Winegrower's Blog
Pinot Noir on My Mind……….
Last weekend marked the 13th Anniversary of the World of Pinot Noir, probably the world’s most comprehensive celebration of the varietal. This came just a week after another pinot centric event we held at the winery, our annual Pinot/Cioppino fundraiser for the Marianne Talley Foundation.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 13 years since the inaugural World of Pinot Noir when Archie McClaren and I, along with a group of vintners from the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties, decided to host a world-class pinot noir event right here in our own backyard. This was the pre-Sideways era when there was enthusiasm for pinot noir, but not the frenzy that occurred just a few years later after the release of the film that ignited the pinot noir craze. We started out with around 50 wineries, a single walk around tasting and some great seminars held at the Cliffs Resort and nearby wineries. This year’s event included more than 150 wineries, a two day technical symposium for winemakers, and tents spanning the bluff from the Cliffs Resort to Dolphin Bay, all overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean. Talley Vineyards was featured with a special retrospective tasting of our 2007-2010 Rincon and Rosemary’s Vineyard Pinot Noirs. It was truly a special weekend.
The week before, we held our annual Pinot/Cioppino fundraiser with longtime friends Tim Sugishita and Louie Bonino. Tim had approached my dad back in the mid-90’s with the idea for the dinner. Cioppino is the classic San Francisco seafood soup, featuring a tomato base and lots of Dungeness crab and Tim and Louie had been hosting cioppino dinners in their hometown of San Martin. Inspired by our friend, local restaurateur Leonard Cohen, we decided that pinot noir would be the best wine to match with the dish. For the 2013 dinner, we celebrated with a beautiful selection of wines including a 5 liter bottle of 2004 Rosemary’s Vineyard that was the highlight of the evening.
In addition to enjoying great fellowship, food and wine, this evening also serves as the key fundraiser for the Marianne Talley Foundation which funds scholarships for Arroyo Grande High School students. Marianne was my sister and we established the foundation in her name after she passed away in 1993. Later, we added scholarships to honor my dad and grandfather. To date, we’ve distributed almost $200,000 to recipients of the Marianne Talley, Oliver Talley, and Don Talley Memorial Scholarships. I truly appreciate the community support for this worthwhile effort. In addition, everyone seems to enjoy the side benefit of the pinot noir that accompanies dinner.
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WOPN
This weekend is WOPN! World of Pinot Noir is the must-attend event for any serious pinot noir enthusiast. This experience features hundreds of pinot noirs from all over the globe through seminars, walk-around tastings and dinner events. Renowned producers of this coveted varietal pour tastes of their current release wines at the grand tastings, while rare and old vintage wines are usually poured in special seminars and dinners. As an added bonus, the event is primarily held on the bluff in Shell Beach at both the Dolphin Bay and Cliffs Resorts, overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean. (Oh, and Brian Talley was one of the founders of this event!)
This year, Talley Vineyards will be the focus of one of the educational “breakout sessions”. This sold-out seminar will feature Rosemary’s and Rincon Vineyard wines from 2007-2010. It is my opinion that these wines are some of the best we’ve ever made, and now is a wonderful time to taste them side by side. Many pinot noirs have a relatively short shelf life, but the Talley wines are known for their exceptional ageability. Our pinot noirs show incredible structure and depth and can begin peaking more than 4-5 years after bottling. Brian Talley and Eric Johnson will be hosting this special event and discussing what is unique about each vintage and what contributes to the beauty of these wines today.
If you want to taste as many pinot noirs as possible, I recommend going to both the Friday and Saturday afternoon tastings. Each day features a different group of wineries. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, it’s not too late. You can still purchase them at http://www.worldofpinotnoir.com. This event provides the opportunity to enjoy the many variations of this wonderful varietal in a fun, educational and beautiful environment.
