“If pinot noir is the next best thing to sex, you must be having really good sex.”
—PinotFile.com
Dave never buys pinot noir at home.
“No balls,” he says.
We know this wine variety can be amazing. We’ve seen the movie Sideways. We’ve tasted good pinot noirs in Washington and Oregon. But we’ve encountered insipid pinot noir far too many times. Cuz insipid pinot noir is cheap.
“I can’t afford to like pinot noir,” says our wine-aficionado friend.
Now here we are, drinking elegant pinot noir and adoring it, eyes rolling back in our head, drool escaping from corners of mouths. We whip out our credit cards for more, more.
We’re drinking on the west end of Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley. Locals call this the Deep End. It’s too close to the Pacific, really, to grow grapes. Yet the Deep Enders do.
At Handley Cellars, tasting-room employee Ali Nemo pours a side-by-side tasting of 2011 pinots. One’s a blend of grapes from three appellations, two inland from here. The second pinot is from grapes all grown about 10 miles from the Pacific. Both wines resonate with complex flavors, feature rich color, and offer an outstanding finish that lingers on and on. But the wines differ in texture, acidity and flavor.
In the first, you can taste the sunshine. Pinot No. 2’s flavors are brought to you by fog.
Owner and winemaker Milla Handley, great-great granddaughter of Henry Weinhard, crafts wines from her 29-acre estate vineyard and also buys grapes from Redwood and Potter valleys. The grapes grown closest to the coast develop an “oceanic acidity.” The resulting pinot noirs have more tannins than we’ve come to expect from grocery-store pinots. That’s why this wine can be plopped in a cellar (or dark closet) and emerge 15 years later drinking so, so smooth.
To get here, drive north beyond Santa Rosa. Head west on Highway 128 at Cloverdale, and cruise rolling green hills toward the coast. Now you’re in Boonville, population 1,035. Robert Mailer Anderson wrote a best-selling 2003 novel set in this quirky burg where oldsters speak a local dialect called “Boontling.” That’s a real thing. The book casts wine tourists as mere extras. That’s not far from reality, either. Mendocino County anchors the Emerald Triangle, where much weed is grown. We don’t encounter any native speakers of Boontling during our weekend in Anderson Valley but, dude, the grapes are good, good. This is a tucked-away place, south of Fort Bragg and, farther north, the Lost Coast, aka the King Range National Conservation Area.
Dave and I drive through Boonville to Philo (FILE-oh), population 349, where we’ve booked a room at the Anderson Valley Inn. Our first wine stop is Navarro Vineyards, named “Winery of the Year” at the 2014 California State Fair. We could stay here all day and let wine-room worker Nick Johnson pour 15 wines for us. These tastings are complimentary tastings—but we pass on award-winning whites and hit the reds. The 2012 Méthode à l’Ancienne ($29) blends pinots from 16 vines, all in Anderson Valley. Johnson describes low yields and tormented grapes grown near the coast, then pours for us the 2012 Deep End Blend ($49). Navarro won a gold medal, best of class, for this one.
I get it.
In two days, Dave and I drink spectacular pinots at many wineries. Along the way, we encounter a few zinfandels from inland vineyards. My favorites include Edmeades 2005 Perli Vineyard Zinfandel ($40) and its 2012 Gianoli Vineyard Zin ($35). Wine notes suggest “intense notes of blackberries and forest floor.” Who knew dirt paired so well with fruit?
These zins vary wildly from our beloved jammy zins of the Sierra Foothills, Amador and Lodi. Different spices. Blacker fruits. Oh yeah.
Anderson is famous for its whites and sparkling wines, so we sample a few of these. But for us, the pinots are the reds of note. At Drew Family Cellars, a smallish mom-and-pop place, we taste the 2012 Fog-Eater Pinot Noir ($45)—“pomegranate, orange and licorice with floral notes”—that was on the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top 100 wine list.
We learn that the term “fog-eater” is a Boontling pejorative for a person who lives too close to the coast, “on the margin.”
You know those bottles of wine that kill you with their luscious beauty? This is one of those. Fortunately, I have not yet hit the limit on my credit card.
Dave’s favorite Anderson Valley pinot noir comes from Harmonique and was crafted by Robert Klindt, a longtime local winemaker and owner of the acclaimed but now-defunct Claudia Springs Winery. Harmonique’s 2006 Oppenlander Vineyard Pinot Noir comes from grapes grown about eight miles from the ocean. Smooth with age, its essence lingers in my mouth for hours, days, weeks. I can still taste it. I have damp dreams about this wine.
Dave and I decide that we’re all about the fog. Blanketed by low stratus clouds, the grapes here strive for survival with testicular fortitude. We taste their anguish in the Deep End pinot noirs. Dave puts it simply: “These have the balls.”
At a newish tasting room for Lichen Estate, we sip a 2012 Pinot Noir ($65), a newly released work of art in a bottle. In the tasting room, we chat with Dan Rivin, who revels in the craftsmanship of small family-owned estates. The foggy wines of Mendocino’s coastal region are gaining popularity. And this makes Rivin oddly glum. He fears the coming influx of large corporate wineries that arrive “with suitcases of cash” and gobble up local estates.
“The secret’s out,” he laments.
There’ll be focus groups. Homogenized pinot noir that no longer pays tribute to the terroir of here. Emasculated flavors. Pinot that tastes like root beer and cotton candy.
Could be. Or perhaps the feisty Deep Enders will prove resistant to invasion.
Rivin pours us a last splash of pinot noir, luxuriously rich, with creamy layers of fruit and spice that taste like here.
We head home in a cloud.
