Not resting on its laurels
The Flowers estate achieved instant cult status in the late 1990s with bold Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs from Camp Meeting Ridge Vineyard, high above the Pacific on the extreme western edge of Sonoma County.
But in the ultra-competitive world of Pinot Noir, early success is simply the price of admission to the high-stakes arena. So Walt and Joan Flowers haven’t broken stride in their quest to produce ever-finer, more impressive wines. They’ve planted a new vineyard even closer to the sea, hired a new vineyard manager and a dynamic young winemaker and have begun re-focusing the winemaking program to reflect their unique coastal sites.
The 2001 Camp Meeting Ridge Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are some of the most compelling Flowers wines to date. But it’s the ’02 Pinot Noirs, still in barrel, that really tell the tale of the new plantings and the evolving personalities of the estate vineyards.
The Flowers were operating a landscaping business in Bucks County, Pa., when they began visiting California in 1981. They were looking for vineyard land but were in no hurry.
“We spent a lot of time in the Napa Valley but didn’t see anything we liked,” Walt says. “Then one day we ventured over the hill to Sonoma and said this is more what we’re used to from a farming aspect.”
In 1989, they saw a western Sonoma County property called Camp Meeting Ridge advertised in a magazine. They bought it in ’90 and started planting the next year. Their first vintage was 1994. A few insiders who tasted barrel samples generated a buzz, and by the time the wines were released, there was a line around the block to be on the Flowers’ mailing list. In April 1999, the ’96 Flowers Camp Meeting Ridge Pinot Noir was served at the NATO 50th anniversary dinner at the White House.
Camp Meeting Ridge is among a handful of vineyards in the coastal zone. It’s elevated above the coastal summer fog line, so it basks in sunshine through long, bright days while the cold wind and fog from the nearby ocean temper the heat. The fog often hangs just below the vines. But the climate can be hostile too. Fierce winter weather often extends into spring and returns around harvest time.
“These vines are not happy campers,” says vineyard manager Greg Adams. “They get gale-force winds, hail, you name it. This is extreme viticulture. The climate pummels us, and we have to respond.”
The rewards outweigh the risks in most years. The yield in those vineyards is seldom more than three tons per acre -- just a few small clusters on each vine -- and that means intense, concentrated wines. But there’s little margin for error. The vines have to be trained with just the right balance of indulgence and discipline. And the winemaking has to take into account subtle differences between vineyard blocks, each with its own combination of soil, exposure, clones and rootstocks.
Those challenges are at the heart of the new phase at Flowers.
Until 2001, the winery purchased some fruit from vineyards as far inland as Sonoma Valley. Winemaker Hugh Chappelle is refocusing the winemaking program to emphasize the two estate vineyards and a few other vineyards in the immediate coastal and near-coastal areas, from Annapolis a few miles up the coast to the Occidental-Bodega area a few miles south and slightly inland in the cool Green Valley appellation. The Camp Meeting Ridge estate (where the winery is) has 45 acres of vines, and there have now been two substantial crops from a new 35-acre planting on nearby Smith Ridge, even closer to the sea.
Narrowing the geographical scope allows for more precise definitions of terroir. Chappelle is particularly focused on fine-tuning the mix of clones that contribute to the sensory effect of Flowers wines, especially Pinot Noirs.
Clones and selections of a grape variety are like brothers and sisters in the same family. They’re more alike than different, yet each has its own subtly distinctive expression of the same genetic material. All Pinot Noir is originally from Burgundy, of course. But such clones as Calera and Swan have been in California for years, long enough to become known quantities in vineyard and winery. The newer Dijon clones, on the other hand, are still enigmatic to California growers and winemakers.
Wines made from individual clones are kept in separate barrels until the final blend is worked out. I spent a morning prowling the barrel stacks with Chappelle, tasting Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.
It was fascinating to see how the same clones -- Dijon, Swan and Calera, for example -- performed in the different areas. All showed that striking coastwise acidity and firm tannins. But those from Annapolis, near the Mendocino County line, were almost universally bigger-boned and chunkier on the palate, while those from the Occidental area, south of Flowers near Bodega Bay, were slightly broader and softer, more like the characteristics I would expect from Green Valley or cool-site Russian River Valley Pinots.
The Flowers estate wines were somewhere in between -- firm and racy with savory red fruit flavor like cherry pastilles. Most had strong underlying minerality, and many showed an Indian spice perfume.
“That spiciness is a definite thread running through all the wines from this area,” Chappelle says. “It seems to be independent of clone and winemaker. We use descriptors like cardamom and East Indian spice to describe it.”
Chappelle is cautious about over-emphasizing the importance of clones in the big picture. “Terroir is the most important thing, and what you do with it comes next,” he says. He does feel that the specific clones have a definite effect on the character of the wine. But he’s not automatically embracing the so-called sexy clones from Dijon (Burgundy) that became available to California growers in the late 1990s. “There’s something to be said for genetic material that’s proven in your area,” he notes. “The Dijon clones were developed in French conditions. Our Calera and Swan clones may not be as fashionable right now, but they work really well here.”
The so-called Calera clone actually has a dozen or more variations. They all originated with a single unregulated or “suitcase” clone that reportedly was taken from one of Burgundy’s greatest vineyards more than 20 years ago. Since then it has been distributed and re-propagated throughout California, developing different characteristics in various sites.
The Calera clone is a big part of the Flowers Pinot Noir character. According to Chappelle, the Flowers vineyards include 11 variations of it, although what that means in genetic terms is hard to say. “It’s all lost in the mists of time,” he shrugs. “We just know that Calera gives very complex and interesting wines here.”
Tasting from several barrels of ’02 Calera clone Pinots from different locations, I found that they shared typical coastal characteristics: a certain briskness and high-toned intensity, a juicy minerality, an acidic verve. And the tannins in the Pinots tend to be notably sterner than the broader, looser-grained tannins typical of the Russian River Valley.
But there was another dimension too. More than the Swan or Dijon clone wines, the Caleras were mysteriously evocative, shaded and nuanced. It will be interesting to see what part that character plays in the finished ’02 bottling -- and to what extent it defines the signature of Flowers Pinot Noir in the future.