3 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
A new California winery will change your mind about Chardonnay
It's become fashionable in recent years to praise lean, laser-focused California Chardonnay — some would say 'Chablis-style' Chardonnay — as a rebuke to the overblown butter-and-oak bombs that proliferated beginning in the 1990s.
But that line of thinking neglects to account for the full-bodied California Chardonnays that are made well — expertly, even. When a winemaker gets it right, there's nothing like it. A rich Chardonnay can be as luscious as uni melting on the tongue, as decadent as a smear of soft-ripened cheese, as satisfying as biting into a juicy, runny peach.
A new Sonoma County winery, Sphaerics, makes a convincing argument for this style. It produces Chardonnay exclusively, and all three of its single-vineyard wines are rich and complex, with a tense line of acidity that keeps them in balance. Now, three years in, Sphaerics will expand its small production thanks to the purchase of its own Sonoma Coast vineyard.
Since meeting as students at U.C. Davis, Laura Jones and Brian Ball had always wanted to start their own winery, said Ball, 'but only if we can make something really unbelievable.' The couple have each had varied careers in the wine industry and now both work at Skipstone Ranch in Alexander Valley; he's the general manager, she's the winemaker.
They set their sights on Chardonnay, not only because it's what they love to drink but also because Jones loves making it. Jones spent five years as the assistant winemaker at Aubert Wines in Calistoga, arguably the benchmark producer of rich, creamy, indulgent California Chardonnay. (Conveniently, Skipstone's only white wine is a Viognier, so there's no competition with their employer.)
Their opportunity arrived in 2022, when the Jackson family offered to sell them Chardonnay grapes from the Upper Barn Vineyard, one of Skipstone's neighbors in Alexander Valley. Upper Barn has a notable legacy with some of the most prestigious names of the rich-Chardonnay camp: Helen Turley made Upper Barn Chardonnay when she was the winemaker for Peter Michael Winery, where it became a bottling known as Mon Plaisir, 'my pleasure.' She also used Upper Barn grapes for her own label, Marcassin. Turley's protégé Mark Aubert later made the Upper Barn Chardonnay when he worked for Peter Michael. Now Aubert's protégé, Jones, would be the next steward of these grapes.
'It was like this mentor-to-protégé winemaker family tree,' Ball said. They call the Upper Barn Chardonnay 'If and Only If,' a reference to their condition for starting the winery in the first place. The 2023 vintage is very expressive, reminding me of marzipan, ginger and apricot. As creamy and full as it is, it has a persistent, refreshing brightness.
'I love really long fermentations,' said Jones. She ferments her Chardonnays in barrels using indigenous yeast, and they typically don't complete their secondary malolactic fermentations until the following spring. (Most wineries would have this wrapped up within a matter of weeks following harvest.) She doesn't filter or fine the wines, nor does she practice battonage — the stirring of lees while a wine is aging in barrel, which can add oomph and body — meaning the wine gets its richness primarily from its raw materials.
'I pick on the riper side,' said Jones. 'The grapes should taste delicious. They should taste good. Like candy.' This sounds like an almost direct refutation of winemaker Raj Parr 's anti-ripeness maxim, now famous in industry circles: 'If you pick a grape off the vine and it tastes yummy, you've already missed it.'
The Upper Barn Chardonnay is Sphaerics' flagship, and its most expensive at $140. The rest of the lineup consists of Overline ($65), a lighter expression from Carneros that's reminiscent of tangy yogurt, yellow peach and basil; and On Days and Nights ($80), from the Russian River Valley, which has flavors of fennel, toasted hazelnut and Meyer lemon. These are bold prices for Chardonnay, in line with high-end producers like Aubert, Peter Michael and Kistler.
This year, Ball and Jones will add red wine to the mix after acquiring their estate vineyard. Located near the town of Occidental, the site has 13 acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. When the couple began scouting for properties, Ball pulled up Google Maps and asked Jones: 'Where in your dream would you want our vineyard to be?' She pointed to this particular area of the Sonoma Coast, where the fluffy Goldridge soils are known to be ideal for Burgundian grape varieties. Many of the wines that Jones had made at Aubert came from this area. When they saw a listing in that exact neighborhood that fit their budget, they felt that it was fate. They closed in May — and are legally prohibited from naming the vineyard's previous owner or which wineries bought its fruit.
Coming up with a name for a winery that's not already trademarked is notoriously difficult, especially when 'your last names are not exciting,' said Jones. They chose Sphaerics, the title of the foundational text on the geometry of the sphere written by Theodosius of Bithynia in the 2nd or 1st century BC. It's partly a play on Ball's last name.
It's also a nod to the shape of winemaking itself. 'Think of the most important objects that make wine,' Ball said: 'the shape of a grape, the shape of the earth, the shape of the moon.'
