The main page needs to be corrected. The wine descriptions are reversed.
[QUOTE=Cesare, post:21, topic:322370]
The main page needs to be corrected. The wine descriptions are reversed.
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Reported and investigating, thank you!
[QUOTE=inkycatz, post:22, topic:322370]
Reported and investigating, thank you!
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…and should be in the process of being fixed. Thanks all!
[QUOTE=gregorylane, post:10, topic:322370]
Bueller?
Bueller?
Bueller?
There’s an echo in here…in here…in here.
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Hey there,
I thought this would be the most appropriate message to respond to if I’m going to try to address a bunch of other messages at the same time. Sorry I didn’t have the chance to jump on earlier!
So I am Scott Shapley, the R2 Winemaker and former Roessler Winemaker, and I had a great time meeting a bunch of you at the Harvest Moon Woot Lunch. Thanks for all of your support for the Roessler wines, and certainly don’t miss out on the continuing Roessler line-up (they’ll still be pouring the wines I made at their tasting room until the 2009s are gone! :)).
The new R-squared program has allowed us to play with some other great varietals and capture a broader regional expression in the wines (while still working with a lot of Pinot!), and it all started through the concept of the Black Pine you all tried in one of the Woots last year.
In any case, I’d better answer some questions on these 2 wines before much longer, so here goes:
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First of all, the notes are indeed switched under the headings, but all of the information is correct under the appropriate varietal listing (ie under “100% Chard” it says “37% new oak” which is correct). The one exception is that the 2009 Big Bend Chard was bottled in Sep 2010, not May 2011 as the Vin Blancs was. This should also help to eliminate the question about the 37% oak on the Vin Blancs, as the VB actually saw no new oak and actually spent a few months in steel ahead of bottling.
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Malolactic fermentation was supressed on both of these wines, and it was based on taste. Depending on how a white wine comes along through fermentation and aging, I often like to leave some malate to help give a crisp edge to the palate and to cut through some of the fatter, more viscous elements.
A) On the Chard, it had naturally self-supressed, but I really liked the acidic balance at that point, and decided to keep it that way rather than try to force it. In 2009, we picked the Chard later, and so the fruit was on the riper side, so we ended up with a nice combination of some of the bigger Chardonnay characteristics, but with a good level of acidity to cut though it and keep it fresh.
B) The Vin Blancs MLF was also surpressed, and while it got closer to being finished, in this case it was more a question of wanting to balance some of the potentialy cloying, viscous qualities of Viogner with a crisp edge. Obviously, with the low pH on the wine, we certainly did keep some good acidity! But there wouldn’t have been much further shift if we had finished MLF as it had gotten close-ish to finishing. 2009 just gave us some nice, cooler growing conditions down in Santa Ynez, so the acidity was going to be pretty good to begin with!
C) A final note on the acidity is that on the Vin Blancs, because of the acid chemistry, some of the acid is unstable at very cold temperatures, so it will throw tartrate crystals in bottle (depending on the fridge temp. These crystals are not bad for you at all, they can just give a “snow globe effect” (I should have put a little diorama of the winery in the bottom of each bottle! 
). I suggest sitting it upright and then slowly decanting or pouring into glass if the crystals do show up, and it’s very easy to see what you’re doing given the flint bottle. The wine tastes GREAT though, and it makes me very happy to be working with Rhone varietals again.
- And then there’s the question of drinking windows… It’s always hard to say - everyone wants to say “great now, but with good agability” etc, and with the acidity in these wines I think they really will be able to last in the cellar for several years. But with R2, we really wanted to present a line-up that you’d want to buy and drink over the short term and then come back and enjoy the next vintage. The furthest example of that was the 2010 Rose we have in the tasting room, as I left the SO2 very low to allow it to be as fresh as can be over the summer, while imagining that most customers will happily consume it before the end of the fall and eagerly await the next Rose in the Spring. All in all, we wanted to put out wines of great quality at a great price point that could be enjoyed on a quicker time-line than the tightest of the Roessler Pinots. More along the philosophy of the Bluejay, Red Label, La Brisa, etc, but with a wider range of varietals.
I’ll check back through the thread to see if I missed anything, but feel free to shout out follow-up questions. I’ve got some cellar work to attend to getting ready to bottle up the 2010s at the end of the month, but I’ll keep checking in on the woot in between barrel driving, blending, tasting… tough life, huh!
Cheers!
Scott Shapley
Who is the photo guy for wine.woot? Seems like a fun job.
[QUOTE=shapley2, post:24, topic:322370]
(Mod edit: small thread, big quote)
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Highly informative post, Scott! Welcome Back!!
[QUOTE=shapley2, post:24, topic:322370]
…
All in all, we wanted to put out wines of great quality at a great price point that could be enjoyed on a quicker time-line than the tightest of the Roessler Pinots. More along the philosophy of the Bluejay, Red Label, La Brisa, etc, but with a wider range of varietals.
…
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Great to see you back! Just to clarify, are you still involved in making the Roessler line-up, and intend this to be a companion value brand, or is this a stand-alone label from Roessler, which is now made by Hall Wine? You mentioned you were only the maker for R2 after '09, but then it sounds like you’re not trying to duplicate some of the more complex Roesslers, so it wasn’t clear to me of the relationship and what to expect from this label…
[QUOTE=rpm, post:26, topic:322370]
Highly informative post, Scott! Welcome Back!!
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It’s good to be back!
I also realized that while I was informative in my last post, I hadn’t addressed one Wooter’s question about what the Vin Blancs was like (other than related to the acid balance).
I think the Vin Blancs is a great expression of a Rhone white blend, with plenty of the perfumed fruit of Viogner on the nose, along with some really nice minerality that comes both from the region and from the other components in the wine. and of course the acid is nice, so it has enough structure to hold up to the fruit.
