Salcheto’s Remarkable Winery

Inspired to improve his wines while reducing energy consumption, Michele Manelli, the winemaker at Salcheto in Montepulciano, Italy, has built a remarkable winery that is completely off the grid.

Nestled into the side of a hill with a vertical garden planted on its façade to absorb the sun, the winery is as beautiful as it is functional. The roof doubles as a piazza and is equipped with an automated sprinkler system. When the piazza is wet, the sun’s energy vaporizes the water and cools the winery through a simple (yet ingenious) thermodynamic process. The facility is heated by burning clippings and other materials in the local landscape. Inside, there are no light bulbs. Natural light is delivered through long reflective tubes and mirrors. To pump over, stainless steel vats harness the power of CO2 released during fermentation process. Electricity is provided through solar panels. In terms of metrics, the net result is that Salcheto’s winery uses 54% less energy than a conventional facility. 

At this state-of-the-art winery, Manelli makes Obvius a Rosso di Montepulciano he describes as being made “exclusively from grapes.” For Manelli, this means no added sulfites, cultured yeasts, oak barrels or even electricity are used in the winemaking process. The recipe calls for perfectly intact sangiovese grapes, ambient yeasts and vinification in his stainless steel vats designed to harness CO2 to power the mechanism for pumping over. The wines are aged and bottled in an oxygen free environment. The result is a fresh juicy wine with a complex inner core, and a terrific value at $19 a bottle. 

The New California Wine

In 2010, San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonné was writing a short article for Saveur when his editor called him with a problem. She had a slew of stories about California wine that were not fitting together and needed an overarching narrative to connect them. She gave him a week to develop and write the piece. After seven days with little sleep, it was clear that what had once seemed like a disparate movement of iconoclastic producers had reached a critical mass and a new kind of California wine had emerged. The seismic shift begged for more space than a special edition of a magazine could offer, thus his indispensable volume The New California Wine: A Guide to the Producers and Wines Behind a Revolution in Taste. 

Sophie Menin:  What are the New California Wines? 

Jon Bonné:  These wines represent the continuity of the state’s long wine growing history, what made people fall in love with California a generation ago and where it is going. They are wines made in a style that is relevant to wines around the world, wines that have a sense of place and are meant to be part of a gastronomic experience. They often use varieties other than the northern European grapes to which we’ve grown accustom and are not trapped in a bigger is better arms race. 

SM:  Yet not all the wine and winemakers discussed in the book are new. 

JB:  The book’s theme may be the new generation of winemakers, but it was important for it not to be about just the young and hip. Decades ago, winemakers such as Paul Draper, Cathy Corison and Ted Lemon (respectively of Ridge, Corison and Littorai) chose to stick with values they deemed important and pursued a radically different set of questions as others took an easier path. Their work wasn’t simply to make great wine, but to push ahead an industry that was really in its infancy. 

SM:  What have you discovered about where varietals are doing well? 

JB:  Grenache and grenache blanc are going to be superstars. Red Grenache grows beautifully in Santa Barbara, Santa Rita and the high dessert. The Sierra Foothills are a largely untapped resource for native Rhone varieties, especially the whites. Ron Mansfield is the great pioneer of those grapes up in mountains. 

SM:  Why is table wine such a dilemma in California? 

JB:  For all the quirky things people are doing, the core of the industry is not paying attention to simpler wines so table wine is left to those who make wine as an industrial product. The new winemakers seem to understand that even if you make great wine, you still have a responsibility to make a simpler wine as well. Steve Matthiasson is an example of someone who is pushing forward on this issue. With the Tendu project he is making aggressively priced compelling wines in liter bottles with crown caps. The white is mostly vermentino from Yolo County and he just released a red made from aglianico. 

SM:   Has it been helpful to not be a California native when reviewing for the San Francisco Chronicle? 

Ten years ago, when I began writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, coming from New York seemed like a liability. It was easy for some in the industry to dismiss me as a dude from New York who says wine should be made in a European style. But more relevant than being from New York was that I had just spent five years writing about wine in in Washington State where it was natural to meet talented winemakers without big money behind them. Washington State winemakers constantly have to prove themselves. It gave me an innate understanding of the type of winemakers covered in this book.

