Wine People

Cornas is a small wine appellation in France’s Northern Rhône Valley. Located at the southern end of the region, its steep granitic hillsides are planted with only about 110 hectares of vines, all of which is Syrah. Until recently, Cornas wines were considered rather harsh and rustic; not worthy of the world's attention and frequently passed over in favor of wines from its storied neighbors,...

When we posted an item about Pinot Blanc last year, a reader responded: “I was searching for a California Pinot Blanc yesterday at BevMo. Not a one to be found but they did have 800 Chardonnays.”

Such is life for Pinot Blanc, which is mostly associated with Alsace when people think of it at all. Our long-time U.S. favorite was from Chalone Vineyard in Monterey. Over the years, though, good Pinot Blanc, from all over the world, became harder and harder to find. We often described them as “lumpy,” which is difficult to explain but it’s not a good thing. They just kind of tasted neutral and sat in our mouths, although, of course, there are always exceptions.

By 2019, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, there were only 324 acres of Pinot Blanc in all of California. (Chardonnay: 89,357). We even assumed – assumed, but hold on – that Chalone didn’t make it anymore since we haven’t seen it in some time and there are no recent vintages available online.

But then we had a Pinot Blanc that made us sit up. “Seriously good wine,” we wrote. “It has a real intensity to it, like it’s very ripe, so it pops in our mouths. And yet it’s also very easy to enjoy. Fleshy white fruit, maybe some melon.”

This was the Ram’s Gate Winery 2020 Estate Pinot Blanc ($38) – and, as it turned out, the Pinot Blanc we’d posted about last year was the 2019, both sent by the winery. There’s clearly something good happening here.

Ram’s Gate was founded in Sonoma 2011 by four high-powered, wine-loving friends: Michael John, Jeff O’Neill, Paul Violich and Peter Mullin. In 2018, they hired Joe Nielsen, now 35, as director of winemaking. He’d previously been the head winemaker for Donelan Family Wines in Sonoma County after first making wine in his home state of Michigan. Ram’s Gate makes 12,000 to 14,000 cases of wine a year, with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay its stars, and has 28 acres of vines, including four acres of Pinot Blanc.

Ram’s Gate made 421 cases of the 2020 Estate Pinot Blanc and it’s hard to find, but, still, we were eager to find out Nielsen’s secret for outstanding Pinot Blanc, so we gave him a call. His answers have been condensed and edited for space.

Why Pinot Blanc?

Sometimes the most captivating wine for me is a delicately constructed but really thought-provoking white wine and the Pinot Blanc does that for me. I always say it’s a “Godfather” wine that kind of whispers something really important and it kind of grabs you and pulls you in. It’s not a yelling wine. It’s not a shout. It’s more of a whisper. But what’s being said is kind of intricate.

What makes yours special?

What’s unique about our site is that we have three different AVAs that overlap here: Sonoma Coast, Sonoma Valley and Carneros. It’s rather cool temperature-wise, more so in the summer, and then it actually flips and it’s a little bit warmer in the winter time than most of Sonoma Coast or even Sonoma Valley. So I was offered the job and I was evaluating my assets, what do I have to work with here, and I see planted we have Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and that makes sense, but then we had Syrah, Grenache and Pinot Blanc grown on the site, plus Sauvignon Blanc. Well, it doesn’t seem like those are the varieties I would expect to be growing right by each other. Grenache is typically very late-ripening, requires a lot of heat. Pinot Blanc I hadn’t made since working in Michigan and I thought if Grenache does well here then Pinot Blanc ought not to work well here and if Pinot Blanc works well I can’t imagine Grenache works. And the truth is that they both work and it’s because of this maritime climate that we have. So I’m picking Pinot Blanc maybe Sept. 15 and I’m picking Grenache maybe Oct. 15 but both of them get ripe.

What’s your vision of your Pinot Blanc?

They don’t have that intense aromatic naturally and then people’s instinct when they can, especially in California, is to ripen them pretty far with the idea that if I ripen them longer I’ll get more flavor. And I think when you do that you kind of lose the varietal character. So there is that sweet spot of trying to find where you’re not picking too early where you’re maybe getting some unripe fruit character but not going to the point where you lose the identity. To me, Pinot Blancs that I really love have this kind of cross between a Golden Delicious apple and some pear Anjou and I want that crispness, I want that freshness that I think is varietal. And then getting a little bit of that exotic stone fruit character is pretty. I like when there is a small hint of reduction that comes across as Parmesan cheese, but ever so slightly. And I’m like bingo, there it is.

How do you do that?

If you make it too floral it kind of competes with Riesling. If you make it in a barrel you kind of have to compete with Chardonnay and if you were just to do stainless it might be too much like Pinot Gris. So the way I combat that is to try to do a little bit of everything. We do some in stainless, some in neutral barrels, we foot stomp a portion of it to let it really soak on its skins. We also have three different clones growing here. On our four acres we have four different Pinot Blancs we’re making each year if not more and we kind of play with variations on a theme so to speak. It’s fun for us after harvest to play with all of these components. The cuvée of them all makes that wine way more compelling. My winemaking goal is three Cs for a wine: It must be complete, complex and compelling. 

Is it a hard sell?

No. The Pinot Blanc is sort of a fan favorite. It’s something that’s unique for us. There’s plenty of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc being made. Pinot Blanc is an alternative white that from a very simple business sense is an opportunity to be different. We do have an opportunity where we get a lot of new wine drinkers. We’re one of the first stops coming into Sonoma Valley from the southern part. We have a real soapbox opportunity to be educators and set a bar for wine styles. We’re building trust with our customers so they are more adventurous. But I just also really love it. 

We were impressed with the consistency of your wines, from lower-end to higher-end, even your rosé. We called them “nicely intense, with great acidity and wonderful balance.” How do you accomplish that?

It’s not our decision as winemakers the price of that bottle of wine. It is our promise to perform regardless. While in that artistic frame of mind you can’t say, well, this is just X amount of dollars so let’s focus on the hundred-dollar wine. It’s all important.

To me, consistency is really important. I kind of look for inspiration in the Old World. When you see a brand anywhere and they have 20, 50 years of consistency, look at that vision. Before a tradition becomes a tradition, do people notice, do people know? I want someone to be able to pick up a bottle in 10 years and say, oh yeah, that’s a style of wine from Joe. We’re starting t...