Arnot-Roberts (California)

Duncan Arnot-Meyers & Nathan Lee Roberts Healdsburg, California
Arnot-Roberts is a young winery managed by two childhood friends, Duncan Arnot-Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts, who in some way are typical of the new turn being made in California, where people set up wineries not based on mainstream assumptions regarding wine styles and what sells well and easily, but set up their business with their sight on the wines they like, not wines that could please easily to the general public.
They started making wine together in 2002, they're mostly into a négociant structure, they don't own vineyards but contract and lease parcels from different growers instead. they started with little money, not big financial support, using their own savings, slowly growing and adding more parcels to their portfolio as years passed by. The first couple of years they made their wines under the roof of a larger winery which spared the expenses on financing a facility and kept them focused on the wines. Then they moved their operations in a small town nearby, Forestville, sharing a facility from 2008 to 2010 before ended up moving here in Healdsburg in 2011 where both of them live with their family. They both have young children and with this warehouse on main street in Healdsburg they could work closer from home.

For once, finding the winery was not arduous, it is located in a small business development along Healdsburg Avenue, in other words main street, just a few hundred meters from downtown. We had time to look around and I was surprised at how Healdsburg had changed in only 7 years, the city grew a lot it seems to me, lots more fancy shops and also land-devouring suburban sprawl compared with the time B. and I dropped there in 2006. Lots of people from elsewhere want to live in this part of California and it fuels a construction boom that worries the city planners who notice that Healdsburg is becoming too visitor-oriented and want to keep growth in control (but isn't it too late?).

Near the vertical press Nathan was making wine barrels before he embraced this winemaking carreer, his father Keith Roberts who retired 3 years ago was a Master Cooper and Nathan worked 15 years with him, travelling to France to select the wood and so on. Nathan still makes barrels for the duo's winery and he travels regularly to France to select the wood and have it shipped to California where he builds the casks for their own needs. this is very rare indeed to come across a winery which makes its own barrels, and as the cask parameter counts a lot, with the wood-grain quality, the aging or toasting style of the staves, I guess that Arnot-Roberts has an edge compared to other wineries in that field.

Duncan for his part grew up in the midst of passionated wine people, his father's good friend was Bernard Portet of the Clos du Val winery which was known in the 1970s' and 1980s' as making elegant wines; Duncan grew up near the vineyards and played around the winery. His father even made one cask of wine at home for his own consumption, a couple of years in a row, and he learnt to be familiar with winemaking this way. California wine in the 1970s' was very different from the wine made by most wineries today, they say. Asked if it had to do with a non-irrigated farming, for example at Du val, they say that indeed some of its vineyards in Stags Leap for example were dry farmed, but generally in California at the time the irrigation technique was different than today, it was more overhead irrigation, the growers leaving more canopy, which made irrigation less necessary because of the coverage and shade on the ground. That's what they're trying to get back now, more canopy and shade. Anyway there's so much sun and heat in California, they say, that growers have plenty of time to ripen the fruit, and speeding the process by taking off leaves and rushing the process is certainly not a good idea. Some people are realizing now that you can do a little less with the canopy and get good results on the wine. Nathan near winery tools Duncan studied physiology at school, was prety passionated by cyclism too, thinking almost to become a proffessional cyclist, which didn't materialize, he worked for 5 other wineries over the years, making cabernet wines and then they began with their 1st wine together with Nathan in 2001, the official start being 2002. Wine was somehow around for these two childhood friends and the idea to associate and set up something together came naturally, this was a good combination of talents with their respective background in barrel making and winemaking.

In addition to the vertical press pictured above, they also use a bladder press for the whites (can be guessed on the picture above). They use the basket press for the Syrah, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, Gamay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The biggest batch of wine that they make is a rosé made from Touriga Nacional and a little bit of Tinta Cao, which they make through a direct press after destemming. And for this rosé they use a much larger press that they borrow from a friend. They prefer to get a rosé with a light color, and this with natural means. They source the grapes from the Clear Lake area one hour north from here, Duncan says that the Touriga has a very savory edge, there's some fruit and also herb notes like sage. The first Trousseau in California... Nathan points to the fact that the same vineyard that grows the two other Portuguese varieties grows the Trousseau that they purchase for their Jura red. This Trousseau is actually also known as Bastardo, a Portuguese variety used for Port, and the growers chose it indeed for its Bastardo role, not Trousseau, as they were just trying to make Port-type wines, but nobody being interested in this variety, Duncan and Nathan discovered it under its French ID (Trousseau) and bought these dual-citizenship grapes with no takers. This 1st Trousseau wine in the region was a big surprise and success and Eric Asimov explains well how it takes one grape to reimagine California wine. The variety was by the way imported from France as Trousseau and is named as such in the U.S. This chain of events was kind of strange when you think about it, a grower plants varieties for intended Port-making and given the lack of buyers you end up with the first Jura/Trousseau wine of California...

