Best of the West

Choosing the best wine ever is a fairly common game, but to tell you the truth, I never know what to say. I might be able to name my 50 favorites, but choosing just one is far too difficult.

So when some of my Internet wine buddies started a thread called “Ten Best of the Millennium” the other day, I answered with 13 wines. Then I went back and added 10 more the next day. Wine is like that. The best wine is often the last great wine you tasted, or maybe the first. Or maybe some combination of both.

Now I have decided to give my chums one more list and to restrict that list to wines of the last 25 years--and to wines from the West Coast.

The foremost criterion in choosing among the 50,000 or so wines I have reviewed over that period is the simple measure of greatness. Only wines of grandeur need apply; just don’t ask me to explain “grandeur.” All I can say is that these wines are so memorable in their beauty that I could come back to them time and time again and never tire of tasting them.

There’s one further criterion: What has the wine contributed to the overall understanding and furthering of the breed? For instance, there are plenty of Chardonnays being made today that are as good as or better than the best Chardonnays of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Yet the great wines of those eras made it possible for hundreds of wineries to find the correct formula for today.

Thus, my final list has come down to a mix of early and recent wines, each of which is significant for its day--and in my cellar.

For years, Cabernet Sauvignon has rated as the leading collectible among wines and the defining grape for the California wine industry. It was winning prizes and fame for California at international competitions before Prohibition, and it retained its premier status as we emerged from that dark era of our vinous history.

My wine collecting days began in the ‘70s with a couple of wines that have continued to be viewed as seminal efforts. If I were forced to point to one wine that symbolizes my love of California wine, it would be the 1970 Beaulieu Vineyard “Private Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon. I tasted this wine again just last summer, and it has retained its beauty and depth, its richness and its layered complexity. I have a few bottles left, and they represent the best $8 bottles of wine I have ever owned.

I would add the 1974 Heitz Cellars “Martha’s Vineyard” Cabernet to my list of bests because it may have surpassed the 1970 Beaulieu at some point in those wines’ aging curves. It was the first truly expensive California wine, selling at $25 two decades ago, and it was worth it. Today, I prefer the Beaulieu, but these are the two best Cabernets of the early ‘70s.

Among younger Cabernets, I think the 1994 Shafer “Hillside Select” comes as close to perfection as any wine among the current crop. It is surpassed by some in sheer weight and tannin, but the Shafer manages to combine intensity with a sense of proportion that some of today’s top Cabernets have given up in their rush to ever-increasing ripeness, concentration and power.

The fourth on my list of great West Coast Cabernets is the 1994 Joseph Phelps “Insignia.” Here is a wine that demonstrates all the fine points of the breed in terms of richness, finesse and sheer sensuality. As the French like to say of some Burgundies and Pomerols, it is “an iron fist in a velvet glove.”

Also like the French, I am at a loss to say whether I like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir better. True, Cabernet is a more consistent producer of great wines, and there is about five times as much bearing acreage of Cabernet in California, but a top-notch Pinot, when it comes along, is a marvelous blend of depth and soft yet strong fruit. It combines velvety texture with spine and complex nuances that remind me of dried violets, truffles, wild cherries and gamy meats.

For years, I have used the 1978 Chalone Pinot Noir as the benchmark against which I have measured all other Pinots. But in recent years, two wines of even grander proportion have appeared on the Connoisseurs’ Guide tasting table. Now, I would defer to the 1994 Dehlinger “Octagon House” Pinot Noir and the 1996 Saintsbury “Brown Ranch” as the best California versions of the grape in my experience.

The Dehlinger follows the winery style of big, mouth-filling, very ripe and very rich wines. They may have velvet in their textures, but the 1994 “Octagon House” bottling has an iron fist of rather massive proportion. The Saintsbury is a more refined wine, although it is no shrinking violet. It takes on complex beauties in the place of the Dehlinger hallmark of intensity. And then there is the spectacular 1950 Beaulieu I tasted last summer. I wish I had known it as a youngster.

Some tasters will tell you that Zinfandel at its best is very, very good but that it can never be great. They will cite lack of complexity and lack of aging potential as their reasons. And I will concede that Zin, even in its finest clothes, is no match for Cabernet as a wine to lay down for extended aging and no competitor to the finest Pinots in terms of sheer majesty. Rather, Zinfandel has always earned its points for its depth of fruit and for its uncanny ability to be the ideal wine to match up with red sauces, barbecues, savory pork roasts and the like.