Tasting Room Trip to Paso
If you’ve visited the Talley Vineyards tasting room, you would know that we have a lot of faces behind the bar. It takes a lot of people to cover our staffing needs to be open seven days a week and it’s not very often that we can get them all in the same place at the same time. Earlier this month, however, we were able to get sixteen of us together for an awesome day of wine tasting in Paso Robles.
Entrusting our tasting room to ex-tasting room employees Michele (now our operations manager), Alyssa (now our direct sales manager), and Belinda (now our direct sales assistant), all sixteen of us were chauffeured to Paso Robles, in style, on the Central Coast Trolley. We hit some of the best on the far west side of Paso Robles – Justin, Tablas Creek, Halter Ranch, and Jack Creek.
Beyond tasting a broad variety of different wines, from the delicious cabernets and Bordeaux blends at Justin and Halter Ranch, to the Rhone varietals at Tablas Creek and Jack Creek, the day was a great opportunity for the staff to build camaraderie. Many of our staff members work a few days or less a month, some only on the weekends, and some only during the weekdays. The ability to have our entire team together, learning about wine and witnessing how other wineries operate and being able to socialize and catch up with one another was priceless. It was also a great success in that staff members have given us valuable feedback on the experience, including many ideas that could really strengthen us as we move forward.
For me, the one universal theme that I noticed is that what impressed our group wasn’t so much about the actual winery, but more about how the staff presented them. A visit to the new tasting room at Tablas Creek, the vineyards and caves at Justin, and the new winery facility at Halter Ranch are enough to make anyone in the wine industry very jealous. Following those up with a stop at Jack Creek, an equally remarkable facility at a sliver of the size of the other three, allowed us to see that it’s not all about size of the building. With great hospitality at all four locations, and knowing what a beautiful place and great people we have here at Talley, the key thing I learned is that a successful winery isn’t all about the facility, it is about a group of people with enough passion to produce a great product anywhere.
Bottling Pinot Noir and Single Vineyard Chardonnay
It’s that time of year again. The winery seems to move into hibernation mode after harvest, with the 2012 wines aging in barrel and the vines dormant. And then the bottling line gets started up and the clanking of bottles begins. To be honest, bottling days don’t usually rank high as a favorite winemaking activity among winemakers and production staff. The stringent quality control guidelines, repetitive work, and endless bottling line repairs and adjustments just can’t compete with the fun of harvest days, fermentations, tastings, blend trials, and all that other good stuff we get to call work.
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| Bottles before the labels | Bottles after the labels |
The bright side of bottling is that we are always excited to see our finished wines going into bottle. It is the point when the wines leave our hands to begin the bottle aging process and eventually be released to the public. Last week was an especially enjoyable bottling run because we got to see the delicious 2011 Single Vineyard Chardonnays get bottled! This week was equally as enjoyable as we bottled the 2011 Estate Pinot Noir which by all indications, will be a great bottle of wine.
We are also excited to announce that we have added a new Single Vineyard bottling to the already great lineup of Rosemary’s, Rincon, and Oliver’s Chardonnays. The 2011 Monte Sereno Chardonnay comes from our smallest vineyard, located just a couple miles west of the winery in the Arroyo Grande appellation. The 2011 bottling is a blend of the two blocks comprising both clone 548 and clone 4. The finished wine showcases beautiful tropical aromas and a rich, creamy texture on the palate. We only made two barrels of this delicious wine, so if you can get your hands on it you’ll be in for a treat!
Feb 15, 2013 at 12:15 PMWinter at the Winery
It’s winter time, which might seem like a slow time around the winery, but that’s not the case. In reality, some of the most important activities in our winegrowing happen now.
