The Excitement Behind the Label

With some wines, just the sight of the label makes wine lovers’ palates react most Pavlovian: this is going to be a great experience.

It works with French wines such as those of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, First Growth Chateaux of Bordeaux, and Salon Champagne. And as California wines came of age in the 1970s, labels such as a Chardonnay from Stony Hill or a Pinot Noir from Martin Ray made us all giddy with anticipation. If a friend invited you over to dinner in 1976 and said he was going to serve one of these wines, you could think of nothing else for the next few days.

Among the rarest of these excitement wines were those from Joe Swan, the tall, white-haired retired airline pilot who has long produced some of the most intensely flavored wines at his modest home in Sonoma County’s heartland Russian River Valley.

Swan’s wines were rare, next to impossible to find (though not particularly expensive) from the day he first opened his winery in 1969. The project started out as a labor of love Joe had for wine. The fact that they sold any of their wine at all was merely an accident necessitated by economics. They would rather have consumed it all themselves.

Swan settled on the simplest way to sell: allow people who were interested to write for it. He, in turn, would mail the wine back. Before long, the Swan mailing list was full and there was a long waiting list just to get on the mailing list. And the wine all went to collectors. There were no restaurant or retail sales to speak of, except for those few bottles that dedicated and magnanimous merchants were willing to part with out of their own stash.

Overshadowed by Newcomers

Over the years, however, as new wineries grabbed the spotlight with almost daily regularity, the Swan name and label began to get lost among the proliferating star newcomers. The fact that the Swan wines were better than ever and that they were more available seemed to mean little to new wine lovers, many of whom were unaware of the Swan name in their rush to get the latest bottle of Sonoma Cutrer, Ferrari Carano, or Dunn.

Also, some people dropped off Swan’s mailing list. The waiting list eventually was eliminated.

In the past, wine columnists would taste a Swan wine, swoon, and then realize that to write about it would be an arrogant and unfair trick because of the lack of availability. So you heard little about the man and his wine.

Now, however, there is good news. A large number of vacancies on the mailing list has prompted Swan to concentrate more on sales than ever before. Not only are some restaurants and retail accounts now getting some of his wine, but Swan will gladly sell to newcomers who ask to get on the mailing list--and with no waiting list, a bottle of Swan wine is but a postage stamp away.

For details on Swan’s wines, drop him a note at 2916 Laguna Road, Forestville, Calif. 95436.

In the cool Russian River Valley, west of U.S. 101 at Santa Rosa, Swan, newly arrived from Utah, discovered in the late 1960s grapes that refused to grow as plump and full as in some other, warmer regions. These were conditions he felt would be ideal for full-flavored wines.

That bit of arcane logic was based on the fact that Swan wanted to make wines of richness and extract, but to do so with very ripe fruit (from a warmer region) ran the risk of higher alcohols than he liked as well as fuller, riper aromas, which he felt were not particularly classic in nature.

He had made wine earlier in Utah and thus knew the pitfalls, and in 1968 made some test batches of wine from Russian River grapes. He was overwhelmed by the character of the resulting wines, so he founded his winery in 1969.

Cases of Obscure Wines

Swan is a low-key individual who intensely loves wine, not just his own. His underground wine cellar is loaded with cases of obscure wines side by side with great products from France, Germany and Italy. Visiting Swan is a wonderful experience because of his deep-seated love for what he’s doing, but he is never loud in his comments, so his intensity is hard to gauge until you’re with him for an hour or two.

And yet his insistence on using older methods to make wine is reminiscent of another forerunner of the California wine industry whose style Swan emulates, Martin Ray.

Ray was one of the grand experimenters in California wine history, a man who achieved greatness a couple of decades before Swan was even interested in the subject. Those methods ignored the high-tech stainless steel of today in favor of old-fashion French classicism.

Yet the wines of both Ray and Swan turned out more similar to their California neighbors than to the French counterparts because of the fact that they had typically riper fruit than is available in France on a year-to-year basis. If Ray and Swan Pinot Noirs are considered “Burgundian” by some, at some point in the tasting the comment is made that the style is a perfect synthesis of Burgundy and California.

