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Tour
of the Flowers Winery
By Brad
Harrington
During
my trip north I had the opportunity to meet Greg La Follette,
Scott Wright and Walt and Joan Flowers. The drive up from the
RRV was a bit wild, lots of winding hilly road to climb, which
struck me as being fairly scarey should there be a bit of fog
to curb your view. When we arrived the whole crew was sitting
around a few picnic tables eating a homemade meal created by a
neighbor and friend of the Flowers, we were invited in to eat
and share a few bottles of wines which were floating around the
tables. Lovely meal. Great people.
Afterwards
we got the grand tour of their winery and vineyards and I have
to say, this is one of the most impressive and beautiful wineries
I have ever seen. Efficient and high tech, much of the equipment
is customized to their unique operation. Many different sized
stainless steel fermentation tanks, so that they can deal with
just about any situation that comes up. They have a large bladder
press as well as one of those flat presses that seem so rare these
days. Can't remember what they call those flat presses?????? Two
barrel rooms and a couple of large stainless steel tanks for blending.
While I was there they were in the process of punching down the
PN and Greg was figuratively putting out fires everywhere he turned.
(In other words he was extemely busy with the details!!)
In
the barrel room there were a few of the vats holding the berries
sitting there and Joan told us to go ahead and taste some of the
grapes. I grabbed one grape and tasted it, Joan then pulled out
a small good looking cluster and told me to do it like this, just
before she popped the whole cluster in her mouth. While I have
tasted a few grapes here and there, I never had thrown a whole
cluster of wine grapes into my mouth. The intesity of the the
fruit was incredible, very tasty and rich juice. We got around
to tasting the Camp Meeting Ridge Chard and PN from the large
blending containers, still very young and being the PN neophyte
that I am, I was surprised at the tannic strength of the PN wine.
Still, lots of dark fruit, spice and cola flavors, you can tell
this is going to be a stunning bottle of wine. The chardonnay
was also beautiful, very rich and exotic along the lines of the
Landmark Lorenzo though still fairly oaky at this stage in it's
life. It's going to be a good one, very rich yellow in color and
lush in the mouth.
It's
hard to express the marvel of their winery without understanding
the setting. The vineyards are located just above the fog line
along the Sonoma Coastal region, just north of the Russian River
Valley outlet into the Pacific Ocean. Martinelli and Hirsch vineyards
are visable from the Flowers property. Most of the vines are located
along high slopes with absolutely stunning views of the surrounding
valleys and the Pacific Ocean. The views are just incredible,
one could never tire of them. The vineyards are awesome, seems
like they have just about every possible clone of PN growing somewhere.
Currently they have about 33+ acres of vineyards producing PN
and chard. I can't remember the numbers exactly but I believe
they have about 230 acres of land on this property which yield
the 33+ acres of vines. Somewhat recently they purchased some
new property, a couple miles away which will eventually yield
another 50+ acres of vineyards! Dea and I went with the Flowers
over to their new vineyards and drove their 4-wheeler around and
looked at all the vines they have recently planted.
This
is clearly a class act, no costs are being spared. It appears
that they are doing everything, down to the smallest detail, the
best way it can be done. I came away thinking that I now understood
why some wines deserve their higher prices. The buildings alone
are impressive, but their care for the grapes and the winemaking
process would impress even the most skeptical.
As
for the people. Greg L is really deserving of more individual
recognition as a top winemaker. I know you are likely reading
this Greg so sorry if you are shy, but this guy is intense!!!!!
Totally applied to the whole vineyard operation. He is an integral
piece of the puzzle here, in ways that many winemakers likely
can only dream of. When you drink a glass of Flowers wine, there
is a piece of Greg there. A good piece!! ;-)
Joan
and Walt struck me as the kind of folks who can really relate
to others. You know the type who are equally at home with the
President of the USA or just some guy who runs a wine forum on
the internet. They don't wait for you to seek their level of conversation,
they can easily find common ground with whomever they meet. Very
impressive folks, very genuine and sincere people.
We
did get around to talking about the recent threads involving the
Flowers winery and the offer of trading their allocations on this
site. They were extremely understanding of the all sides of the
discussion. They felt truly bad for the fellow who had brought
the situation up, yet they also had to deal with the fact that
others on their list saw the post. Basically, someone who is waiting
to get on the list saw the post and complained that they should
not be giving their extra wines to someone who is in turn just
turning around and giving them to someone else who is not on the
list. They know the whole thing is kind of a tough situation and
they had no bad feelings towards anyone involved, they just felt
they needed to respond to their waiting list customers and that
their actions where appropriate. They did not even think about
removing the guy from the lists for future allocations or anything
so ill willed. They are very level headed about it. They did understand
the problems it presented me with the community issues. The main
points they wanted to make were that they had no ill will towards
anyone over the posts and that they knew that perhaps there was
no perfect solution, but they cared about their wines deeply and
were doing the best they knew how in dealing with this situation.
Most of us know about their allocation system and it is one of
the fairest around. At the time of the thread, I was a little
concerned that there may have been some negative feelings leveled
towards the Flowers and I know at least a couple notes wondered
whether they should buy any more of their wines. I hope that none
of these feelings still exist. These are great wines made by great
people who deserve our support and appreciation. All they care
about is producing the best wines they can. Their main goal in
life is not to make lots of money and sell as much quantity of
wine they can. Their goal is to produce the best quality wine
they can and do their best to let people have the opportunity
to taste it. They are intense and passionate about it and I came
away totally impressed with everything about them and their winery.
So
in one word. AWESOME, or as Bruce L might say, WOW!!
To
top things off, I mentioned that I had still never tasted a bottle
of their PN yet and Walt said he would give us a bottle to take
to our planned offline in Napa that evening. We drove by their
house and he ran in and grabbed a bottle and brought it back out.
1996 Moon Select CMR Pinot Noir. Stunning wine, it emptied quickly
at the offline, first emptied of the evening. Lots of dark cherry
fruit with mild exotic spice and cola, but what stood out for
me was the balance of this wine. It was hitting on all cylinders
yet left me wishing I could taste it in a few years when the secondary
flavors start kicking in. As it was I would clearly rate this
wine at the top of my PN experience to this point in time and
I'm betting this wine will improve!!!
That's
it for now, thanks to Greg L and Dea for setting this up for me
and thanks to Joan and Walt Flowers for being such incredibly
wonderful hosts. I had a great day!
Copyright
© Brad Harrington, October, 1999
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