Of course we tasted this wine during the visit, but Nathan and Duncan were also kind enough to give me a full bottle of it, which we kept in the styrofoam icebox in the back of the car and drank several days later in a quiet campsground in the Sierra foothills. I don't know how people can be wary of clear-looking reds but when I see this color I get excited and salivate just at the thought, and the drinking experience was so nice and lively... Duncan laughs when I tell him that I've read that many vintners in California now look for available trousseau. He says that this wine is so light with a good acidity and freshness that it goes very well with food, you can have it with a wide range of different foods, and also people in California begin to be tired after these 20 years of big, powerful wines and look for lighter wines. This trousseau makes 12,5 ° in alcohol. There's a margin of error allowed on the labels but Nathan says that they're pretty accurate at Arnot-Roberts. This sells for 22 $ tax included. Winery watchdog Everything they do for the winemaking is natural, they don't inoculate the primary fermentation and they let the fermentation start by itself on the wild yeast. Same for malolactic. For the reds there's no filtration. For the Chardonnay depending of the vintage they may have a light filtration prior to bottling to limit the turbidity; for the Ribolla Gialla old vines white they don't do a filtration. Asked if this new warehouse allowed from the start the fermentations on indigenous yeast (with the lack of yeast culture ambiance on the walls), they say no problem, they think actually that the yeast are in good part on the fruit, because the saccharomyces love sugar and there's lots of in already in the vineyard. Nathan adds that usually after a few years there's a population of yeast developing in the facilities, with a strain that is stronger and finishes the wines when the weaker yeast die. What you get because of that is a little more amount of alcohol with the same amount of sugar because of these stronger yeast that can finish the job. they noticed that when they started make wine here, the amount of alcoghol of their wines compared to the sugar was pretty low. They spoke to other people running young wineries and they said the same, the first wines in the new facilities yielded lower-alcohol wines at the beginning, then levels increased. Duncan says that the vineyards they work from are farmed sustainably and organic, not biodynamic (their growers are organic only) and they are more healthy yeast because of this organic management. Duncan in the barrel room __ Arnot-Roberts Old Vines white,2012. This is a white we taste from a barrel, it comes from their oldest vineyard which is dry farmed and which is also a field blend, meaning that there are several varieties complanted together, a majority of sylvaner with some riesling and a little bit of gewürztraminer, plus trousseau gris. Their first vintage of this was 2009. The wine is not turbid at all, it's very clean. Bottle in a month (in august, so). They've fermented this wine in stainless steel and then when the fermentation was over they put the wine in barrels, leaving the heavy lees behind. The casks are almost 10 years old, here is one from Rousseau cooperage. Duncan likes the green side of the sylvaner, something like celery, the vegetables. The wines are mostly finished now.

