Our Sonoma Coast Chardonnay Vineyard: Part 1

harvesting the '09 Chardonnay

When Steve and I got married, our dream was to own a farm. We were living in Davis, California, which is smack in the middle of some of the best farm land in the world. We didn't find anything that fit what we were looking for, and then Steve got a job as a viticulturalist in Napa (where he plans, supervises and coordinates the growing of grapes), and we started looking for land to farm in the Napa area.

Then in 2006, we met someone who had just bought land near the town of Sonoma and wanted to plant a vineyard, but had no idea how to do it. We were very excited because the soil was very rocky and very close to a vineyard that is famous for producing great quality wine (called the Durell Vineyard). So we leased the land and planted the vineyard. Because of all of the rocks, it was a much more difficult job than we thought, but the result is worth it...

Originally, we planned to sell all of the grapes to other wineries, but the vineyard site was so amazing, that we decided to make a small amount of MATTHIASSON Chardonnay from that vineyard and the wine is fantastic! We included the first vintage we made, our 2008 MATTHIASSON Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, in our wine club shipment last Spring, and the 2009 MATTHIASSON Sonoma Coast Chardonnay will be included in our Spring shipment this year.

Art+Wine

In the background
"It's A Good Time To Lift The Sun Into The Sky"

Winemaking is delicate balance between art and science. MATTHIASSON wines are definitely made more as an artistic statement....Though they are carefully crafted, there is less measuring and lab testing and more tasting and using intuition.        We are always happy to support friends who are trying to scrape by in the art world and the other night we poured wine for our friend Dusty Kramer at his art opening in Napa.  Here's Dusty's art....they're all for sale.

Dusty next to "Facing Gravity"

"We'll Meet Again"

"We'll Teach Them to Fly"

"Here Comes the Sun"

"It Was You That Opened My Eyes"

"Please Tell Me There Is Time"

Fermentation (this is not only about wine)

When I was pregnant with our older son, Harry, Steve planted a bunch of daikon radish in the garden with the idea to ferment it and turn it into pickled daikon, a Japanese delicacy. Luckily our attempt to ferment a baby turned out better than the daikon radish experiment, but it started us of on a path of fermentation and we have never looked back! 

Making Kimchi

Soon after our first failed attempt at fermenting, we discovered a cookbook called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, where we learned that fermenting foods is not only an age-old way to preserve food, but that the process of fermentation actually makes the food more nutritious.

Different types of fermentation yield different results. With beer and wine, yeast ferments sugars and carbohydrates into alcohol. Another type of fermentation, called lacto-fermentation, uses a bacteria called Lactobacillus to ferment things like milk into yogurt. Malolactic fermentation, which is a type of Lactobacillus fermentation, is part of the secondary fermentation which some wine varieties, such as Chardonnay, go through (that's where Chardonnay can get it's butteriness).

It includes Napa cabbage and watermelon radish

Since we have a big garden, we are always trying to figure out easy, healthy ways to preserve the bounty. So over the years we have learned to successfully ferment the vegetables as a way to preserve them. By trial and error, we have gotten pretty good at making lacto-fermented sauerkraut, pickles, olives, and much more!

This past weekend, the cabbage was turned into sauerkraut and Kimchi (a spicy Korean type of sauerkraut) and the weekend before, we made pickled cauliflower (yum!). If you come by the house, you will almost always find something in the fridge that's been fermented. This might even include several experiments which are sometimes amazing, like green tomatoes, sometimes not, like the unripe nectarines. 

The best recipes for fermented veggies are from a book called Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. In his book, Katz reminds us that many of our favorite foods and drinks are fermented including bread, cheese, wine, beer, chocolate, coffee, tea, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, soy sauce, vinegar, and buttermilk.

the finished product

And be sure to check out his recipe for the Best Sauerkraut Ever!




Jill Klein Matthiasson

Balanced Wines and My Tasting with the Owner of DRC

I’m in a wine tasting group made up of a motley bunch of winemakers.  We meet once a month and this year the eight of us decided to focus our monthly tastings solely on the wines of Burgundy. We all love these wines, but feel tremendously ignorant about them.

By a crazy stroke of good fortune, we were lucky enough to be joined in our tasting group this month by Aubert de Villaine, the propietor of Domaine Romanee Conti. Domaine Romanee Conti (aka DRC) is considered by many to be the best wine in the world (and is definitely the most expensive), and Aubert is the owner and a legend in the business. In his mid-70s, he still is extremely passionate and fascinated with wine. He’s been making wine from the same vineyards for over 50 years, and he told us that he wishes he had a tasting group at home in Burgundy so that he could keep exploring wines other than his own in the way that we do with our tasting group!

One of the nuggets that he shared was the critical difference between “natural opulence and contrived opulence,” This ties into the concept of restraint—a restrained wine can still be opulent, but it is a natural opulence, an opulence that comes with the fruit, not the manufacturing. I’d never heard this verbalized, but as soon as he said it, I felt a huge “ah-ha,” since it confirmed what I’ve felt but hadn’t brought into focus in my mind.

Another nugget that he shared was importance of balance in wine. Aubert stressed that it is the small nuances that transport the wine into another world—the exercise of experiencing wine is about discovering those nuances in the wine—without balance the nuances can’t be detected.

It is really striking to me that the very few times that I’ve had the opportunity to taste with true legends of the industry, I’ve always been struck by their fascination and appreciation of  balanced wines.

The influential sommelier Raj Parr articulated the importance of balanced wines in his interview in the Wall Street Journal this past Saturday, where he uses our MATTHIASSON White Wine as an example and describes it as having..."racy minerality. Dry, long, great balance."

From different parts of the globe and different personal histories people in the wine business converge in their appreciation of wine. After spending the evening tasting with Aubert,, my opinion was reinforced that wine appreciation is not relative, and that our goal of creating singular wines with classical balance is the one and only way for us to make wines that will truly stand the test of time.

Steve