News and Views From High Above Dry Creek Valley

I talk quite a bit about our vineyards each day, educating our customers about how we farm these benchlands on western edge of Dry Creek. One of the most interesting things going on here is block specific farming.  We have roughly 80 acres under vine and we’d be crazy if we tried to manage those acres in the same way.  So we split them up into small subsections, called blocks. A block can be just a quarter of an acre as is the case with some of our Pinot Noir, or it can be as large as 2 acres. We have 65 different ones in all and growing 15 varietals, each block has its own unique requirements.  

One thing is for sure: Benchlands have some of the most diverse soil types, sun exposures, and elevation differences of any vineyard type.  Our job is maximize the benefits of each block while minimizing any deficiancies.  The best way to get a feel for what we do is to walk the hillsides. We offer a Green Tour where we go for an extended hike through the vineyard and actually taste out at a picnic bench high above the rolling hills west of the winery.  It can be a little strenuous and you’ll certainly be glad when we get to the top and taste the 2006 La Brume Chardonnay. 

Benchland farming is about farming diverse parcels. As our vineyard ages, we are now starting to find special block and produce “block designate” wines that showcase some of that diversity and uniqueness.  As with our Deux Terres and Coteaux Sauvages, we are showcasing Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Viognier.  It’s exciting to see some of these varietals break out of the blend!

Jay Kell

I was hanging out in Venice Beach this week at the quintessential Abbot Kinney restaurant, Joe’s and drinking some of our Pinot Noir.  Here’s what we ate:

Braised Lamb Shank, White Ban & Date Puree, Red Dandelion Greens, Vanilla Herb Oil, Reduction of Braising Jus
Pan-Roasted Atlantic Salmon, Ragout of Roasted Pumpkin, Chestnut, Maitake Mushroom, Grilled Scallion, Allspice Emulsion, Ginger Gastrique

Hungry yet?

While drinking, and talking, and eating and generally enjoying the low-key elegance and ambiance I decided to make this wine my Thanksgiving star.

…yeah, yeah, pinot noir is soo yummy and fruity and light…….. Stop.

Michel-Schlumberger Pinot Noir is of the breed of Pinot that does not simply play the part of a dried cherry or strawberry. It has earthiness, body while remaining delicate, and baking spices along with of course: red fruit. What does this mean? It means it is multi-faceted and can pair with pretty much anything on your table.

My plan for Pinot friendly Thanksgiving dinner foods:

~ Rosemary brine for the turkey
~ Cranberry chutney
~ Good ol’ mashed potatoes (I used the red ones)
~ Scratch the creamy lumpy gravy and bring on the wine ‘jous’
~ Roasted mushrooms
~ Haricot verte (baby French green beans)
~ Candied lavendar (either in salad or with cheeses before dinner)

And you?  What are your plans this year?

Q:  Why did the bee sting the beekeeper?

A:  Wouldn’t you be mad, too, if somebody took your honey and nectar?

That corny (but sublime) joke was told to me many years ago by a professor in a graduate level Biology class.  It’s weird how I don’t remember actually learning much in that class but I vividly remember that bit of questionable humor.  Anyway, after I told this joke to a friend recently (it was sadly under appreciated, by the way) it occurred to me that, other than passing mentions, I haven’t blogged about our bees.  This, I think, is partly because I am still very much an amateur beekeeper with a lot to learn and partly because there is just so much immensely cool stuff to say about bees that it’s tough to find a starting point.  Since I gotta start somewhere it seems logical to start at the start with a brief history of the honeybees of Michel-Schlumberger.

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start.

It seemed easy enough, though.  In late Summer of 2007 April Lance, a friend of Jacques, offered to give us a hive of honeybees.  All we had to do was pick it up.  Jacques, who had some bee keeping experience, was busy that day and told us simply to drive the five miles down to April’s house, load the hive into the truck, and drive it back to the winery.  Brunson and I, who had zero beekeeping experience at the time, hopped into the truck, thinking such an activity would be both fun and easy.

Now a quick word on honeybees.  Though they certainly pack a mean punch with their stings, this weapon is very rarely used.  Honeybees are generally extremely passive critters.  A foraging honeybee will almost never sting, even if provoked.  Even nesting bees in the hive are shockingly mellow.  We typically tend our hives with bare hands (many keepers work in shorts and a t-shirt) and only suffer the occasional sting in the event we work too slow and wear out our welcome.  But if one upsets a hive by, oh, say, disassembling it and moving it - then the story is a bit different.

So back to our fun and easy bee run.  When we arrived at April’s she suited up head to toe and quickly began taking apart one of her many hives and moving the frames of buzzing bees to the truck bed.  It was then I learned my very first lesson in apiculture – bees don’t like that much.  Barbara Schlumberger had stopped by earlier to share in the fun and the three of us stood in t-shirts and jeans about 100 feet from April and the hives.  I guess maybe the bees realized that April was invincible in her suit and looked around for others to vent their fury.  Those others would be me & Brunson and Barbara.  First I noticed quite a few bees swarming around our heads.  A second later Brunson cried out “OUCH!” and slapped the side of his neck.  Then it was on.  Brunson and Barbara ran to nearby cars for safety.  I took the less complicated tact of sprinting about 100 yards up the road, screaming and waving my hands frantically around my head.  By the time things calmed down the three of us had suffered a total of around 12 stings and Barbara was rushed to the hospital for a severe reaction. 

