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california

Jagger edge

Clos Saron 2006 Syrah “Heart of Stone” (Sierra Foothills) – There’s a dollop of roussanne here. Very strong. Leather, blackberry, and a forbidding wall of dried fruit adhering to a currently-impenetrable wall. Broadens a bit as it pushes against that wall, but there’s little point in drinking this now.

Clos Saron 2006 Syrah “Heart of Stone” (Sierra Foothills) – Co-fermented with a little roussanne. Bell peppers dusted with black pepper. Gorgeous and expressive right now. There’s some jerky, or perhaps dried leather, late that is usually an early indication of age in syrah, but the wine’s actual future remains to be seen.

Clos Saron 2002 Syrah “Heart of Stone” (Sierra Foothills) – Weedy and starting to unravel. Lots of gravelly minerality, held together by tar.

Le ‘raggy?

Clos Saron 2006 “La Cuvée Mystérieuse” (Sierra Foothills) – Syrah, merlot, grenache, and roussanne. Big, galloping purple fruit with morels. Gorgeous, rich, extremely aromatic. So seductive for such a big wine, whirling and helixing as it finishes.

Clos Saron 2006 “La Cuvée Mystérieuse” (Sierra Foothills) – Syrah, merlot, grenache, and roussanne. Black and blue berries (and yes, a little bruised), strappy, with pink peppercorns adding their odd prickle here and there. A bit of a cudgel at the moment.

Clos Saron 2002 “La Cuvée Mystérieuse” (Sierra Foothills) – Syrah, merlot, and viognier. Developing nicely, a surprisingly pretty face somewhat obscured by swirling dust. Very long, and eminently promising.

On the range

Clos Saron 2008 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard (Sierra Foothills) – Very earthy, sweaty, even a little swarthy, its soils seething in unrest. Pillowy tannin hardens towards the finish, while the wine dabbles in aromatic exoticism. Long and exceedingly interesting.

Clos Saron 2000 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard (Sierra Foothills) – Forest floor and maturing (though far from absent) tannin, lingering antique pie aromas. Gorgeous. Wow!

Clos Saron 1999 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard (Sierra Foothills) – Rough, bold, and chewier than the 2000, still with a heft wallop of tannin and a gritty texture. This may just be in an awkward stage.

White menu

Clos Saron 2011 “Carte Blanche” (Sierra Foothills) – A little out of the norm for this wine in that the grapes for this blend were purchased from Lodi. A crazy-quilt blend of albariño, verdelho, chardonnay, and petit manseng…the varietal equivalent of what my Minnesotan family used to call “leftovers hotdish.” It takes a while to get up to speed, with sweet lemonade aromatics and a bubblegum texture, but eventually the full mass of the wine (and it’s surprisingly, if adeptly, large-boned) makes its impression. Juicy yet brooding, there’s an eventual sharpening to the finish worked by the etching qualities of the wine’s acidity. Finishes long and very dry, despite all the initial dalliances with sweeter notions.

A ticklish subject

Clos Saron 2010 “Tickled Pink” (Sierra Foothills) – Syrah and cinsault. Bony and forgettable. But the a new bottle arrives, vastly more generous than the previous, and while there’s still a parched, desert butte quality on a bed of minerality ground slowly down from gravel to sand, it at least makes one take notice. The notion that this ages well makes sense when one compares it with the bleak starkness of another rosé known for its ageability: that of R. López de Heredia. The organoleptics are different, though.

Jar-Jar

Cowan Cellars 2010 “Isa” (Lake County) – Not, against the advice of the winemaker, decanted. And quite a journey, from attenuated beginnings to the near-absence of the embittering skin contact as the wine sort of settles into a low-lying pool of anonymous green-apple fruit, then coalescing again to something with a lot more confidence in its identity. The last sips are the most appealing, which I guess demonstrates the winemaker’s point. (5/12)

Baxter

Lagier Meredith 2011 Rosé of Syrah (Mount Veeder) – Very pleasant, a bright pinkish-red berry on which one wishes to absent-mindedly snack. It doesn’t really submit to detailed analysis, but it’s nice. (5/12)

Stone in love

Ridge 2002 Zinfandel Stone Ranch (Sonoma County) – 5% petite sirah, 14.8% alcohol. Quite woody, and it’s the kind of woodiness that’s not going to get better. Ridge zins have a terrific history of melding with their oak (that they ever shed or fully integrate it is, with rare exceptions, a myth; that “Draper perfume” is mostly aging wood), and with many such wines one just needs to submit to the proper patience, but this has already turned the corner towards oblivion. It’s not there yet, but the dark boysenberry jam – past maturity into a heavy, almost syrupy realm – is overwhelmed by coconut. Aging recommendations on Ridge labels, always so precise, can usually withstand a fair bit of extension, but this wine likely did not qualitatively outlast its drink-by date, which is a fair number of years in the past by now. (3/12)

Ridge 2002 Zinfandel Stone Ranch (Sonoma County) – Absolutely identical to the previous bottle, albeit just a slight touch smokier. Call it a confirmation. (5/12)

I Londer as I wander

Londer 2007 Pinot Noir (Anderson Valley) – 14.4%. Were I one of those fruit-concentrate California winemakers who screech “geosmin!” at the slightest hint of earthiness, followed by “flaw!” immediately afterwards, I’d be inclined to do a lot of screeching at this wine, which is full of mushroomy, loamy earthen qualities. There’s some fruit, yes, but it’s baked-pie darkness subsumed by the soil and its own mostly fungal fruits. Do I like it? Yes, a fair bit, but it’s in no way impressive or special. (2/12)