A Trio of Rhône Reds

Monday, April 20th

In a way the 2017 Spanish Springs Grenache and the 2018 Edna Valley Syrah bookend the 2017 Spanish Springs Syrah/Grenache blend. You have the blend nestled between the two single varietal bottlings if you will. If you have the occasion to open all three bottles together you can investigate what each varietal is like on its own as well as how they interact. Many of you will be opening these wines individually so each will be addressed in and of itself. If I were to taste all three it would be in the following order.

2017 Spanish Springs Grenache – This vineyard located hard up against the final hills that separate the Edna Valley from the ocean has sandy soils and very cool and foggy coastal weather. This always results in a late harvest, and flavors which are vibrant and exciting. Grenache tends towards a floral/herbal aroma that is lovely when young. There are hints of orange zest, black pepper, and smoke that lead into flavors of fresh blue fruit and confectionary notes. This wine will be best with food during its youth.

2017 Spanish Springs Syrah/Grenache – In its native habitat, the Rhone Valley, Syrah and Grenache are rarely bottled as single varietals. They’re almost always blended with each other and an assortment of other reds and a few whites. The Syrah adds seriousness to the more exuberant Grenache, or you could think of the Grenache as giving the Syrah a sense of humor. Either way they make a cute couple. The aroma is dominated by dried herbs and leaves in a pleasantly autumnal way. The flavors are surprisingly bright with fresh red and black berry tones layered over some floral. It’s a perfect medium weight which will improve with 3-5 additional years of bottle age should you so choose.

2018 Edna Valley Syrah – For the past few years we have made this bottling from fruit grown on the Wolff Vineyard on the far west side of Edna Valley. This vintage we livened it up by adding a single barrel of Spanish Springs Syrah to the twelve-barrel blend. The ’18 growing season was exceptionally cold and late, but because of the dry farmed nature of the vines the wine has both ripeness and freshness – an unusual and charming combination of traits. Despite its youth this wine is ready to drink due to its broad and soft palate. It has a lovely combination of fruit, spice, and savory aspects. It may very well age gracefully as well, but it’s so tasty now I doubt any will survive into middle age.

Spring Cellar Notes

Wednesday, April 24th

While much attention is devoted to harvest as it must be, there are parts of winemaking largely hidden from view that are at least as important, and in some years equally crucial. The late winter and early spring are when blends are put together. For barrel aged wines such as Pinot Noir this entails tasting and grading every single barrel in the cellar before you can even begin to think about putting the first trial blends together. Once blends are proposed and tasted another round of even more detailed barrel tasting begins especially in regards to the top reserve wines where even a single barrel can make a big difference in the outcome of a ten barrel blend. The reality of this process involves scrambling up and down the barrel stacks at nine in the morning with a glass in one hand and a piece of chalk in your pocket for marking the head of the barrel.

At the same time the vines are beginning to set the pace of the upcoming harvest. This winter’s relentless rains and cold has made for a late start to the growing year. Whether this will be a good or bad thing will remain a mystery until the harvest is complete. We are just now seeing the young shoots emerging – at least three weeks later than average. Each growing season is a bit like having a child – you hope for the best, but you really have no idea of how they will turn out. Your job is to do the best you can.

Encompassing the Charm of Alsace

Wednesday, March 7th

A Brief History of Alsace Wines

Part of what makes Claiborne and Churchill so unique and special is our production of Alsatian white wines.  These wines  are virtually unheard of among novice wine enthusiasts.  Alsatian wines originate from the region of Alsace in France, producing delicious, high quality wines, dryer in contrast to their neighbors in Germany.  The German-influenced wines are often sweeter, but produced from the same grape varietals.

Wines such as Rieslings and Gewürztraminers are today generally misconceived as being “too sweet” in the United States.  This is mostly due to a sweeter style with higher residual sugar evident in these wines in the 90’s.  Many producers who work organically didn’t want to pick grapes before they reached total ripeness and didn’t want to add store-bought yeast to complete fermentation that indigenous yeast couldn’t.  This resulted in the wines retaining more sugar post fermentation.  Due to the popularity with consumers and some wine critics preferring the sweeter wines and rewarding them with high scores, winemakers were discouraged from changing their methods until more recently.

Vintners began to adjust their viticultural methods to define ripeness with lower sugar content in the grapes.  Winemakers have worked to achieve beautiful acidity and vibrancy rather than letting the sugars take over and being stuck with a syrupy product.

Embracing Tradition

Our take on Alsatian wines pays homage to how they were traditionally produced and enjoyed. Because of our proximity to the ocean, cool coastal breezes and morning fog create a growing environment similar to that of the Alsace region, yielding in Rieslings and Gewürztraminers with evident floral, spicy, and an array of fruit notes balanced with excellent acidity.  We celebrate a harmonious balance of fruit and oak, structure and texture.

For more information, click here for a fabulous article that goes more into depth on the history of the Alsace region wines.

Wine with a Cause

Wednesday, June 21st

Giving back to the San Luis Obispo Community

We have been very busy these past few months here at Claiborne and Churchill! With summer officially rolling in these next two days, here is a recap highlighting a few of our awesome partnerships in the community over these past few months.

Back in March, we teamed up with Phyllis Musical Revue  for the Diamonds and Pearls fashion show and donated wine benefiting the Woman’s Shelter.

April called for sloppy kisses and wagging tails for our “Wine for Paws Weekend” benefiting the Woods Humane Society.

The Woods Humane Society has tons of events throughout the year with different fundraisers and adoption opportunities. They even feature cat yoga!  Check out their event calendar for more details and dates.

