Last spring, Adam Lee told me briefly about one of his newer projects called Beau Marchais, and sent me barrel samples of the three pinot noirs that will be released this fall under the label. Last week, I joined a crowd of Adam’s Clarice Wine Company customers for a Zoom tasting with Adam and Mike Officer of Carlisle Winery to discuss Beau Marchais in depth. Adam had sent Mike barrel samples, and Mike gave us his thoughts as he tasted through them. The wide-ranging discussion touched on a variety of topics, and provided good entertainment for wine lovers like myself who have missed in-person wine tastings and gatherings.
It was the first virtual tasting event I’ve attended, a decision I made because I’d had the wines being discussed. I’ve been apprehensive so far to register for these events because either I haven’t had the featured wines, wasn’t interested in purchasing the featured wines, or wasn’t going to be able to get the wines in time to give them a proper rest prior to the tasting. While virtual tastings are, I’m sure, a lifeline for some wineries during this global pandemic, I’ve been loath to risk bottle shock and short rest periods during summer weather shipping. It’s brought a topic I think about often to real life, but alas, that’s a subject for a different post.
Beau Marchais is an unusual project because in a certain sense it is virtual winemaking, and is therefore a particularly appropriate one to launch during COIVD. Adam makes the wine, but he takes remote instruction from one of the most famous and respected winemakers in the world, Philippe Cambie, who lives in France’s Chateauneuf de Pape. Cambie currently consults for somewhere in the vicinity of 82 wineries according to Mike Officer, but nevertheless “the opportunity to work with him,” Adam told the gathered virtual crowd, “was too much to pass up.”
Adam and Mike had met Cambie on a trip to Chateauneuf de Pape, in the southern portion of France’s Rhone Valley. “He’s behind a lot of our favorite Chateauneuf de Pape’s,” Mike said, adding that “he’s taken a lot of okay places [throughout the Rhone Valley] and made them exceptionally good. It’s pretty fantastic to say that.”
The Lee-Cambie collaboration genesis, as Adam described it, was that during their trip to Chateauneuf, “we went to enough places that called grenache [the signature grape of the region] ‘the pinot noir of Chateaneuf de Pape.’ I began thinking, could we make California pinot noir in the style of Chateaneuf grenache?” Adam brought the idea to Cambie, and the two agreed that Adam would use his incredible fruit sourcing connections to secure choice California grapes, and Cambie would instruct Adam on how to make the wine. They would do the blending together in-person.
As Adam and Mike interviewed each other during the virtual tasting, Adam described the process that he, via Cambie, made the three Beau Marchais wines. “Philippe brought completely different ideas to the project, things I hadn’t thought to do with pinot noir before.” That’s a big statement coming from Adam, a winemaker who by nature is willing to try different things and has made, pretty much exclusively, pinot noir for numerous projects for more than two decades.
To begin with, Cambie had Adam pick the grapes “on the earlier side of things.” Once the grapes came in, “we didn’t do nearly as much whole cluster press as I normally do. Clarice is around 80% whole cluster, Beau Marchais were around 25%. Philippe uses a particular enzyme to extract more from the skins. It tends to give a very creamy texture, something I’d never thought of using before with pinot. We used it during cold soak.” After the addition of another yeast, “the wine stayed on the skin for about 45 to 48 days. Normally, I do about 17 days, maybe 21, of maceration. I’ve heard of people trialing durations this long, but they’re just trials. This is what Philippe does.”
The differences kept coming. “As you get close to fermentation, we’d do this thing where we’d pump out of the bottom valve [of the tank] and back into the wine below the cap to actually push the skins up [as opposed to pumping the juice over the top of the cap to push the skins down]. This meant no aeration during the pump over. Plus, we used completely different barrels then I’ve ever used before. No concrete, just oak, and a good bit of new oak.”
Adam was asked by an audience member what the biggest influence Philippe had on him during the process. In response, he said that “it’s made me look at pinot noir differently across all my projects. I’ve been making pinot since 1994, and I liked to sit there and say I looked at things different each year. But still, there’s a sense of falling back to what you know. So, this helped me really say, okay, there are real differences in how to make really great pinot. This was an opportunity to increase my horizons.” As Mike summed it up, “no dogma. I like that.”
The Beau Marchais line up consists of two pinot noirs from the famed Clos Pepe vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills, and a third pinot from the equally esteemed Soberanes Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands. Both regions are considered cooler climate for California, and add a sense of history and strong imprints of place to the project. The inaugural release will come from the 2019 vintage. “I’m thrilled to be at Clos Pepe, I’ve worked at it since 2000,” Adam explained. “Getting back to the Santa Rita Hills, I love Clos Pepe. They’re doing great farming, it’s a great opportunity to do something great.”