It’s fun to have 2 very different whites in the line-up - not that our Chards in the past weren’t very different from each other, given our focus on expressing terroir from site to site, but the difference between Rhone whites and Chard take it a step further.
I do like good, crisp acidity, though, so the wine styles on these 2 are somewhat convergent, even though my tendency is to like some new oak on Chard but not much if any on Rhone varietals.
More soon,
Scott
[QUOTE=shapley2, post:24, topic:322370]
big post and another little comment
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Thanks for the information, Scott. It is great to see my fellow Yorkies/high schoolers contributing to the world in such tangible ways!
Your descriptions have pushed me to push the ridiculously large button. Thanks again! Hailey
[QUOTE=ccrida, post:27, topic:322370]
Great to see you back! Just to clarify, are you still involved in making the Roessler line-up, and intend this to be a companion value brand, or is this a stand-alone label from Roessler, which is now made by Hall Wine? You mentioned you were only the maker for R2 after '09, but then it sounds like you’re not trying to duplicate some of the more complex Roesslers, so it wasn’t clear to me of the relationship and what to expect from this label…
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Hey there,
R2 is a stand-alone label from Roessler now, with the exception that Roger and Richard Roessler are involved in both. I helped with the transition of Roessler to Hall through the end of last year, but the winemaking for 2010 vintage was handled by Hall. I spent my time with them from Sep-Dec helping them wrap themselves around the pretty complex Roessler program and vineyards, along with holding their hands through some of the winemaking decisions that I would have made on those lots. But the 2006-2009 Roesslers were all mine, and I had aged, blended and bottled the 2005s.
On top of that, I was in charge of the 2009 and 2010 R2 wines, and while we aren’t focusing on breaking things into the expansive, vineyard-designated program we had with Roessler, we are looking to make wines with complexity through blending. It’s more a question of showing off the 2+2 = 5 you can get when you blend different varietals (in the case of the Rhone reds and whites we’ve made) or when you blend different vineyards (as in the Black Pine Pinot or the old Bluejay, bringing together nuances from several different sites).
Hope that clears things up a bit on that front, and feel free to shoot any more questions my way…
Scott
Slow moving. According to my calculations, only 30 woots have been shifted so far.
I’m in for 1 here. I prefer the Rhone style, but the rich chard will go over great with friends who don’t like what I typically drink.
Is the 14.9 ABV on the Big Bend correct?
I am a big fan of the Big Bend Chard - I bought it when we were there for the Tour, and it’s long since gone. Unfortunately my lack of space plus 35 bottles out in the open in my stupidly warm apartment keeps me from going in at the moment.
Wish I could give more tasting notes from the 2008, but all I wrote for myself was “Excellent, and I’d love it at $20/bottle.” This offering seems to fit the bill…
[QUOTE=tytiger58, post:33, topic:322370]
Is the 14.9 ABV on the Big Bend correct?
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The 14.9% alc actually refers to the Vin Blancs (Viogner, Rousanne, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc blend). The tech notes for the 2 wines were switched, but if you read below “100% Chardonnay”, which is mistakenly under the 2009 Vin Blancs heading, the notes should be lined up correctly for the Chardonnay, and if you read under the “80% Viogner…” that follows the 2009 Big Bend Chardonnay heading, the notes should be correct for the Chard.
Otherwise, the alcohol levels are real. While I prefer having lower alcohol than 14.9 in general, Viogner and some of the other Rhone whites tend to ripen up and get higher sugars, resulting in higher alcohols. The 2010 Vin blancs is actually going to be 13.4%, though, so I’m pleased that the vintage worked with us so nicely. The Chard in 2010 is at around 13.7%, so in general were able to get good, ripe flavors with lower sugars last year, while in 2009, we ended up getting some heat in the end that launched the sugars ahead a bit. I suppose that’s just the fun of vintage variation.
In general, while I like to dream of lower sugars and lower alcohols on all of my wines from all vintages, I’m really more concerned with balance, so if a wine tastes good at 14.9%, I’m ok with that. I like to look at chemistry, but I’m more concerned with enjoying what’s in the glass.
That said, I am always aiming for earlier picks and more natural verve on the palate, it’s just that Mother Nature likes to throw curve-balls more often than not.
Hope that at least clears up the tech notes placement.
Scott
[QUOTE=haileykuhn09, post:29, topic:322370]
Thanks for the information, Scott. It is great to see my fellow Yorkies/high schoolers contributing to the world in such tangible ways!
Your descriptions have pushed me to push the ridiculously large button. Thanks again! Hailey
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Wow! A fellow Yorkie on Woot! I hope you’ve enjoyed being a Wooter (great concept here, I think) I look forward to hearing how you like these R2 wines.
So is this the Hailey that I actually went to York with, or another Hailey from a different era that just knows a Yorkie when she reads one? (I’m not mentioning possible nee surnames in order to protect the privacy of the innocent and/or guilty :))
And don’t worry everyone, I won’t hijack the whole thread for a reunion, but York is my highschool, so I didn’t want to miss connecting with a voice from the past!
More soon,
Scott
[QUOTE=shapley2, post:36, topic:322370]
Wow! A fellow Yorkie on Woot!
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It is the Hailey you know - who has a twin sister in Timber Cove on the Sonoma Coast.
Has anyone received their shipment yet? Mine was scheduled for yesterday but hasn’t come and the tracking information hasn’t gotten past “Shipping Info Received”
Got my shipment before the weekend and just opened it up. The bottle of Viognier has some definant carbonation. 
Im looking at a slight bubble line rising from the bottom.
OK, just got to the end of bottle and found yeast. Watch out for the viognier theres still alot of sugar left in this wine and if the yeasties keep going it could end messy