Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022 - 22

Top 100 Wineries
CALIFORNIA | CENTRAL COAST
Au Bon Climat
A year after the passing of its founder, Jim Clendenen, Au Bon Climat
hasn't wavered, offering wines of exceptional grace and structure.
JIM aDElMaN
This is The firsT year for au Bon ClimaT
without its founder and Mind Behind, Jim
Clendenen. But the minds behind the Mind
Behind, winemaker Jim Adelman and cellarmaster
Enrique Rodriguez, have stayed the
course. Having promised that little would
change, they have continued to draw from
the same blue-chip Santa Barbara County
vineyards, employing the same cellar practices,
reflecting an aesthetic Clendenen
established decades before. This begins with
his long love affair with textural complexity
in pinot noir and chardonnay, inspired by
his many tastings in the cellars of Burgundy
legends. " Texture was an obsession for
Jim, " says Adelman. Over the years that has
meant everything from multiple picks at the
same parcel (one for acid, one for flavor) to
extended élevage. Clendenen aged his wines
in tight-grained French oak barrels, and he
loved the impact of lees, on his chardonnays,
especially. Out in the market, his daughter,
Isabelle, is working to fill the outsized role
he had played. " She's a natural Clendenen, "
Adelman says, and is playing the role with
shades of her father's inimitable swagger.
-P.J.C.
2019 Santa Ynez Valley Sanford & Benedict
Vineyard Chardonnay ($40, 94 points)
This wine has an old-vine reserve, starting off
dense and broad, laden with expensive oak (50
percent new barrels). A leesy, toasted-nut savor
comes up with air, the wine's flavors still quiet
but unfurling; after a day the texture becomes
generous, layered and full of energy, the oak in
retrograde. This wine clearly needs to grow into
itself, before serving with butter-poached halibut.
FOUNDED:
1982
WINEMAKER:
Jim Adelman
VITICULTURISTS:
Chris Hammell
and Jeff Fry
OWNERS:
Isabelle and Knox
Clendenen, Jim
Adelman, Enrique
Rodriguez
ACRES OWNED:
20
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
50,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
10%
22
2018 Sta. Rita Hills Larmes de Grappe Pinot
Noir ($100, 93 points) This wine comes from
Sanford & Benedict's old-vine blocks, which can
absorb a 100 percent whole-cluster ferment as
well as an assertive oak regime-two years in
François Frères 350-liter barrels. The wine's oak
imprint, with caramel and cola scents, is formidable,
but not so much as to mask a coastal,
sea-wrack savor on the palate. The texture is
rich, the dark plum notes sumptuous and fleshy.
2019 Santa Ynez Valley Sanford & Benedict
Vineyard Pinot Noir ($50, 93 points)
This 2019 is a beauty, with an old-vine composure
and spice that renders the wine sturdy and
graceful, with a mildly smoky, vinous aroma, and
a brown-sugar sweetness that lends fleshiness
and a soft succulence and curvy amplitude.
WINE & SPIR IT S
F all 202 2
FOUNDED:
1999
DIRECTOR OF
WINEMAKING:
Josh Bergström
WINEMAKER:
Madeline Rausch
VITICULTURIST:
Nick Gianopoulos
OWNER:
The Bergström family
ACRES OWNED:
70
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
11,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
100%
FARMING PRACTICES:
Biodynamic
OREGON | WILLAMETTE VALLEY
Bergström
Bergström's wines are now all estate grown, their bucolic properties producing
a range of restrained, elegant chardonnays and pinot noirs.
JOSH BERGSTROM
on Josh BergsTröm's aCTive insTagram
account during CoviD there weren't photographs
of France, where he travels often
(with his wife Caroline, a Burgundian).
Instead, there were photographs of winery
life, of pruning and leafing and prep spraying,
of fruit and cover crops, of honeycomb
panels from hives Caroline tends. Bergström
has been the architect of his family's winery
efforts since its inception and one of his
achievements is becoming a homebody, converting
the vineyards and winery to biodynamic
practices. The family now makes its
wine exclusively from five estate vineyards
planted to pinot noir and chardonnay-La
Spirale and Le Pré du Col in Ribbon Ridge,
Bergström in the Dundee Hills, Silice and
the Winery Block in the Chehalem Mountains.
Taken together, those properties
amount to a full palette of the Willamette
Valley's expression. We tasted only chardonnays
this calendar year, each one filled with
a coiled energy and grace. -P.J.C.
2020 Chardonnay Willamette Valley Sigrid
($110, 94 points) Josh Bergström's grande
assemblage, this vintage of Sigrid is blended
from Le Pré du Col, Silice and Bergström vineyards.
It possesses a kind of foundational
restraint when first poured, as if you see the
frame before you see the picture. Before the
fruit comes to saturate the wine over the course
of three days, it's pure, bright, salty and layered,
filling out while it keeps its structure and
composure.
2020 Chardonnay Dundee Hills Bergström
Vineyard ($80, 93 points) Josh Bergström's
parents planted this south-facing vineyard in
1999, their first foray into the Willamette Valley.
The thirteen acres of pinot noir and chardonnay
have been a mainstay of their production ever
since. My first words on this tasting note: " pretty
serious. " Indeed, the build on this stylish chardonnay
is there at the outset: Its modest fruit,
cinnamon and leesy caramel notes swell in a
savory mélange, with a subtle citrus energy rumbling
beneath.
2020 Chardonnay Ribbon Ridge Le Pré du
Col Vineyard ($80, 93 points) This well-built
chardonnay is quiet and creamy, showing hints
of nutty lees, apple and pear, with an undercurrent
of salinity that comes to structure the wine
with air. That mineral weave gives the wine a deft
contour, layering in the mouthwatering acidity.
For the cellar.
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022

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