The seemingly growing stream of excellent boutique wines coming out over the next year is certainly impressive. over the first few weeks of 2007, I am spending at least one day out of the office meeting winemakers, tasting their new release wines and also their barrels. I am fortunate that most of these new discoveries are within an hour of St. Helena so I can get to them in an afternoon after tasting in my office. Yesterday was my first chance to taste with Russell Bevan, who I met last year through a wine community bulletin board. We had the chance to get together for dinner in Paso Robles last year for the Hospice du Rhone and I learned some of what he was doing with Cabernet fruit from Showket in Napa Valley. Russell has had wine flowing through him for many years and I had no reason to doubt that his skills matched his passion as he doesn't strike me as a man who does anything halfway.
I met Russell at his winery, actually a tucked in back corner of a large warehouse in Sebastapol that was formally an apple processing plant. He doesn't need much space as his 2 vintages currently in house number far fewer than 50 barrels. Seemingly, Bevan goes about his winemaking like a chef makes a recipe. Not wanting his wines to be mono-chromatic, he uses a veritable spice rack of barrels and coopers; Gamba, Taransaud and the very sexy wood from Darnajou. We tasted through different component barrels of 2005 Syrah from Dry Stack with the primary difference being the thickness of the staves (20 v. 27mm). There was a marked difference in the flavor profile of the wines. We spent several hours together putting together hypothetical blends. One of the highlights was a Cabernet-Syrah blend that is showing excellent integration already.
Release will be in Fall 2007. Vinfolio is one of three retailers in the world who will have the wine to offer. Production is very small and mostly dedicated to a full mailing list. Russell was just appointed consulting winemaker for Showket Winery replacing Heidi Peterson Barrett.
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