Deciding on a Sterling Choice for the ‘Wine Maker of the Year’ Award

Academics put numbers on wine. Wine lovers drink it. And although Sterling Vineyards frequently makes wine that scores high in the numbers game, by and large it is a winery that hits near perfection in the only game wine lovers care about: satisfaction.

Sterling makes wines that are not, by house style, big, bold and brassy. So they are not immediately loved by those who seek obviousness. They are lean, delicate and refined, with a classic touch in virtually everything.

The Chardonnays are not sweet or over-oaked or infused with a butter/vanilla exclamation point; the Cabernets don’t have enough wood to make Gepetto envious; the Pinot Noir isn’t a motor oil look-alike. These wines are appreciated most by those with a cool hand and a keen eye and horse sense.

Yet in the last few years the quality of Sterling wines has slowly, silently crept up to a point where they sing notes other wine makers envy.

Each December I take stock of the preceding wine year in the United States and try to come up with a Wine Maker of the Year, a person who exemplifies what wine making ought to be--innovative, creative, and dedicated to a house style that varies only as much as Mother Nature requires. And it is a person who moves forward annually, making noticeable improvements in the state of the art.

Tussling with myself, I finally decided that the honor must go to Bill Dyer of Sterling Vineyards in the Napa Valley. The consistency of Sterling wines since its founding two decades ago is unquestioned, and though some of the wines don’t score lots of points in tastings by academics, the wines are impeccably made and prototypes that wine lovers appreciate.

As I thought about this Wine Maker of the Year honor, something gnawed at me. I asked, “Isn’t the wine maker handcuffed to a huge degree by the grapes he gets? Isn’t his greatness partially the result of a great viticulturist, a person who grows superb grapes?”

So it stands to reason that Tucker Catlin, Sterling’s longtime viticulturist, deserves half of the Wine Maker of the Year award for his continuing dedication to a program that has shown slow, steady growth within a framework that changes little.

When you speak of greatness in wine making, viticultural people rarely get just reward, though wine makers tell you. Dick Arrowood is a great wine maker. But ask him about his famed Belle Terre Vineyard Chardonnay and he’ll credit Ron Dick and his son, Henry, owners of the Belle Terre Vineyard, for producing “the cleanest fruit you can buy.” He’ll say the Dick family delivers ripe fruit without leaves in the gondolas. “I love dealing with them,” he says.

Likewise, Andy Cutter at Duxoup credits Mike Teldeschi and sons Ray and Gary for his sensational Napa Gamay grapes, as well as Jean Frediani and her son, Jim, for the superb Charbono grapes he gets.

The story is the same all over: Beringer wine maker Ed Sbragia credits Bob Steinhauer, one of the finest staff viticulturists in the business; Rollin Wilkinson, the longtime viticulturist for The Christian Brothers, improved the quality of his winery’s wines for decades; Andy Beckstoffer is a respected Napa and Mendocino grower; Phil Freese at Mondavi keeps eye on vine and nose in glass; Dale Hampton’s grapes from Santa Maria and Angelo Sangiacomo’s Carneros fruit both are highly prized by more than a dozen wineries; Doug Hill at Trefethen, the Rochioli family in Sonoma County. . . . The list is long and the names generally unfamiliar to even the most dedicated wine lovers.

At Sterling, Catlin gets the credit for handling the diverse vineyards now owned and managed by the company. And he shares this honor as Wine Maker of the Year.

Sterling, a Seagram division, now owns about 700 acres of Napa Valley vineyard land and manages another 400 acres under contract. These properties are some 40 miles apart and range from hot hillside climate to cold, flat land. The growing conditions are wildly divergent in terms of soil too so Catlin deals with each in a unique manner.

That gives Dyer a multitude of different elements he can weave together in trying to hone the best possible wine from each variety, yet still keep to the refined house style.

Dyer, who is married to Dawnine Sample Dyer, wine maker at Domaine Chandon, arrived at Sterling in 1977 and worked under various wine making regimes until he took over for the harvest of 1985.

“That almost coincided with some major changes in our vineyards,” he said. “We had acquired a big vineyard in the Yountville area that gives me Chardonnay. It accounts for something like 50% to 60% of our estate Chardonnay.

“It was also when we started making Chardonnay with 100% barrel fermentation and sur lie aging (on the lees, which are dead yeast cells).” By dealing with the grapes delicately, Dyer retained the superb Yountville fruit, and in the last three years, Sterling Chardonnay, always superb, has exceeded itself.

Dyer’s first Merlot, 1985, was a towering success, a wine of immense appeal. He modestly says, “We were dealing with a pretty exceptional vintage in 1985, and because of that I didn’t feel the Merlot required any Cabernet Sauvignon, so I added only 3% Cabernet Franc. It was a very refined wine,” but a wine of such broad appeal because of its ability please now but age for a long time.

The masterpiece of Dyer’s career thus far is Sterling’s 1985 Reserve, a red wine of remarkable depth and proportion, but one that should age gorgeously. Dyer points out that this wine, 75% of which is made up of the best lots of Cabernet that Sterling had in house, was assembled with a different point of view from the one that existed in the 1970s, when many wine makers sought more and more in their red wines.

“Back in the ‘70s, there was this perspective, that the wine had to be very assertive and brawny, a little bit ugly in its youth, if it was to blossom into something great as it aged,” he said.

“But I can remember when I went to Bordeaux (in 1981) and tasted some of the wines out of the barrel. The wines were very attractive and supple. Well, ours in California were coarse and rustic, and I began to get the feeling that we had to do a better job, to look for suppleness.”

