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Feature Article
CedarCreek's Tom DiBello on Pinot Noir, and its place in the Okanagan...Interview with John Schreiner
BC Regional Correspondent, John Schreiner, speaks with the 'winery of the year' winemaker about his mastery of Pinot Noir
by
John Schreiner
February 19, 2005
Since arriving at CedarCreek Estate Winery in the Okanagan, winemaker Tom DiBello’s artistry has propelled CedarCreek to ‘winery of the year’ in the 2002 Canadian Wine Awards.
He is showing particular mastery of Pinot Noir. CedarCreek’s Platinum Reserve Pinot Noir 2002 scored 91 points and was best of class at the 2004 Canadian Wine Awards. The wine also won an award of excellence in the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s annual competition to identify British Columbia’s premier wines.
Born in New York City in 1957, the son of an aerospace sales executive, DiBello grew up in California’s Newport Beach, where he took up windsurfing, a passion to this day. In his first three years in junior college, he vacillated between medicine and business. In 1979, on his way to investigate northern California’s colleges, he took a break and toured the Firestone winery. As an adolescent, he had visited wineries with his father, a home winemaker. “That smell came back,” DiBello recalls.
One of the colleges on his itinerary was the University of California at Davis. “When I went to Davis, I looked at their winemaking program,” he says. “I found out you could actually major in this and get a job. I always thought it was a big family thing that was passed on. I didn’t know there was that kind of demand.” He took a degree in fermentation science and enology. “I feel very lucky that I fell into this because I just love it.”
He graduated in 1983 and started working at Warren Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Four years later, he went to Cape Mentelle in Western Australia for six months of winemaking – and surfing. Returning to California, he sold wine for two years and then made wine at a succession of wineries from California to Virginia. He was working in Washington State for Washington Hills Winery when CedarCreek recruited him.
CedarCreek, based near Kelowna, is a boutique producer of about 25,000 cases a year, of which Pinot Noir comprises 4,000 cases. The grapes are grown in CedarCreek’s two north Okanagan vineyards – the one at the winery on the east side of Okanagan Lake and the Greata Ranch vineyard at Peachland, on the west side of the lake.
Pinot Noir is an important variety in British Columbia. At 560 acres out of a total vineyard area of 5,400 acres, it is the third most widely planted grape, after Merlot and Chardonnay.
AA:
Where did you make Pinot Noir prior to coming to the Okanagan?
DiBello: I didn’t do a lot of Pinot Noirs. I did a couple in Washington with Oregon grapes, and I made some in Arizona, of all places. The way I learned Pinot was just by liking it -- I have always had a taste for it – and by picking everyone’s brain on how they make it, and then trying all of those things. Really, it is just plain brain picking.
I’ve been through most of the Oregon wineries and most of the California ones and a whole lot in Australia and elsewhere. Winemakers tend to like to talk to me because I have good info to give back, and I am pretty open. I basically have been able to pick everyone’s brain.
AA: Where did you get Pinot Noir grapes in Arizona?
DiBello: The Sonoita AVA, which is at 4,987 feet. A high elevation and it has soils which are virtually identical to Burgundy. It’s red soil and about two feet under that is limestone. It is a little bit warm. But some of the Pinot Noirs were actually pretty decent. It was there and we had to use it, so I made a lot of Pinot. There were certainly some that were respectable.
AA: What winery were you working for?
DiBello: Paradise Valley Vineyards. They are gone. I think someone bought the brand name.
AA: Is CedarCreek’s Pinot Noir all from estate vineyards?
DiBello: For all practical purposes, 99% is from those two vineyards. It is mostly from the CedarCreek vineyard -- about two-thirds, maybe three-quarters -- with a little bit of Greata. I get one tiny bit from Naramata. One of my growers has it. He grows some dynamite Pinot but I am lucky to get two tons of it. We’ve increased the planting at the CedarCreek vineyard, which is now mostly Pinot Noir.
AA: What clones are grown?
DiBello: We have mostly 115; and then 667 and 777 and a tiny bit – about an acre – of 114.