Zinfandel is a hedonist’s dream, and my favorite Zins fall into two categories. The first is unrestrained depth of fruit in wines that maintain their balance as table wines. The legendary 1973 Joseph Swan was perhaps Swan’s finest product, and it was joined in the very same year by the 1973 Ridge “Geyserville”--two of the best-tasting and longest-lived Zinfandels to date.

One does not easily find their equal in the current crop of wines, but if push comes to shove, I would declare the 1995 Rosenblum “Hendry Reserve” my favorite example of wine that combines fruit and ageworthiness. And the 1994 Marietta Cellars “Angeli Cuvee” is nearly as good and a bit more voluptuous in its youth.

A brief mention needs to be made here of the wines from Lytton Springs Vineyard. For 20 years this property (recently purchased by Ridge and therefore no longer a separate producer) made wines in a deep, bold manner reminiscent of the best from Swan. Recent tastings of both the 1987 and 1988 Lytton Springs cement their reputations as among the best Zins produced in the ‘80s.

The most difficult variety for me to pin down is Chardonnay. My early years as a collector and writer saw my Chardonnay tastes dominated by Freemark Abbey, Spring Mountain, Chalone and Mayacamas. I have bottles of each still residing in my cellar, and I pull one out now and then more for the memories of what those wines were than for any current brilliance.

Freemark Abbey, Spring Mountain and Mayacamas all made superb Chardonnays in 1972--a bad year for Cabernet because late-season rains soaked the vineyards and rotted even that sturdy variety. Chalone, with its brilliant 1973, pushed the envelope further with its more extensive use of oak, and from that day forward Chardonnay, almost unknown 10 years earlier in California, established itself as the best white wine made locally.

Soon thereafter, California Chardonnay proved itself on the world stage when 1973 Chateau Montelena finished ahead of French Chardonnays in the famous 1976 “Bi-Centennial” tasting conducted with only French tasters in Paris.

In the 1990s, the single best maker of Chardonnay is Kistler Vineyards. Frankly, whether one looks at its McCrea vineyard bottlings or its Durells or its Kistler Vineyard, the winery is setting a pace matched by no other producer. Somehow, Steve Kistler and company have found a way to combine depth with richness, power with finesse, in wines of balance and exemplary fruit. Among the winery’s recent successes, 1996 Kistler “Hudson Vineyard” is perhaps the most memorable.

Interestingly, however, the two Chardonnays of the ‘90s that stand out most prominently are not Kistlers but the 1991 Mount Eden and the 1993 Matanzas Creek “Journey.” The best of the Kistlers might get the nod for complexity, but these two somehow capture deep and pure Chardonnay fruit flavors in a way that keeps them at the front of the mind when the topic turns to the best Chardonnays.

Although there is no room for Merlot in my top 10, or even 20, the leading Merlots in my memory are the 1978 Duckhorn and the 1996 Pahlmeyer. Louis Martini takes credit for producing the first significant Merlot in California, but Duckhorn earns the honors for elevating the grape into the top ranks, while the ’96 Pahlmeyer has to stand at the pinnacle in the search for depth, range and ageworthiness in Merlot.

Finally, I cannot leave the topic of best wines without mention of a few late-harvest whites. These unctuous, concentrated dessert wines are very hard to produce in Europe, with its cooler, wetter and more variable climate. They are even more difficult here. Yet, from time to time, the West Coast versions of Europe’s “stickies” reach sublime heights.

The best of the early breed, and a wine of legend in its time, was the 1973 Freemark Abbey “Edelwein,” a late-harvest Riesling carrying 10% residual sugar. Nothing of its like had been seen before in California, and though producers like Phelps and Chateau St. Jean would soon match and exceed the 1973 Edelwein both for concentration and for brightness of underlying fruit, the Edelwein did better in the cellar. I have a few bottles of this wine still, and they will be featured at our millennium dinner.

Another extraordinary wine, perhaps the finest late-harvest West Coast wine in my experience, is the 1978 Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling “Ice Wine.” Produced from frozen-on-the-vine grapes, in which the ice crystals separate water from sugar, allowing the concentrated grape flavors to be drawn off, this wine was not only the first “ice wine” produced here, but it remains, for me, the best ever. I have one half bottle left in my cellar, and I may never drink it because I fear its equal will not soon come this way.

Olken publishes the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine, a monthly newsletter devoted to the critical review of California and West Coast wines. Readers of the Times may obtain a sample copy by sending their name and address to: CGCW, P.O. Box V, Alameda, CA 94501, by calling or faxing, (510) 865-3150 or by e-mailing CGCW@aol.com.