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There was an enthusiastic turnout for the Hella Chenin wine fest Saturday as hundreds gathered to frolic in the Hammerling Wines courtyard on Fifth Street in Berkeley, aka the "Natural Wine District," a province of what is sometimes called the People's Republic of Berkeley. The event was a sellout. |
Naturally, natural wine has found a home here in Berkeley (with Donkey and Goat, Broc Cellars and more as anchor tenants) but so now has Chenin, and, at this event, the South African and California wineries who make it.
The event was sponsored in part by the South African importer Culture Wine Co (which may account for why, ahem, no Loire wines were featured). Culture is making the rounds, touring with its South African producers at other California locations (May 5, 6 and 7 in SF, Napa and SF respectively).
Chenin Blanc wines are also very affordable, as well as rare, so this may be two big factors in its widespread appeal within a cult following. Plus it makes excellent wines.
The only problem for me in covering this for this blog is that there are a. very few sources for U.S. winemakers to buy Chenin grapes (most of the vineyards to date have been in Clarksburg, where Delta moisture makes organic farming a challenge), and b. even fewer who are certified organic. In fact, I found only about five at this event.
The variety's rarity alone could account for the variety's je ne sais crois hipster savoir faire.
Farming on the uncertified grower sites ranges from ideal (Littorai in Sebastopol, Rorick Heritage, and Four Diamonds in Applegate Valley, Dashe Cellars' blocks in Clarksburg) to sustainable to dreadful. (Jurassic, a popular spot for Chenin, has great limestone, but industrial vineyard management using, yes, Roundup.)
ESTATES (2)
Two estate wineries grow and make Chenin–DuMOL's MacIntyre Vineyard in the Green Valley AVA and Chappellet in Napa's Pritchard Hill, which had some of the older Chenin vines in the state until it replanted in 2004. Formerly the Chappellet wine was only available to its wine club, but distribution has eased up a little bit these days, I've been told.
WINERIES BUYING CERTIFIED ORGANIC GRAPES (3)
Grape sellers include Massa Vineyard (vinified by Ian Brand, who has farmed it; its grapes are also purchased by Hammerling and Broc Cellars) and Chalone and Rodnick (grapes purchased by Hammerling) in Monterey County's Chalone AVA.
(Note: I personally do not just write about certified organically grown wines overall, but that is the criteria for this blog. At Slow Wine USA, I write about almost 200 wines each year, and not all are organic).
MASTERCLASS PANEL
The wine fest opened with an illustrious panel that included Chenin devotee and evangelist Tegan Passalaqua (of Sandlands),
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The wine fest opened with an illustrious panel that included Chenin devotee and evangelist Tegan Passalaqua (of Sandlands), Bryan Bredell of Scions of Sinai (South Africa) and Alder Yarrow (of Vinography.)
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Herewith a few excerpts from the panel conversation:
Alder:
"I think we've obviously seen a lot of negative news in the wine industry the last couple years, and personally, I'm quite sick of that. I think the wine industry is full of really amazing people and an amazing product that's completely irreplaceable. And I think today is about celebrating Chenin. It's about celebrating wine, and it's about bringing more people into this beautiful space."
About the name of Bredell's family winery, Scions of Sinai:
"The name...has nothing to do with the Middle East. There's a hill where his family has had a farm called Sinai Hill, lots of granite, lots of Chenin, hence the name...he is a seventh generation wine grower in South Africa."
"Through a twist of fate, his family lost all of their vineyards, had to sell them, but remarkably, he is now making wine under the family name in the original Family Wine Cellar from from so many generations ago, which is super cool, and wines are brilliant."
"I'm really excited that the grape seems to be going through a tiny little Renaissance here in California. At the moment, we still have very few acres. It's something like 3,780 acres [4265 according to Capstone) in California, down from 35,000 back in the heyday of Chenin Blanc, when it was going into all the generic white blends in California."
"But despite the acreage of Chenin not having changed much in the last 20 years, what has happened is, all of a sudden, all sorts of little projects, like many of the ones that you're gonna see out there in the courtyard today, have started really taking the grape seriously and making some truly exceptional wines."
"And of course, you're also gonna get to taste the South African examples, which are just fantastic. But Chenin, of course, is one of the most versatile grapes on the planet. Like perhaps only Riesling, it can make everything from a bone dry, deeply mineral wine to a skin contact orange wine to sparkling wine to absolutely incredible sweet wines that are the best dessert wines on the planet, and everything in between. There aren't hardly any other grapes in the world that can do that. And so Chenin has proved long over that it is one of the great noble grapes of the world."
