Bordeaux Brilliance

Written by Mike Stepanovich

American wine consumers have a long-held fascination with Bordeaux. The ancient French city on the Atlantic coast gives its name to a region that provides some of the most sought-after wines in the world.

Among French wines, only Bordeaux wines are classified, a monumental effort accomplished in 1855, and maintained to this day. Bordeaux, of course, is subdivided into various sub-appellations: Margaux, Pauillac, St. Estephe, Medoc, St. Emilion, and Pomerol among them. Only five Bordeaux wines are classified “First Growth,” the top tier, and these wines command huge prices, often running into the thousands of dollars...per bottle.

The wines from the different sub-appellations are distinctive, reflective of their particular terroir, and of the grapes that grow best in each. For example, wines from Pomerol have merlot as their principal grape; St. Emilion is predominantly cabernet franc; while Pauillac is cabernet sauvignon. Interestingly, neither Pomerol nor St. Emilion were included in the 1855 classification, though each has wineries considered among the best in the world—Chateau Cheval Blanc in St. Emilion, and Chateau Petrus, the world’s most expensive wine, in Pomerol.

So I was delighted to find that Jerry Lohr, owner and founder of J. Lohr Winery, has manifested his own fascination with Bordeaux wines by creating a small line called the J. Lohr Cuvee Series, that reflects a California image of three great Bordeaux sub-appellations.

J. Lohr’s tasting room in Paso Robles (it’s north of Highway 46 on Airport Road) is always a mandatory stop for me on my visits to my hometown for a couple reasons: my longtime friend Diane Moreno works there, and I always find wines available only in the tasting room.

Earlier this year, I dropped by to see if any Tower Road, J. Lohr’s petite sirah, was available (the winery doesn’t make it every year, and when it does, it usually wins gold medals at competitions where I judge, like the last two vintages have). Diane had some, but then said, “There’s something else I’d like you to try.” She pulled out a beautiful bottle, poured me a taste, and said, “The Pom is drinking really well right now.” She smiled as I tipped my glass up for a sip.

She was right; it was a great-tasting wine, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard her, so asked, “The Pom?”

She showed me the bottle. “It’s styled after wines from Pomerol. We also have the St. E and the Pau,” which are modeled after St. Emilion and Pauillac.

I tried all three and was intrigued. Here were three distinctive wines, reminiscent of the regions for which they were named, but with a California personality. The three are similar in that they’re deep, rich, and imminently likable. They’re different in that they reflect the best qualities of their principal grape.

I immediately arranged to return and met J. Lohr’s red winemaker, Steve Peck. An easy-going native of Santa Paula, in Ventura County, Peck left there to attend community college in Santa Cruz before getting his enology degree at the University of California, Davis. His previous stops prepared him well for his current position: stints at Joseph Phelps, Five Rivers, and Jekel wineries, before joining J. Lohr in 2007 as red-wine maker.

“The Cuvee Series is a tip of the hat to the French,” Peck said. “The Lohrs are really into French wines. I wasn’t around when Jerry Lohr came up with the idea.

“Ageability is very much in our minds for these wines. With the Cuvee Series, we want tighter tannin structure.”

Peck said the Cuvee Series originated in 1999, but it apparently made its first appearance in J. Lohr’s tasting room about 2006. Peck said he only makes 250 to 500 cases a year. The vintage currently available is the 2006, and is priced at $50 a bottle.

The 2000 vintages of each Cuvee Series wine had much higher percentages of their principal grape than the current blends.

• The 2000 Pau is 86 percent cabernet sauvignon and 14 percent petit verdot; the 2004 is 95.1 percent cabernet sauvignon, 4.4 percent petite verdot, and 0.5 percent merlot; the 2006 is 81 percent cabernet sauvignon, 12 percent merlot, 5 percent petit verdot, and 1 percent each malbec and cabernet franc.

• The 2000 Pom is 88.5 percent merlot and 11.5 percent cabernet franc; the 2004 is 65.3 percent merlot, 24.9 percent cabernet sauvignon, 6.2 percent cabernet franc, 2.3 percent petit verdot and 1.1 percent malbec; the 2006 is 62 percent merlot, 31 percent cabernet sauvignon, 3 percent each cabernet franc and petit verdot, and 1 percent malbec.

• The 2000 St. E is 98.7 percent cabernet franc and 1.3 percent merlot; the 2004 is 45 percent cabernet franc, 44 percent petit verdot, 5.6 percent cabernet sauvignon, and 5.4 percent merlot; the 2006 is 58 percent cabernet franc, 36 percent cabernet sauvignon, 4 percent merlot, and 2 percent petit verdot.

The more balanced varietal percentages more accurately reflect the French models, as the French strive for year-to-year consistency. As one can see from the blends, while the focus for each wine is the principal grape of its region (cabernet sauvignon for Pauillac, merlot for Pomeroln, and cabernet franc for St. Emilion) the percentage of the supporting grapes varies widely from year to year.

Peck said the source of the grapes is also important. For the St. E, “the franc is from two different ranches; half [of the cabernet franc] is from an old planting a half-mile from the tasting room—I don’t know what clone it is—and the other half is from seven miles south near the Templeton Gap. Two clones of cabernet franc are there; it’s cooler there, and the grapes get more hang-time.”

The Pau “is a bit bigger and plumier,” he said, while “the Pom is different, it’s more like Pomerol, softer and more elegant.” The fruit from the home ranch is darker, more masculine, he said, while fruit from the Creston area, southeast of Paso Robles, is more perfumy. By using fruit from diverse sources, Peck is able to create more complex wines.

In addition to broadening the blends, Peck made one other important change. He noticed shortly after he arrived that the staves in the barrels used for the Pau were thinner; as a consequence the “micro oxygenation was more rapid. I noticed they (the barrels with the Pau blend) were sort of done by 15 months.”

He reduced the percentage of new oak barrels and used a standard stave thickness, so that all three wines stayed in barrel 20 to 22 months before bottling. Because the micro-oxygenation was slowed, the maturation took longer, so the resulting wines were better and more complex.

How do these three wines compare with their French models? “They hang well with them,” Peck said. “Our alcohol levels are a bit higher than the French, but the upper tier French wines are north of 14 [percent alcohol] now. Ours are at about 14.9 percent.”

The Cuvee Series wines are all Paso Robles fruit, he said. “These wines tend to be viewed as a value; in Napa Valley, sales froze, while ours picked up.

“We make whatever the vineyard provides. We’re not driven by the sales staff. We’re making these wines to please ourselves and acknowledge the sub-appellations of Bordeaux.”

Article appeared in our 27-3 Issue - August 2010