A Connecticut Yankee?

Greetings from the green hills of Sherman, Connecticut!

Barbara and I moved into a beautiful house here at the end of December, following an initial six-month period in Pawling, New York, after I retired from the San Francisco Symphony in February 2023.

And yet every day I monitor the SONOMA COUNTY WINEGROWERS’ WEATHER website—because this is frost season for a vigneron, and we are still farming the grapes in Cotati (albeit long-distance from the East Coast).

I have the same crew that has managed the vineyard with me in recent years: Miguel Bautista Medina, doing all the weekly maintenance; Espinoza Vineyard Management, pruning and fungus control; the new owners of The Farm, manning the frost protection, sometimes in the middle of the night; and Lisa Bishop Forbes, our award-winning winemaker, who is in charge of everything from crush to bottling.

We just won our third double gold medal from the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, this time for our 2021 estate Pinot noir, in the $35-$39 category for Pinot noir. Before crush last year, following Lisa in her professional trajectory, we moved our winemaking operations to Medlock Ames Winery on Chalk Hill Road.

We’ve expanded our selection of white wines with a delightful 2022 Russian River Valley Chardonnay, French in style with beautifully balanced flavors.

The 2021 double-gold-winning Pinot gris continues to be a source of pride for us and a great favorite among our customers.

The 2018 silver-medal-winning Coombsville Merlot has come into its own with age.

The 2019 Dry Creek Valley Cab is drinking better than ever.

Because we’re on the East Coast now, I will no longer be able to deliver wine personally to our Bay Area customers. In consideration of this, we’re offering a special promotion for all our customers in California: we will pay the tax on your orders. (There is no tax charged on wine shipped out of state.)

We miss our far-flung friends! Send us your likes and comments, share us on your social media (that’s Barbara talking :)—and send us photographs we can post on our Roden Wines photo gallery.

Full Speed Ahead!

  I last wrote to you on May 9, 2020, almost two years ago. The pandemic grinds on but we seem to be emerging from it, gradually, cautiously. The wine industry has had its own challenges during this time, from wildfires and smoke here in the California Wine Country, to worldwide supply-side issues that make it harder and more expensive to get glass for bottling.

But here at our small operation, we are brimming with pride and optimism at what we have accomplished and have to offer. As noted above, we entered three wines in the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, the largest competition of North American wines. Our estate 2019 Pinot noir won a double gold, our 2018 Napa Valley (Coombsville) Merlot, a silver, and our 2019 Dry Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, a bronze.

  As I have come to notice over years, good red wine not only improves with age, it hardly comes into its own until it has been bottled two years. We have an array of wines here in which I have recently noticed measured improvement with age, the ‘17 and ‘18 Pinots, the ‘18 Merlot, and the ‘19 Cab. We have been able to delay release of our newest reds until they have been in the bottle at least a year and a half, and most of them are now moving into young maturity at the same price at which they were initially offered.

  The newest addition to our stable is the 2021 Russian River Valley Pinot gris, made from fruit we grow as well as some purchased from noted vintner, John Balletto. It is a very balanced food wine of 13.2% alcohol that sports a label commemorating Barbara’s new novel, What Disappears, which is being published and released next month. This Gris is so delicious, it even tastes good before it’s chilled!

Greetings to all as we weather the continuing grind of our public health crisis!

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In the beginning of the pandemic, we launched our online wine store, and have been gratified by your response. As promised, the 2018 Napa Valley (Coombsville) Merlot was bottled on June 15 and is sitting in storage for a couple of months until it has time to settle. We’re proud to be able to offer this delicious addition to our repertoire. Bay Area residents who bought the Merlot will receive their shipments in August. I will ask those in other parts of the country if they would be willing to wait a couple of months more to avoid any possible dangers of shipping during the hottest weather. We use very high-quality styrofoam shippers, but the perils of wine being left out somewhere in extreme temperatures suggest that waiting a bit might be prudent.

Your response to the very tasty, low-alcohol 2017 South Block delighted us. It turns out that this vintage will be the only iteration of that block as a separate wine. Because the south end of our property is more exposed to the marine air that rushes in daily through the Petaluma Gap, the fruit there ripens more slowly than in the North Block. A section of the South Block was planted to an Italian clone, VCR 118, which produced beautiful, abundant fruit, but ripened much later than the Dijon clones planted in this same block, making it hard to coordinate the harvest on our small planting. Last year, we grafted these vines over to a highly recommended Dijon clone (828) that we had not previously planted. And so this elegant South Block version ($23) will only exist in the 2017 vintage. Without any more age on it, this has already blossomed into the perfect wine for summer.

I’ve posted a short video of the VCR 118 vines being grafted to clone 828. I was fascinated by the ease and facility of the vineyard worker, Chuy from Jalisco, who did the grafting. What you see here is Chuy among the VCR 118 vines that have been cut off at the fruiting wire. The bag on his shoulder contains the “wood,” canes clipped from clone 828 vines, from which he extracts one, shaving off chips that contain buds. Then he inserts the bud chips into cuts he makes in the vine trunks, and tapes the chips securely into the trunks. I love the grace with which he catches the bud chip as it flies through the air. When these buds sprout, they will become the shoots for the new 828 clone.