AA: And you would like to get some more clones?
DiBello: Yes. There are a couple I would like to get my hands on but I don’t think we would like to replant anything right now.
AA: I understand that 115 is the major clone grown in the Okanagan?
DiBello: That is probably my favourite clone. If I had to make Pinot with one clone, I would probably use that. But the other two are really important too.
AA: Do you vinify them separately?
DiBello: I used to. It kind of depends on how things are ripening. A lot of time I will put them together, especially now that I know the vineyard better and I know what I am getting from these blocks. I do more blending with them right at the start – I will co-ferment them now, because I kind of know what I am going to do anyway. I think wines turn out better if they are co-fermented, if the grapes are ripe at the same time.
It’s a bit of both. In 2000, all of them were totally separate, clone-wise and block-wise and vineyard-wise. As time goes on, I kind of know what I want to blend. Sometimes, logistically, you have to do it.
I generally have a fairly good idea what I am going to put together and what will be what before we harvest.
AA: What are the differences between CedarCreek and Greata Ranch vineyard Pinot Noirs?
DiBello: I think they are both very much black fruit. CedarCreek is a more typical Pinot, where you have a lot of black cherry aromas. Greata tends to have more strawberry and raspberry aromas than black cherry. They both produce dark and big wines. It is a little more typical here at CedarCreek of what you expect from a Pinot Noir. I am not necessarily saying that’s better. It is just a little different.
AA: Do you keep the fruit from the two vineyards separate?
DiBello: They are usually separate. Sometimes, I do a little co-fermenting there too, if they happen to be ripe at the same time. Sometimes I like some of that Greata in with the CedarCreek in the ferment. They generally do get blended together in the end, although I am making a strictly Greata Ranch one for Greata.
AA: CedarCreek has two tiers of Pinot Noir: ‘Platinum Reserve’ and ‘Estate Select’. Formerly, there also was a ‘Classic’ tier, wasn’t there?
DiBello: We quit making Classic [from purchased grapes] after the 2003 vintage. Now we have Greata Ranch Estate, CedarCreek Estate, and the Platinum.
AA: Why was the classic dropped?
DiBello: I had to take grapes from a south Okanagan vineyard to get some other varieties. It wasn’t bad Pinot. It just wasn’t great Pinot. The Pinot up here [north Okanagan] is better than the Pinot from the south Okanagan.
AA: One recent Pinot Noir from a south Okanagan producer was so big that I asked the producer if Syrah was in the blend, because the varieties blend easily. He denied it.
DiBello: I definitely have noted a few people doing that in the valley. I know people put in Merlot, too, and I can usually tell. It doesn’t take much Merlot to change the whole character of the wine. The same with Syrah – not as bad with Syrah as with Merlot, but I just think it is cheating.
I want my Pinot Noir to be Pinot Noir. All of our Pinot is 100% Pinot. We don’t even top up with anything else.
AA: How much more fussy is Pinot Noir compared with everything else you work with?
DiBello: How about five times more fussy than anything? Maybe even ten! It is just tricky stuff. You cannot screw up.
It wants to ferment too fast, for one. It is really hard to get the colour to be stable. If your pH goes out of range at any point in its life, all your colour drops out.
You have to grow it in just the right area. And it is more sensitive than any variety in terms of yield. If you have too much on the vines, you get no concentration unless you pull half the fruit off.
You want it to ferment hot and yet you want to slow it down at the same time.
I have tried about everything you want to do with it, and in pretty large quantities, just to find out what I like here. I don’t think there is much I haven’t tried.
AA: What fermentation temperature do you like?
DiBello: Hot! I do this on all my reds now. I pretty much make them all like I make Pinot actually. It is probably 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. I let it get as hot as it wants to. I learned that from a guy named Don Blackburn in California, who had spent a lot of time in Burgundy, and that was something he came back with. [Now the winemaker for GoldRidgePinot, Blackburn formerly was production manager for the David Bruce Winery.]
The technique gives me a lot of colour and perfume. Everyone thinks if you are too hot on a red, you lose your fruit flavour. It is not true. His was rich in flavour, with nice perfume, and he was fermenting really hot. I’ve always gone pretty hot but I am hotter now.
