Quixote Winery

Face it, we have. Wine ratings have become as important a component of the wine culture as vintage dates. Robert Parker gave us the 100-point rating scale 30 years ago and it has, for better and for worse, become an industry standard, both revered and reviled - depending where on the scale your wine falls.

For you, the consumer, there is no debating that the scale is a valuable tool, a presumed impartial arbiter helping navigate an endless lineup of labels, bringing an element of democracy to the often overwhelming world of wine.

For us, the producer, the ratings are a duel-edged sword, a beauty when the number is high, a bane when it is not.

We’ve been fortunate here at our Stags’ Leap Ranch. Reviews have been routinely superlative, our wines annually regarded as exceptional. Not that we needed that affirmation. We believe our petite syrahs are consistently superior.

Still, it’s nice when the printed page echoes that belief as it has over and again since we released our 2005 Quixote Petite Syrah.

The Wine Spectator awarded our 2005 Quixote Petite Syrah 93 points, the sixth time in six years it has ranked one of our petite syrahs in its outstanding category, testament to our belief that our Stags’ Leap Ranch is a benchmark for the varietal.

But just for good measure, the Spectator followed up last weekend by spotlighting the wine as a pick of the day on its website.

It said the ’05 is a wine full of personality, dark and rich with flavors that persist on the finish.

Forbes’ Richard Nalley agreed, highlighting the ’05 in a story he wrote, making the case that petite syrah and zinfandel are California’s varietal stars.

“Zin and Petite Syrah rise to heights in California that their ancestor grapes never dreamed of,’’ he wrote. “And it is safe to say that the state can claim them as its own.’’

He was effusive in his evaluation of our wine.

“This Petite Syrah, from organically grown grapes, is as fine as any Carl Doumani has ever presided over,’’ Nalley wrote. “Richly layered, with chewy depths of juicy, dark fruit goodness, it is also smoothly harmonious, a wine that carries its not-considerable weight with the deft freshness of a fine Chateauneuf-du-Pape.’’

As always, experience with any wine is subjective, as individual as a fingerprint. For fun, when we had plenty of wines in our library inventory, I used to play a game with visitors here at the winery. I would pour them our 2002 and 2004 Quixote Petite Syrahs side-by-side and ask them to evaluate each.

I would then ask them which they believed was the highest rated according to Wine Spectator.

More often than not, the choice was the 2002, a rich, earthy petite that still rocks. Of course, this was a setup. The 2002 was awarded 87 points. The 2004 earned a 90.

The point I wanted to emphasize is there is a place for ratings, but nothing or no one should override what your own palate tells you. Your best bet is stick with producers who have proven over the long haul they have an understanding of their vineyard.

We’ll keep you updated with what the rest of the world thinks - flattering and otherwise - but in the meantime the doors are open here, so come and visit and make up your own mind.

And for those who have read this far, a special offer. Call or e-mail us and reference the password ‘Sancho’ and we’ll apply a 10 percent discount to your order.

Cheers

St. Helena, Calif., November 24, 2008—Tuesday, December 9, you may indulge in a getaway weekend to Meadowood Napa Valley where Iron Chef Michael Symons will serve his sexy, sophisticated American fare along with Carl Doumani’s Quixote wines from Stags Leap Ranch.  It’s all part of Meadowood’s annual The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Reservations are $1,225 per couple, including your night’s lodging and dinner seating for two.  The evening benefits Napa Valley’s Share our Strength program. For Quixote Winery mailing list members Meadowood is offering a $350 per person ticket for dinner exclusively.

Share Our Strength, a national foundation, has a long list of impressive accomplishments all aimed at ending childhood hunger.  Among them are:

• Served 40.2 million meals to kids;
• Established 926 new after school and summer feeding sites;
• Taught 200,000 kids about healthy foods and food choices;
• Grew 2.5 million pounds of produce in community gardens;
• Referred nearly 2 million people to food and nutrition assistance programs.

The evening’s festivities begin at 6 p.m. Quixote’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah will be paired with Symon’s menu.  For reservations, please call:  800-458-8080.

Michael Symon is the chef and owner of the critically acclaimed Lola and Lolita restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio.  He is the host of the Food Network’s Dinner Impossible.  Revered in the culinary world and adored in his hometown of Cleveland, Symon is credited with revitalizing the Cleveland palate. 

