WOW – it’s a stunningly incredibly gloriously refreshingly sunny day at Schlumberger today! That’s one reason this week’s post is gonna be short and sweet – frankly, after the many weeks of cold rain I’d much rather go wander outside and experience the Estate rather than sit here on my computer and write about it. Besides that, my camera is busted (who knew a 2 foot drop onto a carpeted floor could turn a $200 digital camera into a disposable piece of junk?).

Anyway, last week my lovely wife and I cracked open a bottle of Michel-Schlumberger 2007 cabernet franc to drown our rain-induced sorrows. Lord have mercy, what a wine! I couldn’t get over the sheer berry-ness — oodles of dark, ripe, rich blackberry framed perfectly by a touch of cocoa and spice. Serious yummy fun.

Cabernet franc grapes

An incredibly tasty Schlumberger wine is, of course, no huge surprise. What is interesting, though, is the past history of this grape in our vineyards. For years the cab franc never quite made the cut to be considered for a varietal offering. Until Brunson stepped in. So the Question o’ the Day I posed to Mike the Winemaker is this:

How did you transform the cabernet franc at Michel-Schlumberger from a lackluster blender into a stellar stand-alone superstar?

Mike Brunson, Winemaker and Fisherman

Brunson: In 2005 we stopped inoculating with cultured yeast and made a few more changes before and during fermentation (zero temp control, smaller batch fermentation, soaking longer on the front end and pulling off skins earlier on the back end) that have given us great results.

It helps that the vines are really starting to mature as well. Out in the vineyard they’ve received a bit more nutrient in the form of fish emulsion and compost than they had prior to 2004, and the effort of our Vineyarists in cover crop and canopy management have paid huge dividends as well.

So there you have it. From the mouth of the master. And I would’ve said that is was simply magic…

Tony

p.s.  I don’t mean to be a tease but this particular wine is already long gone — we only produced 280 cases and all of it was reserved as a special treat for our Wine Bench club members. The good news? There’s more cab franc and other very special offerings on the way. Stay tuned…

These days, if you were to pull up a barstool at the Boar’s Nest in Dry Creek Valley (the local’s spot for a pint or four) and eavesdrop on the general conversation, at least some of it would probably sound like this:

Local Guy: “More rain a comin’, I hear.”
Other Local Guy: “Yup. Well, we need it.”

This would be likely be followed by silence and a lot of staring out the window into the cold wet grayness outside.

Yeah, we really DO need the rain to saturate the soil and fill the creeks, rivers and reservoirs. But you gotta admit, rain gets kinda depressing after awhile.

That’s why I felt almost giddy yesterday when the rain stopped for a few hours and the sun came out and I wandered out to the garden to find that the bees had responded instantly to the break in the weather. Hundreds of honey bees were pouring in and out of our 3 Estate hives, the ones going in loaded with colorful yellow and orange pollen collected from the first blooms of the year (mostly mustard).

That, of course, leads to the question of the day – what are those bees doing with all that pollen?

Variety of multi-colored pollen cells under a very high powered microscope.

Pollen, a powdery dust-like substance, is the male germ cell produced by various flowering plants. Pollination occurs when pollen grains are transferred from the male to the female reproductive structures. This transfer can be mediated by the wind, in which case the plant is described as anemophilous (literally “wind-loving”). Anemophilous plants typically produce great quantities of very lightweight pollen grains. Entomophilous (literally “insect-loving”) plants produce pollen that is relatively heavy, sticky and protein-rich. This type of pollen is also called “bee pollen”.

Honey bee filling pollen baskets.

Honey bees collect pollen from flowers and store it in specialized “pollen baskets” attached to their hind legs. The pollen is then formed into granules containing from one hundred thousand to five million pollen spores. These granules are the principal source of protein, fat, minerals, and vitamins essential for the growth and development of larvae. Adult bees will eat pollen but can subsist solely on honey, a pure carbohydrate diet. Each honey bee colony collects more than 60 pounds of pollen per year.

But, like honey, pollen is not just for bees…

Bee pollen is often referred to as nature’s most complete food, containing at least 18 amino acids, more than a dozen vitamins, 28 minerals, 11 enzymes or co-enzymes, 14 beneficial fatty acids and 11 carbohydrates. It is also low in calories. I guess it’s no wonder that human consumption of bee pollen is praised in the Bible, other religious books, and ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts.