AA: Does that mean you give them a long cold soak?
DiBello: Yes. Four to six days, usually. There are water extractables and there are alcohol extractables, and I am trying to get both.
AA: Is there is post-ferment soak?
DiBello: I don’t usually do extended skin contact on Pinot. I’ve done it. I know a lot of people like it. I used to do a lot of extended macerations on my reds. Now that I have equipment for micro-oxygenation, I think it does the same thing better -- although I don’t microx Pinot.
Generally, my regimen for Pinot Noir is two weeks on skins; then we press it and add malolactic culture. The wine goes into barrels immediately, and it never moves again. The only thing happens is topping and SO2 additions for the next year and a half, or 15 months or so.
I don’t rack it. But I don’t rack anything else either. I think that is more key for Pinot. I don’t think you want to rack it. I think you want to have as few movements as possible.
There are a lot of whole berries in the ferment. That is the big key, the fact that we can gravity-feed our fermenters. I can get about 80% whole berries in the fermenter. I run my crusher-destemmer as slowly as it goes, and I don’t use the crusher. I pull that right out. The grapes just get destemmed as slowly as I can and that gives me about 80% whole berries.
I have also done a lot with whole clusters. That used to be what I would do all the time until we got the gravity-feed going here. Since then, I have put the wines side by side and there is no telling the difference.
I also only like to do whole clusters with mature, lignified stems, where the stems get woody. One big difference between northern Pinot Noir and southern Pinot Noir in the valley is that we get great physiological maturity up here. The stems are very lignified; very brown seeds, very dark colours. I really never see Pinot Noir south of Okanagan Falls with lignified stems at all. Even at 26 Brix, I am not seeing it.
AA: Why is that?
DiBello: It is hotter and the grapes ripen faster. They are getting sugar ripe before they get flavour ripe.
AA: What are the soils in your vineyards?
DiBello: Greata is the famous ‘ratnip’ soil. What it is, is alluvial sand. It is basically all that decomposed granite and whatever coming off the mountain and forming an alluvial sand on that bench. It is a nice well-drained loam. The soil over here at CedarCreek is a mixed bag … glacial, alluvial. Glacial till, glacial moraine.
AA: Neither is Burgundian soil?
DiBello: No.
AA: Is it that important to have limestone?
DiBello: I think it is nice, but most of the Pinot in the Okanagan is not grown on limestone. I have to say I really like the fruit quality in Arizona. If we had had a cooler climate there, it would have been amazing stuff for Pinot. But I don’t think you have to have limestone. There are an awful lot of nice Pinots that aren’t on it – most of them.
AA: What is your production per acre?
DiBello: The reserves have come from vines producing as little as 1.7 tons per acre. The mature vines produce from 1.7 to 2.85 tons. The 2.85 was the most I have ever had on a reserve – and it was really nice. It was a cluster a cane. That is just how it worked out.
We have gone up maybe as high as 3.8 tons for some of the estate and classic Pinots.
This year [2004], some of the fruit around 3.5 was quite nice. I think some of the estate Pinot Noirs in 2004 were as good as some of the wines I have put away for reserves. That is the first time that happened.
AA: Are you aiming for a particular style of Pinot Noir?
DiBello: I don’t really believe in aiming at being some particular style from anywhere in the world. Your grapes are going to be what they are going to be. I am just trying to do what makes sense for our grapes. I am look at what they turn into and do what style suits them.
There is some hallmark in what I like. I don’t like overly tannic. I like power and elegance. I like something with some guts to it but that is also elegant at the same time. That is as much as I go toward making a particular style. After that, it is really what these grapes can turn into.
I use a lot of oak on them … not because I said we need a bunch of oak in them but because these grapes are suited to it. They really soak it up.
AA: I am not aware there is much oak when I taste your Pinots.
