Vidon Vineyard: the Pinot Noir Clone Program

Winemaker David Bellows of Vidon Vineyard discusses the three clones of Pinot Noir that grow on the estate vineyard in Chehalem Mountains AVA, Oregon. Bellows discusses the unique character of each clone of Pinot Noir and what they bring to the ‘jazz trio.’

This is Episode #66 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Hi. I'm David Bellows. I'm the winemaker at Vidon Vineyard.

I'm here today to talk a little bit about our clone program. So, we have three clones of pinot planted out in our vineyard. We have equal parts of 115, 777, and Pommard.

Vidon Vineyard Pinot Noir ‘Mirabelle 115’

Today, I'd like to talk to you about the 115 clone, that we call Mirabelle, after Dawn's eldest granddaughter. The 115 clone has a vibrant acidity, and it a distinctive vin cherry note. This lively acidity makes it an excellent food wine. And it acts like the percussionist in the trio, laying down the beat or the pulse.

If you prefer an acid-driven, food-friendly wine, perhaps the Mirabelle would be your favorite.

Vidon Vineyard Pinot Noir ‘Brigita 777’

Today I'd like to talk to you about the 777 clone, that we call Brigita, after Dawn's youngest granddaughter. The 777 clone is our warmest, softest, most aromatic clone. It's known for having spicy kind of exotic notes, like cardamon and clove. It acts sort of like the piano player in the trio, providing the melody, and the individual notes. So, if you are interested in a softer, more aromatic wine, perhaps the Brigita would be the one for you.

Vidon Vineyard Pinot Noir ‘Hans Pommard’

I'd like to talk to you about our Pommard clone, that we call Hans, after Dawn's grandson. The Pommard clone is our biggest most full-bodied wine, with layers of tannin providing structure. It acts like the bass player in the trio, laying down the deep foundation notes. So if you like a more mouth-filling, full-bodied wine, perhaps the Hans would suit you.

Vidon Vineyard Pinot Noir ‘Three Clones’

We've mixed them together to make a Cuvee, to make a blend. And that is our flagship wine, called Three Clones. It's equal parts of the three, and it acts like the jazz trio, piano, bass, and drums all playing together, each of the clones adding a bit to the wine. So, for example, the acidity from 115, and the body from Pommard, and the aromatics from the 777 clone all combine to make a greater whole.

What Does Wine Mean to You? Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars Interview: Part Four

This the fourth part of my video interview with Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars.  In this segment, Mac McDonald answers the question that I ask every winemaker - What Does Wine Mean to You?

Please enjoy this three minute video or read the transcript underneath it. 

This is Episode #58 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Winemaker Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars answers Austin Beeman's signature wine question. What does wine mean to you?

Mac McDonald:

What does wine mean to me? Wine means to me friendship, enjoyment, socialization. It means a lot to me, and the reason that I say that is because I've met so many wonderful folks through this wine business and having a glass of wine. I just think that folks who drink wine, they're very interesting individuals because you have something in common right away, you can talk to them about it. It don't matter if you don't even like the variety of wine. You may like Pinot Noir. You may like cabs. You may like Zin. Whatever it is, you got something in common. I find the reason that I say that socialization, friendship thing, over the years that I've been traveling with Miss Lil around the country doing wine events, wine tasting, I've met so many folks.

I probably have, come to visit our winery or visit our vineyard every year, probably have over 1,000 people just stop by to see me that I met from all over the United States, and I think that that felt really good that I meet these folks and give them my card and says, "Come out to visit us. We'll make you lunch or something," and they show up. That's a good feeling because I wouldn't have never met the folks. The big socialization, the big sharing of knowledge, from the knowledge that I get from folks like yourself, doing wine tasting events, and I'm even going to do a wine tasting maybe here later on today. You come in and meet these folks and they come out and see you, or when I come back here to Ohio, I go to these events. I had a big event every night I've been here. I've been here four nights, and it's somewhat like an old family reunion meeting. They come back time and time to see you, and you may not remember all of their names, but they remember who you are, and you just get to see them and you talk to them.

File May 08, 16 45 31.jpeg

I don't know what I'd do to trade that socialization off for someone else, and let's face it. I enjoy wine.

Check out more great wine content!

Video: What Makes Sonoma Pinot Noir Special? Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars Interview: Part Three

This the third part of my video interview with Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars.  In this segment, McDonald talks about why Sonoma County is such a great place for Pinot Noir and why it is special.

