Oh, deep and profound annoyance! We had gotten turned onto Three Sticks Winery at the Family Winemakers event in Pasadena last spring. Then, after several rounds of phone tag and other missed opportunities, Anne finally got a chance to to talk to winery owner Bill Price. Then Anne spent two weeks…. Two whole weeks, mind you, trying to find the note book pages on which she’d written the interview notes, only to find them on the hard drive of her computer. She’d typed them rather than hand written them, which is better because Anne types faster than she writes.
What attracted us to Three Sticks were the lovely Burgundian-style wines that Price’s winemaker, Don Van Staaveren, was making. Price told us that’s on purpose.
“We try to make a more classicly Burgundian style,” said Price, who is also the owner of Durell Vineyards in Sonoma County, California. He’s got roughly 150 acres in Sonoma, with about 40 acres planted in chardonnay, 40 acres in pinot noir, and then 10 acres planted in syrah, with the rest in a few of the Bordeaux varieties of grapes, including cabernet sauvignon.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get that there’s a big difference between the soil in Sonoma County, California, and the Burgundy region in France. That’s what’s called terroir, and Price agreed that it does make a difference.
“We reflect what the land gives us,” he said. “Though maybe in a more subtle way than… our extreme coastal competitors.”
The result is food-friendly, though perhaps not for the budget-conscious.
The Three Sticks Winery website is here. They do expect to be releasing a cab sauv soon, but, hey, check us out on Wednesday, when we post the pinot noir notes.