Hank Beckmeyer and Caroline Hoel, the owners of La Clarine Farm, are part of a growing contingent of California winemakers who are making natural wine. Yes, they grow their grapes organically but their approach goes much further.
They have adopted farming ideology from both Rudolph Steiner (the founder of Biodynamics) and Masanobu Fukuoka, who proposed minimal intervention or 'do nothing' farming.
Their wines are also made with native yeasts, aged in neutral oak barrels,are unfiltered, unfined and have minimal sulfur added at bottling.
Most importantly, the wines are delicious.
Not to mention, the farm's commitment to biodiversity with olive and fig trees, and a herd of angora goats, from which they make goat cheese and natural soaps.
La Clarine Syrah 2008 $20 (BUY IT HERE)
Very pure blueberry flavors, great acids, some eucalyptus and pine aromas, earthy, very balanced and clean, did not feel hot even with 14.9 alcohol (This number made me wince but California is a warm , sunny climate).
*I received the La Clarine Syrah as a wine sample. I have no other affiliation with La Clarine Farm.
9 comments:
I always am fascinated with the idea of using native yeast (when available, of course)... just makes sense!
Do you think it influences the taste too? Adds a bit of the terroir into the wine?
Hmm, I think all yeasts do influence a wine's flavor, but many designer commercial yeasts promise to give your wine specific flavors, like pineapple or blackberry.
Native yeasts also affect a wine's flavor, but are not imparting faux tastes that were not already present.
We never add artificial industrial (and possibly genertically modified) yeasts to our wines. That's because we dont't mind that the 'same' wine is comes out different every year. In fact we, and our customers, like it that way. Our wines express the terroir and climate every year. And of course we believe that it makes for a tastier, more complex and interesting wine.
Other winemakers (especially the volume producers) have 'brand' to sell and they are forced to produce the same wine every year, no matter what the weather, so they have to add not only artificial yeasts but a plethora of other chemicals and additives too.
Wine Whore,
You got it. Wild, or indigenous, yeasts do give the wine a little something special, and sure you can call it a bit of terroir. Better yet, the really help the wine express itself and it's locality.
Selected yeasts on the other hand, just as Amy says, can impart certain characteristics that some wine makers are looking for, and to many, this is unnatural.
Once you get to tasting wines that have been spontaneously fermented using only the yeasts airborne or already on the skins of the grapes, you will begin to recognize them and you will notice also a certain vitality in these wines.
-cheers
So, what do you think: is it better to use native yeast or are selected yeasts better because they can be used to add that "just right" characteristic?
Wine Whore,
That all depends on what the wine maker is trying to achieve with his final product. Is he trying to achieve "typicity"? Scores from the critics? Trying to appease consumer tastes?
As for my personal opinion?? I am not a big fan of selected yeasts, and I especially don't like one that is selected to impart a particular characteristic. To me, this is unnatural. In fact, just about every wine on my wine list (about 90 titles), are spontaneously fermented, and I like them!
I much prefer the wine maker doing as little as possible when he/she helps healthy grapes transform into wine, and this includes not adding anything at all from yeast to sulfur.
I must mention, that there is risk in allowing native yeasts spontaneously ferment the grapes. The fermentation may not begin or may end before the sugars are finished fermenting, leaving a wine that is half-dry or even sweet - I have tasted some of these. The risk is, of course, very often financial.
It's a complicated discussion, but I am anyway convinced that a wine made with wild yeasts is very often superior, and better helps express it's terroir (which is another lengthy discussion)
:-)
I would suspect wild yeast influence would be less perceptible in a Syrah than, say, a Chardonnay.
Does make it tougher to make a consistent product, I would imagine. I will say, with all the biodynamic processes in place, the cost of production must be higher, so $20 sounds like a great deal.
Interesting... in any case, the idea of expressing the terroir in a wine through the use of native yeasts sounds very romantic to me!
Hello Joe
I am not sure if a "wild" yeast would be less perceptible in a Syrah than in a Chardonnay. This is a good question and perhaps the best answer is that certain "terroirs" will have stronger or more influential yeasts that may be more perceptible regardless of the grape. But, I am not sure how these wild yeasts influence different grapes.
So far in my experience, I have found the wines of the Loire Valley, especially the reds, and the wines of Campania (Italy), again especially the reds, to have the most noticeable "spontaneous smells" - if that makes any sense at all ;-)
And, it is definitely tougher to make a consistent product, but sometimes it's these slight variations in vintage or even bottle that make me look forward to opening the next bottle, and the next and the next!
I am really not sure about the costs involved, but I think that making natural wines can actually have a lower cost than conventional wines with all those expensive machines used in making them. And those pesticides and herbicides...they aren't free either.
-cheers
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