Please enjoy this six minute video or read the transcript underneath it. 

This is Episode #57 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars discuss the specific characteristics that make California Pinot Noir - and specifically Sonoma Pinot Noir - so special.

Mac McDonald:

From my mind, what makes California fruit a little bit more consistent is that we've kind of figured out what type of soil condition, what type of weather patterns that you have is the best area to grow Pinot Noir. We've found that nice cooler areas, cool at night, maybe when it's a little bit warmer during the day, you know 80s is not to high into the 100s and stuff like that. Well, its more ideal for drinking and making Pinot Noir because you don't get the over ripe fruit all the time, unless you purposely trying to do that. So I think we are a little bit more consistent and we do have a tendency to get a little bit more alcohol you see than Burgundy or Oregon. I think when you look at Northern California, I think we're pretty consistent in finding a good location to grow Pinot Noir and I think that, that's really the determining factor.

Burgundy, you know they don't get a lot of heat and in that Burgundy area. So your alcohol normally is not as high and the wine can last a lot longer. Of course, we make our wines in California so that they'll be able to be consumed a little bit earlier. Now when I get into California itself and I think about Carneros, I think about a more dense, maybe a little bit more hardier of Pinot Noir because you don't have a lot of hot, hot weather in that Carneros area. It's quite close to the water. You get over into Sonoma County where I live, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley, ideal for Pinot Noir.

Our property is maybe three quarters of a mile from the Russian River, which is nice and cool in there. When the ocean itself is about 45 miles away. It's nice and cool in that Russian River Valley, where you get up in the 80's, once in a while you get up, you know 95 or something like that, but normally it's in the 80's and at night it kind of cools down so you get more of a cherry, real ripe plum kind of a fruit from that area, not as dark as it is in Carneros. Then when you get down to Monterey County, to the Santa Lucia Highland, particularly upper part of the Santa Lucia Highland, around Solidad, in that area. I purchased fruit from the Gary's in Rosella's Vineyard and a Las Ventura's vineyard that's owned by the Wagner family, and I tell you, that's an ideal area itself for growing Pinot Noir.

You still get that little dense kind of a fruit there. The acid can be high in that area, a lot higher than it is in I say Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, or Carneros, or in Napa area and part of it is in Sonoma. The acids can be pretty high down in the Santa Lucia Highland and into Monterey County. When you get down past Santa Barbara and that area, now you're picking up a little bit more ripe of fruit, a little bit lighter fruit and you can kind of get more of what I call that candy apple kind of a bright sweet kind of a real cherry, real not wild cherry, but real bing kind of a light cherry kind of a wine. With maybe a little bit of berries and the typical raspberry flavors down there.

I don't think that, that's a problem with that, but I think we're consistent in all the areas that we're making Pinot Noir in, but finding out that the temperature in except in those areas makes a big difference in how Pinot Noir should be coming out and how the trellising of the vines and how you can actually get the exposure to the grape to the sun shine that you need, but we can't change the sun. We can change how the sun hit the fruit itself by the way we prune it or by we go out and pick the leaves off of it. So I think overall, California's learned how to farm is the bottom line.

Now Oregon, a lot of folks in Oregon they kind of maybe live there, made wine in California so they've taken a lot of the practice up there that we had. They started out in Oregon using the fruit from that area and not trying to make it a California Pinot Noir style. They started out real light. They're gonna get a lot of sun, lot of heat. So they were able to just make a wine from the area and it was so different than California and I can remember when I used to go up there and I'd taste those Pinot Noir's and I use to think, "Oh, what do these guys think they doing?" Because, I was suggested to drink in a little bit different style of Pinot Noir. But I think overall, they doing a great job. They're making their Pinot Noirs up in Oregon and parts of Washington as well now.


Check out more great wine content

Video: How (and Why) to Grow Pinot Noir. Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars Interview: Part Two

This the second part of my video interview with Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars.  In this segment, McDonald talks about the reasons he chose to pursue great Pinot Noir and the challenges of working with such a complicated and finicky grape.

The first part of the interview is here.  "From Rural Texas to Napa Valley Wine Country."


This is Episode #56 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.  Direct Download Link.

Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars discusses why he chose to grow great Pinot Noir and the complex challenges that he faces.