__ Arnot-Roberts Zinfandel 2012, not for sale, just for friends. From a puncheon. This is made from very old vines of Zinfandel (1915 or almost a century old), planted on their onwn roots (ungrafted) on the sandy/decomposed-granite terroir of Lodi. They make 3 barrels of this. Fermented whole clustered. Bottled this august. The funny story about this cuvée is that they went to France last year and visited Sélosse in Champagne, and Anselme Sélosse asked them if they made Zinfandel, they said no, and he said it's too bad I love Zinfandel and I'd trade a barrel of Zinfandel against a barrel of Champagne, and back in California they had the opportunity to work on this interesting parcel, so now they might send Sélosse a barrel of it and just wait... Zinfandel 2012 from the barrel Duncan says that he likes Zinfandel when it's elegant but it can easily be much more powerful and syrupy than pinot noir and gamay. This one is very restrained in terms of alcohol, 12 ° only. This zinfandel is indeed very light in color. There's some reduction on the nose but then the nose has something very appealing. The color is relatively light. Very savory, balanced wine indeed with what seems to me a nice texture of tannins. Not this feel of concentration that I've felt when I tasted Zinfandel. Duncan says that they pick relatively early compared to what is being done around them, which could explain the difference. It's their philosophy, they like to pick the grapes when they have energy and freshness and not yet into the concentration level. People have been used to expect very ripe and powerful Zinfandels but again, this wine goes much better with food when tyhe grapes are picked earlier. Nathan notes that within a cluster the ripeness is always uneven, with almost green grapes and others that are ripe already, and when people make a sample they assume that the whole cluster is at, say 12 % potential and then it's 14 %, so deciding the time to pick is a tricky excercise. The yields are low here but that's also because the vines are very far apart, it's not a vineyard like the ones of today, the vines aren't trained, each vine is like a small tree on its own. The insulated barrel room __ Arnot-Roberts Gamay Noir, from El Dorado, in the Sierra foothills, 900 meters elevation on pink granite, the soil looks just like Fleurie, a beautiful terroir. This is east of Sacramento towards Lake Tahoe, near the American River Canyon which brings a breeze of cool air (the air from the mountains flows down to the canyon). 2011 was their 1st vintage with the gamay and this is the 2nd. The vines are 15 years old but were recently grafted with gamay, so they'll get more volume in the future. Superb nose. Savory wine with dust touch in the mouth. The tannins are present.
Surprisingly, I learn that there are only two plantings of gamay in the whole of California, and there's only one other winery making gamay wine, it's Edmunds St. John -- Edit : there's also Martian Vineyard in Santa Barbara. Why there's not more gamay can be debated, Nathan says that one of the reasons is money, growers and wineries tend to plant varieties that sell well and gamay yields less returns than pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay. Nathan says that it's a very exciting time to make wine in California because people are beginning to open up to more restrained wines, to more obscure grape varieties, and even if this push is still marginal, it allows them to be involved and make the wines they love, thanks to a few growers who are daring to go in this new direction. What helps them is that in the Sierra foothills people know that they can't compete with the Napa valley or Sonoma on cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir, so they position themselves on varieties that are been snubbed by these mainstream wine regions.
This Gamay was vinified with a partial carbonic for about one week, one part being whole-clustered, keeping the fruit cold, putting CO2 on top of sealed tank, then pigeage. The other part which has begun to ferment is then blended with the maceration and works like a pied de cuve, accelerating the fermentation. They're still learning on carbonic maceration, but they experimented it a few years on the syrah too. In the mouth the gamay are quite forward here, they say that it's the style of this vintage, to be more tannic. Looking for a cask __ Arnot-Roberts Syrah 2012, from a barrel. Comes from the coldest vineyard for syrah in California, this was picked in the 1st week of november with a potential alcohol of 12 % (they never gey more than 12,5 % on this parcel). THe parcel is located in a low place but close to the ocean and the for and wind come easily. It's in the Sonoma coast, actually Petaluma wind gap. Organicly farmed, the grower who planted that is very daring because it's colder than cornas while it could be pretty safe for pinot noir. It makes always very savory syrah. The wine is indeed very refined, and goes down ptetty well, but Duncan says that it doesn't taste well now, the mouth is short. Duncan and Nathan were kind enough to invite us for a picnic in the shade in front of the winery, and we keep tasting a few wines in bottle, beginning with the delicious trousseau 2012.

