The Old Way
Vineyards have gone through several evolutions in how they are planted. At first, the vines were planted willy-nilly, at incredibly high densities, and were only (could only) be worked by hand. Then as the use of horses became common in European agriculture, the vineyards were replanted in regular rows to allow them to be worked in just the same way as this picture from the Apalta Valley demonstrates. Some, like this gentleman, still choose to work vineyards this way, even as vineyards are now planted with spacing to allow tractors between the rows. — Alder Yarrow

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One of my greatest pleasures remains my “discovery” of small new wineries, and the opportunity to watch them mature over time. Of course, three vintages isn’t exactly a lot of time to watch a winery mature, but it’s quite exciting to see the third vintage of a winery that seemed to hit it out of the ballpark with their very first release.

A couple of years ago some bottles showed up on my doorstep bearing the name Anaba in beautiful looping script. I was immediately intrigued to note that the first releases from this new Sonoma County winery were Rhone style blends — far from the typical initial foray that most new wineries make in Sonoma County. I noted at the time my surprise that they weren’t making a Pinot Noir, and received an e-mail note from the owner saying, essentially, “wait for it.”

So, a year has gone by, and what should arrive on my doorstep last month, but a package of wines from Anaba, this time, including two very nice Pinot Noirs.

Anaba Wines, named for the anabatic winds (big points with meteorology geeks) that are so crucial to the climate of Sonoma’s wine country, is a new label started by John Sweazey and his wife Kathleen in 2006. Sweazey fell in love with wine in college, and after graduating into a successful job selling IBM PCs in the early days of the industry, his first opportunity to take a sabbatical found him wandering the wine regions of France and Italy.

Sweazey continued his exploration of wine through a long career in real estate, and like many, at a certain point he began dreaming of owning a vineyard. Through all his travels to various wine regions with his wife, Sonoma county, and in particular the town of Sonoma, felt the most like home to him. So when the time was right, he struck a deal with Vic McWilliams, who had decided to unload the winery and 16 acres of vineyards known as Castle Winery in Carneros. Sweazey promptly renamed the label, started replanting, and purchased some grapes from vineyards like Sangiacomo Vineyard, Windsor Oaks, Ferguson Ranch and Bacigalupi Vineyard, to make the first wines under his new label.

For help with winemaking Sweazey turned to the young Jennifer Marion, a recent graduate of the U.C. Davis enology program, and most recently the assistant winemaker at MacCrostie Winery in Carneros as well as a technical vineyard consultant for agricultural management company Crop Care Associates. Marion, given her background in both viticulture and enology is responsible for everything that happens in the vineyard (both the estate vineyard that is being replanted and the contract vineyard sources) as well as the cellar.

Marion continues to do an excellent job with the wines, and seems to be maintaining the style she established with the winery’s first two vintages: generally lower alcohol (though this wine doesn’t exactly qualify), very little new oak, and pure fruit expression. This particular wine was fermented in small lots and aged for 17 months in French oak before bottling. The grapes came from a number of different sources throughout the Sonoma Coast appellation, spanning warmer, as well as cooler sites.

In addition to being one of the most promising new wineries in Sonoma, the Anaba seems focused on making sure it is relevant to today’s, producing wines in the $20-$35 price point, which will make them quite attractive to wine lovers in search of a treat in these tighter times. This wine in particular achieves the remarkable feat of being a Pinot Noir, being under $30, and actually being really good — something that for the past decade has been as elusive as a unicorn, but which may thankfully begin to be more common as the California wine industry adjusts to the new normal.

Full disclosure: I received this wines as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Medium ruby in the glass with a faint orange highlight, this wine smells of raspberry and red apple skin, with notes of sandalwood. In the mouth the wine offers bright raspberry and dark wet earth flavors welded to a beautiful cedar and pine bough aspect that is really charming. Faint leathery tannins emerge as the wine lingers with raspberry, apple skin, and orange peel aromas in a long finish. Impeccably balanced, with a very nice personality. 14.5% alcohol.