Mac McDonald:

Pinot Noir is what we do. Folks often ask me, why do you choose or select the toughest type of grape? Well, number one, in California, Northern California, and you want to make Cabernet unless you come out of Napa Valley, folks normally think it's not that good. So I thought if I could craft a great Pinot Noir, because Burgundy is the same grape, that if I could craft a good Pinot Noir then I think I could play with the big dogs. I'm pretty competitive in everything that I do so I want it to be good, I want it to make a mark for doing what I was doing. And at the time as a winery in California called William Seylem that I thought was doing a great, great job and then I also thought Sanford down in the Santa Barbara, those are the only two great Pinot producers that I thought was really, really good and I thought if I could make a great, great Pinot Noir then I could compete. 

That's why they was selected. I had no idea all the crazy things about that grape even exists but I'm a pretty fast learner so I learned a lot about it. Well, it's a real challenging thing because if you think normally about the clones of a Pinot Noir grape, the challenge of growing the grapes, making the wines and selecting the right yeast and keeping the temperature at a certain control. To start off with, you have to really know your soil condition and really match your soil condition with your root stock. Root stock, how much water you have, the soil condition, how much you want to grow per ton, like a Sauvignon Blanc, it doesn't care, it's like a weed, you can just overload it with tons and tons of fruit. In the Chardonnay world, let's say, you have about 50, 60 plus clones some place in their different varieties, different clones. Same with the Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, you have about 50 or 60 there.

But in the Pinot world, you have about 11,000 clones. These things just mutate, you start out, for example, with a 667 or a 777 clone and you may have one side of the road, you may have this clone planted over there, the other side another different clone and they'll completely go different flavors. Then you get into the pruning process of it. You talk to different Pinot growers and they have different methods of pruning and I just like a little bit of exposure to my fruit. So it's really consistent with leaf picking, in other words, if you get more sun on the east side you may wanna leave a little bit more leaves on that. You don't get enough on the west side of the vine you may want to pull some of that off. So it's a constant juggle of trying to get the ripeness, in the evening ripeness, on the fruit itself. 

Austin Beeman: Isn't that challenging? 

Mac McDonald:

Yeah, it's pretty challenging and like I said, we all, a lot of us have different thoughts about it but I think we all come into an agreement. That's why we've been able to craft better Pinot Noir in California. It used to be, like I said, Brett William was the king of it but now you've got a lot of folks making great Pinot Noir. In fact, even here in the state of Ohio, they have a Pinot program, it's doing pretty good. I gave a big lecture at Ohio State several years ago on the crafting on Pinot Noir and I came back and tasted what some of the things that they made and they doing pretty good. But it's a real tough grape to grow. There's a whole bunch of choices of selections of yeast that you use to ferment your fruit and that makes a big difference in the end result of the flavor. 

The type of yeast you use helps determine the flavor you get on the end and then you have the other extreme of that, barrel selections is really, really critical because in my mind, a Pinot Noir should be treated like a white grape. It's a delicate thing. You can get too much wood on it or you can get too much alcohol in it. I'm not saying that if you don't like high alcohol Pinot Noir you shouldn't buy them but I'm just thinking that 13.5, 14.5, in there, is ideal alcohol level for a Pinot Noir. Now with that said, sometimes your vineyard, your fruit is just not there. Out of 25 bricks, equivalent to a 13.8, 13.9 of Pinot Noir and so you may have to let the alcohol get up a little bit higher because it's a little bit riper, so the riper it is, the higher the sugar content and the higher the sugar content is, higher the alcohol is gonna be in the finished product. 

So it's kind of an up and down thing with that grape in that sense as well.

File Mar 27, 13 14 33.jpeg

Video: From Rural Texas to Napa Valley Wine Country. Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars Interview: Part One

Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars is not what you would expect from someone making some of California's best Pinot Noir. 

Mac speaks with a southern drawl, wears a farmer's hat, and sports blue jean overalls in a world of California's "Wine Country Casual."  He is a boutique craftsman who makes his wine in the corporate beast that is Wagner Family Wines.  He is also African-American in an industry where diversity is in the terroir and almost never among the winemakers.

Mac McDonald is also one of my favorite winemakers.  Not only because he makes delicious Pinot Noirs - which he does - but for the perspective he brings to the industry.

Please enjoy this 5 minute video or read the transcription afterwards.  

This is Episode #55 of the Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman Podcast.  // Direct Download Link.

Winemaker of Mac McDonald (part one) of Vision Cellars interviewed by Austin Beeman. Mac McDonald discusses his path from rural Texas to being a winemaker in California.

