I had to share a few pictures that I grabbed while looking at the grapes at Floodgate the other day. The Pinot is through veraison (when the berries turn from green to purple) and The Gewurztraminer is almost there. In the Gewurz pictures you can see a few berries that are starting to take on a golden hue. These berries are already tasting quite sweet so I’m wondering if the Gewurz will be the first fruit in this year???? The crew has been through the vineyard and dropped any green clusters that were not going to catch up with the rest of the crop so things are quite uniform throughout the vineyard. You can see what they dropped in one photo and there were some sections of the vineyard that actually set enough fruit that we thinned it out a bit to separate clusters and balance the fruit load.

Cheers, Alan

Floodgate Vineyard is through veraison – looking great is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Photo credit: Christian Kallen

Thanks to the 100 or so friends who showed up to celebrate the upcoming opening of Garagiste Healdsburg. Garagiste Healdsburg is a cooperative micro winery and tasting room we built with Stark wine. The space is looking great and we now know we can handle a crowd with a little help from our friends. How many of your facebook or twitter friends can you see in this 30 sec video clip?

Click here to see the whole evening fly by in 30 seconds – Video

After our Grand Opening Celebration we’ll be open Thurs – Monday 11-6pm and Tues/Wed by appointment

Hope we see you soon.

Alan

July Facebook meetup at Garagiste Healdsburg was a blast is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

We had the pleasure of pouring for two days in San Francisco last week.  Sonoma in the City is a great event where you get to taste a bunch of wines all from Sonoma County.  Why is that so cool? – because you get to see how various producers in one AVA or across the various regions in the county approach their wine making. For example, you could taste our Pinot Noir from Floodgate Vineyard in the Russian River Valley and then walk around the table to compare it to Gary Farrell’s Alysian Pinot Noir also from Floodgate Vineyard.

What I truly loved about these two tastings were the great comments we received.  People who did not want to sample our Gewürztraminer “because it’s sweet” tasted our 2010 Floodgate Vineyard Gewürztraminer and loved that it has the classic floral, honeysuckle nose but is lean and dry on the palate (not sweet at all).  The 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Pinot Noir got rave reviews for having the fruit flavors in balance with the subtle earth and loamy characters that make Pinot such a wonderful wine. The two comments I heard repeated several times were “it has so many layers,” as well as, “really, 2009? I thought it was an 07.” I think the four clones (667, 777, 828, Pommard) used give this wine a great deal of complexity that should deepen as it ages. We’re very eager to watch this wine evolve.

For more info on Sonoma County Vintners and other upcoming events, go to: http://www.sonomawine.com/.  We will be pouring at the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend in August. Tickets are on sale now for the Taste of Sonoma at MacMurray Ranch and other events over the Labor Day weekend. For Taste of Sonoma Tickets, click here.

Hope we see you in Healdsburg at the tasting room or at MacMurray Ranch.

- Serena

Sonoma in the City is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

We spent Saturday 6/18/11 in San Francisco at Fort Mason pouring our 2009 Floodgate and Perli Pinot noir at the San Francisco Pinot Days grand tasting. We have not yet released the 2009 vintage so it was fun for us to hear people’s thoughts on the wines, which we love and can’t be more thrilled that 2009  was the year we made the leap into Northern California making our home and wines from the vineyards around us.

Brandye Alexander took this fun photo of our Pinot noir as we were setting up

We poured the 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Pinot noir from the Russian River Valley, and the 2009 Perli Vineyard Pinot noir from Mendicino Ridge.  Considering we pick these grapes at nearly the same time. their flavor profiles are wildly different owing to the classic foggy RRV days juxtaposed to the rugged mountain terrain and proximity of the Pacific ocean in the Perli Vineyard.

We had great conversations about temperature inversion, slope, flooding, and other nerdy ag related stuff with the smart folks wandering around tasting Pinot.  That passion for grape growing from the attendees is something we love about this crowd.  Because the focus is on Pinot, we get to have really detailed and geeky conversations about the winemaking and growing conditions.  If we were pouring other varietals as well, we would not have had the time to go into such depth with folks.

Grape nerds unite!

It was also so exciting to be able to officially invite everybody to come visit our tasting room that will be open in July downtown Healdsburg.

Brandye and Alan are ready to pour some Pinot

So to all of our friends, old and new,  and wine making friends who share our devotion to this amazing grape, cheers for making this a great event.

Serena & Alan getting ready to pour (photo by Brandye Alexander)

See you in the tasting room!

Serena

Pinot Days SF 2011 is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

While the silence on our blog was deafening, we were heads down building our new tasting room!  We found a space in Healdsburg about 2 blocks from the central square.  Because our focus is on small, handcrafted lots, we got together with another winemaker (Christian Stark of Stark Wine) who is also a boutique wine producer and decided to launch a tasting room and microwinery.