The two Clos Pepe vineyard wines, named Clos Pepe Est (“east” in French) and Clos Pepe Ouest (“west” in French), each represent unique areas of the already small vineyard. The Est comes from, you guessed it, the eastern edge and middle of the vineyard and is comprised of 115 and Pommard clones. This area of the vineyard “has some rolling hills, and the portion where the grapes come from is on the backside of the hill where it is more protected [than the west side where Ouest comes from]. It makes a big difference.” The Ouest is a mix of Pommard and 667 clones and “faces the Pacific Ocean, which means it gets direct wind. It produces smaller clusters and achieves higher brix. The wind is so strong sometimes that you can end up with poor fruit set.”
As Mike tasted the two Clos Pepe’s, he commented that the two wines were “totally different” even though they are “from the same hood.” I couldn’t agree more. Not only is the Ouest more integrated at this stage – I get the sense that it responded to the extended maceration in a softer way – but the nose and fruit has developed more quickly as well, offering more differentiated layers at this early stage. It seems to be on the path to being more spicy and hedonistic than the Est, reminding me of Gigondas.
The Est shows a lot of gritty skin tannin, which takes up residence in a distinctly different region of the mouth than the acid. While the acid carries red fruit and florals, the higher level of tannin brings black tea and tobacco flavors than the Ouest has, the latter more dominated by black and blue fruit, with tar and black pepper.
“It was actually Philippe’s decision to split [the vineyard] like this,” Adam noted. “When we were together to blend, I was looking to make one blend, but Philippe said we should do an east and a west.”
The Soberanes Vineyard bottling was the hardest to put my finger on. While it initially struck me as the most delicate of three despite it’s darker color, it gained weight with air and developed a nose and palate with distinctively different profiles. I noted that “it is the most classically pinot-esque of the three.” While the nose is all pastels and florals and red fruit, the palate is a concentrated combination of dark fruit, teriyaki, rose, orange blossom, sweet tobacco and tar with sweet, long tannin and modest acid. At the end of my notes, I wrote that “it is the closest these wines come to being sappy though it isn’t cloying. Best balance of the three at this stage. It evolved more than the two Clos Pepe between the two rounds of tastings (which were two hours apart).”
The project is named after a man named Pierre Beaumarchais, a French playwright, inventor, musician, spy “and so much more,” who helped with the foreign financing of the American Revolution by creating a company that smuggled money from the French and Spanish governments across the Pacific and into the Colonies. “We thought it was a great parallel to Philippe helping to make pinot in America. Also, it means ‘the beautiful walk’ in French.”
I asked Adam and Mike for their thoughts on the ageability of the three Beau Marchais wines. “If I’m comparing them to the Clarice wines, I’d say enjoy Beau Marchais while you’re letting the Clarice wines age,” Mike said. Adam added that “Clarice is aging more on acid and the stem tannins. Beau Marchais will be aging on skin tannin, it’s going to be fascinating. I don’t know the answer yet. I’d guess Mike is right, but neither are certain.” I’d approach it the same way myself, though I’d be tempted to let the Beau Marchais sit for a year or two post-release to allow for more integration and softening.
The inaugural Beau Marchais release will come this fall. You can sign up on the website to be notified when they are available, and they will also be made available to Clarice Wine Company customers. Beau Marchais is a fascinating project that will appeal most to those who like experimental wine, but also appreciate the incredible experience that Adam and Cambie to bring to the experimentation. This isn’t some new technique applied by someone with five years of winemaking experience trying to make a name for themselves before they know what they’re doing.
I want to plug Carlisle Winery briefly, which I visited in early 2019. Located in Sonoma, it is primarily known for its zinfandel, which Mike aptly describes as “the Rodney Dangerfield of grapes” and California’s only true “benchmark grape (you think of Bordeaux for cabernet and merlot, Rhone for syrah, Mosel for riesling. But zinfandel, globally, it’s California).” While I really enjoyed several of Mike’s zinfandels during my visit, especially their estate Carlisle Vineyard bottling, I was most taken by two of his white wines, a grüner veltliner from the Steiner Vineyard and a field blend from the Compagni Portis vineyard, which is comprised of gewürztraminer, trousseau gris, riesling, roter veltliner “and several other varieties yet to be identified.”
The virtual tasting included a trio of Carlisle wines selected for Clarice customers, including a newly released 2018 syrah from Radiant Ridge, a high elevation vineyard in the Bennett Valley. Adam called it “my favorite syrah [Mike] has ever made” and “the most French-style syrah I’ve tasted from Mike.” A number of attendees chimed in, adding their praise for the wine. Carlisle is a fantastic producer, and one to dig into if you haven’t already.
I’m going to end by recommending these virtual tastings for those who miss winery visits and wine dinners with friends these days. Countless wineries are doing them, and offering expedited shipping on the wines chosen for the tastings. I won’t give a final verdict on whether I think a week or less of post-shipment resting is sufficient to clear the effects of bottle shock, but I will encourage people to order as far in advance of the event as possible. Besides that risk, there’s very little downside to taking advantage of the ability to virtually taste with winemakers around the world. It’s a great way to explore the wine world during a time when we cannot otherwise travel.
