It's true that I sometimes find out about obscure producers from wine writer friends who work more closely in the areas where the wines are produced. This happened recently when I read reviews penned by Paul Gregutt, a writer from Seattle whom I had met at the Meadowood Professional Wine Writers Symposium in 2007. A couple months ago, I read one of Paul's articles regarding a small Columbia Valley producer named Buty, made by Caleb Foster. Buty gets its name from Caleb's wife, Nina Buty Foster. Gregutt's comments were pretty enthusiastic so I sought out the winery and received a call back from Caleb. He agreed to send me down some samples of his currently available wines.
Nearly a month ago I moved my Vinfolio office from the tony up valley village of St. Helena into the more bohemian hot springs of Calistoga. Now instead of patients coming up the elevator for their clandestine rendezvous with a Plastic Surgeon down the hall I have a calico-colored Border Collie named Bella nosing her way past my doorway for her morning bisquit. Much better neighborhood. For better or worse I didn't tell Caleb about my move and I thought any samples would be traveling to my temp-controlled warehouse in San Francisco until such time I could formally evaluate the wines. Last week I received a call from UPS that they needed my new address for a delivery.
What arrived on my doorstep the following day was my Buty samples...
Pleasantly surprised they had come direct to me I eagerly opened the box only to discover there had been a small amount of leakage from the red. Upon closer inspection I realized there was little apparent impact on the fill levels in the wines. My inspection further showed the cork in the Chardonnay had pushed up a couple millemeters. Curious of the travel time I went to the UPS tracking site and realized to my astonishment that the wines had gone out for delivery three consecutive days the previous week to my vacated St.Helena office. Needless to say the Thursday that week subjected the valley to a miserable heat spike where my back yard experienced 110 degrees. The only remaining question for me was "Are these wines as toasty as the temperatures last week?" Curious and with nothing to lose, I popped both of these open and poured away. Surprisingly the wines showed no apparent negative effects from their trip to hell and back.
Caleb had included a handwritten note requesting feedback from me on the wines and the sincerity of his missive was too much to ignore. I let him know the wines tasted very well but I also felt he needed to know about the condition even though it was not his fault. He immediately replied that he didn't want me to base my evaluation of his wines on potentially comprimised samples, regardless how well they showed. I couldn't argue with his reasoning and yesterday the fresh samples arrived.
Beauty is more than skin deep
I secretly held a lot of respect for how these wines had buffeted their way to my far-flung outpost without deteriorationg into vinegar, or worse. I popped the new samples and experienced a very similar impression. The surprising aspect of these wines is they are craft produced in small quantity and very competitively priced at $35.00 each.
2006 Buty Chardonnay Conner Lee Vineyard, VF 92 produced only 563 cases.
2006 Buty Red, (54% Merlot and 46% Cabernet Franc), VF 93 produced only 345 cases.
Full reviews will appear in the Wilder Side of California soon. The VF scores appearing above should be enough to tell you how well made these wines are.
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