We sometimes refer to Viognier as “lumpy.” We doubt we’d find that description on anybody’s tasting wheel. What we mean is that Viognier, as a varietal wine, is often kind of cumbersome, lacking enough complexity to keep us interested beyond the first few sips. We can understand why Viognier is often used as part of a blend, generally to add aromatics.
There are exceptions, of course, as there always are in wine, and then there is Exceptional: Darioush Signature Viognier from Napa Valley. This has been a favorite for years. We just tasted the 2023 and we believe it was our best yet from the winery. How excited were we? Our contemporaneous notes, in part: “Spicy nose – nutmeg/cinnamon. Really interesting. Remarkably light on its feet for such a spicy wine. Intensely spicy, all the way down. Lime zest and pith, carambola, peaches and minerals. It has a real focus and great acidity. Real purity. But at the same time it’s not just one prominent flavor. It’s like it contains multitudes. Think of this as your entertainment for the night.”
Contains multitudes? That’s quite something for $60. We were so excited about this that we decided to give the winemaker, Hope Goldie, a call. The notes that came with the wine, which was sent by a winery representative, say the grapes were hand-picked and whole-cluster pressed, and the wine was cold-fermented in steel tanks and aged in 25% new and 75% neutral French oak for six months.
Pretty much anyone who has visited Napa knows 35,000-case, Napa Green-certified Darioush and its astonishing Persian-dream winery. Darioush Khaledi, an engineer who owned a successful construction business in pre-revolution Iran, emigrated to the U.S., and started a chain of grocery stores. He and his wife, Shahpar, founded the winery in 1998. Khaledi’s father made wine as a hobby and imparted his love of Bordeaux to his son, whose winery makes wines from Bordeaux and Rhône grape varieties. A philanthropist and community leader, Khaledi became a United States citizen in 1982.
Hope Goldie, whose chemist father made wine at home in Washington, studied enology and food science at UC-Davis and worked at Opus One, Stags’ Leap and Rutherford Hill Winery before joining Darioush in 2005. She has held various winemaking jobs there, from enologist to assistant winemaker to director of winemaking and, now, vice president of winemaking. John met her earlier this year during the Wine Writers’ Symposium at Meadowood Napa Valley. She is charming, funny and deeply knowledgeable, so we were eager to catch up and ask her some questions, including the simplest: Why Viognier? While it’s widely planted around the world, especially in the Rhône Valley, where it’s especially famous in Condrieu, it’s fairly unusual in the U.S. and even more unusual in Napa Valley, especially as a stand-alone varietal. In 2023, there were 2,555 acres of Viognier in California and 88,063 acres of Chardonnay, according to the California Grape Acreage Report. And last year, the report noted, there were only 117 acres of Viognier in Napa compared to 22,945 of Cabernet Sauvignon.
The following conversation has been edited.
Grape Collective: Darioush has made Viognier since 1999. Napa is red-wine country. Why make Viognier?
Hope Goldie: Maybe the most authentic answer is that we got connected to a property that had it. And I would give a lot of credit to Steve Devitt, who is the founding winemaker here for whom I worked until 2018, when he retired. He’s so awesome. He was able to dial in, after a lot of experimentation, how to really make that wine shine because it’s a challenging grape for sure. Even when I started off here, we were still experimenting for years on how to make it the best it could be. We want to focus on those really awesome aromatics that are unique. And then since the skin is fairly phenolic, how do you exclude that or how do you keep it from being bitter? So that’s been the challenge for years and years. I don’t know that we’ve ever really made it perfect, but I feel like we’ve got it pretty much in the bag now in terms of being familiar with our fruit sourcing and we have a pretty good technique.
(Hope Goldie, vice president of winemaking at Darioush)
GC: And now it is your most popular white.
Goldie: It’s certainly popular and my mother loves it, but she can’t pronounce it, which is adorable. She’s like “That white wine that’s not Chardonnay.”
GC: Loving it is what’s important.
Goldie: Exactly. And she wants ice cubes in that baby, too.
GC: Do you own any acres of Viognier or is it all sourced from other growers in the cooler Oak Knoll district of Napa?
Goldie: We have a long-term lease where we’ve directed them to plant to our specifications and we farm to our specifications.
GC: You made 3,453 cases of this 2023. That’s a lot.
Goldie: Isn’t that crazy? It was more than we thought. I was in trouble with barrels. It just yielded very heavily, more so than we thought. So the thing is we were not over-cropping and it just came in really heavy and we thought, well, it’s good, so I guess it’s good to have more. I had to scramble for barrels and press room in the tanks and all of that, but it tastes great. I was psyched how it turned out. I was concerned that it might taste somewhat less intense than other years, but I feel like it was very fruit forward and bright.