DiBello: The reality is I am using more oak than anybody I know anywhere. The reserves are 100% new oak, all good quality French oak – high end barrels. And the wine is in there longer. Everyone else is doing 11, 12 months of barrel aging and mine are in there for 15 to 17 months. Our grapes will just take it. Also, finesse oak is not as overwhelming as crummy stuff. I have had Pinot Noirs with American oak that I like but I don’t particularly care for American oak in it. That is just my taste.
AA: Elaborate on power.
DiBello: I like some extract there. I want it dark. I want it to have a lot of fruit. I want it pretty ripe.
AA: What alcohol levels do you like?
DiBello: I am trying not to get them too big. They are usually around 13.7 or 13.8. I am still picking on flavours more than I am on Brix. Usually, I try to get them around 24 Brix. I don’t want alcohols to get into the high 14’s.
The other thing with these open top fermenters and the heat that I ferment at is that I tend to get pretty low alcohol conversions. So I can be pretty ripe and still not go out of bounds on my alcohol.
AA: I believe the smoke saturation from the forest fires in the summer of 2003 had an impact on the Pinot Noir quality in the CedarCreek vineyard. [The fire burned right to the vineyard border.]
DiBello: We are not going to make a reserve from 2003. We lost some of the best parts of our grapes. Our Greata Ranch Pinot Noir, not affected by smoke, was good enough to be a reserve and there was lots of it, but we decided that it is not as good as 2002, although it is better than 2001.
The other thing is that we are getting a little bit better at Pinot in general. Our Estate’s come up a few notches. There was not quite as much distinction between the two as I would have liked to have seen.
AA: What are the parameters that separate Platinum from Estate?
DiBello: I start in the vineyard. I know my blocks and I crop the reserve lower. Some of that is based on historical data, and some depends on changes that I see. It does move around where I make the reserve from. But we’ll kind of pick the spots that we are liking and we will crop those down to a cluster per cane. The estate is a cluster and a half per cane – we also cut that one down a bit but not as much.
The Platinum has a little more concentration. And so far, the Platinum has gone entirely into new oak. There is still a lot of new oak in the Estate, 50% to 60%.
When I was at Steamboat [Pinot Noir Technical Symposium in Oregon] a few years ago, I learned that the most oak anyone was putting into their reserve was 40% new – and it showed. Most of the wines at 30%, 40% had too much wood.
I got a round of applause for ours. I asked them all if they thought it was too oaky and I asked them to guess how much oak it had. Everyone said about 30%. No one thought it was too oaky.
AA: What barrels are you using?
DiBello: The mainstays are Remond … and those are medium toast long; and a mix of Tronçais, Vogues and Allier wood. The other mainstay is François Frères. Those are all medium plus toast – I don’t like François Frères wood any other way – and they are a little more Tronçais than Allier.
After that, it is a barrel from Alain Fouquet that is called a Chassagne Montrachet barrel; a Burgundy style barrel, really nice wood. The other mainstay is Mercurey, a long slow toast.
Those are the four main ones. After that, there are all kinds of things, including, Touton, Rousseau and Berthomieu. I like the Touton a lot.
AA: How does the Pinot Noir program spill onto the other wines?
DiBello: The gravity feed. I don’t do as much whole berry with the Bordeaux reds but it is still 50 or 60% whole berry. They are both kathunked. We moved from punching down to kathunking, which does the same thing but in a gentler manner. [The reference is to breaking up the cap with big air bubbles: see AppellationAmerica interview with Steve Girard.] It also breaks up the cap more. There is not a berry touching a berry. The whole thing is that you want to expose your fruit without beating it up. You want every berry in contact with wine. In punching down, it is still hard to get all of it broken apart. The goal for me is to get every berry in contact with juice without beating them up to do it.
AA: Is it a distraction having to work with eight other varieties?
DiBello: Yes, but I think I would be bored if I wasn’t. I really enjoy all these other varieties we make. I am not really making anything that I don’t really like to make.
I get that from people who make Pinot Noir, that you cannot make Pinot Noir and make all these other things. I have heard that at Steamboat. I say, okay, but my Pinot Noir came out pretty good, didn’t it? And so did my Chardonnay and my Bordeaux wines. I think you just have to love what you are doing and have a love of the variety.
