Time Travel

Posted 03/28/2008 at 06:59 AM by Ben

A recent survey on the Internet posed an intriguing question: if you were offered the gift of one superpower, what would it be? I'm pretty sure my choice would be time travel. (The winner, BTW, was the power to become invisible, which could also come in handy from time to time.) My first stop would probably be a trip to the Jurassic epoch to see some real live dinosaurs, followed by a visit to ancient Egypt to check out Cleopatra for myself.

But because I'm a wine geek, I'd also want to make some stops in the tasting rooms of the past.. For sure, I'd head back 20 years to Grand Hyatt hotel Washington, DC, where I first met winemaker David Ramey.

David was an incredibly articulate and energetic speaker, who was really able to convey his passion for wine and for winemaking. He had recently been appointed the head winemaker at Matanzas Creek winery, and had brought along a bunch of newly minted Chardonnays for us to sample. They were stunningly delicious, and a true revelation about just how profound California Chardonnay could become in the hands of a great winemaker.

David talked a lot about something called "terroir." As a budding Burgundy enthusiast, I was vaguely familiar with the term, but didn't really understand it. What the French referred to as "gout de terroir" often tasted to me like unpleasant, funky, off flavors. What I didn't realize at the time was that a lot of what the French referred to as gout de terroir was just an excuse for poor winemaking and musty old barrels.

David put an entirely different spin on it. The way he explained it, terroir wasn't something one learned to tolerate, but something wonderful that a good winemaker should try to coax from the soil and the vineyard to make a very special and distinctive wine. To bring off this feat of magic, however, a winemaker had to be willing to take risks that were well beyond the stodgy UC Davis winemaking cookbook that was dominated California winemaking at the time. David called this method "swinging for the fences.".

Twenty years later, David has his own winery called Ramey Wine Cellars. The wines have been getting rave reviews from virtually every major wine publication. I'm especially fond of the Chardonnays from the Hyde and Hudson vineyards. They stand out from the crowd for precisely the reason David was talking about way back when. They are terroir wines that stand as a smack down to all the grousing about dull, a distinctive Chardonnay.

The Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay reminds me a lot of a Grand Cru Chablis with its racy acidity, taut structure and underlying minerality. The Hudson is its stylistic counterparty, with a big, generous expression of Fuji apple fruit and bracing structure. Both the 2004 and 2005 vintages of both wines are particularly successful.

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