What does that mean?  It means we have an awesome tasting room space where you can come taste all of our wines as well as hang out on the patio and enjoy the warm afternoons and evenings this summer with a glass of wine.  The tasting room will always be staffed by either one of the winemakers or owners of Cartograph or Stark wine.  Between Cartograph and Stark we will be able to offer a tasting that includes Gewürztraminer, Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Syrah.

In addition, our space is a bonded winery which means we will be producing wine in that same space.  So, you’ll be able to dip into barrels with us and get a real hands on winemaking experience.

We are really excited to see this project coming to fruition.  We’ve spent numerous days and night building the space with the help of several friends.  We should be finished building the tasting bar in the next ten days.  The final furniture delivery happens tomorrow.  Right now we’re focused on building a really cool chandelier (made from de-stemmer gears!), finishing the lighting, making tables, and finalizing the numerous licenses and permits in order to open this summer!

We’ll keep you posted on our official opening and get some photos up soon.

A flurry of activity resulting in a “soon to be open” announcement is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Spring is an amazing time to be in the vineyards of the Russian River Valley, especially Floodgate where we get the majority of our Pinot noir for Cartograph wines. As the days get warmer and longer you see and hear all sorts of birds migrating north. Even though you can’t see any visible growth on the vines, you know change is in the air, and soon we’ll see the first shoots emerge. Vigilance is required to protect the vines from frost and mildew as conditions are volatile but there is nothing like watching those first buds swell and release the leaves and potential clusters that have been waiting all winter to burst forth.

I’ll let the images speak for themselves but this was a particularly interesting year. The vineyard went from flooded, with the vines completely under water, to budbreak in a single week. The span between flood pictures and full-on shoots with leaves is seven days!

Alan

Budbreak in the Floodgate Vineyard 2011 is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Thanks to everyone who visited us at World of Pinot Noir. Our first visit- won’t be our last.

There were so many great wines and I probably only tasted 40%, so I won’t say this is a best of anything, but rather a few wines I loved.

Thanks to the alphabet – we poured between Carr Vineyards and Winery and Chamisal, not bad company! Chamisal is, simply put, solid top to bottom. I fell in love with the Carr 06′ Turner Vineyard. Clone 113 is in the mix and really gives it a spark that I love. Freeman nailed everything. Baxter keeps setting the bar higher. Derby – who knew? (I probably should have but damn!) Hirsch showed grace with bottle age (98 was killer.) Landy – new, worth watching. Littoria, nuf said. Paul Mathew, pure, age-worthy. Presqu’ile – Young punks, old-soul wines. Thomas George showing vineyard sources awesomely. And the quietest couple ever from Wolff Vineyards making subtle, graceful wines. Wolff is right up there with Landy as favorite find at WOPN.
Oh, and an old friend, Dave Ball with his CaliCaro label had a fabulous bottle at the Crushpad table.

Sorry to old friends I may have missed.
There are more days ahead, and plenty of wine to go around. Support these folks who have dedicated their lives to helping us enjoy ours.

Alan

World of Pinot Noir 2011 is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

“No thanks, I don’t like sweet wines.”

We hear that often when we are pouring our Gewurztraminer, because lots of people have tasted very sweet, cloying Gewurtztraminer.  That is not the type of Gewurztraminer that we enjoy nor is it how Alan makes the Cartograph Gewurztraminer. So, when we see people shying away from tasting our Gewurztraminer, that’s when we know we have a great opportunity to show them something different.

The 2009 Cartograph Gewurtz is, in fact, a “dry” wine.  (geeky side note: A dry wine is a wine that has up to 4 grams per liter of residual sugar (EU regulation 753/2002) and our 2009 Gewurztraminer is well under 1g/liter – literally no perceived sweetness) It has a wonderful floral, perfumed aroma reminiscent of apricot, white peach, and honeysuckle blossom, with underlying mineral and slate aromas.

If you stop there, the wine has fooled you. It is not a perfumey, sweet, honey suckle wine.   On the palate the acidity steps forward in a very crisp manner and balances the flavors of honeydew melon, peach, and sweet citrus. It pairs beautifully with spicy foods because it cuts through the spice and heat bringing a refreshing zest to a meal. My favorite pairing is the Gewurztraminer with Vietnamese or Indian food.  A lovely surprise I discovered while in class at the SF Cheese School was that Munster pairs beautifully with Gewurz!

Several restaurants have put our Gewurztraminer on their wine lists and we’re hearing about all sorts of great pairings from foie gras to spicy meatballs. We also received a great review in the February 2011 Wine Enthusiast (91 points and editor’s choice!) and a really nice write up in Artful Living Magazine. It’s always nice to get a little love back for something into which you’ve put so much of your heart.