I don’t like making Champagne and I don’t make it. I just think it is another art. It is really a specialty to make Champagne right. It is really hard to do. It is very labour-intensive. You need a lot of specialized equipment. To do it right is a big investment. The whole winery has to be geared to doing that. This winery is not designed to make Champagne.
I just don’t think I am good enough. I could be good enough but it hasn’t been my focus. I picked everyone’s brains on Pinot Noirs – I haven’t picked many as far as Champagne goes, just enough to know there is a whole lot to doing it right. I don’t have as much love for it as I do of the table wines.
AA: What are your benchmark Pinot Noirs?
DiBello: I love Eschezeaux. I love Romanée-Conti. In Oregon, I love Domaine Serene’s wines and Drouhin’s. I like the elegant ones that still have some guts to them. In California, Saintsbury has always been a benchmark; and Williams-Selyem in Sonoma.
AA: Have you goals for yourself?
DiBello: My basic goal is to make wine better than I did the year before. Nothing is set in stone here. It is always evolving. I don’t think I have ever made wine in exactly the same way twice in a row. There are always large scale experiments going and there is always something we are trying to learn.
DiBello: I didn’t do a lot of Pinot Noirs. I did a couple in Washington with Oregon grapes, and I made some in Arizona, of all places. The way I learned Pinot was just by liking it -- I have always had a taste for it – and by picking everyone’s brain on how they make it, and then trying all of those things. Really, it is just plain brain picking.
I’ve been through most of the Oregon wineries and most of the California ones and a whole lot in Australia and elsewhere. Winemakers tend to like to talk to me because I have good info to give back, and I am pretty open. I basically have been able to pick everyone’s brain.
AA: Where did you get Pinot Noir grapes in Arizona?
DiBello: The Sonoita AVA, which is at 4,987 feet. A high elevation and it has soils which are virtually identical to Burgundy. It’s red soil and about two feet under that is limestone. It is a little bit warm. But some of the Pinot Noirs were actually pretty decent. It was there and we had to use it, so I made a lot of Pinot. There were certainly some that were respectable.
AA: What winery were you working for?
DiBello: Paradise Valley Vineyards. They are gone. I think someone bought the brand name.
AA: Is CedarCreek’s Pinot Noir all from estate vineyards?
DiBello: For all practical purposes, 99% is from those two vineyards. It is mostly from the CedarCreek vineyard -- about two-thirds, maybe three-quarters -- with a little bit of Greata. I get one tiny bit from Naramata. One of my growers has it. He grows some dynamite Pinot but I am lucky to get two tons of it. We’ve increased the planting at the CedarCreek vineyard, which is now mostly Pinot Noir.
AA: What clones are grown?
DiBello: We have mostly 115; and then 667 and 777 and a tiny bit – about an acre – of 114.
AA: And you would like to get some more clones?
DiBello: Yes. There are a couple I would like to get my hands on but I don’t think we would like to replant anything right now.
AA: I understand that 115 is the major clone grown in the Okanagan?
DiBello: That is probably my favourite clone. If I had to make Pinot with one clone, I would probably use that. But the other two are really important too.
AA: Do you vinify them separately?
DiBello: I used to. It kind of depends on how things are ripening. A lot of time I will put them together, especially now that I know the vineyard better and I know what I am getting from these blocks. I do more blending with them right at the start – I will co-ferment them now, because I kind of know what I am going to do anyway. I think wines turn out better if they are co-fermented, if the grapes are ripe at the same time.
It’s a bit of both. In 2000, all of them were totally separate, clone-wise and block-wise and vineyard-wise. As time goes on, I kind of know what I want to blend. Sometimes, logistically, you have to do it.
I generally have a fairly good idea what I am going to put together and what will be what before we harvest.
AA: What are the differences between CedarCreek and Greata Ranch vineyard Pinot Noirs?