At the beginning of June, we poured and donated wine for the Annual Afternoon of Epicurean Delights event with local social service organization, CAPSLO.  This year was the 30th anniversary of hosting this event at Pismo Beach!

In mid June, our very own Elizabeth Thompson teamed up with  local restaurant Luna Red and poured at The Big Event hosted by the Big Brothers and Big Sisters nonprofit of San Luis Obispo County.

Coming up on July 26th 2017, we will be partnering with Big Sky Café and pouring wine at the Benefit Dinner in the Plaza for the Festival Mozaic, a classical music festival held in downtown San Luis Obispo. The festival will begin July 19th through the 26th featuring an assortment of classical musicians, delicious food, and a wide variety of wines. The complete calendar can be found here.

We love being able to help out and extend our appreciation in the community. Our family here at Claiborne and Churchill has loved donating, pouring, and getting to meet the individuals who dedicate their time and energy into each of these different non profits and shelters.  We are so excited to keep exploring more opportunities in San Luis  Obispo and beyond!

For more information about current events and updates please visit our Facebook page and follow our Instagram.

Pinterest & Wine: The Perfect Match

Tuesday, August 30th

DIY (do it yourself) is all the rage right now! There are more and more television shows about crafting and videos are all over Facebook. The hub for all of these design projects is, of course, Pinterest. Started in early 2010, this social media platform has since grown to over 110 million monthly users across the globe, according to LinkedIn. The pins, which often link to websites, are about topics from fashion, to recipes, to gardening and home decor with everything in between. One of the biggest uses for Pinterest is DIY projects. From big to small and quick to time consuming, they have it all!

Claiborne & Churchill recently created our own Pinterest page! It is growing with recipe ideas, pairing options, wine gifts, and, of course, DIYs! We encourage you to follow us and stay updated with all the fun ideas Pinterest has to offer!

Pinterest & Wine: Cork Crafts

Make your own wine cork key chain!  Use the cork from your last bottle of Claiborne and Churchill red. Twist a screw eye into the bottom of the cork and you’re done! A bonus with this craft is it floats!

Put those corks to good use! Keep your cords straight with this quick tutorial. All you need is a cork and bungee cord!

Corks are the perfect holder for a succulent! Hollow out the end of a cork then plant a clipping inside it. Then glue a magnet to the side and you’re ready!

Pinterest & Wine: Bottles

Put one of your empty bottles to work! With a little wood working knowledge you can make this bird feeder for your backyard and garden.

Make some cute wall decor! This project will only take you less than half an hour to create and will look great with some flowers inside.

Follow our Pinterest page for more craft ideas along with recipes, vineyard photos, and wine gifts!

The Origin of Claiborne & Churchill, Part II:
How To Start a Winery With No Money and Scarcely a Clue

Tuesday, April 22nd

In early August, 1981, I gave up a tenured professorship at the University of Michigan to move to California and start work as a “Cellar Rat” in a local winery, for $6 an hour. Fredericka and I had married on August 6th took Amtrak from Ann Arbor to San Luis Obispo, arriving just in time for one of the earliest harvests in history.

The Pinot Noir crush started during the second week of August, and I quickly learned that I had severely underestimated my fitness level. Crush work at Edna Valley in those days was extremely labor intensive; within a month I had lost fifteen pounds and gained a nice layer of callouses all over my hands. At the end of each 14-hour day I would return to our little apartment on Higuera Street ($330/month) sore and exhausted.

Regrettably, I did not keep a diary of those early days. It was abundantly clear that I could not both DO the job and also REFLECT upon it. It was one or the other. I had burnt all my bridges, and I had to succeed in my new career.

I had never been happier in my life.

Working in the “wine business” was a breath of fresh air after the stale and stultifying atmosphere of the university. Here I found co-workers who reveled in hard work, who supported each other at all times, and whose satisfaction came from creating a product of the highest quality.

I hasten to add also that it was a heck-of-a-lot of fun. The camaraderie, the horse-play, the pranking, the unrepeatable bad jokes: there was an esprit de corps I have never experienced before or since.

In 1983, after two years of cellar work, crush and bottling, laboratory and even sales experience, it was time to take stock of my new “career.” I was never really on a track towards the title of “winemaker,” usually reserved for those who studied the subject at U.C. Davis. For a while it looked like I might be groomed to sell wine for Edna Valley and its parent, Chalone.

But what I really wanted was to make wine. Our own wine. Different, special wines. “Niche wines.”

In those days the advice was to make not wine that you liked, but that the market liked. “Make Chardonnay and Cabernet and hire a pretty girl” was the mantra.

Fredericka and I rejected this idea. Through our experience in western Germany and eastern France we had developed a love of the dry, fruity and well-structured Rieslings and Gewurztraminers of Alsace.

In the summer of 1983 we flew to Europe, took a train to the town of Barr at the northern end of the Alsatian “Route du Vin”, and back-packed southward through the vineyards and wine villages, sampling the wine and food and visiting and talking to the vintners themselves.

We returned eager to make wines inspired by the wines of Alsace. Still, we had no winery and no money. Happily, we were able to borrow a little from relatives, and then received permission from Chalone to start our wine production in a small corner of the cellar at Edna Valley Vineyard.

In the fall of 1983 we bought 30 used barrels and eight and a half tons of grapes and produced 563 cases of barrel-fermented, dry wines: 224 cases of Dry Gewurztraminer, 128 cases of Dry Riesling, and 211 cases of a blend of the two, which we called “Edelzwicker” after the Alsatian name.

Now we could joke that we had fulfilled our dream not only to “make wines nobody drinks” but also to “make wines nobody can pronounce.”

Next: Part III; “Selling Wines that Nobody Drinks”