Our Estate vineyards got a beautiful, yet scary 8" covering of snow on Easter Sunday, and the growing year was beginning on a gloomy and soggy note.
We had a too typical late spring, with snow & rains going well into late May, causing a very late start to our growing season. Mother mature called an end to the wet & cold weather pattern with a flurry of hot & dry weather, causing the vines to grow almost unbelievably fast, as they seemed to know that they were getting a late start and needed to catch up.
In speaking to other growers and winemakers in Northern California, we were all in agreement that a late, late harvest was going to be in the cards. All were worried of bumping right up against the cold weather and snow as happened in 2005, and most memorably of the 1998 harvest, when we had three snowfalls before harvest, leading to low sugar levels, poor color and concentration, and the worst wine vintage in memory.
Low and behold, the vines caught up, and a well timed two week long heat spike actually caused the average berry size to stay smaller than normal....a good thing as the skins carry all the color compounds and many of the desirable flavor and aroma compounds, so the skin to juice ratio was increased, causing a year of good color, flavor, and concentration.
Barrel tasting now in early December shows that the wines have vibrant fruit, strong pear & apple in our Chardonnay, Bing Cherry and raspberry in our Merlot, wonderful currants and cherries in our Cabernet, exotic wild cherry & raspberries encased in spices in our Zinfandel, peaches & citrus in our Viognier....wow....and a new addition, a Dry Chenin Blanc touched with aromas and flavors of Ruby red grapefruit. It should be a great year
2005 Wines
Wow, what a year!
A tiny but delicious Chardonnay crop, wonderfully ripe & opulent Merlot, Cabernet, Zinfandel, Syrah, and a surprise, we picked some Merlot very early to make a special batch of Sparkling Wine....a Blanc de Noir made from Merlot grapes, strawberry notes with hints of cherries on both the nose & palate. To be released in fall 2006. Very delicious and it looks to be the beginnings of a tradition!
2004 Wines
Our 2004 Chardonnay is aging in a combination of new and used French oak barrels, aromas of apples, pears, and citrus fill the air. Every couple weeks we open up each barrel, stir the "lees", and top it off. Malolactic fermentation has started, but won't finish until late spring.
The 2004 Viognier is looking great, with flavors and aromas of nectarine and citrus, especially orange peel/tangerine. The Viognier is not being made in oak for the first time; we have decided to make a fresh, fruity, and juicy style this year to compliment our offerings with another style of wine reminiscent of, maybe, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
The 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon came in early from our AlexanderValley vineyards, and is ultra ripe, ultra concentrated, and as dark as a moonless night.
The 2004 Cabernet Franc tastes great; we just pressed it over the last few days. Rich, dark, wonderfully aromatic and full of ripe currant & cherry flavors.
The 2004 Merlot is ripe & jammy, with great plum, cherry, berry & tobacco nuances.
We are into our 2nd year making Zinfandel from a wonderful grower in Lodi.
This old vine zin is dark with intense fruit concentration, nice spices, and that earthy character familiar to Lodi zins.
Also new....a 2004 Petite Sirah.... lovely color & concentration. Berry, cherry, & licorice, yes, licorice. This is really quite a mouthful!
More Awards
California State Fair- The results are in, both the 2001 Merlot and Tres Rojas won “Best of Class” awards, the Tres Rojas was given a “90” point rating by the judges, the Merlot an “89”. The 2001 Chardonnay won a bronze medal.
That pretty much ended the Major Wine Competition season, with our wines garnering 23 medals in 25 entries with the Merlot and Tres Rojas both 7 for 7, and the Chardonnay 5 for 7. Generally speaking, 1 in 3 entered wines receive awards (.333)……so we have quite a batting average (.920).
Archived articles
THE GRAPES OF SHINGLETOWN PROVIDE SWEET TASTE OF SUCCESS
By: Doni Greenberg
Published: February 16, 2001 in News
Jim Feider, Redding's Electric Utility director, attends his share of meetings -- sometimes out of town.