Numerous tiny hairs enable honey bees to capture flower pollen on their bodies as they forage.

The alleged health benefits of bee pollen is way too huge to detail in this post but includes the treatment of seasonal allergies, fatigue, constipation, prostate diseases, sore throats, acne, wounds, asthma, arthritis, eye problems, obesity and depression. And did I mention that pollen, like our Michel-Schlumberger cabernet, is also a powerful antioxidant? And check this out — The British Royal Society of Naturalists found that mice fed exclusively bee pollen had long and healthy lives through at least several generations!

Bee pollen granules.

So does this mean we should all run out and find some pollen to nibble on? Well, maybe. I reckon that even if pollen is not the miracle food many folks claim it to be then at least its consumption will directly encourage the preservation of the rapidly declining honey bees.

Pollen granules are available on-line and at most health food stores. Fortunately, you can also opt for simply taking a few spoonfuls of pollen-laden honey everyday. The trick is to make sure to get raw, unfiltered, local honey for the very best results.

Bee Healthy!

Tony

Electron microscope image of a single pollen cell. Very cool...

MS courtyard in the winter

To the common passerby, it may appear that most winegrowers do things exactly the same way as everyone else. Once you start to gain just a bit of viticultural knowledge, you start to realize that there are some differences. The more you learn, the more you realize that every farmer does things a little differently than the next. What are the driving forces behind these decisions that farmers make? It could be the site. It could be tradition. It could be economics. It could be an experimental block. It could be to encourage vigor. It could be to limit vigor. It could be to address a nutrient deficiency…the list is endless and in most cases, it’s a combination of all of the above. All I can tell you is why we do things the way we do. There is no right or wrong…just different (and in some cases toxic…see Tony’s post on Monsanto). I wanted to start the year with a little list of some of the things that we do differently and why we do them. Here goes:

1. We don’t burn our clippings- Most burn days fall on the most beautiful days of the winter. You start the day in awe and then at 9am the fires start and next thing you know, it’s hazy and gray. We keep our clippings and then chip them into our compost pile where they add much needed nutrients to the pile. It also forces us to turn our piles, which is critical to the success of the compost.
2. We don’t use herbicides- we use Olde English Southdown Baby Doll Sheep and handwork to address our weeds. In fact, in most cases we actually encourage undervine growth. The competition from the grasses reduces the vigor of vines. For example, Syrah is known to be very vigorous. Even when planted on vigor limiting rootstocks, it can go off. A little cover crop under the vine can slow things down a bit and provide vital cover and stability for our soils during the heavy downpours that we’re known to get here on the Westside of Dry Creek Valley.
3. Permanent cover crops- As stated above, it can help with vine balance and erosion control. In addition, we have permanent cover crop to ensure that the water that runs off of this ranch is clean and doesn’t dump loads of sediment into Wine Creek. We’ve worked very hard to restore our portion of Wine Creek (with help from Dept. Fish and Game, Trout Unlimited, Fish Friendly Farming and CA Conservation Corps) and have seen our efforts rewarded with increased Salmonid spottings. Permanent Cover Crops also contribute a slow release of nutrients into the soil and allow all the critters in the soil to establish a colony that will help over the long term. In much of our soils, you can’t take a shovelful of our soil without scooping out  2-5 worms…it’s loaded. That’s a good sign of healthy soil and healthy soil structure. Nice.

Why do we do these things? Because we believe that this is the best farming system for these ranches and our people. It supports balance in not only the vines, but both ranches as well. We are happy to move sheep or use a shovel or hoe, instead of driving a tractor spraying herbicides. We are happy to chip our clippings and reuse them, instead of burning them. Everyone knows burning stuff can be fun, but on a large scale, it just doesn’t make sense for us. All in all, we believe that this is the best system for our people, our ranches and ultimately our wines. Here’s to 2010!

So I was chopping chard in the kitchen last week when my lovely wife, Lorraine, blurted out, “My favorite album cover of all time!”

Although her declaration came straight out of the blue I was not taken aback – she has a very endearing way of sometimes saying seemingly nonsensical things at weird times.

“So what is it?” I asked.

“Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. My mom played it all the time. As a little girl I thought the cover was so cool – that lady all covered with whipped cream. I loved to just stare at it.”