He said it required care in the selection process, making sure certain barrels of wine were never used in the final wine. “You have to have concentration of fruit, but you have to look for those wines that have suppleness. Back in that 1970’s, they were looking for the wines that had the really potent entry and the powerful finish--boxcar wines that they said were going to keep on rolling. But I figured that without suppleness, all you had was a clumsy wine.”

Dyer called the Reserve “the most personally satisfying, because it has the most to do with wine making. It is a selection, an assembled wine.” He likes working too on the big, chunky Diamond Mountain Cabernets, he said, “you have to work on the suppleness. I’ve been blending in Cabernet Franc, doing some fining and aeration of the wine, to deal with it.”

When Seagram bought the Winery Lake Vineyard in the cold Carneros region, it gave Dyer one more element to deal with, and his Winery Lake Chardonnays have been spectacular: similar in many ways to the Napa Valley-designated wine, but with a concentration of tropical fruit aromas that almost defies description.

A problem child thus far from Winery Lake is Pinot Noir, which Dyer said varies a great deal from area to area. “One real obvious cut was from the deeper, richer soils. The Pinot Noir there was quite different from the hillside vines, and we quit making wine from that area.” Those vines were converted to Chardonnay, “and one of the best blocks of Chardonnay is from that deeper soil.”

Catlin is a major contributor to Sterling’s consistency. A quiet man with grin wrinkles and a charming wit, Catlin says modestly he doesn’t know anything about wine. But that’s like saying Tony Gwynn doesn’t know anything about pitching.

“Tucker’s impact is mainly in being very present,” said Dyer. “We have a feedback mechanism where he’s looking at the wines and I’m looking at the growing techniques and we talk constantly about it. This close feedback is important, and really it began only recently,” about a year ago, when Catlin moved his office from a field location to an office adjacent to Dyer’s in the alabaster fortress above the Napa Valley floor.

In assembling a list of Wine Makers of the Year in the United States, one must look at so many factors including the ability to make great wine from a wide variety of grapes; improvement from year to year, and dealing with adversity.

Of course, any listing of a top 10 would leave someone out, for one of at least two reasons: either I didn’t know about a particular wine maker, or a name slipped my mind. It therefore might be considered dangerous to print such a list, but the “next 10 best” wine makers, in my opinion, is a list that includes a number of people who deserve recognition.

Briefly, then, here is my list of “the 10 next best;” it probably isn’t complete and may (accidentally) leave someone out. My apologies in advance.

Rob Griffin --Hogue Cellars, Washington: The two Hogue wines that knocked me out in 1989 were a Semillon and a Riesling, but everything else Griffin touched turned to gold at one fair or another. This may be the best non-California U.S. winery of them all.

Ken Brown --Byron, Santa Maria Valley: Brown, formerly at Zaca Mesa and now with a winery recently acquired by Robert Mondavi, is one of those rare individuals insightful enough to spot potential problems and halt them before they erupt. His Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays have become world-beaters, proving once again the worth of the Santa Barbara growing region.

Gary Farrell --Russian River Valley: Using the Russian River fruit to make a bold and gorgeous statement with Pinot Noirs and a number of other varieties, Farrell has stamped himself one of the brightest lights in the game today.

Dennis Johns --St. Clement, Napa Valley: Without fanfare, and without owning any vineyards (!) Johns has, in the last two years, developed some of the Napa Valleys best Chardonnays, Cabernets, and Sauvignon Blancs made entirely from purchased grapes.

Bryan Babcock --Santa Ynez Valley: Using a bold, aggressive style that calls for barrel fermentation of even varieties such as Gewurztraminer, Babcock has developed a huge cult following for his tiny production. Occasionally eccentric, always exciting wines.

Bob Henn --Pindar, New York: Situated out on untested Long Island, Henn’s attention to detail has created one of the nation’s top new red wines, Mythology, establishing Pindar as a winery to watch.

Jack Stuart --Silverado Vineyards, Napa Valley: A track record almost unmatched for consistently superior Cabernet, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc was upgraded in 1989 with more greatness.

Scott Harvey --Santino, Amador County: His bold red wines (notably Zinfandel and Barbera) and spectacular late-harvest white wines were overwhelming last year, and represent excellent values.

George Bursick --Ferrari-Carano, Sonoma County: The first releases from this Dry Creek property, using spectacular Alexander Valley fruit, were stunning and improved in 1989, and new wines from Carneros vineyards added more luster to an already glowing image.

Bill Pease --Clos Pegase, Napa Valley: Situated across Dunaweal Lane in Calistoga, Clos Pegase has been rather quiet since erecting an eclectic edifice that elicited excitement, pro and con, from neighbors. But the wines, lean and direct, are gorgeous examples of fruit without overt tinkering.

In dozens of ways, wine makers have praised the grape growers for their success. Here are just a few.

Joe Swan, the late Russian River wine maker: “Use good grapes and don’t screw ‘em up.”

Andre Tchelistcheff, to Andy and Debra Cutter on their wedding day: “I have a present for you, a bit of advice: ‘It’s the grapes.’ ”

Robin Day; Orlando Wines, Australia: “Get good grapes and don’t trip on the mat on your way out of the winery.”

In my interview with Dyer, he added a line worth quoting: “When I was in the cellars of Henri Jayer in Burgundy, I kept asking him, ‘What’s the secret (to your red wines)? Do you add stems? Is it the fermentation temperature? The length of time in the barrel? And he finally said, ‘It all boils down to just one thing: the grapes.’ That’s the secret.”