot noir and chardonnay, with the cuttings most likely hailing from the vineyards of Louis Latour back home in Paul’s native Burgundy. The first wines produced from these vineyards were released in 1905, with Monsieur Masson specializing in high quality sparkling wines from the outset at his Paul Masson Champagne Company. His success arrived briskly and his fortune seemed secure, until Prohibition derailed the budding California wine business in 1921. Monsieur Masson kept his doors open producing a bit of Champagne for medicinal purposes (and only available with a prescription through a pharmacy in those twisted days), but, as was the case with so many other contemporary wineries in the budding west coast wine industry, prohibition was a devastating blow to his business from which he never fully recovered. By the time Prohibition was lifted in 1933, Paul Masson was seventy years of age and ready to sell his eponymous Champagne company, as he had no sons whom to leave his winery to upon his retirement. One cannot overstate the changed nature of the wine business that prohibition brought about in its wake, with former bootleggers and organized crime members now heavily entrenched and quality wine far from a priority at most wineries. Martin Ray had been in and out of the cellars at La Cresta in his youth, falling in love with the winemaker’s lifestyle as epitomized by Paul Masson up on his ridge above Saratoga, and he was already quite well-versed in fine wine by the time he left the area to get his college education and start out his life in the business world. Always at the back of his mind was to be able to earn enough to build a bucolic vineyard oasis such as Paul Masson had and craft high quality wines of his very own. He found success as a young man working as a stockbroker, and eventually founded his own firm in San Francisco. However, due to health considerations brought on by a mild stroke, he was looking to change careers and sought to purchase the Paul Masson Champagne Company from his old wine mentor as the company struggled to regain its momentum in the first post- prohibition years. Monsieur Masson tried to persuade a young Martin Ray to instead purchase 2 the unplanted ridge adjacent to his La Cresta property and plant his own vineyards, but Martin was persistent and eventually purchased Monsieur Masson’s Champagne Company. One of his innovations during his tenure as owner of Paul Masson would be to release the first varietally- labeled bottles of pinot noir under the Paul Masson label. He would own the company for six years, receiving great acclaim for the superb quality of his pinot noir and chardonnay bottlings, as well as maintaining the excellence of the sparkling wine lineup already pioneered by Monsieur Masson. A tragic fire at the Paul Masson property eventually led Martin Ray to sell the Paul Masson brand, re-built winery and vineyards at La Cresta to the Seagram’s distillery and using the proceeds from the sale to purchase that very same adjacent Santa Cruz Mountain ridge suggested by Monsieur Masson back in 1933 and planting his own vines here. Not surprisingly, he began planting in the spring of 1943 with chardonnay and pinot noir cuttings from the Masson La Cresta Vineyards, so the genetic source material for his vines also probably hails originally from Louis Latour and the hill of Corton. This site would become home to the Martin Ray Winery until 1970 and eventually, today’s Mount Eden Vineyards. By all reports, Martin Ray was a man of strong opinions and a vision for the potential of California wine that was far ahead of his time. His largess at the table was legendary, with most dinners or lunches for guests ending hours and hours later, with the table stacked with empty bottles and the air still pulsating with Ray’s dissertations and diatribes about California’s wine future. This was a tradition he had learned from Paul Masson, who had hosted fabled dinners at his “château” at the winery during his own heyday in the years before prohibition.