Santa Barbara Winemakers.
Bridlewood. 2002, English Pleasure syrah, barrel sampling.
Why review this wine you may wonder. Afterall noone is ever going to get this in a month of Sundays to say the very least. Well there's more to this review than meets the eye. The object of this tasting is to look at another less discussed aspect of wine, besides it keeps this site on the cutting edge of influence. You will see more of this kind of talk in the future.
The first aspect of this tasting note is about the humble screw cap. I was following a few recent discussions about whether the wines will age if they are hermetically sealed, or if the cork will do the job better. After having tasted tonights' offering, here is another facet to the manifold aspects about this argument. The wine under review was not from the tasting room but a sample bottle from the barrel after flavour profiling the '02 limited production wines at Bridlewood. David Hopkins, the Winemaker at Bridlewood, invited me to help choose the blends for the English Pleasure, Sidesaddle, Six Gun, Reserve, Old Stagecoach, Dusty Trails and Black Beauty syrahs. These are the limited production wines only available to wine club members and occasionally found in their tasting room. This is one of two bottles (375ml) I have had since mid 2004.
As anyone who has tasted wines from the barrel knows, they taste different, better different in many ways. There is a pleasure principle, like letting chocolate melt in the mouth or drinking a fresh oyster. Barrel tasting, when the wines are ready but before they go in the bottle are, in many cases the best time to enjoy a quaff.
Now you can see where we are going. What if you can capture that moment in the barrel in the bottle? But. But. But. Go ahead exclaim, say that is what the bottling is for. Nah. Sometimes the wine in the bottle can be a poor representation of itself when it was in the barrel. That is a quandary the winemaker deals with. "Bottle shock", "it needs time to settle", "to recover", etc. etc. yadda yadda. Sometimes, you want the real thing (like getting coke from Mexico where they still use cane sugar instead of corn syrup, it does taste better, different better), you want to taste that energy from the oak, without that bit of air between the wine and the cork. Without that waltz through the bottling machine where it ends up all nice and clean in a new little emperors outfit all dressed for church. The wine from the barrel is a different child, full of hope that a connoiseur will appreciate it when it gets older, but not now. In the barrel it is full of potential.
That very taste from the bottle now is a taste of the day of its conception as it was blended in with its siblings who tasted of chocolate, blackcurrant, mouth drying tanin and as we waded through 150 barrels to find the right mix. It is this I taste now, the final blend of percentages and barrel combinations before it gets to settle in an 1800 gallon steel tank for a month or two, before it gets lightly filtered, before the Bottlemeister winds his way to the cellar door.
This can be the true essence of the wine as much as the same bottle from the tasting room and left to age for a few. This wine tonight is the flavour as you slide open the cellar door and breathe deeply the oaken room full of American and French combinations. The air filled with fermentation and of differing vintages, all pervading and adding to that unmistakeable aroma. The bottle had been filled to the brim, allowing no or little air, the lid screwed on as tight as the hand can, then stored in the dark cellar and coated with dust and cobwebs. Sediment trawling the bottom of the bottle remained as undisturbed as possible as the wine was poured into the glass, a few minutes to allow for breathing was all it needed to release the flavours from the suffocated grip of the tanin.
The verdict? Looked at in this light, we don't necessarily have to oblige the old school thinking that a wine has to age, though the cork will allow the oxidation process. Nor do I now have a mind to support the screw cap as the be all and end all either. But if you want to look back on a vintage to see how it was then and now how it will become through the aging process, it may well be that a fully topped up bottle filled straight from the barrel and stored in a cool dark place until you are ready will hold true to one disagreement in the battle of the closures. The wine will not age, it will taste just like the day it was bottled, but if that is a taste you want to really contain, to evoke that memory, then it can be a good thing. As with all subjects related to wine there can be a Sword of Damocles hanging over every word, yet even the naysayers argument can be used for soothsaying too.
The least I can recommend is a screw when it is called for. In polite circles use the word Stelvin closure though, otherwise you'll get caught in a Boons Farm/white zin/"first time I ever drank wine was in college" conversation with some boring fart you can't get rid of. Say Stelvin and it will save you, say screw top and you only have yourself to blame. You have been warned.
Cheers
October 21. 2006
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