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Preflight: A Region Ripe for Discovery
A cloudless sky gave Clear Lake a sparklingly blue brilliance as I greeted Lake County vintners and wine professionals at the Riviera Hills Restaurant in Kelseyville for the first-ever APPELLATION AMERICA Discovery Tasting in Lake County.

The restaurant possesses a commanding view of the lake and its surrounding hills, and we could easily see a range of Lake County terroirs included in the tasting. To the east rose the western rim of High Valley, home to Shannon Ridge and Brassfield Estate. To the south, Spencer Roloson’s Madder Lake Vineyard angles up steeply above the lake’s southern shore. Just a few miles to the east lies the sprawling Red Hills appellation, home to a number of the wineries that had contributed their recent releases to the tasting.

Glenn McGourty, who provides veteran viticultural advice in Lake and Mendocino Counties on behalf of the University of California Cooperative Extension (with strong support from UC Davis), was instrumental in enabling this inaugural Discovery Tasting for Lake County. “People have lots of ideas about Lake County, but no one has done the kind of systematic analysis we’re going to do today,” McGourty explained to the panelists before we began. “The goal is not to rate or rank the wines, but to see what they can tell us about this appellation and what it might become.”

The tasting also received strong support from the Lake County Winegrape Commission (Executive Director: Shannon Gunier), which sponsored the tasting venue and provided glassware. The wines listed below were graciously supplied by the wineries, which also provided extensive data on where and how the wines were grown and made.

McGourty and I consulted on the wines for the tasting, and I agreed with his plan: one flight each for Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a group category called “Mediterranean reds.” All wines were tasted blind by both panels, which consisted of winemakers (the Discovery Panel) and growers and consumer-facing wine professionals (the Confirmation Panel). All wines were tasted in the same order at the same time in the same room, to ensure that we could fairly compare results and impressions between the two panels and thus confirm the winemakers’ findings.

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  Flight 1: Sauvignon Blanc
Lake County has already secured a reputation for its Sauvignon Blanc, and our first flight of the day included eight examples, mostly from the 2006 vintage. The Sauvignon Blanc grape is so much a signature variety for Lake County, with a well defined consistency of style, that every wine tasted was deemed to be representative of the appellation and an "Appellation Signature" wine.

• Ceágo Vinegarden 2006 Sauvignon Blanc, Kathleen’s Vineyard (Clear Lake)
• Brassfield Estate 2006 Sauvignon Blanc, High Serenity Ranch (High Valley)
• Wildhurst 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Reserve (Lake County)
• Shooting Star 2005 Sauvignon Blanc (Clear Lake)
• Shannon Ridge 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Lake County)
• Guenoc 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Lake County)
• Langtry Estate 2006 Sauvignon Blanc “Lillie” (Lake County)
• Gregory Graham 2005 Sauvignon Blanc, Rolling Knolls Vineyard (Red Hills)

Record of Proceedings

The Discovery Panel needed little time to home in on the “Appellation Signature” of Sauvignon Blanc in Lake County:

"...refreshing citrus fruit laced with bracing minerality,
and good balance tilted toward crisp acidity."

Greg Graham called the citrus flavors “upright,” while Sam Spencer noted that the minerality was not associated with tight or astringent wines – “the most distinct minerality comes from the wines with the ripest aromas,” he pointed out.

The tilt toward acidity also did not come at the expense of body or texture. “This is the kind of acidity you want [in Sauvignon Blanc],” Javier Tapia-Meza said, as other panelists nodded in agreement. Mark Burch commented that “we [vintners] can do a lot with Sauvignon Blanc in Lake County, and this flight shows both good commonalities and the kinds of variations we can get based on where we plant and when we pick.”

When I asked the panel if there were any wines that did not fit this Appellation Signature description, there were no nominations. Nor were any individual wines singled out as more representative of the region than the others. Instead, the panelists commented on the overall positive impression the wines conveyed. “These are sound wines anyone would be happy to drink,” Graham summarized.

What the Numbers Tell Us

When we compared our conclusions against viticultural and vinification data for the wines, we found numerous supporting commonalities. All the wines were grown in a band of elevation between 1250 and 1800 feet, all were harvested within a 17-day period covering the first half of September, and most were ready to pick within a point of 23 Brix and at a pH near 3.4. “Nature does a lot of the work for us here with Sauvignon Blanc,” commented Steve Tylicki.

The similarities continued in the winery. For example, stainless steel was the nearly unanimous choice for fermentation and aging, and individual alcohol levels were consistently close to the group average of 13.5%. Overall, it was easy to see why the wines expressed bright, clear flavors and good balance.

Conclusion

In the opinion of the Lake County winemakers on the Discovery Panel, all eight wines were considered good representations of the regional style, and each wine can be considered an “Appellation Signature” wine.

The Confirmation Panel came to strikingly similar tasting conclusions, particularly regarding the citrus fruit, minerality, acidity, and overall good quality of the wines – “the right grape in the right place,” as Charlie Hossin put it.

“This flight certainly confirms what everyone says about Lake County and Sauvignon Blanc,” McGourty concluded. “If anything, the surprise is how uniformly good the wine is.”

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See PART TWO of APPELLATION AMERICA’s Lake County Discovery Tasting, where the region’s winemakers assess the red wines looking for regional signatures.

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