That, I thought, was a good answer. But the question was even better. What makes a truly great album cover? In the interest of thinking of something interesting to post I decided to find out.

I quizzed six friends and associates. Obviously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I had to choose my beholders carefully. The qualifications were fairly simple – trust worthy and creative types who were both passionate about music and old enough to remember the good ol’ days of vinyl and cardboard (sorry young bucks, a CD cover is not the same as an album cover).

By the way, what does this have to do with my usual organic farming and wine rants? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

O.K. — here we go…

Jay Kell. Founder, Verge Wine Cellars. Jay was born in Arkansas and plays outstanding acoustic guitar. The boy can sing, too.

“Freewheeling Bobby Dylan – it was the first Dylan album I bought. Like nearly every human being, I was dumped and identified with the song “Don’t Think Twice”, which I must have heard originally on some classic rock station. It was only later that I found I liked nearly every other song the man’s written.”

Mike Brunson. Winemaker, Michel-Schlumberger. The only guy in the world I’m certain really, really loves all sorts of music as much as myself.

“I’m going with Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti and it’s changing windows (when you slid the sleeve out) in the apartment complex. On top of that, it’s their best recording.”

Judd Wallenbrock. General Manager, Michel-Schlumberger. Judd’s not afraid to dress up in full bee-keeper gear (veil included) and play bad Dylan covers on a cheap guitar to bemused winery visitors. How cool is that?

“I like the Abbey Road cover. Why? Because I like stories — stories behind wine, stories behind labels, stories behind people…and this cover stirred up one of the most controversial and sensational ‘stories’ of all time. Paul is not dead.”

Wendy Rossiter. Human Resources, Michel-Schlumberger. I had to get at least one woman’s perspective on this. Besides, I love the fact that Wendy is an unabashedly HUGE Pat Benatar fan.

“The Chambers Brothers. This just popped up in my head when you asked me. In fact, I can’t even remember exactly what the album cover looks like.”

Blair Poynton. Winemaker, Jed Wines (Australia). O.K., Blair is actually a bit young to really appreciate the days of vinyl but I had to get a foreign perspective on this and the guy knows music…

“Not sure exactly but it would have to be something from the Corrs - because those three sisters are bloody hot!”

Randall Filbert. Senior Consultant, Long View Associates. Old school rocker. This guy could stand up to anybody in a 70’s/80’s rock trivia contest.

“London Calling – The cover is the quintessential rock ‘n’ roll image: the frenzied electric guitarist smashing his axe before a stoned and drunk audience. It’s all presence…no past and no damn future.”

And, finally, for me?

“I like Maggot Brain by Funkadelic because I’m not sure exactly what to make of it. But, amazingly, if you listen to the title track the album cover suddenly seems to make perfect sense.”

Peace and Silliness,

Tony

p.s.  What’s yours?

Last night my lovely wife and I had a bottle of 2006 Michel-Schlumberger ‘Le Fou’ pinot noir. Wow — what an experience! Right off the bat the wine was showing luscious fruit, fine structure and acid for age-ability, and a hint of that nearly indescribable “forest floor” aroma that typically characterizes a fine Burgundy. After about 20 more minutes of swirling and sniffing, the finer complexities began to show – ripe pomegranate, red cherry and Christmas spices melding perfectly with silky smooth tannins. A half an hour later the wine had reached it’s full virtually indescribable glory. And later on when the pizza arrived (yes, we paired the pinot with a beautiful NY style pizza) we were quite happy with how the spice and fruit in the wine harmonized so well with each slice.

And now I’d like to compare last night’s wine tasting experience with a quick summary of what goes down at a wine competition. A “professional taster” sits at a table with a scorecard and a pencil. An assistant opens maybe 15 bottles of wine or more and pours the wine into a whole buncha glasses. The taster sniffs and sips and ponders for a moment and gives the wine a score or a medal (or not). That’s it. Done deal. And then the believers flock to the store to snap up the 94 point cabernet and the Gold Medal pinot.

