Berger on wine: Williams Selyem and its cult pinots

As much justified acclaim as Napa Valley has received in the last 30 years for the greatness of its cabernet sauvignons, so has Sonoma County gained similar praise for the excellence of its pinot noirs in the last 20 years, albeit with a more limited audience.

Wine lovers who once had undivided loyalty to the great red wines of Bordeaux began, in the 1980s, to adopt upstart Napa as a rightful challenger for age-worthy cabernet-based reds.

That message eventually spread to most of America, including to non-wine lovers, as a result of a widely publicized 1976 Paris tasting indicating a Bordeaux-Napa parity.

No one has yet suggested that California pinot noir is on a par with Burgundy, but when Burt Williams and Ed Selyem established an eponymous winery in the Russian River Valley in the early 1980s, it focused on a unique and decidedly elegant style of pinot noir. And some Burgundy fans quickly took note of the wines’ greatness.

Pinot noir was pioneered out this way before the 1981 founding (as Hacienda del Rio) of Williams and Selyem’s first wines, including work by visionary Davis Bynum.

However, the relative paucity of great, red Burgundy in the United States over the years meant that there were fewer fans of pinot than of cabernet, resulting in Russian River Valley’s “fame” being initially limited to adventuresome wine buyers willing to pay high prices for bottles of red wine from a region and two guys no one had ever heard of.

Today, three decades later, Williams Selyem is perhaps as famous a U.S. wine brand with pinot lovers as is Opus One to cab fanciers.

Yet it may already be off the radar of some newbies to great pinot noir.

That’s due in part to a curious phenomenon related to two old sayings, one attributed to the late Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” In Williams Selyem’s case, people often say, “I don’t know how good the wine is. No one gets any.”

Part of this relates to scarcity. Generally the only way to get a bottle or two of a Williams Selyem wine is direct from the winery. That means being on the winery’s mailing list, which entails first joining a waiting list.

Mailing list buyers have perks beyond the wine, such as being able to visit the gorgeous Westside Road winery south of Healdsburg as well as access to such fascinating wines as a dry chenin blanc or a dramatic zinfandel.

Williams Selyem has ostensibly no retail visibility and limited (and pricey) exposure in restaurants, so we now reach the other old saying: “Out of sight, out of mind.” Even pinot freaks tend to forget this brand when creating top-10 lists of domestic pinot noirs.

Williams Selyem rightly belongs at the top of any such list, even after several changes at the winery, such as the sale of the winery 20 years ago to New York winery owners John and Kathe Dyson.

Soon after that sale, rumblings sprouted that the winery might increase production and quality could dip. But the hiring of brilliant winemaker Bob Cabral scotched that notion; wine quality simply grew.

When Cabral left for greener vineyards, Jeff Mangahas, who had joined the team in 2011 as winemaker, was promoted to director of winemaking. His philosophical, terroir-based approach elevated an already superb brand image. A molecular biologist by training, he had worked for years alongside star Russian River Valley winemaker Dan Goldfield.

As difficult as it is to evaluate any young wines, especially pinot noir, I took the challenge last week and tried several newly released 2016 Williams Selyem pinots with Mangahas, but only on the guarantee that readers of this column could contact the winery (contact@williamsselyem.com) and say they had seen this article.

He said the winery would try to accommodate callers with requests for a few bottles. (All wines are highly allocated.)

The two least expensive Williams Selyem pinots ($39 each) are designated Central Coast and Sonoma County.

The former is laden with bright cranberry and red cherry fruit, and is slightly backward, needing aeration now or three more years in the bottle.

Of the two, I prefer the Sonoma County. It reminds me of the strawberry/raspberry complexity of the Russian River Valley. Pinot fanciers would call this wine a bargain.

At $55, the wine designated Russian River Valley is a clear winner and worth the extra outlay. It’s as great a “blended” pinot as you can find.

It offers a perfume of blackberry, rose petals and the depth of a Cote de Nuits. This is not a shy wine!

By contrast, one of the classiest of Mangahas’ efforts is designated Sonoma Coast ($55), a clear reflection of the Cote de Beaune sensibility.

The complex but ultimately lighter-styled aroma here leans more in the direction of dried and fresh herbs such as tarragon and perhaps fresh oregano, with remarkable cool-climate dark fruits like cherries and fresh plums. The high acidity (pH is a low 3.56) is excellent and the wine a mere pup, needing years to develop.

Splitting the difference between Nuits and Beaune is the exotic Olivet Lane Pinot Noir ($78).

A dramatic aroma of red fruits, fresh plums and black cherries and a classic backwardness that demands decanting for 2 to 4 hours if consumed now. Best bet: wait six more years - at least.

As we investigate pinot in various incarnations, we start with one of the most quality-oriented and note that, considering the high cost of making such wines, I see Williams Selyem prices as fair, especially in relation to all the $75 to $90 pinots we are now seeing.

Update: The 2015 Apricale Rosso di Montalcino ($27) recommended last week may be ordered at chigazolamerchants.com of Santa Rosa.

Wine of the Week: 2014 Helderberg Sauvignon Blanc, Stellenbosch ($18): South Africa can make some startlingly interesting wines, and this slightly mature example is a case in point.

Lime, passion fruit, herbal tea (!), and grapefruit make this wine so exotic it’s easy to see how great it would be with food.

Try it with mussels in butter and garlic and the explosions will begin! Wine.com is carrying this wine.

Sonoma County resident Dan Berger publishes “Vintage Experiences,” a weekly wine newsletter. Write to him at winenut@gmail.com. He is also co-host of California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon on KSRO Radio, 1350 am.