DiBello: I think they are both very much black fruit. CedarCreek is a more typical Pinot, where you have a lot of black cherry aromas. Greata tends to have more strawberry and raspberry aromas than black cherry. They both produce dark and big wines. It is a little more typical here at CedarCreek of what you expect from a Pinot Noir. I am not necessarily saying that’s better. It is just a little different.
AA: Do you keep the fruit from the two vineyards separate?
DiBello: They are usually separate. Sometimes, I do a little co-fermenting there too, if they happen to be ripe at the same time. Sometimes I like some of that Greata in with the CedarCreek in the ferment. They generally do get blended together in the end, although I am making a strictly Greata Ranch one for Greata.
AA: CedarCreek has two tiers of Pinot Noir: ‘Platinum Reserve’ and ‘Estate Select’. Formerly, there also was a ‘Classic’ tier, wasn’t there?
DiBello: We quit making Classic [from purchased grapes] after the 2003 vintage. Now we have Greata Ranch Estate, CedarCreek Estate, and the Platinum.
AA: Why was the classic dropped?
DiBello: I had to take grapes from a south Okanagan vineyard to get some other varieties. It wasn’t bad Pinot. It just wasn’t great Pinot. The Pinot up here [north Okanagan] is better than the Pinot from the south Okanagan.
AA: One recent Pinot Noir from a south Okanagan producer was so big that I asked the producer if Syrah was in the blend, because the varieties blend easily. He denied it.
DiBello: I definitely have noted a few people doing that in the valley. I know people put in Merlot, too, and I can usually tell. It doesn’t take much Merlot to change the whole character of the wine. The same with Syrah – not as bad with Syrah as with Merlot, but I just think it is cheating.
I want my Pinot Noir to be Pinot Noir. All of our Pinot is 100% Pinot. We don’t even top up with anything else.
AA: How much more fussy is Pinot Noir compared with everything else you work with?
DiBello: How about five times more fussy than anything? Maybe even ten! It is just tricky stuff. You cannot screw up.
It wants to ferment too fast, for one. It is really hard to get the colour to be stable. If your pH goes out of range at any point in its life, all your colour drops out.
You have to grow it in just the right area. And it is more sensitive than any variety in terms of yield. If you have too much on the vines, you get no concentration unless you pull half the fruit off.
You want it to ferment hot and yet you want to slow it down at the same time.
I have tried about everything you want to do with it, and in pretty large quantities, just to find out what I like here. I don’t think there is much I haven’t tried.
AA: What fermentation temperature do you like?
DiBello: Hot! I do this on all my reds now. I pretty much make them all like I make Pinot actually. It is probably 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. I let it get as hot as it wants to. I learned that from a guy named Don Blackburn in California, who had spent a lot of time in Burgundy, and that was something he came back with. [Now the winemaker for GoldRidgePinot, Blackburn formerly was production manager for the David Bruce Winery.]
The technique gives me a lot of colour and perfume. Everyone thinks if you are too hot on a red, you lose your fruit flavour. It is not true. His was rich in flavour, with nice perfume, and he was fermenting really hot. I’ve always gone pretty hot but I am hotter now.
AA: Does that mean you give them a long cold soak?
DiBello: Yes. Four to six days, usually. There are water extractables and there are alcohol extractables, and I am trying to get both.
AA: Is there is post-ferment soak?
DiBello: I don’t usually do extended skin contact on Pinot. I’ve done it. I know a lot of people like it. I used to do a lot of extended macerations on my reds. Now that I have equipment for micro-oxygenation, I think it does the same thing better -- although I don’t microx Pinot.
Generally, my regimen for Pinot Noir is two weeks on skins; then we press it and add malolactic culture. The wine goes into barrels immediately, and it never moves again. The only thing happens is topping and SO2 additions for the next year and a half, or 15 months or so.
I don’t rack it. But I don’t rack anything else either. I think that is more key for Pinot. I don’t think you want to rack it. I think you want to have as few movements as possible.
There are a lot of whole berries in the ferment. That is the big key, the fact that we can gravity-feed our fermenters. I can get about 80% whole berries in the fermenter. I run my crusher-destemmer as slowly as it goes, and I don’t use the crusher. I pull that right out. The grapes just get destemmed as slowly as I can and that gives me about 80% whole berries.
