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San
Francisco Examiner
December 15,
1999
THE WINE PAGE
by Bob Thompson
Pinot
Noir you want in bathtub lots
PINOT
NOIR is supposed to be velvety, seductive, decadently rich– the
drink of kings. It is supposed to make even kings want to drink
it bare-headed and kneeling. All of that is based on Burgundian
models as reported in French literature.
For the most part, you have to
resort to old Burgundies to get the effects.
Every now and again, though somebody
in the New World hits the mark or gets close enough to it.
Gerald Rowland has made several
Rowland Cellars Pinot Noirs of the kind you want to buy not only
by the bottle, not by the case, but the bath tub lots – the kind
you want to save but somehow can't leave it in the cellar. In
an odd way of the modern world, the Australian Rowland is making
these wines using grapes from the Napa Valley and Central Otago
(it’s in New Zealand) with ideas implanted by a Lebanese who makes
wine in – yes, of course, why not?- Burgundy.
Such was not the original plan.
He was all set to continue his winemaking career in Australia’s
Coonawarra District when he met his future wife while hitchhiking
through California wine regions on a learning trip. Pinot Noir
came in to the target because it is a shifty target few winemaker
can resist.
Rowland calls both his Napa and
New Zealand Pinots Accadian in style; this sent me to my shorter
Oxford, which defines the word as the ancient middle-eastern language
and Accadians as the people who spoke it. No help there.
Turns out the Lebanese winemaker
in Burgundy is named Guy Accad and Accadian is Rowland’s doffing
of the cap to him.
Accad’s central idea is that Pinot
Noir needs as much color and flavor as can be gotten from the
grapes. The way to do that is a long seeping of the juice and
skins before fermentation starts and then as slow a fermentation
as good sense allows.
A good many Pinot Noir producers
are using pre-fermentation seeping commonly called a “cold soak”
in trade talk- for two to three days. Rowland following Accad’s
example, goes for 10 days and up.
The idea, says Rowland, “is to
hold the fruit in contact with the juice for as long as possible
in order to get as much flavor and extraction as possible. Do
it at the end and you get bitter tannins because of the alcohol.
Do it at the start and it’s a water solution, and you don’t get
the bitter tannins.”
Rowland does not crush his
grapes. Instead he uses some proportion of whole clusters, the
rest whole berries, to help the fermentation go slower than it
would if the juice was all free. It is another step towards the
one fundamental idea: keep fruit and juice in the closest possible
contact for as long as possible.
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