GC: We found this year’s to be particularly spicy. Where does this spiciness come from?
Goldie: We have clones that are more Condrieu and kind of bitter, but also have more texture, and we also have some clones that I would consider more south of France that are more really kind of juicy-fruity and spicy. And I think the combination of the two is what we’re excited about. I think just one or just the other would’ve been a little insipid. So I think that the combination really kind of amplifies the good aspects of both of those clones.
GC: So it sounds like it’s possible that if you popped one of those grapes in your mouth, you would get spiciness.
Goldie: Yes. You absolutely do. It’s awesome. I love checking the various vineyards for Viognier because they taste good and right away you’re like, yeah, you’re psyched.
(Along with the science of when to pick, Goldie considers how the grapes taste)
GC: So how do you decide when to pick? Is it entirely scientific? How much of it is just how it tastes to you?
Goldie: My background is very scientific and that’s my foundation. So I usually do a lot of chemistry in mid-August and after I hit a certain milestone, then I stop testing them chemically and I’m just doing taste because I know I have what I need. Then, I have the luxury of really trying to nail in when it’s going to be best. The thing is when you make a picking decision, you’re not really going to get the fruit in for five days. You have to guess what it’s going to be like in five days. So you’re sort of taking an egg off the frying pan before it’s all the way cooked, but if you wait until it’s done, it’s going to be overcooked on the plate. It’s more intuitive.
GC: We don’t often think of Viognier as a focused wine, but this had a purity and a focus. How do you do that?
Goldie: Well, that sounds great. I’m like, wow, that makes me sound really smart. Basically, these are long-term sourcing vineyards. I just feel like I know them. They’re sort of like kids. You’re like, OK, I know that kid and I know that kid, and how are they going to be the best and most synergistic with the weather of the year? So to me, it’s listening to vines. That’s not necessarily something that happens in the cellar or some ulterior plan. I’m, like, they’re going to tell me what to do and I’m going to do it. I’m so familiar now, fortunately with 20 years, that I can tell when they’re going to be in the zone.
GC: It’s 15.5% alcohol, which seems a little scary. And normally we would kind of go, oh my goodness. But we don’t look at things like that until after we’ve tasted the wine and we never would’ve guessed that it was 15.5. So why is it 15.5?
Goldie: This is California. We get so much sun and it’s normal. California winemakers’ challenge is how do we get flavors without excessive sugar and excessive alcohol? I want the vines to be as happy as possible. I liken them to an orchard tree, not a strawberry. This is a long-term orchard. And so what’s making the long-term health of the vines and whatever that fruit of the year is, is less important than the bigger picture of year in and year out. Magically, I’d love them to be lower, but that’s not in the cards for the 2023.
GC: We had some very serious discussions about what food would be perfect with this. What do you eat with it?
Goldie: I always take Viognier to Thanksgiving. We don’t have a lot of heavy stuff at my Thanksgiving, so it’s like, it’s turkey, but it’s also very savory foods, so the spiciness and the aromatics of the wine kind of show and can be amplified with the experience. So that’s been kind of a hit in my family. It tends to be just spicy enough that it makes it interesting.
GC: And your mother loves it.
Goldie: She does. She wants ice cubes in the glass. I just say yes, ma’am.
GC: The other thing we debated was how this would age. What do you think?
Goldie: I’m not an older-wine lover, so I’d probably skew towards more of a five- to 10-year-old rather than beyond 10-year-old wine. I think if you try it this time next year, you’ll think it’s even more awesome. And maybe the year after that. And then you’ll get differences that you may or may not appreciate depending on your palate. But I think after that, I don’t know that it would be something that 20 years from now, you’d say it’s great. I’m like, maybe, but I feel like one reason why it’s such a joyous wine is that it’s young. It has this vivacious energy to it. So that’s what I like about it. I tend to like them within five years. But that’s just me.
GC: After we had this, we bought more, so we will open one in a year.
Goldie: Let me know how you guys think of that.
GC: We will.
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher conceived and wrote The Wall Street Journal's wine column, "Tastings," from 1998 to 2010. Dorothy and John have been tasting and studying wine since 1973. In 2020, the University of California at Davis added their papers to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection in its library, which also includes the work of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Dottie has had a distinguished career in journalism as a reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer at The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and at The Journal. John was Page One Editor of The Journal, City Editor of The Miami Herald and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. They are well-known from their books and many television appearances, especially on Martha Stewart's show, and as the creators of the annual, international "Open That Bottle Night" celebration of wine and friendship. The first bottle they shared was André Cold Duck. They have two daughters.