In the vineyard, this is when we prune. Critical decisions that will affect the crop for this season, as well as subsequent years, are made right now. It all depends on how many buds we leave on the vine. More buds mean more potential crop, but less vigorous growth. These decisions are made on a block-by-block basis depending on previous growth and our production goals. This is an area where quality, focus and attention to detail really pay off, and I’m proud of our vineyard team. To see a video of pruning, check out our pinot noir pruning video 
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In the winery we are focused on nother critical activities. One of these activities is our assessment of the quality of the previous vintage. Eric Johnson, Nicole Pope, Travis Monk and I conducted a complete tasting of every wine we produced from the 2012 vintage (more than 150 separate lots) on January 14 and 15. As we suspected, quality is excellent across the board with juicy approachable wines reminiscent of the highly successful 2005 vintage.
It is during these blind tastings that we first recognize special wines that are likely candidates for our single vineyard bottlings. Last January, we discovered how much we enjoyed the 2011 Monte Sereno Vineyard Chardonnay and East Rincon Vineyard Pinot Noir; so much so that we decided to release these as separate Single Vineyard Selections for the first time ever. We bottled only two barrels of each of these—so I anticipate that they will sell out immediately upon release. Enjoy!
Watch Bottling at Talley Vineyards
Here is a quick look at the 2011 Rosemary’s Chardonnay traveling through the bottling line.
Mano Tinta Artist Label Competition
It is my pleasure to announce that this March, Talley Vineyards will be hosting the sixth annual Mano Tinta revolving artist label competition. For those of you unfamiliar, Mano Tinta is a charity wine produced through a community effort wherein all the grapes, packaging and labor to make the wine is donated and the artwork for the label is created by the local community through this competition. The vibrant and creative labels from the past few vintages of the Mano Tinta wine have featured a variety of colorful images, all symbolic of the vineyard worker and their craft.
This competition is open to the general public and will be on display for public viewing and voting in the Talley Vineyards tasting room throughout the month of March. We encourage local artists of all ages and levels of experience to submit their artwork to the Talley Vineyards tasting room anytime through the end of March. Submissions must be accompanied by a completed entry form and should be original and meaningful. The winner will be announced within the first week of April and will have their artwork showcased on the 2010 Mano Tinta label, website, t-shirts and posters. Entry forms and specific guidelines can be found listed below or by contacting anna@talleyvineyards.com.
Mano Tinta Label Competition Guidelines and Form
The profits raised from the sales of this wine are donated to the Fund for Vineyard and Farm Workers; an endowment created by Brian and Johnine Talley that benefits organizations utilized by the vineyard and farm workers of all San Luis Obispo County. For additional information about the competition or The Fund For Vineyard and Farm Workers, please call (805) 489-0446 or visit us at www.talleyvineyards.com.
What is Malbec and Why Does Everyone Love It?
When I think about Talley Vineyards, the grapes that come to mind are of course, pinot noir and chardonnay. When I think about the tasting room, however, I think about a diversity of palates. It is precisely for these palates that we continually produce unique wines. Some of these wines only get produced in one great vintage, such as the West Rincon Pinot Noir or the Ranchita Canyon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. Others we continue to produce annually, like our petite sirah. In the most recent vintages, however, we have most definitely taken a liking to the lovely malbec.
In the wine-drinking world, passion for malbec is a recent trend. Malbec originates from France and is one of the five permitted varietals of Bordeaux, though it is certainly not the star there and considered a minor blending component. Most of us, however, think of Argentina when we think of Malbec – probably because you can still get a nice bottle for a relatively inexpensive price. Malbec was brought into Argentina in the mid 1800’s, but it was not until the 1990’s that the wine producers of Argentina decided that it would be their key varietal. Malbec, according to our winemaker Eric Johnson, is “an awesome grape because it varies heavily based on where it is grown – it can be tannic, soft, fruity, or spicy, or it can be all of that wrapped up into one wine.” I think that the reason why many people love it here, however, is that it often tends towards ripe, juicy aromas and flavors (think ripe blueberry, blackberry, and plums), soft tannins, and moderate acidity. Assistant winemaker Nicole Pope really enjoys the varietal because “it has a distinct fruit profile from all of the other reds we work with, with awesome fresh berry aromas - even during fermentation.” While still not widely planted here on the Central Coast, Malbec is a perfect fit in Paso Robles. The fresh, ripe fruit develops during the warm, sunny days, and the cool evenings preserves the acidity that balances the wine.