I have also done a lot with whole clusters. That used to be what I would do all the time until we got the gravity-feed going here. Since then, I have put the wines side by side and there is no telling the difference.
I also only like to do whole clusters with mature, lignified stems, where the stems get woody. One big difference between northern Pinot Noir and southern Pinot Noir in the valley is that we get great physiological maturity up here. The stems are very lignified; very brown seeds, very dark colours. I really never see Pinot Noir south of Okanagan Falls with lignified stems at all. Even at 26 Brix, I am not seeing it.
AA: Why is that?
DiBello: It is hotter and the grapes ripen faster. They are getting sugar ripe before they get flavour ripe.
AA: What are the soils in your vineyards?
DiBello: Greata is the famous ‘ratnip’ soil. What it is, is alluvial sand. It is basically all that decomposed granite and whatever coming off the mountain and forming an alluvial sand on that bench. It is a nice well-drained loam. The soil over here at CedarCreek is a mixed bag … glacial, alluvial. Glacial till, glacial moraine.
AA: Neither is Burgundian soil?
DiBello: No.
AA: Is it that important to have limestone?
DiBello: I think it is nice, but most of the Pinot in the Okanagan is not grown on limestone. I have to say I really like the fruit quality in Arizona. If we had had a cooler climate there, it would have been amazing stuff for Pinot. But I don’t think you have to have limestone. There are an awful lot of nice Pinots that aren’t on it – most of them.
AA: What is your production per acre?
DiBello: The reserves have come from vines producing as little as 1.7 tons per acre. The mature vines produce from 1.7 to 2.85 tons. The 2.85 was the most I have ever had on a reserve – and it was really nice. It was a cluster a cane. That is just how it worked out.
We have gone up maybe as high as 3.8 tons for some of the estate and classic Pinots.
This year [2004], some of the fruit around 3.5 was quite nice. I think some of the estate Pinot Noirs in 2004 were as good as some of the wines I have put away for reserves. That is the first time that happened.
AA: Are you aiming for a particular style of Pinot Noir?
DiBello: I don’t really believe in aiming at being some particular style from anywhere in the world. Your grapes are going to be what they are going to be. I am just trying to do what makes sense for our grapes. I am look at what they turn into and do what style suits them.
There is some hallmark in what I like. I don’t like overly tannic. I like power and elegance. I like something with some guts to it but that is also elegant at the same time. That is as much as I go toward making a particular style. After that, it is really what these grapes can turn into.
I use a lot of oak on them … not because I said we need a bunch of oak in them but because these grapes are suited to it. They really soak it up.
AA: I am not aware there is much oak when I taste your Pinots.
DiBello: The reality is I am using more oak than anybody I know anywhere. The reserves are 100% new oak, all good quality French oak – high end barrels. And the wine is in there longer. Everyone else is doing 11, 12 months of barrel aging and mine are in there for 15 to 17 months. Our grapes will just take it. Also, finesse oak is not as overwhelming as crummy stuff. I have had Pinot Noirs with American oak that I like but I don’t particularly care for American oak in it. That is just my taste.
AA: Elaborate on power.
DiBello: I like some extract there. I want it dark. I want it to have a lot of fruit. I want it pretty ripe.
AA: What alcohol levels do you like?
DiBello: I am trying not to get them too big. They are usually around 13.7 or 13.8. I am still picking on flavours more than I am on Brix. Usually, I try to get them around 24 Brix. I don’t want alcohols to get into the high 14’s.
The other thing with these open top fermenters and the heat that I ferment at is that I tend to get pretty low alcohol conversions. So I can be pretty ripe and still not go out of bounds on my alcohol.
AA: I believe the smoke saturation from the forest fires in the summer of 2003 had an impact on the Pinot Noir quality in the CedarCreek vineyard. [The fire burned right to the vineyard border.]
DiBello: We are not going to make a reserve from 2003. We lost some of the best parts of our grapes. Our Greata Ranch Pinot Noir, not affected by smoke, was good enough to be a reserve and there was lots of it, but we decided that it is not as good as 2002, although it is better than 2001.