He occasionally meets with other members of the Northern California Power Agency. NCPA representatives hail from cities such as Alameda, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Lodi, Ukiah and Healdsburg -- to name a few. Speaking of Healdsburg, what leaps to your mind when you read that word?
Wine country perchance? Just wondering.
Anyway, before last year's annual NCPA meeting, a few members (who happened to live in the wine country) suggested a future ice-breaker for the NCPA's after-hours social gathering. Every NCPA member -- not just wine-country residents -- was asked to bring locally produced wines for a taste test.
Stereotypes can be so cruel, yet predictable. Consequently, I'll let you imagine the good-natured ribbings Feider suffered from NCPA members who don't think ShastaCounty is exactly synonymous with prime wine-growing country. Plus, last year's NCPA head was from SonomaCounty and the vice chair was from NapaCounty. Talk about a stacked deck. Talk about no contest.
Regarding all that talk, Feider took the fun one step further and recommended a blind taste test. Yes, people laughed, but Feider kept a stiff upper lip and maintained his sense of humor throughout all those jokes about the screw-top wines he'd bring.
Once the laughter died down, Feider tackled his wine assignment with gusto and started asking around. Someone introduced him to a certain Shingletown grape grower, someone who'd not only been growing grapes for 18 years, but selling them to Fetzer winery for eight years. As luck would have it, this Shingletown resident also agreed to donate a few bottles of his locally produced wine for the blind taste test. By the way, I'm not trying to tease you by referring to this Shingletown winemaker so mysteriously. For now, he prefers his name stay out of this story. Understand, although this grape grower is in the process of making his agricultural venture a legally bonded winery, his wine won't be available for commercial sale until 2002.
Until then, he's got plenty of work to do. People mean well, but whenever word spreads about his grapes, this grape grower ends up glued to the phone as his counsel is sought about everything from grape growing to wine making. As a family guy with young children, each unnecessary minute spent on the phone is one less minute with his kids.
I promise to print his name and winery when he gives me the go-ahead.
But back to that blind taste test, judged by more than 75 people at the NCPA social event. Not only did the Shingletown merlot win first place, more significantly, it blew away the Napa and Sonoma county reds. Feider's victory? Sweeter than wine.
The shock when they unveiled the winners was unbelievable, he recalled. People were saying things like, 'OK Feider, where'd you get that wine?'
But that was last year. Feider recently returned from this year's NCPA meeting, which featured its second-annual wine tasting. This time, Feider's Shingletown wine came in second to a Santa Clara wine.
In my book -- especially considering the competition -- I think that's still a very big deal. As the Shingletown grapegrower put it, both years' wine tastings were a great ending to a classic David and Goliath story. The little guy's ammunition was wine -- not stones.
To that Shingletown grape grower -- Feider thanks you for making us proud.
The rest of us -- we'll join him and lift our glasses in a toast.
Doni Greenberg's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. She can be reached at dgreenberg@redding.com or 225-8237.
Great grapes: Secret out about winery's prize-winning merlot
November 07, 2003 — 3:07 a.m. More than two years ago this column shared an inspirational, David-and-Goliath wine story of a little-known ShastaCounty merlot that beat out some established NapaValley wines in a blind taste test. Jim Feider, Redding Electric Utility's director, brought the up-and-coming wine to a Northern California Power Agency conference. Some of Feider's colleagues were from the Wine Country. Wisecracks about "unsophisticated" ShastaCounty turned to surprise when the seemingly lowly merlot Feider entered in the contest earned first place.
I promised to release the name of the winery and its creators as soon as I received permission.
That'd be today. Pencils, everyone.
Lassen Peak Winery. Its name appears in gold lettering upon a beautiful label, designed by Redding artist Charles Valona. The label has a drawing of Lassen Peak, bordered by a deep purple.