O.K., I guess I’m being a bit snarky. But, at this point, I need to make a horrible confession. I used to be a Spectator believer. Young and naïve, I would dutifully take my monthly buying guide to the wine shop and snap up all the Best Buys and Cellar Selections I could afford (which wasn’t much, actually). But eventually I saw the light and realized what wine writer Dan Berger recently commented on – wines with subtle finesse and character don’t win medals, the monster oak and alcohol wines do. And monster wines don’t pair well with food and they don’t age well. These wines are like a bad pop song, designed to smack you in the face with immediate gratification but little else. Sure you may be tapping your toe the first time you hear “Achy Breaky Heart” but after two or three more listens you realize that you’ve been had.

These days I look at wine tasting not as a singular event but as an entire experience. It’s about the people you’re with, the food you’re serving, the occasion, the ambience, the weather, the music, the mood. It’s about a taster’s relationship with the winery and Winemaker. And it’s especially about the mystical way a wine opens up and evolves over time, to be sipped and savored over the course of an hour or two. It’s really that simple.

But even if one ignores the whole “experience” argument and really, really wants an expert to pave the way then who, exactly, can one turn to? A recent study looked at the results of several thousand wines entered in 13 major U.S. wine competitions and found little consistency in which wines won gold medals. Another study found judges often rated the same quite differently when they tasted it twice in the same blind flight of wines. Hmmm….

So the moral of this story is simple — learn for yourself. Discover your own palate, not Parker’s. Eat, drink, chat with friends, rock out and enjoy the experience. And leave the medals to Michael Phelps.

Happy Sipping,

Tony

As “Vineyard Biologist” at Michel-Schlumberger, this is one of the most common questions I get from visitors (and one of the toughest to answer):

“Exactly what is sustainable farming?”

Very good question. There seems to be a lot of confusion about sustainability, and for good reason – there is no simple answer. For a little help, I turned to Google.

The National Safety Council, I discovered, offers a reasonable definition:

Sustainable Farming: Environmentally friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without damage to the farm as an ecosystem, including effects on soil, water supplies, biodiversity, or other surrounding natural resources. The concept of sustainable agriculture is an “intergenerational” one in which we pass on a conserved or improved natural resource base instead of one which has been depleted or polluted.

That definition, I think, is a bit vague but I like it alright. Most of the other links I looked at described the term in a similar way. But as I scrolled down through a few pages of search results I came across something that really caught my eye — a link to the Monsanto website. What on earth, I wondered, does Monsanto Corporation have to do with sustainable farming? A quick perusal of the company’s homepage left me stunned. The word “sustainable” is plastered all over the Monsanto homepage, along with cute sprouting seedling icons and photos of smiling third world farmers tending their lush crops. One of the headers boldly declares:

By 2030, Monsanto commits to help farmers produce more and conserve more. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto seeds are all about.

Wow. There are so many reasons why that statement is blatantly, shockingly, horrifically untrue. First of all, ironically, even the Monsanto seeds themselves are not sustainable. Billions of people on the planet are supported by farmers who save seeds from the crops and replant these seeds the following year. Most farmers cannot afford to buy new seeds every year, so collecting and replanting seeds is simply how farming works. This is the way food has been grown successfully for thousands of years. With Monsanto’s terminator technology, however, seeds have been genetically-engineered so that when the crops are harvested, all new seeds from these crops are sterile. This forces farmers to pay Monsanto every year for new seeds.

And Monsanto’s genetically modified “Roundup Ready” seeds simply encourage more herbicide spraying which results in more erosion, less soil fertility, the promotion of “super weeds” and a buildup of toxic chemicals in our food and water. That’s not very sustainable.

But enough quibbling over the semantics of sustainability. I was looking for the very guts of Monsanto Corporation. What’s it all about? What makes it tick? I took a look at their official Mission Statement. It starts off:

Our Pledge. Growth for a Better World. We want to make the world a better place for future generations.

Then that’s followed by a whole lotta silliness on how caring they are for the poor farmers all over the world. Interestingly, on the same menu bar as this mission statement is a button to access updated stock performance charts. Now that’s convenient. You see, Monsanto is a corporation. Its mission is to make money. A lot of money. How many Monsanto executives really are deeply concerned with making the world a better place for future generations? Do investors sit and discuss all the worldly good they’ve done at their board meetings? I doubt it. After all, these are the same fine people who brought us Agent Orange and still, to this day, deny that the toxic herbicide has any negative health effects, other than a possible skin rash. From 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 19 million gallons of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops. As a result, within ten years of the close of the war, 9170 veterans had filed claims for disabilities caused by Agent Orange. In 2002, Vietnam requested assistance in dealing with the tens of thousands of birth defects due to Agent Orange. In order to avoid medical compensation expenses, Monsanto continues to claim this now banned chemical is not toxic. Real caring people at Monsanto.

