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Watch teenage chef Flynn McGarry giving a cooking demonstration based on beets: watch as he constructs a dish.After the stress of 2017, Sonoma winemakers hoped for a more relaxed harvest this year, and Mother Nature gave it to them. Last year brought scorching temperatures that triggered picking on Labor Day weekend. And that was before the wine-country wildfires began. But 2018 brought moderate temperatures and a long growing season, leading to relaxed picking and promising wines.
Welcome to Wine Spectator’s 2018 Wine Harvest Report, our coverage of Northern Hemisphere wine regions. (Our Southern Hemisphere 2018 harvest reports were published earlier this year.) While we won’t know how good a vintage is until we taste the finished wines, these reports offer firsthand accounts from top winemakers in leading regions.
Despite a warm February, the 2018 growing season started off cooler than the past few vintages. Stonestreet winemaker Lisa Valtenbergs reported a two-week cold snap in Alexander Valley, with frost fans blowing for two weeks straight. “We even witnessed some snow in our higher elevation vineyards,” she said.
A cool spring meant bloom lasted longer than usual, but fruit set was consistent. “There were a couple small weather events during set, but most Russian River and Sonoma Coast sites were not affected, and fruit set was very good in almost every vineyard site,” said winemaker Jeff Stewart of Hartford wines.
Summer temperatures were moderate with fewer heat spikes than in recent years. Veraison started later as well. “A cooling [period] in late July put the brakes on and meant that we avoided the late summer heat spikes that drove an early and compressed harvest in the two previous vintages,” said La Crema winemaker Craig McAllister.
As a result, harvest started two to three weeks later than in recent years, but some winemakers said it was historically more typical. “Harvest stared ‘later’ but really back to ‘normal’ compared to the previous four years,” said Valtenbergs. “It was the first Labor Day holiday our team enjoyed in the past six years or so.”
“The 2018 vintage required patience from growers and vintners alike, given that the development and flavor maturation took extra time,” said Nicole Hitchcock of J Vineyards & Winery. “Wet weather in early October was followed by dry spells and moderate heat, rewarding those patient enough to sit tight.”
For Paul Hobbs, 2018 was “the most benign growing season in over 40 years,” he said. It started with near-perfect fruit set in the spring, which led to large grape clusters that translated into a large potential crop, leading him to reduce the fruit ripening on the vine to enhance quality.
“I was forced to convert several per-ton to per-acre contracts mid-growing season to coerce growers to perform the intensive thinning work needed—up to four full thinning passes,” said Hobbs, adding that two passes is typical. “This long growing season, largely a function of fine weather—a full two weeks longer than average—is always a highly desirable thing. We are already seeing the benefits in the cellar with fully mature, sweet tannins, outstanding color and brightness, depth of fruit, naturally beautifully balanced wines.” He called 2018 an exceptional vintage.
Vintner David Ramey, based in Healdsburg, concurred with Hobbs’ characterization of the harvest as one of the smoothest on record. “Honestly, [it was] the easiest harvest ever,” he said. “Never had to force a picking decision to stay ahead of rain or a hot spell—just beautiful, from start to finish.”
“[2018] has a lot of potential for greatness,” said Jason Kesner, the winemaker at Kistler Vineyards in Sebastopol. “I was very pleased with all of the fruit and the resultant juices. In general, the weather being as mild as it was allowed for a relatively relaxed pace of things and excellent development of flavors and retention of great natural acidity across the wines. In most instances, we were waiting almost solely on pH [a marker of acidity] to shift to make our picking call. That applies to both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.”
Yields varied, depending on site, variety and clone, but overall appeared to be average or slightly higher. “Across the board, Pinot Noir yields tended to be up, with crops reminiscent in size of 2012 and 2013,” said McAllister. He reported that Chardonnay yields were also higher, but varied more based on site and clones.
Winemakers report that the long growing season means that wines are showing structure and concentration without being overripe. “The Chardonnays really stand out to me,” said Valtenbergs. “Harvesting with cool mornings compared to the heat waves of 2017 was a pleasure and far less stressful. The quality of the clusters, the juice and the natural acidity are going to produce some stunning wines.”
“At this point the 2018s seem to have good backbone, acidity and balance,” said Stewart. “Chardonnay in the Russian River has good fruit intensity, with Chardonnay on the Sonoma Coast having more acid drive and finesse. Pinot and Zinfandel are both fruit-driven, but with very good sense of place and complexity showing from all our vineyard sites.”
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History, nutritional values and recipes: a focus on pepper, one of the most widely consumed spice in the world.In 1979, Michael McCarty was getting ready to open his inaugural restaurant, Michael’s, in Santa Monica, Calif. It would become a beacon of the California cuisine movement. (If McCarty flies under the radar as a founder of the genre, his pioneering influence is nonetheless unmistakable; Wolfgang Puck notably opened Spago three years later, in 1982.)
1979 was a busy year for Michael: He and his girlfriend, artist Kim Lieberman, were also renovating their Douglas Rucker–designed post-and-beam house in Malibu. With the help of Rucker himself, they knocked down the walls between the dining room, living room and kitchen to create one big free-flowing space. Today, open floor plans, much like farm-to-table cuisine, enjoy great cachet. But not so in 1979. “I just wanted it open,” Michael, 65, shrugs. “Drove me crazy. It was so beautiful.”