We switch to bottles now as we sit in ther garden for a nice picnic with charcuterie abnd cheese.
_ Arnot-Roberts Chardonnay 2011 (bottle), Trout Gulch vineyards (Aptos area). Planted in 1980 on AxR#1 rootstock, very good original type of rootstock, not like now where people want to match with the location. Organic, and on sandy soil from the ocean bed. Very light, aerial wine, alive, with a saline touch. 12,2 ° in alcohol. 125 cases. 30 $. 225 cases. 2011 was a cool year, this was picked ocrober 27 at 12,2 potential. Fermented in stainless steel then neutral barrels, no batonnage. Malolactic went 60 % then just stopped because the ph is just 3. For the SO2 they added some before bottling but not before, not when the fruit comes in. If the fruit is clean, even if it comes from far away, they don't add sulfur. They driive themselves the grapes like early in the morning, they don't use refigerated trucks, if it's picked cold it's fine, it's not a problem. This wine is easy drinking, not heavy at all. Thety say it's mostly about their philosophy and taste, that's the type of wines they like to drink also. Picnic in front of the chai __ Arnot-Roberts Ribolla Gialla 2012 (bottle). Vinified in amphorea during 60 days, Georgia style, then pressed and put into a barrel, that's an experiment they've been doing, It's been bottled a month ago and it will be released only this september because it's a bit too fresh now (in july). But they like it. Unfiltered wine. Appealing, exciting nose. In the mouth, lovely wine, with vividness. Only one cask of this. 11,5 ° in alcohol. 40 $. Skin contact like they do in Friuli.
__ Arnot-Roberts Trousseau 2012. Again. Superb color, peppery notes. Nice light tannins, so easy to drink and swallow. Delicious.
__ Arnot-Roberts Ribolla Gialla 2012 (bottle) vinified with direct press and steel fermentation (no amphorea). They make every year this wine and the amphorea was just a first trial when they received the clay container. Bottled a month ago.
The conversation turns to the winemakers who influenced them and whom they admire, and they say that Thierry Allemand in Cornas, they love the wines of Pierre Overnoy and Marcel Lapierre too. Also Puffeney, Stéphane Tissot in Jura and Julien Saunier in the Beaujolais, they say Saunier is fantastic, he's a fairly recent winemaker, his 1st vintage being maybe 2006. I need to taste his wines.
__ Arnot-Roberts Trousseau 2012, again. Lunchsinger vineyard, clear Lake. Super color, peppery nose. Nice light tannins, so easy to swallow. Delightful drink. Spicy. They say this Luchsinger family they buy the grapes from are a typical New World story : they came from Switzerland 100 years ago to settle in Chile to make cheese and then one of the sons moved from Chile to California and began growing trousseau in clearlake in order to make port-style wine.... Very versatile wine, they say, you can drink that with lots of things. They make this wine since 2009.
They hopes more producers will grow this, and Copain winery is already making some now, they took the cuttings from this Luchsinger vineyard to plant a large surface. Nathan says that actually it's a great variety for California because it's very tolerant of heat. Nathan was in the Jura 5 days before this visit. He goes there regularly and in another trip he had Pierre Overnoy and Puffeney taste the trousseau and liked it, aknowledging that Trousseau stands better heat than poulsard. Corks & wax
__ Arnot-Roberts Syrah 2008, Clary ranch, Sonoma Coast (Petaluma Wind Gap). Cool vintage for this region, picked november 18th, 11,5 % alcohol (!). Syrah is indeed rare in this area. Very aromattic, small red fruits, Nathan feels like capers here too. Excellent, such a balance. Very, very, very nice wine, gets swallowed so easily. They've been giving bottles of this wine to Thierry Allemand, Eric Texier, Marcel Juge, Jean Paul Jamet to show them what can taste a syrah from California... This wine was really for them a way to have people understand their philosophy. It can be sometimes polarizing because the reactions around here can be from hate to love about this syrah. They like the purity of the expression of the variety here. The color is more like bright ruby instead of the usual dark syrah found in the region. Lovely wine.
__ Arnot-Roberts Pinot Noir 2012, Santa Cruz Mountains, Peter Martin Ray vineyards. 100 whole-clustered. Just pigeage, like for the trousseau and syrah. Wild yeast, no sulfur during vinification, only after malolactic. And they use very low volumes, like 1,5 gram. And the wine is only released next october so some of it will go away. 7 barrels made of this.
One of the oldest plantings of pinot, replanted in 1979, unirrigated head-trained vines, very unusual way to prune pinot noir but Santa Cruz is sort of an isolated region and that's the way they used to do for years. The vine is attached to a stick, it's very unique to see a pinot noir planted like this. Elevation 1600 feet or 450 meters, it's on the original Mount Eden estate, an old producer in California in the 1970s'. Martin Ray was the first to make a single varietal wine, with label already in the 1940s' and 1950s' with "Pinot Noir" on the label, when the other producers had fancy names like Claret or Burgundy for example. He's famous for that. In the 1970s' they sold most of the surface and only retained a small part of the surface, and they're lucky enough to buy Pinot Noir from them. The farming is old style, there has never been modernization and it's very rustic. They sell the bottle 55 $.
__ Arnot-Roberts Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 Clajeux vineyard, Chalk Hill, Sonoma County Work since 2003 with it. Very classic cabernet qualities for Duncan, herbal qualities. Bottled sept 2012. the owners are Canadian, this is organicly farmed. Very influenced by the Russian River valley weather and the area is quite cool for Cabernet Sauvignon, it has higher natural acidity and freshness. Picking : end of september, alcohol : 13 %. They retain 30 % of Whole clusters in the fermentation, similarly to the other wines, adding the 70 % of destemmed grapes on top in the fermenter, after which the fermentation starts slowly like 3 weeks in total. 22 months in barrels, 30 % new (2 on a total of 5). 13 % is quite low for the region. Aromas on the herbal range, thyme, lavender maybe. Some spices. Intense mouth but balanced. They experienced that their cabernet is aging very well and even needs lots of years before been appreciated fully, you have to wait for the conversion of certain aromas, says Nathan. The Cab sauvignon costs 85 $.
__ Domaine Tempier La Vigne 2007, a luxury, we're having a Domaine Tempier table wine by Kermit Lynch, they got it from Anthony, Kermit's son. Ripe but dry and crisp. 100 % Marsanne In a vineyard We're here in the Compagni-Portis vineyard that you reach from Sonoma following Castle road (it's 1 mile from Sonoma), it's at the base of the western flank of Mount Veeder in the Sonoma valley, and this is the complanted parcel with riesling, gewürztraminer and a few others, dating from 1954. This vineyard makes 6 acres and they take one third of it. Another third goes to the Bedrock winery which is doing a good job at preserving these vineyards which are historical.