Today, Swan wines remain a constant reminder of how great California wine can be when French varieties and French methods are used in tandem and then matched to grapes coming from a cool region. This is true especially of the older Swan bottles--one taste of which will destroy any argument that says Golden State wines don’t age well.

Three weeks ago, I called to make an appointment to see Swan. His son-in-law and assistant wine maker, Rod Berglund, asked if I would like to try the Pinot Noirs or Chardonnays or Cabernets. I was tempted to say, “Yeah, all of them,” but instead I opted for the Zinfandels.

Zinfandel is the one wine that Swan makes that has no French counterpart, and it is this wine for which Swan has achieved near immortality among Swanophiles. He has defined a rich, potent style of wine that not only tastes good when young, but which ages handsomely. It is a style I have long felt represented the ultimate achievement in California Zinfandel.

When I showed up, to my surprise, Swan had out every Zinfandel he had ever made--a tasting he had never done for himself and one he never thought would be particularly interesting. In fact, it was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had in wine, for not a single bottle, starting with the 1968, could be called over-the-hill or tired.

Vibrant fruit and classic flavors ran through all these wines, and I was stunned by one after another.

I won’t bore you with a listing of all the wines, other than to say that the best wine on the table was clearly the 1975, from one of the coolest vintages on record in the region. The wine’s opulent fruit and intense spice were still evident, but creeping into this wine was the softness and elegance one sometimes gets from a great Bordeaux with the requisite bottle age.

I mention this wine not to tantalize you with an experience you’ll never have, but to make a comparison with Swan’s latest two Zinfandels, from 1984 and 1985. The former has a huge jammyness in aroma, but with supple, rich fruit. The wine was made with 50% whole clusters unceremoniously dumped into the fermenter, and the resulting wine is fruitier than past efforts.

The aftertaste is so lush and exciting it’s hard to describe. It is purely and simply one of the finest Zinfandels I have ever tasted, and at $9 a bargain if I ever saw one. It compares favorably with the Swan ‘75, said Swan, at a comparable stage of development. A few cases remain for sale at the winery.

Potent Stuff

The ’85 Zinfandel, to be released on Sept. 1, is likewise potent stuff, with a truly zesty, berryish aroma and spiciness in the aftertaste.

The other wines in the Swan line, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, are equally excellent. All are $15.

Swan became interested in wine in the late 1940s, and it was 1955 when he first made wine from Utah grapes.

“I was living in Bountiful, Utah, at the time, and I got some Zinfandel (grapes),” he said. “I put my 30-gallon crock on top of the fridge in the little apartment I shared (with fellow pilots). And the wine turned out about as dark as a rose. We called it Jose’s Rose.”

After we had finished our evaluation, Swan asked Berglund if I had paid my dues. “Yeah, I guess so,” replied Berglund.

“Then I guess we can go get a bottle of the stuff,” Swan said.

The stuff was a bottle from the cellar. It was a 1970 Swan Gamay, a wine made from a grape so light it usually ends up in some light Beaujolais barely beyond pink in color.

As this wine was being poured, I knew this was no ordinary wine. The color was pitch black with garnet hues. The aroma was blackberryish, jam-like, spicy and intense, and the taste was rough, tannic and inky. There was so much extract that the aftertaste went on for many minutes.

“I don’t understand it,” Swan said. “Never have. It’s always been baffling to me how a wine from Gamay could turn out this way.”

Swan made Gamay only twice. Had he continued making it, the grape variety might have a different persona today.

Wine of the Week: 1984 Franciscan Cabernet Sauvignon ($9.50)--Franciscan’s roller coaster image, down for some time in the late 1970s, is taking a big upswing under the direction of president Agustin Huneeus and wine maker Greg Upton. This wine shows the influences of better oak barrels and a better Cabernet aroma because of the excellent nature of the vintage. The fruit is ripe and typically olivey, and the slight toastiness from the French oak barrels rounds out a delightful and reasonably priced wine. (Expect to see it at less than $9 in discount shops.)