The other thing is that we are getting a little bit better at Pinot in general. Our Estate’s come up a few notches. There was not quite as much distinction between the two as I would have liked to have seen.
AA: What are the parameters that separate Platinum from Estate?
DiBello: I start in the vineyard. I know my blocks and I crop the reserve lower. Some of that is based on historical data, and some depends on changes that I see. It does move around where I make the reserve from. But we’ll kind of pick the spots that we are liking and we will crop those down to a cluster per cane. The estate is a cluster and a half per cane – we also cut that one down a bit but not as much.
The Platinum has a little more concentration. And so far, the Platinum has gone entirely into new oak. There is still a lot of new oak in the Estate, 50% to 60%.
When I was at Steamboat [Pinot Noir Technical Symposium in Oregon] a few years ago, I learned that the most oak anyone was putting into their reserve was 40% new – and it showed. Most of the wines at 30%, 40% had too much wood.
I got a round of applause for ours. I asked them all if they thought it was too oaky and I asked them to guess how much oak it had. Everyone said about 30%. No one thought it was too oaky.
AA: What barrels are you using?
DiBello: The mainstays are Remond … and those are medium toast long; and a mix of Tronçais, Vogues and Allier wood. The other mainstay is François Frères. Those are all medium plus toast – I don’t like François Frères wood any other way – and they are a little more Tronçais than Allier.
After that, it is a barrel from Alain Fouquet that is called a Chassagne Montrachet barrel; a Burgundy style barrel, really nice wood. The other mainstay is Mercurey, a long slow toast.
Those are the four main ones. After that, there are all kinds of things, including, Touton, Rousseau and Berthomieu. I like the Touton a lot.
AA: How does the Pinot Noir program spill onto the other wines?
DiBello: The gravity feed. I don’t do as much whole berry with the Bordeaux reds but it is still 50 or 60% whole berry. They are both kathunked. We moved from punching down to kathunking, which does the same thing but in a gentler manner. [The reference is to breaking up the cap with big air bubbles: see AppellationAmerica interview with Steve Girard.] It also breaks up the cap more. There is not a berry touching a berry. The whole thing is that you want to expose your fruit without beating it up. You want every berry in contact with wine. In punching down, it is still hard to get all of it broken apart. The goal for me is to get every berry in contact with juice without beating them up to do it.
AA: Is it a distraction having to work with eight other varieties?
DiBello: Yes, but I think I would be bored if I wasn’t. I really enjoy all these other varieties we make. I am not really making anything that I don’t really like to make.
I get that from people who make Pinot Noir, that you cannot make Pinot Noir and make all these other things. I have heard that at Steamboat. I say, okay, but my Pinot Noir came out pretty good, didn’t it? And so did my Chardonnay and my Bordeaux wines. I think you just have to love what you are doing and have a love of the variety.
I don’t like making Champagne and I don’t make it. I just think it is another art. It is really a specialty to make Champagne right. It is really hard to do. It is very labour-intensive. You need a lot of specialized equipment. To do it right is a big investment. The whole winery has to be geared to doing that. This winery is not designed to make Champagne.
I just don’t think I am good enough. I could be good enough but it hasn’t been my focus. I picked everyone’s brains on Pinot Noirs – I haven’t picked many as far as Champagne goes, just enough to know there is a whole lot to doing it right. I don’t have as much love for it as I do of the table wines.
AA: What are your benchmark Pinot Noirs?
DiBello: I love Eschezeaux. I love Romanée-Conti. In Oregon, I love Domaine Serene’s wines and Drouhin’s. I like the elegant ones that still have some guts to them. In California, Saintsbury has always been a benchmark; and Williams-Selyem in Sonoma.
AA: Have you goals for yourself?
DiBello: My basic goal is to make wine better than I did the year before. Nothing is set in stone here. It is always evolving. I don’t think I have ever made wine in exactly the same way twice in a row. There are always large scale experiments going and there is always something we are trying to learn.
