2012 Ramey Chardonnay Russian River Valley

Community Tasting Note

8 comments have been posted

• Comment posted by Benj:

  6/5/2020 11:18:00 PM - I've found a lot of these RRV Chardonnays to fade *rapidly* after 5 years. I haven't been able to figure out why, but I've essentially stopped seeking out anything more than 5 or 6 years old. Have you had any more luck with any other California Chardonnays?

• Comment posted by honest bob:

  6/7/2020 7:21:00 AM - Yes, that is my experience with RRV too. I was about to suggest Fred Scherrer as an exception, but looking back at my TNs e.g. for his 2007 Helfer Vineyard Chardonnay I seem to have enjoyed his Chards most at about 3 to 5 years after the vintage.
  
  Moving outside RRV, I'm interested to reread my notes on a mixed bag of 2012 DuMol Chards I bought at +5 years, enjoyed at the time, but at +6 and +7 thought were heading over the hill. And then there was a decaying 2014 Centre of Effort at +6 (just after we last met in Healdsburg). And several others as well. Interesting that Au Bon Climat releases its Chards late: the vintage of Nuits Blanches au Bouge I bought at the showroom in March 2020 was 2015. It tasted young and tight, and I noticed they were offering library wines back to (if I remember correctly) 2006. So that might be an exception; I have 6 bottles here, so let's see how they develop.
  
  Moving outside the US, I am appalled by the premox failure rate of white burgundy, notably the outstanding 2008 vintage in Chablis, which I unfortunately went long on. Although there have been some delicious single bottles at +10, I can't honestly say I thought they were any more enjoyable than I found their fellows at +6, and keeping them even in my (stable and reliable) cellar has turned out to be an expensive and frustrating hobby, with a ca. 50% premox failure rate. My regular source for single bottles of expensive burgs from the Côtes, a Cambridge college cellar, occasionally comes up with white treasures at +9 or so, but almost as often with promoxed bottles. Now I know that premox is a "thing", but I can't help wondering whether the supposed age-worthiness of Chardonnay from wherever might not be more about wishful thinking rather than sound, empirically-based rationality.
  
  Some notable exceptions: Kumeu River (NZ), which I have found little changed at +10 under screwcap. A 2008 GC Chablis Valmur from Bessin, which was still painfully young at +10. Great BdB Champagne, of course, most recently a superb Diebolt Valois 2006 at +14. And of course the greatest white wine I have yet tasted, a 1997 Montrachet from Laguiche/Drouhin at +12.

• Comment posted by Benj:

  6/7/2020 7:53:00 PM - Yeah...my experience with Chardonnays over 10 years I think I could count on my fingers, though an excellent 2002 Vaudesir (can't recall the producer) stands out from last year.
  
  I have wondered if, in general, Chardonnays made in this riper style just do not have the acidity for a long sleep. I would be interested to taste through some older vintages of Carneros Chardonnays. There are some really astonishing - and well-cared-for - sites there for the grape (Hudson and Hyde stand out to me in particular), excellent acid preservation, and I've had a few 5, 6, 7-year-old examples from there that were showing no signs of losing any vivacity. But hey, maybe 3-5 years is the general window. From the RRV, a couple 2014 Walter Hansels sleeping in my closet will provide an interesting test later this year.

• Comment posted by honest bob:

  6/8/2020 3:47:00 AM - Yes, I'd take any opportunity to try a few mature Hyde vineyard Chardonnays too! Let's put that on our collective bucket list next to that vertical LdH Tondonia tasting!
  
  Increased ripeness due to climate change is just as surely detrimental as high acid is contributory to longevity. No surprise that Mosel and finer Rheingau from cooler years keep so well, but – even with my very modest understanding of chemistry – I think there are some other significant factors which may have led to problems in the past 10-20 years.
  