But that seems like such a long time ago now.  Barbara, thankfully, recovered and went on to found the Melissa Garden dedicated to honeybee conservation.  Brunson and I finally got the hive back to the winery, where it sits today with two additional hives we created by capturing a swarm and splitting the original hive.  And our honeybees are the mellowest, friendliest, happiest bees on earth.  Just don’t try and move them. 

With that bit of history officially recorded, stay tuned for future blogs on the beyond-incredible honeybee.

Turning down Wine Creek Road this morning, I remembered an interesting conversation I had with a customer a few days back. The gentleman and his wife wanted to know if I recommended decanting the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, if I thought it would ”improve” the wine. 

The subject of decanting can quickly go down the slippery slope of wine snobism so I gave him the same adivce I always do.  Trust your own palate.  If you like to decant young wines in general, then yes, our wines taste incredible when allowed to see a bit of oxygen. See, the point of decanting a young wine, especially a cabernet or other full bodied red, is to expose the wine to O2 which helps soften both the fruit and the tannins in the wine. Growing on hillsides, we tend to have a lot of both. 

However, most folks don’t even own a decanter, which is commonly associated with drinking older wines. In this case, you are decanting primarily to remove any sediment which has naturally developed in the wine. Here’s the snob factor.  Your precious wine has been brought up from the cellar and allowed to stand neck up for three days.  You have the decanter. You have your trusty candle or flash light under the neck of the bottle. You find the “position of repose (the line of sediment formed on the bottle’s side). You tilt the wine 45 degrees away from the position of repose so wine isn’t flowing across the sediment and as you’re pouring the wine into the decanter, you are watching for the smallest amount of sediment to enter then decanter and then you know it’s time to stop pouring.  You are now 25% ready for your MS exam.  

Whenever you pour a wine into a decanter, it changes.  Young or Old, it has now entered the first step (exposure to oxygen) of turning to vinegar.  Will is evolve as it sits in the decanter? Yes.  Will it be better? Maybe yes, maybe no.  Can you use a water pitcher as a decanter or must you only use the finest Riedel one money can buy?  Although I’m sure the folks at Riedel would disagree (and truth be told I have both), I don’t think it matters and I like the sheer whimsy of serving young wine in anything from a beaker to a flower vase.  

What do you think?  Do you decant our younger wines? Do you think they improve with a little air?  And what about our older vintages? How long can say our 1993 Reserve Cabernet (15yr) or our 1998 Reserve Cabernet (10yr) last in the decanter before they head south?  I’m going to the kitchen right now to set it up out and I recommend you make tonight a decanter night, whatever its shape. Experiment. Go to your cellar and pull an older Michel Schlumberger Cabernet just for fun. Take some time and decant it. Get to know the wine over the course of an evening or even a day.

Jay Kell

Mike Brunson wants you to try a bottle of Merlot and so do I.   To help you enjoy this taste challenge, I offer up this delicious beef stew recipe.   A perfect pairing for a rainy November evening.  Let me know what you think about the Merlot, the stew and the pairing.   I loved it a little to much, but that is a story for another day.

Thank you winemaker Mike for the wine and wife Bethany for the stew recipe.  Enjoy.

Beef Stew with Michel-Schlumberger Merlot.

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil
2 lbs stew beef, cut into 1-inch pieces

6 large garlic cloves, minced

6 cups beef stock or beef broth

2 cups Michel-Schlumberger Merlot

3 tbsp tomato paste

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

5 sprigs thyme

1 1/2 Worcestershire sauce

4 bay leaves

1/4 stick butter

3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 large onion, chopped

2 cups 1/2 pieces peepled carrots

salt and pepper

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

2 tbsp Maggi sauce (Worcestershire if you can’t find)

Method

1. Marinate beef in 2 tbsp of Maggi sauce, 1 tbsp salt.  Combine ingredients into a zip lock bag and set aside while you prep.

2. Heat olive oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat.  Add beef and saute until golden brown on all sides, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and saute 1 minute.  Add tomato paste, sugar, thyme, Worcestershire and bay leaves.  Stir to combine,  cook about 3-4 minutes.  Add beef stock and wine, bring mixture to boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low, then cover and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

3. While the meat and stock is simmering, melt butter in another large pot over medium heat.  Add potatoes, onion and carrots,  Saute vegetables until golden, about 20 minutes.  Set aside until beef stew in step 2 has simmered for 1 hour.

4. Add vegetable to beef stew.  Simmer uncovered until vegetables and beef are very tender, about 40 minutes. Discard bay leaves.  Tilt pan and spoon off some fat.  Transfer to serving bowl, sprinkle with parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

5. Serve with a glass of Michel-Schlumberger Merlot, fresh bread or biscuits.  Go ahead and open another bottle of Merlot right about now.  Enjoy.