Five years on, Kim and Michael were married on their tennis court, cantilevered over the ocean. In 1985, they added a vineyard. “We were having a wild party at my house, and I had just received the sixth notice from the L.A. County Fire Department saying, ‘You must clear the obnoxious weeds that are surrounding your property,’ because we had fire problems,” Michael says. “So I said to Dick [Graff, of Chalone Vineyard], I said, ‘This is killing me, this is costing me thousands of dollars.’ He said, ‘Why don’t we plant a vineyard?’ I said, ‘Done! We’re doing it!’ ”
They cleared an acre and planted cuttings of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon from Mount Eden Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc from Joseph Phelps in Napa. When the McCartys’ daughter, Clancy, was born in 1986, the neighbors strung the vineyard posts with pink streamers. Son Chas followed in 1989, the year of the vineyard’s first vintage.
But in 1993, disaster struck. The Old Topanga Fire leveled much of the area, including the McCartys’ home. Michael had just landed in New York to visit his satellite Manhattan restaurant when he got the call. “It was the winds that changed; that’s what always happens,” he says. “We got nailed.” Vines often act as a firebreak because of their water content, but located downwind from the house, they couldn’t save it.
The McCartys called on Rucker again, this time to rebuild the house in its former image, only larger, stretching the noted Malibu architect’s typical proportions. “He made beautiful little Craftsman-style houses, more what you would think about as a California bungalow,” Michael explains. The home shot up from 3,000 square feet to 5,000, mostly thanks to the additions of a big deck and an upstairs master bedroom suite.
But the footprint of the rest of the house expanded too. Pitched over the living space, Rucker’s tongue-and-groove Douglas fir ceilings were done using wider-than-usual beams—6 inches across rather than 4—to better suit the room’s amplified, 1,500-square-foot scale.
Though it wasn’t destroyed, “The vineyard was shocked,” Michael says. It didn’t produce fruit for three years. In 1999, the team, led by winemaker Bruno D’Alfonso, decided it just wasn’t working—”so we took the whole goddamn thing out,” Michael says. They had seen the most consistent success with Pinot Noir, so they added a second acre and replanted the land to three Dijon clones of the grape and updated the trellising. The wine was labeled The Malibu Vineyard. Since its first vintage in 2005, it has produced 100 to 200 cases a year, sold at Michael’s Wine Spectator Award of Excellence-winning flagship restaurant in L.A. and his Best of Award of Excellence winner in New York, as well as at a few Malibu and Santa Monica restaurants and shops.
At home, Michael often goes for Minuty rosé or a big Barolo; Kim favors Sancerre. They keep four or five cases at home—”and it gets consumed rapidly!” Michael says. “We always entertain on Sundays. We always cook.” The patio can hold up to 80 people, as it does for their annual day-after-Thanksgiving get-together featuring Michael’s turkey BLTs. Beyond the main house, two guest houses, one with a pool, provide ample hangout space. “We’re not precious,” Kim, 62, says. “People come by with thousands of dogs, and our kids still come and destroy our pool house many times a year with all their friends.”
After four decades—including multiple renovations, a full-scale rebuilding, a home wedding, the growing-up of two kids, and the planting and replanting of an estate vineyard—Kim and Michael’s place has endured. “Building something takes a long time,” Kim reflects. “But we got to build the house we wanted.”
A version of this story appeared in the Dec. 31, 2018, issue of Wine Spectator, which went to press in early November. Shortly thereafter, the Woolsey fire ravaged parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including Malibu, displacing tens of thousands of residents and scorching local vineyards. Michael and Kim McCarty gratefully report that the fire did not directly affect their home or vineyard. However, relief efforts are ongoing. The McCartys encourage you to help by donating to the Malibu Foundation.
Photos by Joe Schmelzer; click any image to enlarge
Albert Frère, co-owner of Bordeaux’s famed Château Cheval-Blanc in St.-Emilion, died Dec. 3 at age 92. The Belgian billionaire was a co-investor with Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, when they acquired the legendary estate in 1998.
“I am deeply saddened by the death of my friend,” said Arnault, in a statement. “Albert was an extraordinary man and a truly exceptional entrepreneur. Throughout our 35 years of faithful friendship we forged extremely close ties, both personal and professional.”
With diverse investments that stretched from steel to fashion to oil, the Belgian business titan was also famously passionate about wine. He enjoyed his times at Cheval-Blanc, where he developed a strong camaraderie with the team running the estate.
“He was both a businessman and a man of the Earth, a real vigneron. He often came to see us and he was a great ambassador for our wines,” Pierre Lurton, director of Château Cheval-Blanc and Château d’Yquem, told Wine Spectator. “He was a real visionary.”
Frère was the wealthiest man in Belgium, with a fortune estimated at $5.8 billion. King Albert II of Belgium made him a baron in 1994. Frère started his rise to riches during World War II, at age 17, when he left school to run the family’s modest nail business.
From the start, he was a savvy entrepreneur, rebuilding the company in the years after the war. By the 1950s, he was investing in steel factories. Two decades later, he dominated Belgium’s steel industry. Eventually, after a lucrative merger, he sold his steel business and created a holding company, Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, that invested in oil, insurance, telecommunications, finance and other sectors. He helped negotiate some of France’s largest mergers and acquisitions.
In addition to Cheval-Blanc, Arnault and Frère bought Château Quinault l’Enclos, also in St.-Emilion, in 2008. “Beyond his innate business sense, I will always remember Albert’s passionate love of life, his great skill in unifying people and his tremendous commitment to everything he undertook to accomplish,” said Arnault.
Frère is survived by his wife, Christine, two of his three children and several grandchildren.
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