Anyway, I know there are a lot of intelligent and caring  people who disagree with my not-so-favorable impression of Monsanto. It is a very complicated issue and I would certainly urge everyone to take the time to read up on the claims by all sides and decide for yourselves. But I think it all really boils down to one simple question:

Who are you going to trust with the health of yourself and the environment – your friend and neighbor the small sustainable farmer or Monsanto Corporation?

Tony

P.S. Out of sheer, morbid curiosity I couldn’t help checking out the Monsanto gift shop on the website. For a very reasonable $4.05 you can purchase a nice ball cap printed with the phrase:

Monsanto
Imagine

I guess I’ve got an overactive imagination. Surely, any reference to the John Lennon song is completely unintentional. They couldn’t really sink that low, could they? It’s hard for me to imagine.

I mentioned in a previous post that the vines seem to do better when they have a little company. Hogwash? Well, if that was a stretch for some of you, this may be way over the top. What influences do you think music has on wine, if any? I’m a firm believer that music shapes and directs feelings of human beings and animals. I’ve seen it too many times to count on my hands and feet. In many cases, it’s so obvious that you can’t ignore it. Have you ever been to a punk rock show and ended up in the mosh pit? Or what about going to the symphony and being moved to tears? For years now, we’ve been able to listen to whatever kind of music we wanted to.

We all love music here at the estate. For Ramiro, Tony and myself, music is an integral part of life. So we’re always in search of new music, long forgotten favorites, the music you’ve had since you were a kid, music that reminds you of days gone by, music that makes you sad, angry, happy, hungry…thirsty? Seriously, any of the Banda music that we listen to makes me want to drink Budweiser! So, what sort of effects does this (the music and the Budweiser!) have on the wine here at M-S? I couldn’t tell you specifically, but I do know that wine tastes different with different types of music playing. Here’s a list of Michel-Schlumberger wines paired with some of our musical favorites that you can test out in your own home. If you have any suggestions, let me know. Since I’m a huge fan of music and wine, putting the two together can only lead to enjoyment, right? Cheers and here’s to spring!

Pinot Blanc with Calexico’s House of Valparaiso.

Chardonnay with Charles Mingus’ Better Git It In Your Soul.

Pinot Noir with Charlie Hunter’s Oakland.

Merlot with Eagles of Death Metal’s Miss Elissa.

Syrah with Ween’s Gabrielle.

Cabernet Sauvignon with the entire album Led Zeppelin 3.

Coteaux Sauvage with Thelonious Monk’s Ruby, My Dear.

Deux Terres with anything by Django Reinhart, but it has to start with the song Night and Day.

Open a bottle with comfort food

Years ago I learned about the Wall Street Journal’s Open That Bottle Night.  The concept is why wait to open that “special” bottle of wine for a “special” occasion.   Instead open it now – it could remind you of a past special occasion, it could make this occasion special just by opening it or…you may find out you opened your bottle just in time.  I loved this idea and often did just that – opened one of the bottles from my modest cellar to enjoy with extraordinary meals and ordinary meals.   I never wrote in about my experiences but I loved reading others.  
 
What made me think about it was a dinner I cooked the other night.  It reminded me of that column in the WSJ that I haven’t read since I left the Finance Industry to work in the Wine Industry in 2004.  A lot has changed since then.  When I worked in Finance the wine in my modest collection was “precious”.  Now that I work in the Wine business we have a lot more wine at home and I’d actually forgotten about the “precious” wine.  It’s stored in two small wine refrigerators in our laundry room.   There is so much delicious stuff that I bring home, or friends from other wineries bring over that we wind up drinking that.   So…back to what happened.   I was whipping up a cozy Shepherds Pie in response to the dark rainy day.   We were going to settle in to watch the Oscars with this comforting ground beef and mashed potato dish.  When I was sampling the pie as I assembled it I thought – this could pair great with a good red wine.   Down home everyday food doesn’t need to be paired with everyday wine does it?  Hmmm…it was time to get into the “precious” wine.   I was excited to enjoy one of these gems with this dish.   First I tried a Meritage from Napa -  turns out I had waited too long to try it – it was flat as could be – it’s taste could only be described as “blah”.  Next a Cabernet from Walla Walla, Washington.  Strike two.  The wine was tired.  Really tired.   Finally I spotted a bottle a bottle from Big Horn Cellars – it made me smile when I pulled it out remembering it had been a gift from a friend 7 or 8 years ago.   I popped it open poured it in the glass and took a sip.  It was delicious.   I couldn’t wait to have it with dinner.   When I tasted it with my Shepherd’s Pie I thought wow this is a great wine – but then I thought maybe it’s so great because I’m remembering my friends that gave it to me.   And this is why I thought of the WSJ column.   Two of my bottles of wine had passed and one brought back warm memories of how I got that bottle.  