This area is the oldest wine region here, this is the original home site of Agoston Harazsthy, the Hungarian who brought Zinfandel to California, and this area has been under vines since the early 1800s'. This parcel was planted before 1954. The soil is volcanic ash with ryolite, a stone with high porosity. The parcel is dry farmed and the vines are quite old for California.

The interesting thing with this vineyard is that they have to balance the picking-time decision, because on this same parcel you have the riesling that ripes quickly and the sylvaner which for some reason is slow, so they have to make a choice. Plus, they take decisions depending of the vintage, so it's always a challenge but they like that. Duncan spots a wild carrot while we walk between the rows. There's been two wires added to support the vines, it's new. Nathan says that what he likes in Sonoma is that it's not monoculture like in many French wine regions for example, it's diverse with lots of woods, olive trees and Coast Live Oak, a type of oak that looks like the Chêne Vert in Provence, with small leaves. It looks pretty much built when you're around Sonoma but on Google Earth you can see that there are vast expanses of wilderness with patches of vineyards here and there. He says that typically a farmer or owner will own 25 acres and plant, say, 5 acres, so the region remains authentic and diverse. Looking at a sylvaner vine Duncan kneels in front of one of these white-variety vines, possibly a sylvaner. He says that this variety keeps green, it never gets golden like chardonnay, viognier, marssanne. Roussanne tends to remain green too, he adds. They don't plan to trim even though some shoots went high above the rest. This was the first week of july and the plant were keeping growing.

They make wines from about 20 vineyards in different regions, Santa Cruz, Sonoma Coast, Clear Lake, Mendocino county and Napa valley, 4 vineyards per region, roughly. They decide themselves when to pick, which is very important, using the picking team of each grower.
In general there's lots of life in the vineyard, with grass, flowers and insects. Duncan says that California is transitioning in that direction and you see more and more organic farming here. Asked about the difficulty to source organic grapes he says that 10 years ago it was difficult but now more people are switching to organic, like for example two of the growers they have been buying the grapes from since the beginning, they changed their farming management in the recent years and now grow organic. On the irrigation issue it's more mitigated, they have several vineyards which are dry farmed, then they have others vineyards with irrigation systems in place but not used, the tubes are like an insurance for the grower for certain years. There's another vineyard where the grower uses irrigation and they're working on the issue to get the farmer get rid of it for their grapes, first because it's possible to do it, through a slow process. They can cut back the use progressively until the vines don't need the water anymore. Plowing and spading becomes more common, sometimes every other row.

San Francisco Chronicle article about Arnot-Roberts
NY Times' Eric Asimov article on Arnot-Roberts

Arnot-Roberts 33 Healdsburg Ave. Unit I Healdsburg CA 95448 phone +1 707 433 2400 www.arnotroberts.com (by appointment)

Morning fog in the redwoods (Northern California)

Comments

[Alex Bernardo]

Hi Bert

Amazing how you've covered a good chunk of Northern California viticultural history and geography in this one single post! Bravo!

Best
Alex