Here in the tasting room, we now have two delicious wines that feature malbec. The first, our 2010 Bishop’s Peak Malbec, is our first 100% varietal malbec in over fifteen years! This wine is packed with fresh berry characteristics and has soft, elegant tannins resulting from over 20 months in the barrel. The second is our current wine on tap offering which is a 2011 blend of 60% malbec and 40% cabernet sauvignon. This wine, with less time in the barrel, really showcases the ripe fruit of the malbec and compliments it with the peppery spice of the cabernet sauvignon. Come try them side by side!
Maybe it turns out that you’ve read this entire blog and disagree with me because you actually don’t like malbec, and that’s ok! I urge you, however, to stop by the tasting room and give ours a try – after all, there are a lot of other wines here to enjoy as well!
New Year, New People
It’s the New Year and we are focused on planning for our 65th year of farming in the Arroyo Grande Valley. While most of the effort is directed toward things we’ve done many times before, things like pruning, planting schedules and budgets, there are some truly new happenings to announce, especially related to people.
On the vineyard side, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Travis Monk as our new Vineyard Manager. Travis has worked with us since 2008 when he started in the Tasting Room. Lucy Parkin was extremely impressed with his work ethic, great attitude and especially his BBQ skills. After graduating from Cal Poly with a degree in Agricultural Business Management in 2009, Travis joined former Vineyard Manager Kevin Wilkinson as Viticulturalist and was appointed Assistant Vineyard Manager at the end of 2011. Travis worked closely with Kevin this past year to ensure a seamless transition to his new role. He oversaw the planting of more than 20 acres of avocados and now turns his attention to the replanting of the Rincon Vineyard, which will start in 2015. In his spare time, Travis enjoys hunting and golf. I’ve enjoyed working with Travis and look forward to the new ideas and the commitment to quality that he brings to our vineyard operations.
We’ve added another full time cellar worker in the winery. Patrick Sigler was one of three harvest interns who helped us during the 2012 harvest. Pat’s main responsibility was grape sampling, but he proved to be dedicated, conscientious and hardworking in the cellar as well. Pat just graduated from the Wine and Viticulture program at Cal Poly. In addition to his studies, he enjoyed much success on the Cal Poly soccer team, scoring the game winning goal against arch rival UCSB in 2011. Pat was raised in Sonoma County where he was exposed to the wine industry through friends and looks forward to becoming a winemaker someday.
Restaurant Month in California
As a way to encourage dining out during an otherwise slow time of year, California celebrates January as “Restaurant Month”. Each participating restaurant creates a generous fixed price menu offering 3 courses for $30. This is a fantastic opportunity to get in on some incredible culinary values, particularly in some restaurants where that’s less than the cost of just one entrée.
I can’t speak for what happens in other counties, but in San Luis Obispo there’s an added bonus of wineries partnering with these restaurants. In most cases this means that for a small additional fee, the restaurants will offer either a flight of wines or individual glasses to complement each course. For the most part, these added wine pairings are designed to be as great of a bargain as the meals so you have the chance to taste some incredible, and in some cases rare wines, all for a nominal price.
This brings me to the Talley Vineyards tie-in… I’m in marketing, can you blame me? We are delighted to share that we are partnered with the fabulous Marisol Restaurant at The Cliffs Resort in Shell Beach. They are well known on the Central Coast for their exquisite food prepared by Chef Greg Wangard in a beautifully scenic location perched right on the cliffs of Shell Beach. This month only, for $30 you can choose from a large selection of gourmet appetizers, entrées, and desserts for each course that pair perfectly with some delicious Talley Estate wines. Check out this link to see their complete menu, but I highly recommend the beef short ribs with our Talley Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir, the best I’ve ever had!