Share your story with me.  I hope more than occasionally it’s a bottle of Michel-Schlumberger (we know those are gorgeous with a little age) but I’d like to hear about all of your experiences (good and bad) and memories of where the bottle came from or where you first enjoyed that wine.  You can post it to this blog as a comment.

In case you’re wondering we had our 2004 Michel-Schlumberger Merlot with the leftovers.  It rocked.

—— Juliana

I am new to the world of blogging, at least the writing side of the blog world.  I have been reading and enjoying blogs for many years.  Benchlandblog is the first time I have ever posted anything.  I can’t help but think that every post just floats out into the dark space of the interweb never to been seen or read by anyone.  How can anyone find time to read my post with all the noise, traffic, information, etc on the web.  I know I love reading Benchland, but does anyone else outside of Michel-Schlumberger?

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the answer to that question is yes.  Tom Wark, author of Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog, not only reads but enjoys our blog.  Today’s post was about the top 5 most intriguing new wine blogs of 2008 and Benchlandblog  was  on the list.  Thanks Tom!

I have been reading Fermentation for some time now and so should you.  Not only is it educational and very entertaining, but it has a clear point of view and always tells it like it is.  One of the great things about social media is it gives you the chance to get involved, join the conversation, or start your own.  At the very least you can be a voyeur into the stories and lives of millions of others.

I will keep posting happily knowing that at least one person hears my blog when it falls.

Writing about organic and sustainable farming can be awful gloom and doom-y sometimes.  But not today.  In my last post, you may recall (or maybe not), I was lamenting the likely appointment of former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to the position of Secretary of Agriculture.  Vilsack has been an ardent supporter of Monsanto Corporation, genetically modified crops and corn-based biofuel production.  He has also been nicknamed “The Satan of Seedsavers.”

I am very proud to write that his nomination has officially been withdrawn.  WOO HOO!!! Vilsack, apparently, did not comment on why he was sacked but sources at the Obama transition headquarters reported “a flood of calls and emails” from organic consumers opposing Vilsack’s nomination.

This is great news but it can’t stop there.  Although signing petitions and writing emails is great and all, we can do more.  A lot more.  And the very cool thing is that creating real change may be easier and more enjoyable than you think.  It’s really pretty simple.  Corporations such as Monsanto and the “farming” practices they support are fueled by one thing – money.  If we, the consumer, stop giving them money then they will cease to exist.

VOTE WITH YOUR FORK.

Instead of loading up on mega-farmed meat and produce shipped in from God-knows-where to Safeway, why not shop at a local store for local meat and produce from local farms and dairies?

Or, better yet, go straight to the source.  These days nearly every city and town has at least one Farmer’s Market where you can not only get the best and freshest stuff but you can actually interact with the nice ladies and gentlemen who planted and harvested those fine artichokes and peas.

Or try Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).  In a CSA program the consumer signs up for weekly boxes of local veggies, meat and dairy to be delivered or picked up at a set location.  It’s extremely easy – check out www.localharvest.org to find CSAs in your area.

Just think – along with signing those petitions you can make a HUGE statement and help make the world a better, happier, healthier place simply by eating better, happier and healthier food.  How cool is that?!?

And when you’re roasting that fine local lamb with the potatoes from the organic guy just outside of town I would highly recommend sipping on a fine wine made from organically grown, sustainably farmed grapes.