We were so happy with the fruit that went into our 2018 Merlot that we tried to acquire more from the same source for 2019, but the property was put on the market and the vineyard went untended. The silver lining for us is that, at the last minute, we were able to score some superb Cabernet Sauvignon from Dry Creek Valley, which is famous both for its Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel. At a recent tasting, when the barrels were being topped up, this wine surprised us by revealing itself as good enough, despite its tender age, to drink with dinner that night. It will mature in the barrel for another six months before it’s bottled. With appropriate fanfare, we’ll release it next year.

The Lockdown Special remains in place, including the sale prices and free shipping on orders of a half case or more. If you want to buy fewer than six bottles, drop me an email: wayneroden@comcast.net

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Our efforts continue to find and use the best materials for mask-making. This was step one for adapting a pair of pantyhose to seal the sides and edges. 

The "Sideways" Lockdown Special

As I write this, Barbara and I are safe and healthy. We’re hoping the same is so and remains so for you in these strange and perilous times. Sheltering-in-place has afforded me unrivaled opportunity to address a somewhat neglected aspect of my little wine venture: the business part. I throw myself into learning about viticulture and oenology, and taking care of the vineyard and wine. But the moment it comes time to think about promoting or marketing my product, I find some way to procrastinate. Wine fascinates me. Business does not!

And yet here I find myself in possession of more bottles of excellent wine than I can drink…

In 2004, the movie “Sideways” extolled the virtues of Pinot noir while relegating Merlot to the realm of the contemptible. The movie had a profound impact on sales of both varietals, boosting the sales and price of Pinot noir and depressing the price of Merlot. While there is one-dimensional, fruit-bomb Merlot, there are also wines made from Merlot that are complex and fascinating (some Grand Cru Bordeaux, for example).

 

In 2016, we produced my first commercially available wine with Pinot noir grown exclusively on our property in Cotati. If you bought some of that from me and still have any, it has really come into its own now and is drinking great. The following year, the custom crush where we make my wine threw me a curve by requiring all clients to process at least three tons of fruit. I only grow about a ton of grapes, and I couldn’t find a custom crush that would allow me to process such a small amount. So I was faced with a choice of expanding by buying fruit, or ditching the whole enterprise.

 

Searching for quality fruit, I scored two tons of Merlot from the Coombsville AVA, which is just east of the town of Napa and has a cooler, more temperate climate than the Napa Valley further north, as it’s closer to San Pablo Bay. Lisa Bishop Forbes, formerly director of winemaking at Chalk Hill Estate and winemaker at Dry Creek Vineyard, 80 of whose wines received a 90 or higher from the Wine Spectator, the Wine Enthusiast, and the Wine Advocate—and now at Ektimo Vineyard and Ross Road Custom Crush—has made a spectacular wine out of this fruit, which was harvested in September 2018. Aged in French oak barrels for 18 months, our Merlot has developed a lot of structure and complexity. It’s only 13.4% alcohol. We’ll be bottling this wine on June 15, shipping in mid-August. I’m offering futures of it for a special price now of $25 a bottle for a six-bottle minimum. (The normal price will be $30 a bottle.) Shipping is free during the special.

 

I also have the ’17 Russian River Pinot noir (sourced from our place in Cotati), which comes in two versions. The North Block, 13.6% alcohol, is quite complex, has a sweet floral nose with hints of rose, orange peel, red cherry, graphite and dried mushrooms, with flavors of tart cherry, orange, cranberry and cardamom. It has a long finish with bright acid and a full mid-palate. The second Pinot, the South Block, ripens later due to the different clones planted there, as well as the marine air that sweeps across the south end of our property. This wine, only 12.2% alcohol, is an amazingly graceful light-weight Pinot, featuring raspberry and cranberry notes, nice tannins, with a powdered sugar nose and savory overtones of coriander. It will be great on a warm day—it may even be the red to have with fish. It’s drinking really well right now. The North Block (normally $45) is on special for $35 a bottle for a six-bottle minimum. The South Block (normally $28) is now $23 a bottle if you buy at least six bottles. Again, shipping is free. (We’re only shipping cases and half-cases now.)

 

Perhaps you could do a vertical tasting of Pinot and Merlot as you watch “Sideways” in a comfortable place where you can make a safe transition to the horizontal.

Welcome to my website!

As most of my friends and colleagues are now aware, I've been growing grapes and making wine for the past ten years. In 2016, I made my wine at Ross Road Custom Crush in Sebastopol, preparatory to obtaining a license to sell my wine.

I have been fortunate at Ross Road to collaborate with winemaker Lisa Bishop Forbes, who has made more than 80 wines that have received a score of 90 or higher from the Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and Wine Enthusiast for such wineries as Chalk Hill and Dry Creek Vineyard.

My small initial offering of 2016 Pinot noir is sourced completely from my place in Cotati, a cooler-than-average Russian River Appellation locale. In a never-ending quest for the best approach to making Pinot noir, the guiding principle that has emerged for me is something I learned from Bernard Hervet of Faiveley in Burgundy: “Pick earlier, rather than later!” Picking earlier means that the wine will be lower in alcohol, with more natural acidity, producing a Pinot true to type, rather than a Pinot trying to be a Cab (such as one often finds in California).