I used to buy Burgundian oak barrels from a variety of different coopers, made from different forests at different toast levels. Those sorts of combinations can multiply rapidly. Through the years, I’ve undergone a honing-in process in barrel selection. I’ve found that, depending on the individual wine, usually a particular barrel (one forest, one drying regime and one toast level) from each cooper works best.

I simply ask myself, which barrel enhances the wine best? If you try to use several different barrels to build a wine – this one enhances the entry, this one builds up the middle palate, that one fills in the finish – it can be too much, producing a wine that is technically correct but lacks personality.

From each cooper, whether the forest is Allier or Tronçais, or it’s two- or three-year air-dried oak, there is a particular barrel that either supports the fruit personality of the wine or lends some personality of its own to move the fruit subtly in a good direction. It’s not overly aggressive, but it just works. Then I can mix two different barrels to compound the results.

For example, from François Frères, I tend toward Allier wood to build the mid-palate. From Billon, I prefer a three-year air-dried Vosges medium toast barrel that subtly enhances minerality while showing sweet fruit. And those two barrels do work very well together.

For Chardonnay, I go very subtle because any white wine shows the wood so much more. I like the quality of oak, not toast, in Chardonnay. So I choose lighter toast coopers and tight-grained wood that slows aging and leaves the wine tight and compact.

Right now we’re working on blending the 2008 vintage wines. We’re starting to look at some new programs like a heritage selection blend. It’s preliminary, but right now this blend seems to be dominated by Old Martini and Calera selections. We’re just at the stage of picking the best barrels, and it’s really fun.

We’re even considering a small amount of stand-alone Martini in a combination of Billon and Sirugue cooperage. This would be a high acid, intense, red fruit dominant Pinot Noir.

Crop-wise, 2008 was a short vintage, but as I’ve mentioned previously, everything in barrel is very solid. There are no dogs in this vintage. The crop yields were almost a joke, in some cases 60% less than what we would have thought they should be. But the resulting excellent fruit intensity, nice structure and amazing color make it a very good vintage.

I will taste all of the components at least twice, and I’ll taste them blind; that is, I will know that I’m tasting various lots of our 2007 Pinot Noir, for example, but I won’t know which lot is which. It’s just a way of eliminating any prejudices and expectations, conscious or not, I may have about a given lot of wine. During this period, I’ll do the most tasting that I do all year.

I’m walking into a system with which I’m already familiar, having made the wines over the previous few months. So I go into the cellar with some general ideas and I give myself plenty of time. I put on music and I work with all my components, tasting and taking notes, putting together little blends. I may take a thief and splash a little bit of one lot into another to test my ideas. Slowly, a plan begins to take form.

Eventually, I’ll look at a main component and then experiment with a spectrum of other wines blended in increments, a range of percentages. As I identify what I like, I begin to tighten up, going from broader to narrower percentages – say from roughly 2/3 and 1/3 down to 72% and 28%. Finally, I will select the three or four best case but different scenarios.

Then it’s time to sit down with Anne and test my ideas. By the time we are tasting together, things are pretty tight and we start tweaking. Again, we’ll taste blind, and I may even put just the raw component in again and see how it fares.
We keep at it until we agree consistently.

We go through this whole process so that we have systematically covered all the bases and can put the final blend in the bottle with confidence.

This summer we’re blending the 2007 vintage, the seventh Donum vintage, and for the first time ever we’re planning to produce that other major Burgundian varietal, a Chardonnay.  We’re only going to make about a hundred cases, but we want ultimate Chardonnay. So we have to consider the same kinds of stylistic questions as we do with Pinot Noir.

A few days ago we tasted six Chardonnay lots – the finalists. Two of the wines were old Wente selections from separate blocks. Two more wines were blends of those old Wente selections. And we had one Weimer selection and one Dijon clone.  All of the wines were fermented and aged in one-year-old French oak barrels, and all of them went through partial malolactic fermentation (in which the more tart malic acid, found in apples, is converted to the softer lactic acid, found in milk). Partial malolactic adds some richness and texture to the wine, but also retains some of the wonderful crisp acidity found in Carneros Chardonnay.

I’m happy to report that we liked all of the wines. At first I asked my colleagues to rate the wines from 1, their favorite, through 6, their least favorite. But they found that difficult, so I asked them just to pick their personal favorite. The aromas ranged from pineapple, Gravenstein apple, pear and honeysuckle to lemon oil, tropical fruit, citrus and floral characteristics.

In general, oak vanillin and toast played a quiet supporting role and did not take center stage, in keeping with our philosophy. As with Pinot Noir, we look for wonderful varietal fruit, fully ripe but not over-ripe, and a delicate balance between power and elegance.

As we discussed the wines, it became clear that we all wanted richness and ripeness, but in a refreshing wine. And we all agreed on the sixth wine. It was one of the old Wente selection wines, with a classic nose full of ripe apple, fresh pear and lemon blossom aromas, rich yet vibrant on the palate. Anne commented on its minerality and viscosity, noting how beautifully it finished with a clean, pure expression of fruit in the aftertaste.

Initially, our selection may not be quite as showy as some of the other wines, but we reveled in its subtleties. I was pleased that we all agreed and, once again, I’ll be very happy to be bottling a wine that I really want to drink. Now it’s back to Pinot Noir!