  1. Don't you think squeamishness about SO2 is a problem, particularly since so much wine even at the highest price levels is now made for early drinking? Anecdote time: both occasions we ate at the superb Le Montrachet hotel restaurant in Puligny there were NO even remotely mature burgundies on the wine list. The only bottles older than 5-6 years were DRC and the like, and even those did not have the kind of bottle age which I would assume to be necessary for such (presumably) concentrated and complex wines to unfold. As far as white burgs go, I understand: premox may be maddening for the private consumer but it is potentially ruinous for a restaurant located in Puligny Montrachet at which practically every guest is going to drink some white burgundy. So I guess their only option is to serve wines still young enough to be reliable (and thereby also conveniently not tie up too much capital while waiting for it to mature). Interestingly the same applied to the reds on their list, which must primarily be a commercial, rather than spoilage, matter... There are so many good reasons why restaurants and consumers buy for short-term consumption these days —they are, however, going to favour wines which show well in their youth, which of course includes not smelling of SO2 when the bottle is opened 2 years after the vintage.
  
  2. Another issue is surely also the lack of clear direction about closures. Natural cork hasn't exactly had a great track record in the last two decades, but there doesn't seem to be anything like a consensus about how to deal with the problem. Some fine producers go to great lengths to source and micro-quality control their corks, but still occasionally run into trouble (Albert Jane's Acústic in the 2016 vintage, for example). Screwcaps obviously work longterm (see AUS/NZ) but there seems to be real cultural squeamishness about them in Europe and the US (and perhaps in important export markets like China too?) I'm coming round to DIAM after initial skepticism and some bad experiences with bottles closed with DIAM5. That's partly because of many more positive experiences recently, and also my respect for the decisions made by e.g. Ramey, William Fèvre and Hugel to switch to DIAM entirely. But other alternative closures haven't done as well. Nomacorq, for example, was a total disaster for some producers like Günther Künstler, who saw large quantities of fine wine premoxed in the early 2000s. And the beautiful glass stoppers used by e.g. Wirsching a decade ago seem not to have found acceptance. Each of these closures surely makes specific demands on the winemaker in terms of reduction/oxidation at the point of bottling which I imagine can't entirely be grasped theoretically. And who has 10 years time to experiment these days?
  
  All that makes it even more complicated even for a wine freak like me to guess the chances of cellaring Chardonnay, and I imagine I'm not the only person who has decided that it's a very risky game. At some point any remaining incentive to make wines which will show best 10 years or more after the vintage vanishes, with consequences for the choices being made about the chemistry of winemaking and bottling processes which I'd really like to hear about in technically competent language from you some time!

• Comment posted by Benj:

  6/8/2020 9:44:00 PM - Onto the collective bucket list it goes :-) now that one might actually be something I could help source!
  
  I would love to see a given winery's (or even region's) average pH for incoming grapes and finished wines over the last 40 years - I am sure that these data exist in Davis or Bordeaux or the AWRI or some of the techier wineries. It makes sense that ripeness (and so also pH) would have increased over this time, and that this would compound an existing problem in hotter climates like those that are home to most of California's Chardonnay plantings. Less so somewhere like Chablis, and even less so for Champagne and other global BdBs picked for high acid/low pH.
  
  1. I'm still learning a lot about sulfur and maybe one day soon will have something useful to say about it. For now, wild conjecture will have to do. I do think you're right that some people, maybe a lot of people, are undersulfuring their wines, though my guess is that much of the time - for Chardonnay at least - it's not so much concern over sensory effects as a reliance on received wisdom. If your predecessor or a mentor or a class or a book tells you to aim for 30 ppm free SO2 and you just do that, never notice any immediate problems, and sell your wine to be consumed young, then sure, why would you do anything differently? But higher-pH wines require more free SO2 for effective antioxidant activity, so if (made-up numbers alert!) 30 ppm gives you 15 years of oxidative protection at pH 3.2 but you're at pH 3.5 because you're picking riper fruit, now 30 ppm maybe only gives you 5 years of oxidative protection? Climate change becomes more of a problem then if sulfuring practices don't keep up. The higher the pH, the more SO2 you need, but also the more SO2 you can add without being able to smell it. And for me a question still remains: what does a well-aged, well-preserved ultra-ripe Chardonnay taste like? Is it desirable in the first place? You may have some perspective on that question. The best aged Chardonnays I've had have all been Chablis.
  
  Side note: I have noticed recently that the very young Kistlers I've tasted have been distinctly sulfury. I've never analyzed these wines for SO2 or pH so can't back it up with data, but it may be that those are a candidate for good aged ripe California Chardonnay down the road.
  