So what is happening with the 2010 vintage?

The growing season for 2010 was a funky one as described by Alan previously in his post “2010- what a year in the vineyard.” We had a great time picking the 2010 Gewurtztraminer grapes as we had the pleasure of several friends participating in the process which makes those middle of the night picks a lot of fun. When picking Gewurtz, perhaps the very best thing is when you pop one of those beautiful grapes covered with dew in your mouth and it explodes with all the flavors you later see echoed in the wine. Delicious!

Ice forms on the side of the holding tank pre-bottling

The 2010 vintage had a nice long, slow ferment which preserves those wonderful aromas that Gewurz has and the wine has been quietly aging in steel drums. No oak is used in producing our dry Gewurztraminer. We’ve just transferred the wine to tank (see picture at left) to chill it down to about 26 degrees. This will prompt any tartrate crystals to precipitate out so that we leave them behind before bottling. This keeps the crystals from forming in your bottle as you chill the wine for drinking. We’re excited to get this wine out to you because it is a dead ringer for the awesome 2009 version. We anticipate releasing the 2010 Gewurztraminer in early spring 2011. Stay tuned…

Gewürztraminer: 2009 was a success, what’s happening with 2010? is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Back in November we had the pleasure of meeting the writer David Mahoney who was in Sonoma county to interview winemakers with ties to Minnesota.  During his visit, David interviewed  Dave Ready from Murphy-Goode, Scott Adams from Bella Winery, Dan Gustafson of Gustafson Family Vineyards, and our winemaker Alan Baker.

We had a great time tasting David on our 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Pinot Noir which had recently been bottled, the 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Gewurztraminer, and the 2006 Wentzel Vineyard Pinot Noir which was the first commercial wine Alan made.  We chatted about the 2009 and 2010 harvests, Alan’s winemaking philosophy, and the story behind Alan’s move in 2005 from Minnesota to Healdsburg to pursue winemaking.  As the fog lifted we went out to Floodgate Vineyard. It’s always fun to taste the wine and then actually see the vines from which the grapes come.  It was one of those beautiful wine country days where the colors of the leaves in the vineyard were vivid, and the fog was rolling back to reveal a brilliant blue sky with a hint of someone’s wood fire in the air.

David’s article, titled “Living in Zin” came out in January’s issue of Artful Living. Follow this link to read the full article: Living in Zin

We are looking forward to being in the Twin Cities the last week of January and meeting the Artful Living team.

– Serena

Cartograph Featured in Artful Living Magazine is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Perli Vineyard, September 2010

Now that all the 2010 Cartograph wines are safely tucked away in barrel for the winter, we can take a moment to reflect on a season that held many surprises.

We had abundant rainfall in the winter of 2009/2010 and a cold spring which gave us quite a late start. And considering the cool foggy conditions that persisted into the summer months, it almost felt like summer wasn’t going to happen at all. To combat the cool wet conditions many growers had to pull most of the leaves from the fruit zone to keep the fruit free of mildew. This set up a perfect storm for some vines as the first real heat came very fast and the temperature went from 51 to 109 degrees in a single day and some fruit was quickly burned to raisins. There were a few more 100+ degree days to contend with after that, so the task of getting quality fruit meant that we had to drop a depressingly large amount of fruit that had sunburn. In our Pinot and Gewürz vines it hurt all the more because half the cluster was raisined and the other half was pristine beautiful berries. But, we knew we couldn’t pull them all apart on the sorting table so to the ground they went.

As a winemaker I was really excited by the cool summer because the cool conditions had the grapes maturing very slowly. This meant the grapes had ripe flavors at low sugar levels. We picked most of our Pinot around 22.5 Brix. In a typical year grapes at this sugar level would still have green seeds and very high acids. It was a wild ride as we dodged heat spikes and threat of rain to get the fruit in but the many passes in the vineyard paid off with beautiful grapes going into the tank. All the Pinot noir came through fermentation with alcohol levels under 14%. For every winemaker who ever said they wished they could get fruit in with good flavor at reasonable sugar levels, this was the year it was possible. We’re ecstatic.

It seems pretty nerdy to be excited about a stainless steel fermentation tank but this year we added a temperature-controlled tank specifically to ferment our small 1.5 ton lot of Gewürztraminer. It was a cold, slow, fermentation that really has the aromas popping out of the glass right now. These aromas will moderate before bottling to better match the dry mineral-driven complexity of the wine. We’re really excited by the Gewürz again this year.

We’re going into winter very grateful to have such great growers to work with who provided awesome fruit in a year that took creativity and a LOT of work to deliver such killer grapes.

Here’s to a nice mellow winter.

Cheers, Alan

2010, What a Year in the Vineyard! is a post from: The Cartograph blog. Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.