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If you’re headed to the Italian mountains this winter, be sure to book ahead to enjoy some world class refined dining in these Michelin restaurants.About 70 miles north of Los Angeles is Ojai, Calif., a city in a scenic valley setting with a charming downtown area. Ojai Valley Inn & Spa has been one of the city’s top resorts since 1923, and its Olivella restaurant has held Wine Spectator’s Best of Award of Excellence for more than a decade. Olivella takes its connection to the region very seriously, sourcing ingredients from nearby farms, orchards, ranches and waters through its “valley-to-table” program. Chef Andrew Foskey blends inspiration from Italian cuisine with local ingredients. The result is a menu of Italian staples with a distinct Californian twist, like bison carpaccio with pine nut and a frutti di mare with uni and almond crumb.
With its most recent renovation in 2015, the resort created what is now the trophy piece of the restaurant: the Olivella Wine Room. The impressive private-dining space holds about 500 of the restaurant’s 10,000 bottles in temperature-controlled, glass-enclosed units lining the walls. Managed by wine director Melissa Lamb, the 850-label list features standouts from California—with special attention paid to its closest wine region, the Central Coast—as well as France and Italy. While the list is expensive overall, each there are picks for under $100 from all three countries, and there are two pages of half-bottle selections. For guests seeking a deeper understanding of the labels on their list, Olivella regularly hosts winemaker dinners with prominent producers like Dom Pérignon and Opus One.
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From fine dining to comfort bistro, Italian food surprise diners in the city. And has been awarded its first Michelin star in Greater China.The 2018 growing season kept Burgundy’s vintners on their toes, with a quick start following by erratic rains and a slow harvest. However, in the end, yields were good and quality appears to be very good to outstanding.
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.
“Although it has sometimes been tough to keep up with the rhythm, it has been an almost ideal season,” said Alexandre Brault, manager of Maison Alex Gambal. “We have had enough water and sun, and everything has grown perfectly, resulting in good volumes. In terms of crop quality, I don’t believe I have seen a rotten berry in all of the harvest. The grapes were in absolutely perfect condition, which has helped us wait for them to ripen.”
The rhythm and ripeness issues Brault was referring to were the varying amounts of rainfall during the summer, thanks to storms that impacted some areas but not others. It was possible to have 2 inches in Meursault and nothing in Chassagne-Montrachet on a given day. Vintners reported rain in one part, but not in another, of the same parcel.
The year began with a rainy spring that helped the vines to grow quickly once the sun appeared and temperatures rose toward the end of April. The flowering was also fast, starting in late May.
Hail struck Nuits-St.-Georges, specifically in the Prémeaux-Prissey section, in early July, while a second storm, two weeks later, dropped 7 inches of rain, according to Géraldine Godot, technical director of Domaine de l’Arlot. Though the moisture made working in the vineyards difficult, and workers had to make anti-fungal treatments by hand, Godot was pleased with the resulting yield and quality of the grapes. “Despite two violent hailstorms at Prémeaux-Prissey, [yields] are almost similar to 2017,” she said. (In 2017, the crop was one of the largest of the past decade.)
Dimitri Bazas, technical director of Maison Champy reports that July and August were hot, with abundant sunshine. Yet it was the uneven pattern of rainfall that required patience and planning during the harvest. Expecting to start harvest early, on Aug. 25 due to the heat, the team at Gambal discovered that not all their parcels were ripe. In fact, the typical picking pattern according to each climat was quickly abandoned.
“We generally harvest our Bâtard on the same day as our Enseignères; this year we picked them a week apart,” recalled Brault. “Our small plot of Meursault Narvaux is usually one of the last whites; it was one of the first this year. We generally harvest most of the whites first; this year we were harvesting both whites and reds at the same time. We harvested between Aug. 27 and Sept. 20, almost four weeks … never heard of.”
In the end, yields were good—less than the abundant 2017 harvest, but much higher than 2016, when frost struck some areas, as well as the small volume in 2015 and the hail-impacted 2014, 2013 and 2012 vintages.
In Chablis, Gregory Viennois, technical director for Domaine Laroche, reported good ripeness and acidity in the newly fermented whites. He says he was one of the first to start picking, on Aug. 27, in order to preserve that acidity. “We took our time and we finished the 13th of September. No rot, no disease, beautiful conditions”
In Pouilly-Fuissé, the spring rain also lessened impact of the subsequent hot, dry summer, according to Antoine Vincent, proprietor and winemaker at Château Fuissé. The early flowering suggested a mid- to late-August harvest, but “the vines continued slowly mature, so we decided to wait until Sept. 1, to [aim] for the physiological maturity.” Vincent also said there was a good volume of juice in the berries, resulting in healthy yields.
Overall, 2018 was a year that delivered new challenges for growers in Burgundy, but also brought promising results. However, as the Burgundians say: “On verra.” We’ll see.
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