His thoughtful cooking style has earned him numerous honors among them:  National Rising Star by Restaurant Hospitality Magazine; Top Ten Best New Chefs by Food and Wine Magazine, America’s Best Restaurants in Gourmet Magazine, and a featured role in Michael Ruhlman’s  book, “The Soul of A Chef”.  The James Beard Foundation has nominated him for several awards and he has hosted over 100 episodes of The Melting Pot on The Food Network.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is poised to be a joyous, plugged-in affair with “webisodes” of each dinner to be produced and aired by FoodNetwork.com.  Online viewers can look forward to chefs creating their signature holiday menus while sharing tales and memories of holiday seasons past.  On-site diners will enjoy their culinary artistry first hand on the plate and in the glass while raising funds to keep at-risk children well nourished.

According to the rules of cowboy myth and melodrama the high-noon shootout was typically a savage, sadistic affair.

It was, of course, often inspired by drink, seldom justified, almost always deadly, a confrontation appropriately epic even if it was a little messy.

The Napa Valley may no longer qualify as the wild, wild west, but the shootout remains an intoxicating prospect, one we couldn’t resist.

So, on June 16th we settled a long-simmering feud the old-fashioned way when a shootout between two disparate wines became reality. The first Petite Syrah-Cabernet shootout was neither savage nor sadistic. And it was certainly not deadly.

But justified?

The feeling at Quixote was absolute. It was time to settle, once and forever, an issue that threatened to split the Napa Valley.

When the subject is grilled lamb, which wine provides the perfect match - petite or cab?

The debate had been gaining currency since, well, since we began it. So on Monday, June 16th, just past high noon, the question was posed before a gathering of 70 sommeliers, wine writers, trade reps and just plain wine lovers at the Plumpjack Winery in Oakville.

The idea was the brainchild of our owner Carl Doumani, who has long maintained that Petite Syrah is the superior choice when lamb is served. To prove his point, he invited our friends at Plumpjack to the challenge and Plumpjack General Manager John Conover accepted.

So, for three hours we ate, we drank and we debated - mostly with tongues in cheek.

The gathering of judges was presented three excellent wines - our 2004 Quixote Petite Syrah, Plumpjack’s 2005 Napa Cabernet and Cade’s 2005 Cuvee. Cade is Plumpjack’s new sister winery located on Howell Mountain.

Participants had the opportunity to taste each wine with a leg of lamb that was organically farmed, marinated in garlic, lemon and olive oil with salt and pepper then perfectly grilled.

So, how did we do?

“The petite is the perfect match,’’ said Mary Lou Lackey, whose husband Wayne owns and operates Wine Country Helicopters.

Chef Rick Warkel, who prepared the lamb, declared the shootout a draw, but most were more decisive.

“Loved the Quixote with and without the food,’’ one voter wrote. “Best with the lamb,’’ wrote another. “They were all superb, but with the lamb the petite was numero uno,’’ was another’s take.

Joey Altman, host of View From the Bay on San Francisco’s Channel 7, offered, arguably, the most incisive critique.

“I liked the Plumpjack and the Cade,’’ he said. “But the Quixote paired better. It resonated with the lamb and all the ingredients on the plate. The frequency and the intensity of the flavors were perfect. John’s big mistake was letting Carl pick the meat.’’

In the end, we feel we proved our point, moving petite syrah to higher ground and affirming again that ours is a star’s trek, the destination where no petite syrah-growing man has gone before.

“This was a setup,’’ Conover said, effectively throwing down the gauntlet. “Next time we’re doing beef.’’

Sounds like another excellent idea. Beef and an appropriately aged petite. Let the debate begin.

The day began as many do, with a shrug and sigh.

The request was genuine, innocently phrased. “May I make an appointment to visit the Hundertwasser Quixote Winery?’’

Go ahead and laugh. We do. Daily.

This, of course, is the Quixote Winery. It was designed by Fredensreich Hundertwasser and we are proud of that association. He left us with a remarkable building, a showplace that resonates with everyone who visits. We love sharing his vision, his eccentricities and his genius with all of you and will continue to do so.