  2. I wonder how much of this collective hand-wringing about closures, sulfur, and oxidation is just the moment we're in (albeit a moment that seems to be dragging on into the decades). In 20 years will it be obvious that wines should be bottled under either DIAM or screw cap? Oxidation aside, I'm getting tired of seeing all these "guaranteed TCA-free" cork batches that still contain a ridiculously high proportion of duds and therefore ruined bottles. I really don't know what this "guarantee" is supposed to be...once the wine is in bottle it's too late, you can't "return" the cork for a new one and have your problem solved, and cork manufacturers love to point out that TCA can come from other parts of the process and love to sow often unjustified uncertainty in the winery's knowledge of their own systems. I know DIAM are trying to position themselves as the connoisseur's choice - seems to be working to some extent among us obsessives, not so sure about everyone else. Lots of wineries seem to be coming around though.
  
  The incentive for making ageworthy wine has presumably always been, in some part, the art of it, no? If a smattering of European houses have built and maintained reputations for building long-lived wines, but most haven't, then I can only imagine that they will adapt to manage the challenges of a changing climate and cultural palate, and maybe we should expect the same from the New World? And if the combinations of climate, variety, and technique necessary for producing high-acid, ageworthy white wines have not taken hold yet then maybe those producers are only just getting started? If I can say one thing for my generation, it's that we love individuality, craft, and experimentation - there are plenty of hypertalented viticulturists and winemakers out here doing wild and wacky things. There are Chenin Blanc plantings in Amador County that seem to hold a lot of promise for ageworthy dry wine, and some Roussanne from Paso to Carneros to Yorkville Highlands already showing ageworthiness. A friend of mine who is an Anderson Valley obsessive says their Champagne-method sparklers can easily go 20+ years, and has even introduced me to some Chardonnay from up there that I am crossing my fingers for. Maybe I am just not as jaded because I haven't spent lots of money and waited many years to find half my wine ruined...give it time ^_^

• Comment posted by honest bob:

  6/16/2020 5:43:00 AM - One additional thought. Might changing fashions in oak usage, especially old oak barrels, be another factor in decreased longevity and resistance to premox?
  
  Traditional white Rioja might be an extreme example, but with the exception of a case of 1984 Tondonia blanco Reserva (a very weak year for Rioja) which I bought on ebay for about 4 EUR per bottle, most of which has been manky so far, I do think of oak-aged Viura as being very stable and rewarding extended cellar time. The 1990s LdH/Tondonia Reservas and Gran Reservas I have tasted were occasionally corked or musty, but never yet prematurely oxidised. And what about the current release of Murrieta's Ygay Blanco GR: 1986? That's a remarkable age for a dry white, but of course at +- 500 EUR/75cl it's well out of my price range.
  
  Coming back to Chardonnay, I suspect that the general trend to improved cleanliness in the cellar may have led to a change in the way even traditional-minded producers use their old oak barrels. Could it be that even the likes of Dauvissat have aimed for much "cleaner" wines, i.e. with less perceptible oak, since the mid-1990s? Might that be a factor?

• Comment posted by Benj:

  6/17/2020 6:01:00 PM - I wouldn't be too surprised if cleaning practices were somehow implicated. The more we learn about microbes, the more important they seem to be! I think it was David Ramey himself who I remember hearing in an interview that it is risky to treat your wines too well because they become too pampered and delicate. He was referring specifically to how, I believe especially in the 90s, people were trying to prevent oxidation of the wine at any point at all costs, including during the crush itself, whereas if you let some oxidative browning happen during crush it is much more oxidatively stable down the line, and that the initial oxidation products in the juice end up adsorbing to the grape solids and yeast and getting pulled out of the wine when it gets racked anyway. I know there's been a lot of work on how the presence of oxygen in red wines during fermentation and initial aging helps in the long-term color stability of the wine, too.

• Comment posted by Decanting Queen:

  12/13/2020 4:51:00 AM - Benj and honest Bob—thank you both for this fascinating thread. I am not very knowledgeable about Chardonnay but have wondered many of these same things and found it a pleasure to read these comments!!