The 2004 Michel-Schlumberger cabernet sauvignon leaps to mind…

Here’s a strange thing.  President elect Obama’s leading pick for the position of Secretary of Agriculture is former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack.  This guy is a long time and close friend of Monsanto.  He was voted Governor of the Year by the nation’s biggest biotechnology group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization.  He has also been referred to as “The Satan of Seedsavers.”

Anyway, I did a lot of reading on this guy and I was getting all fired up and wondering what the heck Obama was thinking and then I started writing this post…

And then I lost my motivation.  It’s raining lightly here now.  I love the rainy season.  Most of the folks here at Michel-Schlumberger are taking the day for the ong weekend Holiday festivities.  The garlic in the garden has sprouted.

It’s hard for me to rant on a day like this.

So instead, I would like to simply wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.  Drive safe and try to be nice to everyone.  Take the food seriously but not the relatives.  And have a glass of two of really nice wine.

Peace,

Tony

The nice thing, I think, about blogging is that it gives me an opportunity to rant about pretty much whatever I want once a week.  Maybe that’s not so good for the reader but if it’s any consolation it makes me feel just a little bit better.

Anyway, back to my rant.  This post has nothing to do with my usual focus on organic and sustainable farming stuff.  It has everything to do with a wine competition tasting I poured at last week.  Maybe I was just a bit grumpy from working harvest or maybe I was simply jealous since the wine I was pouring at this particular competition (not Michel-Schlumberger, by the way) did not win a medal, but I came out of the experience with a bad taste in my mouth and it certainly wasn’t from the extremely delicious, well balanced chardonnay I was pouring (and drinking).

Wine competitions (and for that matter, wine publication ratings) are an interesting and controversial thing.  For those maybe not familiar with the process, here’s how it works.  A panel of “qualified wine judges” sit in front of a table full of glasses.  Somebody opens a whole buncha wine bottles and pours a small amount of each into a glass.  The judges look at the wine, swirl and sip and spit and ponder.  Then he or she writes down some notes and assigns the wine a score.  That’s it in a nutshell.

To me, there are numerous and obvious problems with this approach.  First, it seems silly to render judgment on a wine based on one single sip & spit.  That’s like judging a movie after only watching the previews or choosing a spouse based on a single date.  Also, certainly when faced with a table full of samples even the most experienced taster will tend to notice the bigger wines – wines of finesse and character and terroir tend to get bulldozed under the ones with more oak and more ripe fruit and more alcohol.

Much more vexing, however, is the notion that the tastes of a few individuals should dictate the tastes of everyone.  I’m not saying that wine judges are wrong, I’m just wondering why their opinions are taken as absolute and applicable to the entire universe.

I am not a “wine expert” (and hope to never be one) but here is my simple suggested protocol on how anyone, expert or not, should judge a wine:  Take the bottle home.  Invite a few friends over for a casual dinner.  Cook up something that seems like it will go well with the varietal of wine you are drinking.  Greet your guests with glasses of wine and music on the stereo.  Sit on the patio and sip on the wine and chat pleasantly with your guests as you nibble on some appetizers and prep the entrée.  Move to the dinner table and eat and sip some more and notice how the aromas and flavors of the wine change over the course of the evening.  Check out the label.  Are you familiar with the appellation?  Is the wine organically grown?  How does it work with the food?  Have you visited the winery?  If so, how did you like the vibe there?  Ponder these things and drink up and enjoy your dining experience.  If there is wine leftover (yeah, as if..) then shove the cork back in and refrigerate the bottle and taste it again the next day.  There — that’s it. If you liked the wine, great.  If not, that’s great, too – it just means that particular wine is not your style.  Try again with another bottle of wine.

Congratulations!  You have just made a qualified judgement of the wine without the help of an expert.

But what would happen if everyone took this approach?  What would be the ramifications?  I guess that we, as a society, would have to eliminate wine competitions.  Major wine publications would be forced to either focus on the educational, enlightening and entertaining aspects of wine or go out of business.

I guess we couldn’t have that, could we?

I’m interested…how do you decide about wines?  And do scores & competitions influence your wine purchasing decisions?  Curious minds want to know…please feel free to add your comments — this could be fun!

Four Hundred plus wineries packed into the Grand Pavilion at Fort Mason in San Francisco a week ago Sunday and Monday to pour wines for and connect with wine loving consumers, retailers & restaurateurs at the Family Winemakers tasting.  I’ve poured at these events for I don’t know how many years now and ask myself why do we do this?  How can anyone attending possibly remember anything they’ve tasted and does it really help Michel-Schlumberger get some recognition?

