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| Tonight, we have Santa Cruz-based natural winemaker Ryan Stirm in the shop to pour a selection of his current vintage wines. Ryan is renowned for growing and crafting a range of dry, razor-sharp rieslings from different terroirs along California’s Central Coast. It is his rieslings, which are always dry, that get all the glory, but he also makes lovely, low-ABV red wines, too. Tonight, we will taste one of Ryan’s rieslings sourced from vines that are now approaching the 60-year mark. Although riesling has had a storied history in California, with the earliest plantings in the mid-1850s, the fashion for it began to decline by the mid-80s and by the year 2000 plantations of it had declined to only 1837 acres, while chardonnay had grown to nearly 83,000 acres. Ryan is one of the winegrowers who is fueling a riesling renaissance, and in 2018, the fortunes of riesling in California are looking up, with the total acres more than doubled from its nadir. Pat Wirz, the farmer who owns and grows the riesling we are tasting tonight, planted his riesling vineyard in 1964 and bravely refused to follow the winds of fashion, and it is thanks to Pat’s stubborn persistence that we now have this fantastic source of old-vine, dry-farmed, head-trained riesling. Located inland from Monterey Bay, the Wirz vineyard is in a contradictory location. The Cienega valley seems to have more in common with our hot Central Valley than the cooler central coast, but it is also 1,000 feet above sea level, and although it can get very warm during the day there’s a huge diurnal shift of temperatures at night, thanks to a cleft at the north of the valley permitting cooling breezes from the Pacific to wend their way there. Riesling, like many grapes, can yield flabby, inert wines when the climate is too warm, but the microclimate of the Wirz vineyard is unique, and with Ryan’s approach the results are stunningly alive and electric. We are also tasting two of Ryan’s red wines: another high elevation wine, a pinot from the Santa Cruz mountains, wild yeast fermented and aged in old barrels, and a vibrant, low-ABV syrah (12.3%) from Sonoma. I always am interested in tasting red wines made by white wine specialists, and these examples do not disappoint.
Stirm “Wirz Vineyard” Riesling 2017 |