Mac McDonald:

I am Mac McDonald. I'd like to say I'm the owner, winemaker of Vision Cellars but I'm married with Miss Lil so I just make the wine for Miss Lil. 

Well, you know, it's kind of interesting how I got into wine. I grew up 89 miles south of Dallas, Texas. I grew up way in the woods, way in the country. I consider myself as an old organic kind of a guy, growing back up in there, squirrel eatin' type of a guy. At 12 years old, there used to be a couple hunters used to come down in these woods and go hunting with my grandfather and drink my father's moonshine. So one of them used to drink burgundy and these guys would give him a hard time about drinking that burgundy wine, blah, blah, blah.

But they was drinking corn whiskey. So one day he said to me, he says, "Hey, son, would you like to have this bottle of wine?" And said yes, but 12 years old, I didn't know how to get it open but I finally dug out the cork out of it and I took a stick and shoved it off in there and I tasted it. You don't have to worry about Child Protective Service because they didn't have anything back off in the woods to do that anyway. At any rate, I tasted it and I drank a half a bottle of that wine that day. It tasted pretty good. From that point on, all I talked about was I wanted to be a winemaker. Fast forward through high school, my coach says to me, "If you wanna make wine, you need to move to California."

That's why I moved to California, from Texas to California. I grew up about 89 miles south of Dallas, Texas, around Palestine, Waco, in that area. So I get into California, we had a pretty tough time getting to know winemakers and I didn't know who they were or what they do, any of that thing. So I started hanging around up in Mendocino County, which is about 160 miles north of San Francisco. Met a guy by the name of John Parducci up there and old John wouldn't give me the time of day but that was okay because some kid coming out of Texas talking about you wanna make wine but I kept going back up there and he started talking to me, telling me stuff. But really what kicked me off into this wine business is I met a family over in Napa valley. A family called the Wagner family and I hung out with Mr. Wagner probably for 9 months and I didn't know who he was, he didn't say anything about who he was.

And one day the taster room manager came out and said, "Hey, why you always out here bothering Mr. Wagner?" And I says, "Well, what do you mean? That old guy out there?" He goes, "That ain't just some old guy, that's Mr. Wagner. He own this place." I had no idea for 9 months I'd been hanging out with the owners of Caymus Vineyard. Fast forward a little bit further, I've known the Wagner family for around 31 years. 17, 15 years or so after hanging out with him, Mr. Wagner said to me, "Son, you ought to be in the wine business." And I thought, "Well, you know, I'd like to but I don't have that kind of money." He goes, "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of ya." So 17 years ago, my wife and I, Miss Lil, we started Vision Cellars and to this day, I'm the only non family member that's allowed to make wine at Caymus.

All my wines are crafted at Caymus Vineyard in Rutherford, California. I make 'em all myself. We own some vineyards in Sonoma County, which is about 110 miles north of San Francisco, Russian River Valley. We own this little vineyard there and we do craft wine from that vineyard. That's basically how I got into the wine business.

File Mar 22, 16 01 05.jpeg

Keep Reading...

Video: L. Mawby and the Rise of Sparkling Wine in Northern Michigan

Larry Mawby of L. Mawby / M. Lawrence discusses the rise of Sparkling Wine in the Leelanlau Peninsula of Northern Michigan.

This is Episode #53 of the Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman video podcast.

The History of Growing Sparkling Wine in Northern Michigan.

Larry Mawby:

"We've been growing grapes here for just a little over 40 years and I'm the second person to plant a vineyard here, so this is a young grape growing area by international standards. Even by U.S. standards, it's pretty young. When we started, we had no idea whether grapes were possible to grow here. We had no idea what kind of wines we could make. We had no idea whether we had any customers that would care and be interested.

There was a lot of experimentation at the beginning and there still is a lot. When we started, I planted all French-American hybrids, because those were the varieties that were available, that there was some experience from the Finger Lakes, New York, that was similar climatically to us. We thought we had a good chance that they would survive the winters and that they would ripen in the length of growing season that we had.

Then, we started to plant Vinifera. We started with French hybrids in 1973, and in 1981 I planted the first little bit of Vinifera. Those were vines that I got from Oregon. At that time, I was really interested and my role model probably was Burgundy. I love red and white burgundies, and I thought if we grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir here, and make a credible table wines from those that would be a great thing.