Food Pairing:
This is a great food wine that will go with most anything you want a nice Pinot for, but especially a nice bit of duck confit.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $25

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

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There are a few categories of wine that qualify for the designation of “I just don’t drink nearly enough of this stuff” in my house, and one of the top candidates is German Riesling. When it’s good, it’s just so damn good. It goes so well with food, and it makes you happy. What’s not to love?

Of course, to the uninitiated (and that applied to me about six years ago) it can be an intimidating landscape to navigate. The inscrutable labels, the different levels of sweetness, the unfamiliar quality designations — they all contribute to an unease for many wine lovers that I remember well. Luckily, I got over my fear and learned enough to navigate my way through the forest of umlauts and hard consonants, and have been rewarded with experiencing some of the most delicious wines on the planet.

This particular bottle is a near-perfect example of everything good that German Riesling has to offer, thanks to its legendary producer, fantastic vineyard site, and classic flavors.

The name on the label is one of the most well known in Germany’s Mosel Valley, and even the country as a whole. The Loosen family has owned and farmed vineyards on the steep riverbanks for more than two centuries. The doctor on the label is one Ernst Loosen, who assumed control of his family’s vineyard in 1988, and quite single-handedly took the estate to an entirely new level of quality in the three decades since.

Loosen had the good fortune to be working with some of the best possible raw materials on the planet. The Loosen family vineyards are some of the oldest and most distinctive vineyard plots in Germany, among which the vineyard that produced this wine, the Ürziger Würzgarten, may be the most superlative.

Translated to English, the vineyard’s name means the Spice Garden of Ürzig, Ürzig being the little village that sits below the vineyard at the water’s edge. Containing some of the oldest vines (some exceeding 120 years of age) owned by the Loosens, this vineyard is a mindbogglingly steep slope of bright red rock that sweeps up from the river’s edge in a shallow bowl. Impossible to work mechanically, and dangerous to work manually, getting fruit out of this vineyard can only be described as a labor of love. It takes somewhere between 1000 and 1500 man-hours per acre each year to maintain the vineyard, whose old vines (many of which predate the phylloxera epidemic that wiped out nearly all of Europe’s vineyards) yield precious little fruit.

The vineyard, like all of Loosen’s Mosel vineyards, is farmed organically, and painstakingly by hand. The elimination of all chemical fertilizers and pesticides was one of Loosen’s first decisions in his quest to elevate the quality of his family’s wines. Likewise, the cellar techniques have been reduced to their most fundamental, with as little mechanical or chemical intervention in the winemaking as possible.

This wine is classified as a spätlese, which literally translates to “late harvest” and which means that the grapes used to make it were picked at least seven days after the normal harvest that would have yielded a dry, kabinett level wine. Confusingly the spätlese designation does not technically guarantee anything about the level of sweetness in the bottle, only that the grapes were a little extra ripe when they were picked. In practice, however, German spätlese, in particular, tend to be lightly to moderately sweet, this wine being no exception.

Dr. Loosen is now one of the most consistent and high-quality producers in the Mosel, and this is one of my favorite wines from his portfolio (the other being the spätlese from the fabulous Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyard). I highly recommend it to anyone, from those looking to dip their toe into German Riesling, to those like me who can’t seem to find enough excuses to drink the stuff.

This 2008 vintage wine has just been released globally, and may take a little time before being more widely available.

Full disclosure: this wine was sent to me as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Near colorless in the glass, this wine smells of lychee, ripe pear, and honeysuckle flowers. In the mouth, a wonderful silky texture marries with bright mandarin orange, pear, and honeysuckle fruit flavors, a light sweetness, and a crackling mineral undertone that does, true to name, yield to a light spiciness. Fantastically balanced, this wine keeps on giving through a very long finish. Effortless to drink.

Food Pairing:
I’d love to drink this wine with any sort of Vietnamese food, like Vietnamese noodle bowl and Imperial Rolls.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $38

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

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