But we are also enamored of our wines. We love sharing those too. And let’s not beat around the bush, we love selling them.

That’s why, as we enter the summer season, we are altering our visitation schedule. Beginning May 30, Friday, Saturday and Sunday appointments will be for tastings only.

We’re doing this to accommodate more visitors on the busiest days of the week, eliminating the architectural tour from the presentation on those two days and placing the focus on our wine program.

So for those interested more in Hundertwasser’s work than our winemaker’s, the days to visit will be Mon.-Thurs when our tour/tasting schedule remains unchanged. As has been the case since our initial opening, you will be guided through Hundertwasser’s wonder, then treated to a sit-down tasting, an experience that lasts 1:15 and costs $25.

The Friday-Saturday schedule will allow for more appointment opportunities, with times for tastings available at 10, 11:30, 1:00 and 2:30 with a 4:00 bloc available for our Quixote Case Society and Panza Select members. On these days, you will be treated to a sit-down tasting and discussion of our wine-producing goals, an experience that lasts 40 minutes and costs $20.

Change, of course, is inevitable. As we continue to welcome members into our case society and establish our reputation as one of the premium petite syrah producers in the valley, our offerings will continue to evolve.

Fewer and smaller groups, barrel tastings, vertical tastings, food and wine pairings…this is an open forum. I would love some feedback, from those of you who have already visited and those who plan to soon.

In the meantime, raise a glass to Hundertwasser and to petite syrah.

Inevitability no longer is, well, a foregone conclusion as presidential politics this year are teaching us.

Though it has never been inevitable that our Stags' Leap Ranch will always produce superb petite syrah, at times it has seemed that way.

Carl Doumani discovered something unique 38 years ago when he launched the Stags' Leap Winery. He discovered that petite syrah has a distinct voice in an area lauded for its cabernets, his love affair with the grape translating into one of the Napa Valley's signature wines

We've carried the same commitment forward to Quixote and as we look around today we see we're not alone. Petite Syrah, too long best known as the grape that salvaged boring cabernets, is beginning to gain the respect we've always felt it deserved.

At times, it would have been easiest to throw our hands up in surrender and change course. This is Napa Valley, right? Home to world-class cabernet? So why buck convention? Why petite syrah? Guests to the winery ask the question daily.

My response? Why not?

Petite syrah is distinctive, easy to drink, versatile with a variety of food pairing options. It has the structure to age, the complexity to entice. It's often enigmatic, equal parts beauty and beast, both assertive and elegant. If you don't want to take my word for it, I've got allies.

"As longtime readers know, I believe this is the most underrated varietal in California," Robert Parker wrote in his Wine Advocate. "But it's not exactly a fun wine to drink young. After 10-15 years of age, it often reveals more character than many more expensive reds."

We believe, like Parker, that an older petite syrah quite often is more interesting than more heralded red varietals, but the petites we produce from our Stags' Leap Ranch are characterized by soft tannins which make for enjoyable drinking in their youth.

Experience has convinced us that petite syrah is very terrior driven. Winemakers will tell you that fine wines come from somewhere, meaning it's not the brand that makes the wine, it's the land.

The wines produced within the Stags Leap District have been referred to as the 'iron fist in the velvet glove' because they offer a tremendous fruit punch accompanied by a soft mouth feel, a product of the area's micro-climate.

There is something about the combination of soil and climate - especially our location at the end of a narrow channel from the San Pablo Bay that delivers a daily cooling breeze - that invigorates our petite syrah vines.

So, you might say the answer to the question of why petite syrah is a no-brainer.

It was inevitable.

The Napa Valley in winter can fool you. The vines may be asleep, the roadways empty, but don’t be deceived. The valley in winter is alive.

And so goes the paradox that is viticulture and winemaking.

The evidence lies beneath the naked vines. This is the season of regeneration, when dormant vineyards give birth to a different kind of life - the cover crop.

Sustainability is the gospel growers up and down the valley are preaching, the demand today to give back to the land as much as we take out.

Drive into the valley this week and you’ll see acres of yellow mustard and wild flowers and vegetation ranging from fava beans to sweet peas. You’ll see sheep grazing between the rows of petite syrah and cabernet, dispensing the need for gas-powered mowers. Look closely enough and you’ll see the foundation being set for the next vintage.

