WEDNESDAY NIGHT FLIGHT
ROTATING 3 WINE FLIGHT MARKET PRICE
SCHERRER
SONOMA COAST
PLATT VINEYARD
Vertical of 2010, 2011 & 2012, Pinot Noir.
3 half glasses $39
limited to 30 pours
Platt Vineyard was planted in 2003 by Joan Platt and the late Lew Platt. The vineyard, planted in fine, sandy Goldridge soil, approximately eight miles from the Pacific Ocean, is known for producing wines with remarkably fresh acidity. The project was funded when Lew retired as CEO from Hewlett Packard. With the help of experts like Fred Scherrer, the Platts planted one of the most important vineyards in the US. Russian River Partners took control of the vineyard in 2015 after Lew's passing. Many great wines from the vineyard have garnered interest from major investors and in 2022 AXA Millésimes, the wine subsidiary of French insurance company AXA, purchased Platt Vineyard. This is significant because Platt has been a key source for numerous wineries, including Ramey, Littorai and Rivers-Marie. The wines from Rivers-Marie, in particular, gave AXA the confidence to purchase the vineyard. There is talk that the subsidiary plans to stop selling Platt fruit and take on all the winemaking themselves, commanding a higher price for the wine. The Scherrer’s have released a library vertical that we are excited to share with you as our inaugural Wednesday night flight and commemorate this now famed vineyard while we can afford to. Cheers - Nik Wells
Winemaker's Notes
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Joan and Lew Platt planted these vines for us to work with on their property overlooking the town of Bodega. A very cool site with intelligently selected plant material that is well farmed is a Pinot Noir maker’s dream. Red, black and blue fruit character with great structure, minerality and complexity are the result.
This is a rather elegant expression of this special vineyard just in sight of the ocean. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have selected the clones for the initial planting, knowing that this site was “on the fringe” climate wise and that any given year could be very different from the next. This is one of those cases where having an array of plant material allows the winemaker everything needed within one property. ‘Swan,’ ‘Pommard,’ ‘828,’ and ‘Calera’ seem to have a sweet spot here in either warmer or cooler vintages. Since we get both kinds even so close to the sea, it made sense to have an array like this available. The characteristics that one clone usually shows in the cooler vintages ends up being displayed instead by another clone in a rare warmer vintage. This just tells me that these characteristics are the site being expressed through a happy plant. Like the OMV Zinfandel, not everything goes into it — just what needs to.
The 2010 has not only red and blue fruits, but it also has some interesting savory notes as well. Even though the clonal mixture that was optimum this year was very different, it reminds me very much of the 2008 vintage except that it is a little mellower in its youth as it has begun to present itself in a unified way rather than a sum of parts at this early stage. Pinot Noir’s strength is its subtlety.
The 2011 is very much like what we expected to have ripeness-wise when the vineyard was first developed nearly 15 years ago: 13.3% alc. There’s an iron/blood thing that speaks of the nearby sea and sense of salinity. It does not appear super-rich at first glance, but has a surprising depth of flavor that comes in subtle, non-linear approach (substance within delicacy). Josh Raynolds wrote “Juicy and nicely delineated on the palate, showing very good depth and gentle sweetness to its mineral-laced red fruit flavors. The refreshingly bitter finish clings with vibrancy and spicy persistence.” (May 2014) I do think it is more approachable earlier than the previous vintages of this bottling that, while frustratingly latent, one is rewarded with patient aging as any who have tasted the 2008 which is beginning to happen now. Those looking for cold-climate Pinot Noir examples can see the edge this is poised upon.
Carrying on with the Burgundy comparisons as shorthand, the 2012 is more Côte de Beaune than Gevrey. Nice earth tones are there but also red cherry notes are integrated throughout. It floats effortlessly across the palate and makes itself comfortable there in its own gentle, graceful way. I am often asked how much whole cluster (entire clusters of grapes rather than destemmed) I use when vinifying our Pinot Noirs because of the herbal, spicy nuances they have. And the answer is always the same: 0%. This statement is often met with disbelief and questions. I used to be a big whole cluster advocate in the fermentation tanks in the 1990’s. But with the sites I work with, I don’t think it is as appropriate or will be successful in every vintage. I think it is possible to allow the fruit’s intrinsic herbal, spicy notes and high toned perfumes to be expressed thru other means that have more to do with timing and nuances of conducting the fermentation than anything as potentially inappropriate or overpowering such as employing some whole clusters.
-Fred Scherrer
“In the mid-1970’s, due to a normal teenage interest in alcoholic beverages, my family allowed me to make some wine from the family vineyard and beer at home (under adult supervision, of course). This led to a UC Davis degree as well as concurrent work at a local winery doing the dirtiest and most menial jobs imaginable. In the mid-1980’s good friends at Duxoup Wine Works (think Marx Brothers for the pronunciation) inspired me to try my hand at my own label so I negotiated cellar space in lieu of a raise by my then-current employer, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards in Anderson Valley (I got a raise anyway). Greenwood Ridge was supportive of my project and decided to have some Scherrer Zinfandel produced for their label as well. Unfortunately, I had a poor business plan and during the first year I realized I was not yet ready for this project. Greenwood Ridge continued to make a small amount of Scherrer Vineyard Zinfandel for many years.