And we’d appreciate more Merlot recipes if you’d like to share!  Post yours below.

The word terroir may seem a bit pretentious to some. This may be because of it’s perceived affected “Frenchy” pronunciation or because initially the only people who talked about terroir were in the wine industry or were wine snobs showing off their substantial knowledge of all things wine related.

However, there is something to say about the terroir of each different appellation and even further, of each individual vineyard. In the past years, many different appellations have been classified in California due their unique terroir, which proves that their soil, weather, conditions, etc are different enough from their neighbors to warrant their very own growing region. While this makes it harder and harder for the general public to figure out a wine bottle-it also speaks for some of the different qualities we find in wines from these areas.

As far as I’m concerned-I don’t NEED to know about the terroir of a vineyard where the grapes were grown for the wines I drink most nights at home. But I do WANT to know.  And if I were attending a wine tasting for a certain region or country, I might want to delve a little deeper and get to know exactly what differences in ‘nature’ (think nature vs. nurture) were present for these wines before they became, well….. wines. How much does the nature vs the nurture (winemaking procedures, oaking, ageing, etc) differentiate these wines when they are the final product?

I can taste the difference in a wine that has been French Oaked vs. American oaked. I can taste the difference in high alcohol/low alcohol and sugar content. But-can I taste the difference in how the grapes were grown?
At Michel-Schlumberger we think: Yes. Terroir definitely plays a major role in our wines quality and it’s taste once in the bottle. In fact, we have quite our own little unique terroir on the estate. There are so many variations in our 100 acre vineyard sites. Some places are a little cooler or warmer, some are a higher elevation or different soil or mineral content in the soil…….. How do we choose where to grow what, and what effects are we looking for in the wine when we make these choices?

We’ll have more information on this in the next blogs…in the meantime, what are your thoughts?  Is the concept of terroir relevant or unimportant?

Chef Ralph Tingle is a good, earnest guy who could put several reams of typing paper to use whipping out a few chapters of his bio about his well-lived life-to-date: stints at Taillevent in Paris, Le Cirque in New york, Le Fetzer in Hopland, to name a few. Fortunately for Ralph, typewriters are in upstairs attics waiting to be hauled to local museums. Besides, he doesn’t have time to write – just yet - because he is too busy keeping his eye on the bistro ball he put in motion back in ’92 when he opened Bistro Ralph on the Healdsburg Plaza - and this is fortunate for us.  

When Ralph found this ideal place to hang his chef’s shingle and attempt just the right balance of hard work, innovation, relaxation, and celebrity required for a small town restaurant, we were ready to embrace his effort. We are still embracing. We all eat at Ralph’s. We all hope he is there when we go in for lunch or dinner. We all hope he gives us some time. We like Ralph because he is incredibly human, remarkably peripatetic – difficult in our little town, passionate about his kids, politics, and his food – which is also some of our favorite food: lamb burgers, chicken livers, frites, good sole or barely cooked yellow fin, and a proper chicken paillard. Plus, he still starts us off with those little seasoned bread balls that we eat like popcorn while we’re waiting for our glass of wine.  

I mention the bread balls because I have spent time at Ralph’s occasionally calculating the number of these things I have eaten in sixteen years – about 3,786 to date. I mention the wine because currently we can enjoy a glass or two of the 2005 Michel-Schlumberger Maison Rouge – the perfect Bistro wine to have when we dine at Ralph’s Bistro.          

At least in my mind it is.  Yeah, it’s been cold and rainy for the past four days (it is November, after all) but I can’t help thinking about the sunny days ahead.      It’s not that I’ve got a problem with Fall (I LOVE the rainy season) – it’s simply because I can’t help but get fired up about how the Michel-Schlumberger Estate is going to be looking greener and brighter than ever come the return of the growing season.

With this cheesy introduction out of the way I am extremely pleased to announce the completion of PHASE 1 of the new garden plantings.  Last week, friend and garden designer extrordinaire Kate Frey set out the first batch of new plants.  In two days I was able to lay out the irrigation and plant every one of the roughly 300 pollinator-friendly perennials – numerous Salvia, sunflowers, various natives and more.

The front fence of the estate is now densely planted with perennial flowers and vines, which should make for a serious wall of color next year.  Also, we tore out the ugly (and prickly) juniper shrubs along the East wall of the Cellar and planted all sorts of beautiful (and soft) flowers.  We left a bit of room for a small bench, as well, so folks will have yet another special little spot to sit in the shade and commune with Nature while sipping wine.  Finally, we planted two new circular beds in our honeybee garden.  When the bees emerge from the hives to forage after a long, cold, wet winter they are going to find a virtual buffet of nectar and pollen awaiting them.  And, a bit more selfishly, it’s probably not going to hurt next year’s honey crop.

This is just the beginning of some seriously crazy plans we have for the greening of Michel-Schlumberger.  Stay tuned for still more Phases and news and musings.  And maybe a few more rants, too.