Tag: Santa Barbara County

Deborah Hall, of Gypsy Canyon, Shows off Her Vines

Deborah Hall is the owner and winemaker for Gypsy Canyon. She’s not only a super nice lady, she makes some amazing wines, in particular, her Old Vines Angelica. This is a sherry-type wine that was made by the mission fathers throughout the southern parts of California. In fact, Angelica was supposedly named for the city of Los Angeles. 

Check out the video below and she tells about how she found the old vines of Mission grapes on her property. BTW, head-trained grapes are ones that are not put up on trellises. More about Deborah and how we got to know her below the video.

We got to know Deborah Hall when Michael started his own little ancient vines project here in Los Angeles. Michael got permission to harvest the grapes off of two vines at the oldest building still standing in Los Angeles, the Avila Adobe on Olvera Street. We’re pretty sure the vines were planted when the adobe was built in 1818, but there’s no way of knowing. The vines are well over 100 years old and are quite possibly the oldest vines in the state.

Once Michael found out that he was dealing with Mission grapes – a variety grown here by the Franciscans who built the California missions, he contacted Deborah Hall to get some pointers on how to make Angelica. Deborah was not only kind enough to share her recipe, she invited us up to lunch at her home and winery. She not only fed us and poured us her incredible wines, she took us out to see the grapes she’d found while clearing brush on her property. Anne had the video camera and we had a blast talking about old vines.

What Are Tannins? Rick Longoria Explains

Winemaker Rick Longoria
Winemaker Rick Longoria

If folks tend to refer to Rick Longoria with a certain reverence, it’s not just that he produces some truly awesome wines. He is also one of the pioneers of the Santa Ynez wine country. He started working in the area in 1976, and founded his Longoria winery in 1982. We just happened to catch Mr. Longoria in his Lompoc tasting room, so, like, we’re going to turn down an opportunity to ask the man about something wine-related? Of course not! And since Mr. Longoria is all about longevity and structure, then what better question to ask him than “What are tannins?”

If you’ve ever sipped some red wine and felt a sharp, almost drying sensation in your mouth, then what you’re noticing are the tannins in the wine. But what are they? Where do they come from? And why is some tannin good, but too much is bad?

“Tannins are a natural compound found in the skins of all grapes,” Longoria said.

But, he explained, since white grapes are pressed immediately after they are crushed, the juice doesn’t pick up the tannin compounds. Red grapes, on the other hand, are crushed but the juice is left with the fruit skins while it is being fermented, which gives red wines their color and also tannins.

“Red wines pick up the tannins from the skins of red grapes,” Longoria said. “And every variety, characteristically, has different levels of tannin. Pinot noir, for example, is one of the varieties that has the least amount of tannin. And going up the spectrum, some of the syrahs, cabernet sauvignon, the Bordeaux varietals, have higher levels of tannin.”

Longoria also pointed out that tannins are not tannic acid. They’re actually poly-phenols and not acid components. In addition, how much tannin ends up in a wine is something that the winemaker can adjust by prolonging or shortening the contact the juice has with the crushed grapes.

“Tannins help in the ageability of red wines,” Longoria said. “They act as a kind of shield that – layers of shields – that as the years progress, they get bound up.”

So as a red wine gets older, it gets softer, and hopefully the amount of tannin ends up balancing out the flavor of the fruit.

“The ideal thing would be to have just the exact number of tannin levels, let’s say tannin layers, so that when the fruit of a wine finally gets to a point of ultimate maturation, let’s say 15 years, that last layer of tannin has been resolved. So then you have this perfect, harmonious integration of the fruit flavor, maturation and there’s not more tannin to interfere with it.”

Longoria also noted that some winemakers will miss the mark and allow too much tannin into a wine, with the result that the fruit is gone, but the tannin is still there. And that is why some older wines are beyond marvelous and others just make your teeth feel dry.

Longoria 2009 Pinot Grigio

Type: Dry white
What makes it special: Italian grape finding a great home in Santa Barbara county.

Plays well with: Salads, seafood, creamy sauces.
We are celebrating this humble, but lovely treat of a wine for a couple reasons.
First up, we do want to make note of the TAPAS Grand Tasting in San Francisco this weekend, one of the wineries pouring is winemaker Richard Longoria, who made this pinot grigio – even though it’s not one of the wines featured by the Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society. TAPAS is, of course, about the Spanish grapes – tempranillo, garnacha albariño.
Longoria is going to be one of 44 wineries showing their wares to upwards of 1500 consumers. Address, ticket prices (there are still some left) and more information can be gotten at the TAPAS site, tapasociety.org.
The other reason is that we love pinot grigio. In the same way that sangiovese got a bad rap after years of cheap bottlings in straw baskets, pinot grigio got tagged with being a largely blah, insipid tasteless product produced cheaply for export from its native Italy.
Now, we ask you – is that any way to treat a perfectly nice, inoffensive little grape? We don’t think so and, fortunately, neither does Mr. Longoria and a bunch of other growers in Santa Barbara county, near the Santa Rita Hills and Santa Ynez regions.
Thanks to them, pinot grigio is making a comeback, finding a new soul and a backbone.

The Longoria 2009 Pinot Grigio is clean looking and smells fresh without being too fruity. But there’s plenty of crisp fruit in the taste, including peaches and honeydew melon. It’s light in the mouth, and there are plenty of thirst-quenching acids to help cleanse the palate between bites of something tasty on a lazy afternoon.

There’s also a great feel of minerality to the wine similar to the added minerals in your bottled water. Consider it a feature of the terroir of the Santa Barbara region, which is finally getting some attention these days and not just for the abundance of chardonnay in the area.

This isn’t the cheapest wine on the market, but it is perfect for that special summer picnic. Just don’t try holding onto it for long. Pinot grigio – even the best of them – won’t age and should be as transitory as that lazy summer afternoon.

Rideau 2007 Mourvedre

Type: Dry red

Made With: the mourvedre grape

Plays Well With: Hearty meats, such as herbed leg of lamb.

Call the mourvedre grape the stinky cheese of the wine world.  While it’s a good, hearty wine that does pair well with strong cheeses, like they do about some cheeses, folks will complain about funk in the nose or taste.  Which is probably why it’s getting more and more common to see US. wines blended with the lighter grenache and fruitier syrah – the GSM you sometimes see on labels – like they do in the Rhone valley of France.

But you’re just as likely to find it bottled as a single variety wine, like this one from Rideau Vineyard.

The nose is a combination of rose petals and a hint of leather which can be one way to describe the “French funk” as it is known. But the nose is only hiding some good fruitiness and some herb flavors such as sage and mint. That may not sound very tasty for a wine, but then, this wine needs to be drunk with food on the plate, such as an herb-roasted leg of lamb or some other hearty fare that will play off some of the herbs and other flavors in the wine. While some mourvedres are made with lots of fruit and can be served as cocktails, this specific model from Rideau is not of them and that is a very good thing indeed.