Enter Dehlinger Winery in the late 1980’s. Tom Dehlinger was very supportive of my long-term plans and challenged me to develop a solid business plan, facilitating an important entry into my own project. In return, his winery received my heart and soul for a decade. The final key element in our getting started was from my parents. They allowed me to delay paying them for their fine grapes until we began getting cash flow from our wine sales. By 1997, we were ready to make the move to a facility of our own. In anticipation of this, we were able to add Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay to supplement the Zinfandel we were producing, all from my father’s vineyard in Alexander Valley. Tom Dehlinger supported this transition of my focus, allowing me to produce these additional wines in his facility and we parted very amicably after that vintage.
And so after the harvest of 1997, I moved our operation to a corner of an apple packing shed-turned-winery, finally leasing the entire building. During this period, our production grew from just the three varietals from Scherrer Vineyard, to now typically a dozen wines, about half of which are Pinot Noir. Total production is now about 3000 cases. My good friend, Don Bliss helped me whenever I needed a hand (or a finger to dial 911 in the unlikely event of a forklift mistake) during the first years until he sold his fine vineyard and moved back to his native Texas in 2006. Since then, I have been able to impose on a handful of friends and local customers when I have needed help, but still continue to work at the winery pretty much alone most of the year. Judi, my wife, has handled administrative and compliance for the winery since 2002, keeping me out of trouble with bureaucrats and making sure we are able to conform with the complex and changing world of direct shipping and wholesaling laws, reports and fees.”
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-Fred Scherrer
Frenchtown Farms
& Clos Saron
Sierra Foothills AVA
White​
2020 Frenchtown Farms 'Pearl Thief,' Sauvignon | Roussanne | Semillon
Rosé
2020 Frenchtown Farms 'Cecelia,' Syrah | Sauvignon | Grenache
Red
2018 Clos Saron, ‘Holy Moly!’ Grenache | Merlot
3 half glasses of each $33
limited to 30 pours
Frenchtown Farms
Aaron & Cara Mockrish ended up in North Yuba County with the intention of establishing a farm, but a bottle of Clos Saron Black Pearl 2008 sent them off on an unexpected path to winemaking. Having tasted the wine, they found that the man who made it lived near to their farm. It was there, in Oregon House, California, that they found Gideon Beinstock, his tiny home vineyard, and their future.
They began learning from Gideon, working in the vineyards to the winery and everything in between, and it was clear that not only was this the life for them, that this was a singular place and the wines were unlike anything else. Shortly after producing their first vintage in 2015, they were able to secure access to a large portion of the Renaissance Vineyards, where they have been carefully farming multiple blocks of old, own-rooted, and dry farmed vines. In addition to their work at the Renaissance Vineyard, Aaron and Cara are establishing new vines on the steep, rocky slopes of their home vineyard, as well as tending to a 12-acre plot of mixed varieties in Grass Valley.
The hard work in the vineyard and cellar are clear when you taste the wines of Frenchtown Farms. They are part of a tradition while carving out a singular voice of their own.
Their vineyards are harvested in repeated passes through the vines (typically from three to eight times), picking only clusters as they begin to soften, to determine perfect ripeness. The grapes are foot-stomped in open-top bins allowing the vineyards' indigenous yeasts to conduct the fermentation. For the blends, the grape varieties are all co-fermented as Gideon believes the results are better integrated. The wines are then aged on lees in five- to twenty-five-year-old French oak barrels for as long as he feels is needed before being bottled, unfined and unfiltered, with minimal use of sulfites. Production is often around one hundred cases or less per wine.​​
Clos Saron
Over the past thirty-five years, Gideon has been involved in almost every aspect of the wine industry: sales, writing, purchasing, educating, and a sixteen-year-long stint as winemaker for Renaissance. It is at Clos Saron, though, where he has tapped into something rare: wines that are challenging, surprising, and yet instantly gratifying. They happily defy description and convention without forgetting that, at its core, a wine should be a pleasure to drink.
Way up in the northern reaches of the Sierra Foothills, Gideon Beinstock and his wife, Saron Rice, produce small batches of wines that are unlike anything else coming out of California. Using traditional techniques and strict organic methods both in the vineyard and the cellar, they make tiny amounts of Pinot Noir from their two and one-fifth acre home vineyard as well as a variety of unique blends from five and a half acres of nearby leased vineyards that they farm as well.
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The vineyards are densely planted, about 2,500 vines per acre, and are dry farmed wherever possible; yields range from as low as one ton per acre and maxing out around two. Because their area is free of phylloxera, their vines are all “own-rooted” and some are over thirty-five years old.