An excerpt from the label's text best describes Lassen Peak Winery: "Our 2,600-foot elevation, volcanic soils, steep terrain and natural spring water provide ideal conditions for growing wine grapes. We use natural yeast fermentation in small French oak barrels to handcraft our rich and flavorful wines full of varietal character. From our family to yours, Mike, Deanne, Brian and Shane Boehlert."
Wednesday morning, the Boehlerts' Shingletown property looked like a slice of Tuscany, surrounded by rolling hillsides covered in vineyards and hundreds of trees decked out in Froot Loop colors.
The air smelled like wine. No wonder. A number of covered, spa-sized plastic tubs sat outside, filled with tons of fermenting grapes. Nearby were Land-of-the-Giant-sized jugs with thousands of gallons of filtered wine. The Boehlert cellar was lined with oak barrels filled with wine waiting for aging and bottling — such as Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel and Pinot Noir.
Although Fetzer winery has purchased some of Boehlerts' grapes for nearly a decade (100 tons this year alone), finally, nearly 20 years after planting their first grapes, the Boehlerts' wines are now available for sale in Shasta County.
Cheers!
Mike and Deanne Boehlert took a breather from their break-neck schedule Wednesday to discuss their unglamorous and costly road to winemaking. They've worked with cranky machinery whose directions are in Italian, which produced some maiden efforts on a foreign bottling machine that looked like something out of an "I Love Lucy" episode. They've dumped 200 bottles of wine that tasted like cardboard (blame a bad paper filter), and flushed 800 gallons of white merlot, because it was inferior.
"It turned out sort of palatable," 49-year-old Mike said with a shrug.
"It was awful," 45-year-old Deanne said with a laugh.
Behold, Lassen Peak Winery's husband-and-wife winemaking team.
She runs their Taco Den business in ShastaLake, but lends a hand with everything from harvesting and tasting to bottling and marketing for Lassen Peak wines.
He is the master winemaker, who learned much of what he knows at the University of California at Davis. He also coaches the couple's 9- and 15-year-old sons' soccer teams. Both take turns carpooling their sons to Scouts, school, sports and activities.
When Mike and Deanne sleep is anyone's guess. Both are dedicated community supporters who've donated cases of wine and hours of time to everything from the Women's Refuge, Red Cross, Black Butte School Library and FoothillHigh School to the Redding Beer and Wine Festival, Shasta Land Trust and the American Cancer Society.
Now, it's the Boehlerts' turn to reap the benefits of their hard work.
You can try Lassen Peak wines at DeMercurio's Restaurant's Winemaker dinner Nov. 21 and 22. You can buy it at the Shingletown Store. Soon, it will also be available at the Sentry Market in ShastaLake, as well as Liquor Barn, Sunset Marketplace and some Holiday markets in Redding.
Prices range from about $10 to $18 a bottle. They include a 2002 Estate Viognier, a 2001 Shasta County Barrel Aged Chardonnay, a 2001 Shasta County Barrel Aged Merlot and a 2001 Tres Rojas Reserve Red (Mike's favorite.)
"I'm not worried," Mike said. "Everybody in the wine business says our wines are really good."
I'm no wine expert, but I'd have to agree.
As Mike extracted wine samples from oak barrels using a turkey-baster looking device, (how do you think I tried it?) a sign over the cellar summed up the Boehlert's humor and commitment: "If they don't have a wine cellar in heaven, I'm not going."
Doni Greenberg's columns appear Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. She can be reached at 225-8237 or dgreenberg@redding.com. She also can be seen Tuesday mornings on KRCR TV's Good Morning Northstate program.
Winemaker Dinners
November 20 at DeMercurio's in Redding, here is the menu from last years extravegant feast. Call 221- 1307 for information & reservations.
Winemaker Dinner
First Course
Hickory Smoked Chilean Seabass presented with a
Citrus Vinaigrette with fresh Grapefruit
Wine - 2001 Chenin Blanc
Second Course
Roasted Garlic & Brie Cream served in a Baby Pumpkin
