Bold red blend back on top at 2022 North Coast Wine Challenge
A classic Bordeaux red blend wine made from cabernet, malbec, petit verdot and merlot took home the top prize last week during the 10th annual North Coast Wine Challenge at Santa Rosa’s Sonoma County Fairgrounds.
During the contest hosted by The Press Democrat, the Roth Estate Heritage Red Wine, part of Foley Family Wines, went up against a Napa Valley cabernet for the Best of Show Red award. It then rose to the very top as the judges’ choice for the Best of the Best wine during the final judging on April 6. Along with Best of Show Red, it also was named Best of Sonoma County.
“It was a really great, seamless wine,” said Chief Judge Daryl Groom, the winemaker who organizes the contest each year. Groom was recognized this year with a Chief Judge and Visionary award presented by Press Democrat publisher Steve Falk.
The judges gave the wine 99 points and praised it as “a brilliant blend ... deep, dense and pleasurable.”
A Bordeaux red blend hasn’t won the top award since the contest’s inaugural year in 2013, when Beaulieu Vineyards’ 2009 Tapestry Reserve, Napa Valley took home the Best of the Best. Since then, the top prize has gone to three pinot noirs, two chardonnays, one zinfandel, one rosé of pinot noir and one sparkling wine.
One of the 27 judges at this year’s contest, Jesse Katz of Aperture Cellars, said he created the Heritage Red wine back in 2012 when he was still working at Roth Estate. The winery has built its reputation on Bordeaux varietals.
“The idea was to show what Sonoma County could do with some of the great blenders,” Katz said. “This wine shows some of the richness and decadence you can get from Sonoma County.”
Winemaker Michael Beaulac, who started out at Murphy-Goode Winery in Geyserville and later worked at well-known Napa wineries such as Markham and Pine Ridge vineyards, returned to Sonoma County in January 2021 when he joined Roth Estate as its senior winemaker. Roth Estate is directly across the street from Chalk Hill Estate, where Beaulac is also senior winemaker.
One of Beaulac’s first tasks at Roth was to blend the 2019 Heritage Red, made from 36% cabernet grapes grown in the Alexander Valley and 36% malbec grown in the estate vineyards off Chalk Hill Road.
“The wines from Roth are often softer, and a lot of that has to do with the malbec,” Beaulac said. “I love malbec, especially as a blender with cabernet. Malbec tends to have a lot of color and not as much tannin.”
Like many winemakers, Beaulac believes in being proactive in the vineyard, babying the fruit so it can find balance and the varietals can express their true character. Once the juice is in the winery, he tries to touch it as little as possible.
“(The year) 2019 was a relatively cool year, so that really helped with getting things ripe,” Beaulac said. “With the cooler weather they get more flavor, and we were able to pick at the ideal time.”
Trend toward cooler regions
Of the 29 wines that made the final sweepstakes round this year, Groom noticed a shift in the white wines away from the warmer climate of Sonoma County toward the cooler temperatures of the Anderson Valley in Mendocino County.
“That could be climate change,” Groom said. “Or it could be that people are leaning toward more elegant, lighter styles, with less alcohol.”
The same was true of reds in the sweepstakes round, Groom added. Many were grown in cooler climates, apart from the pinot noirs that have always flourished in the foggy Russian River and windswept Carneros appellations.
Beaulac predicted that many of the red Bordeaux varietals are going to start showing well when planted in cooler climates.
“It’s pretty amazing when you first come onto Chalk Hill Road, and then you go up a grade and you start to lose some of the fog,” he said. “I think this is a great, great spot for Bordeaux.”
During blending, he said, he strives to make the same style of wine every year, but also the very best wine. The varietals and percentages vary year to year, depending on the quality of each varietal.
“My red wine style is to blend early, to let it come together and marry in the barrel, so it’s aging as the finished blended wine for about a year before it’s bottled,” he said. “And then we hold it in bottle for another six to eight months.”
The winemaker, who enjoys cooking at home, compares blending wine to braising a stew: “You put it together, hold it and it tastes better.”
With the Roth Estate 2021 Heritage Red, Beaulac said he likes to serve monkfish topped with a red miso sauce.
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