We got cuttings from Oregon because they were the most serious producers of Pinot Noir in the U.S. in a climate that was anything like ours. California, doesn't make a difference what you do in California; we don't have that kind of climate.

We started growing those vines on a small scale in '81, and in '84 I decided to start making sparkling wine. Mostly at that point because all my experience, which was only 10 years of growing grapes and about 5 years, 6 years of making wine here commercially, was that we had short, relatively cool growing seasons, really quite cold but snowy winters, and that in cool growing seasons we struggled to get Chardonnay or Pinot Noir ripe enough to make a table wine but we always got them ripe enough for sparkling wine.

 The Brix levels that you want for sparkling wine are substantially lower, and because it's a relatively short growing season, because of the typical weather in the last month or so of the growing season, we get really good flavor to all of them at low Brix, which is really important for sparkling wine. That's one of the challenges that a lot of the California sparkling wine producers have is to get the Brix low enough to make a balanced sparkling wine, they have to pick really early in the growing season and there's no flavor development, so you end up with these awkward wines that have the technical parameters that you'd like but they don't taste right. That's why the really good sparkling wines in California are in the really coolest parts of the state.

We have naturally that kind of balance of sugar acid and flavor and aroma that develops, and it was pretty clear to me that sparkling wine was something that we could consistently do every year no matter whether it was a really warm year or a really cool year, we got the kind of flavor development that we wanted in the grapes to make nice sparkling wines. It was also clear to me that we had critically we had people from around the country and European sparkling wine critics had tasted the wines and said, "These have some real promise. You should continue do this sort of thing."

It was also clear to me that at that point, sparkling wine was only 15% of our total production. We weren't focused on it. We were making table wines mostly and we would make sparkling wine. It seemed to me that the real future was focus on sparkling wine, concentrate only on that, grow everything in the vineyard knowing that you're going to make sparkling wine from it, harvest it, ferment. Everything is about sparkling wine if we don't do table wines.

 By the time we started making sparkling wine in the mid-1980s, there were 5 wineries in this area. If a visitor came from, let's pick an Ohio, if they came from Cleveland or Cincinnati and wanted to visit the wineries here, they could come up and visit everybody in a weekend. It was doable. Well, by the mid-1990s, we had about 15 or 20 wineries, and we were adding a couple wineries every year or two. Today, we have 40, and so it was clear in the mid-90s that there were going to be enough wineries that visitors had to start making choices. They couldn't just come for a short period of time and see the whole wine region. They had to make choices.

What I wanted to do was to have them make a choice and have the people that walked into my tasting walk in interested in what I was doing, not just walking in, looking for cherry wine. I don't make cherry wine. We have other folks that do. We'd like people who want cherry wine to go to the wineries that make cherry wine and find that. It seemed to me that there was a possibility for us to specialize, but it took 4 years to eliminate 85% of my sales.

We make sparkling wine. If you're interested in sparkling wine, you think about us. If you're not, you think about somebody else."

Video: The Meaning of Wine with Larry Mawby of L. Mawby / M. Lawrence

Larry Mawby of L. Mawby / M. Lawrence answers Austin Beeman's signature question.  "What does wine mean to you?"

This is Episode #52 of the Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman video podcast

Austin Beeman: "What does wine mean to you?'

Larry Mawby:  "What does wine mean? Wine is an essential component of civilized life. It's like another food item. It's food for the soul as well as the body. It's a part of the civilized discourse around the table.

It's a lot more than that but that's the critically important piece.  For me, it's the way I make my living. For most consumers it is a tangible connection to a place.

A lot of customers vacation here.  Say, they live in Cleveland and it's January in Cleveland.  They open a bottle of my sparkling wine and they can be instantly transported to the time that they were here in Leelanau Peninsula in July and had a great time on the beach, in the water.

It's a great way for an urban dweller to connect to the rural, agricultural heart of the human experience."


Video: Inspired to Discover New Terroir (with St. Innocent Winemaker Mark Vlossak)

Without the established rules of Europe, how do American Winemakers discover great new terroir?  For St. Innocent's Winemaker Mark Vlossak, it is all about inspiration.  In this short six minute video, Vlossak talks about the different subregions of Oregon's Willamette Valley and what he find so inspirational about each of them.

This is Episode #50 of the Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman video podcast and the fourth of five videos from my interviews with Mark Vlossak of St. Innocent Winery. Click below to see the other parts of the interview.