Cloudburst Reveals the Potential of the Margaret River

Cloudburst owner and winemaker Will Berliner just netted the chardonnay he will harvest in late February. The meshwork protects the fruit from three types of birds: silver eyes, which take a sip out of each berry; ring neck parrots, which lop off whole grape bunches to exercise their beaks; and honey birds, which actually eat the fruit. He guards his tiny crop jealously, given that after three vintages, Cloudburst Chardonnay has earned coveted placement on the wine lists of three New York City dining meccas-- Tribeca Grill, Le Bernardin, and Eleven Madison Park, a remarkable accomplishment for a novice winemaker with a vineyard in the Margaret River of Western Australia.

Cloudburst’s unlikely genesis began with Will’s homesick Australian wife, Ali, with whom he used to travel to Australia regularly to visit family. When Ali became pregnant and sleeping on floors was no longer possible, they drove the Australian coast in search of a home. Coming from New England, Will found it difficult to imagine living in the country’s arid climate. Then they visited the Margaret River, a wine community among ancient hardwood forests five miles inland from the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet, and it just felt right. They spent their savings on a property abutting Aboriginal land and a national park, which also happened to be on the local wine route near the well-known wineries Leeuwin Estate and Moss Wood Winery.

For seven years, Will listened to the land and developed a deep affinity for biodynamic practices. Meanwhile, he studied viticulture long-distance at the University of California at Davis, educated his palate and began planting experimental blocks of chardonnay and other varieties. He released the first vintage of his expressive chardonnay in 2010, followed by a leaner, more complex bottling in 2011 and an elegant, fleshier wine 2012.  All in all, it is an auspicious debut for an adventurous spirit from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Reducing the Carbon Footprint in Bordeaux

Few economic sectors see the effects of global warming as clearly as winemakers, for whom the words “weather” and “vintage” are synonymous. In Bordeaux, decades of records show that the harvests are occurring earlier and the wines tend to be less acidic and higher in alcohol. While these changes are not entirely linked to climate change -- technical improvements and new vineyard management regimes have made it easier to grow ripe healthy grapes -- the Bordelaise know it is a fact of life.

Aware that wine regions must implement strategies to preserve vineyards for generations to come, in 2008 the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB) commissioned a study to measure the Bordeaux wine industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. The study pointed to incoming goods, particularly glass bottles, as being the leading contributor to the region’s carbon footprint, followed by wine transport and energy use in the vineyard and cellar.

The CIVB responded to the study by launching The Bordeaux Wine 2020 Climate Plan with the goal of reducing the region’s total emissions by 20% by the end of the decade, while increasing its energy and water conservation 20% during the same period. For wineries seeking to reduce greenhouse emissions, here are a few lessons from the Bordeaux study worth considering:

Use Lighter Bottles: Move to bottles that retain the same physical properties and appearance as conventional bottles, but are lighter and made with fewer materials.
Collect Empty Packaging: In 2012, Bordeaux was able to collect and recycled 17.5 tons of empty packaging, which was used to produce alternative energy for cement manufacturing.
Study and Alter Wine Shipment Methodologies: Bordeaux plans to increase its use of maritime shipping, which generates 5.5 % less CO2 than ground transport.
Consider Groups and Support Networks: Collective efforts allow winemakers to share both the startup costs linked to setting up an environmental protection process and strategies for continued improvements.

The Genesis of Louis / Dressner

When Long Island son Joe Dressner met Burgundy native Denyse Louis at NYU, the two were studying for their masters’ degrees in journalism. At the time, they had no idea that one day they would start a wine importing business together. Yet with their partner Kevin McKenna, they have created one of the most influential wine portfolios in America. Today, Louis / Dressner represents over a hundred properties, mostly in France and Italy, but also in Spain, Portugal and Croatia. Advocates of organic and artisanal practices long before it was fashionable and simply because the practices made wines taste good, they have introduced some of the most characterful wines available in the country. When they imported the Didier Dagneau Pouilly-Fume Silex, it set a new standard for the level of complexity one dared to expect from a Sauvignon Blanc. With Arianna Occhipinti they revealed the potential for Frappato and Nero d’Avola to capture the wild elegance of southeast Sicily. Their Alice et Olivier de Moor A.O.C. Chablis “Bel Air et Clardy” is ethereal in its clarity. Dressner passed away in 2011, but his spirit is very much alive in the catalogue of passionate vignerons he assembled during his lifetime.