I took a break to mender around, mingle with people I know in the industry, and see what the other wineries were doing to break through the clutter.  I was in awe.  Of the 400+ wineries, there were at least 100 (200?) I’d never heard of before…and I’m sure they’d never heard of Michel-Schlumberger before either.  But all of them were enthusiastically engaging the people, and the people were enthusiastically engaged.  I was inspired.

But the real epiphony came in the ‘L’s’ (we were alphabetically placed).  I looked up and saw none other than Heidi Peterson Barrett and her husband Bo Barrett pouring wines (both days by the way) at La Sirena.  If you don’t know who these people are — Heidi is the ultimate ‘cult’ winemaker — producer of Screaming Eagle, Grace Family Vineyards, Paradigm and many other ’unobtainable’ wines.  She is not a rock star by a long shot — very down to earth – but she is truly wine royalty.  And her husband, Bo, is the owner & co-founder (with his Dad) of Chateau Montelena (recently sold to Chateau Cos d’Estournel & is the central figure in the new movie Bottle Shock).  Bo maybe could be a rock star.

This is when it hit me – we are all in this business together, and together, we are all trying simply to connect with people to tell them our stories, taste our wines, and get them to like us.  It doesn’t matter if we are ‘stars’ in the industry or starving artists — when it comes right down to it, we’re all in this together – a family with a common mission to spread the good word of wine.

Collectively we’ve grown consumption in U.S. from 1.6 gallons or so per adult in the 60′s to right around 3 gallons per adult today.  Collectively we’ve introduced varietal wine by the glass in restaurants of every level making it an accepted part of dining.  Collectively we’ve changed the American culture!  And collectively we are a family – we may have different names, and clearly have different personalities, but we are all related.  And families stick together.

Ultimately, collectively, we are changing the world.  And if it is by connecting with consumer one at a time at events like Family Winemakers, then so be it – it is our mission.  That is why I’ll be back at the Family Winemaker event again next year, and the year after.  And the family grows…and grows.

“There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song.”
Masanobu Fukuoka

Tom Kisaichi, our Japanese-born enologist and my good friend, just poked his head into my office and told me the news — Masanobu Fukuoka has passed away at the ripe age of 95.  For those of you who have not had the pleasure, Mr. Fukuoka is a farmer in Japan and the author of The One-Straw Revolution, one of my all time favorite books.  In the midst of this ever-modernizing world of conventional agriculture, he taught the concept of “do-nothing” farming – a return to the old days when farmers had a real connection to the land and to the crops they grew.  He believed the reason that man’s modern farming techniques (e.g., tilling, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) seem to be necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependent on them.

But its not too late.  Getting back to a healthy, sustainable system of farming is simply a matter of perspective.  The aim of natural farming is to trust Nature to do her work with minimal interference from us big-headed humans.  Rather than asking ourselves “How about trying this?” or “How about trying that?”  Mr. Masanobu encourages farmers to consider the questions “How about not doing this?  How about not doing that?”

The One-Straw Revolution is a beautifully written text on farming, eating, thinking and loving.  I highly recommend it to any of you who eat food.

In a recent blog posting, a well-known wine pundit appeared to have chastised the Dry Creek Valley appellation for effectively not really standing out for anything special — for not really being unique.  I believe this writer was not so much blasting the region as challenging it.

Mr. Laube (oh shoot, I mentioned the name!), in my opinion, is mistaken by his observations — the Dry Creek Valley is one of the best examples of terroir-driven fruit in the state — but that terroir may not be his cup of tea (or Cab or Zin or Syrah as the case may be).  But I do applaud him if indeed his intention was to challenge us as a collective group.

So I have a modest proposal.  Dry Creek is the little valley that could.  It is off the beaten path — it is a bit farther away from the City than the others.  But it is a special place…and I think it can be even more so.

What if Dry Creek Valley became the first appellation in America (the world?) to become 100% Certified Organic?

What if collectively we had a vision to lead this industry to the next level of sustainability and stewardship?  You know, they say that vision is better when standing on the shoulders of giants — and clearly this valley has some giants to help provide a better vision.

I don’t know — just maybe — like I say, it is simply a modest proposal.