At Quixote, we farm our Stags’ Leap Ranch organically and one of the keys to that approach is the introduction of a diverse set of cover crops each winter, their ultimate payoff a rich, living soil we believe translates into expressive fruit in the bottle.

Cover crops aid by increasing the nitrogen content of the soil, improving water penetration, creating organic matter that is returned to the soil and reducing dust which eliminates some pests.

Our vineyard manager, Michael Wolf, has planted everything from red oats to purple vetch to two varieties of peas.

“What we’re trying to do is to make sure we have no erosion on our slopes and to provide a natural form of organic matter to the soil,’’ Wolf said. “Sustainability and organic have become synonymous in wine-speak, but they are not. You can make an argument for calling just about anything you do sustainability and some do.
“But organic farming limits the kinds of material you can use in the vineyard, specifically chemicals. We only use materials certified for organic production.’’

What does this mean to our wines? In the short term, consistency. In the long term a vitality we hope lends our wines a sense of place.

“By farming organically, we’re trying to have the fruit more closely lined up with the soil for a better expression of the site,’’ Wolf said. “We want to apply a lighter hand and the cover crops a part of that.’’

And, hey, in the meantime they conspire to create a beautiful winter landscape.

Lew Price

Click here to view more Quixote cover crop photos.

OK, so we're a little quixotic. But are we twisted too?

The short answer is yes, the shorter one, no. Yes, we specialize in petite syrah in the heart of cabernet country and yes, we bottle our entire production under twist-off caps.

But no, we are not so twisted in our belief that the screw-cap is the best closure for our fine wine. We have company, a growing legion who have discovered as we did that a twist-off closure is the finest seal for quality wines.

Maison Jean-Claude Boisset, one of Burgundy’s largest wine merchants, bottled half its 2005 Chambertin with twist-off caps. That’s a $200 grand cru now cork free. Boisset decided to make the move after comparing 30-year-old wines sealed with corks against the same wines sealed under twist-off caps and deciding the capped wines offered more consistent quality and better fruit and freshness retention. “The future of great wines is with screw caps,’’ Boisset winemaker Gregory Patriat told Wine Spectator.

And that’s not all. Wine Spectator columnist, Matt Kramer, wrote in the magazine’s Oct. 31 issue of the results of a study conducted at a Bordeaux university that again confirmed that wines bottled under a twist-off cap generally emerge fresher and fruitier with more precise flavor definition. The study also suggested that the argument that screw-caps retard the aging process may lack merit, proving that there is oxygen ingress with the metal cap. “Screw caps sealed in more oxygen during bottling than did other closures because oxygen remained underneath the screw cap when it was attached to the bottle,” Kramer wrote. “Researchers found that when in place, screw caps allowed the ingress of consistent low amounts of oxygen.’’

More support followed Nov.6 when Wine Spectator’s Jim Laube, in an online blog, revealed that tasters at the magazine tasted 3,600 wines in 2007 and found 325 bottles flawed by bad corks, a failure rate of about 9 percent.

“I know cork producers insist they are cleaning up their acts,”Laube wrote. “But our results, all from blind tastings, suggest the problem is as serious as ever and maybe worse. At 9 percent, you’re close to having one bad bottle per 12-bottle case spoiled and that’s absurd. If you add in the 193 wines we tasted out of twist-offs, it raises the percentage of bad bottles even higher, to 9.5 percent.

“I blame wine producers as much as cork makers for this problem, since they are the ones that choose what to seal their wines and the failure rate of corks is pathetic. We keep hearing the same old refrain about corks that progress is being made. But if a 9-percent failure rate is considered progress, I wonder what percentage cork makers would consider a disaster?”

The bottom line, the evidence says, is that wines under screw cap age exceptionally.

But those are researchers speaking. Don’t take their word for it. Form your own opinion. Compare our 2002 Quixote Petite Syrah, of which there remain only a few dozen cases, against the newly released 2004 and see for yourself.

To order both wines. click here: www.quixotewinery.com or call us at 707-944-2659.

Garrett at the Vanilla Garlic food blog has written about a weekend tour and cheese tasting, complete with some wonderful photos!