On California's under the radar visibility for Chenin:
"I looked up this morning the entry for Chenin Blanc in the Oxford Companion of Wine, which I contribute to but sadly, did not have an opportunity to edit this particular entry, and the way it describes Chenin Blanc in California is quote, 'In contrast to South Africa and the Loire, California has very few champions of the variety, and most of it is used as usually anonymous base for everyday commercial blends of reasonably crisp white wine.'"
"So this is our mission, right? It is our mission as a group, as a community, as people who love Chenin and want to make sure that when the next edition of the Oxford Companion of Wine comes out, that that has been changed, and it says amazing things about the incredible boutique versions of the grape that are being made here in California."
Bredell told the story of how Chenin arrived in South Africa.
"370 years ago, there was a ship passing from Europe on its way to South Africa. It was a three month voyage...on the Atlantic Ocean, with a few cuttings of Chenin. These cuttings were kept with a little bit of soil...They arrived in July of 1655, so it was only planted in that August, as the first vines at the Cape, with Palomino and Semillon– the first three wine varieties."
"It was only about four years later that the first wine was made, at the Cape...It basically started with that, and it wasn't very good..."
Made as a durable sweet wine, it was used to help the sailors stop getting sick from bad water on long sea voyages.
Fast forward to California...where Tegan begins his story of Chenin.
"We don't know exactly when it first came to California–most likely the 1860s to the 80s. We do know that it was Napa Valley. The first variety labeled Chenin Blanc in America was in 1955...by the Mondavi family, Charles Krug, and it won the International State Fair in California, which was the big wine fair of the world."
"It was a big thing to win, and no one had ever really heard of it, but it came out and won the best white wine for the whole International Wine Competition, in Sacramento. So that really got everyone's attention."
"And then Charles Krug really had its payday with it. They made about 300,000 cases a year of Chenin in the 60s and 70s....Parallel that to South Africa, where they had a wine that was the number one selling wine...does anyone know that the number one selling wine in the world in the 60s was South African white wine?" [It was Chenin.]
"They were selling up to 3 million cases a year of the wine."
Tegan credited Philip Togni with keeping it in the ground in Napa.
"Philip Togni was the original winemaker at Chappellet. And the story I had heard when he arrived there, if anyone knows where he came from, it's part of the story, because he arrived there and (who ever he was working for) said, 'Oh, we've got to rip out all this Chenin block.'"
"And he goes, 'No, no.'...He had just left Chalone, and he's like, 'I know how to make it.' And they're like, 'Okay, we'll keep it.' ...So that was kind of this rebirth of a serious Chenin–the first kind of cult Chenin Blanc."
"The reality of the demand that Chenin Blanc had in the Napa Valley, in our parents lifetime–everyone wanted it.
"In the 70s, it was the most planted white grape in Napa Valley."
Nonetheless, the grape is rarely grown even in areas of the state where it could perform beautifully, the speakers said. Amador County is the source for one of Tegan's Chenins.
Tegan made a plea for more people to plant the variety and to hold on to the vines (so winemakers of the future could get grapes from old Chenin vines).
"If you're young, try to plan a vineyard...All of us in this room who make wine, we're takers, we're not givers. We've been able to be very successful on the backs of what the people from past generations have done. And we're not doing that for the further generations to come."
"Everyone says, well, it's really hard to find a vineyard. But do you think in 1919 that it was easy for people in Russian River to plant...when they worked at the quarry? No, it's always been hard, but that's the big issue.
"Why we don't have this is because people aren't doing the work that the future generations are going to be able to make great wines from.
"South Africa...had great work done, and then thank God for the distilling and brandy that saved all these [Chenin] vineyards for them for 50 years.
"We don't have that right now, so people in 50 years are gonna be like, 'where's all the old Chenin and vineyards that we get to make wine from? And it's like, 'Grandpa, why didn't you plant them?"
1. Scions of Sinai
In the masterclass, Bredell presented his 2023 Granietsteen Chenin Blanc, a spectacular example, full of glorious acidity. (More info here). I agree with Randy when he writes: "I have to say that the one wine that impressed me the most was Bredell’s 2024 Scions of Sinai Granietsteen Vineyard Chenin Blanc: An absolute stunner of a wine, oozing with mineral, lime-like and honeyed qualities, a rapier-tart and high tension edginess offset by silken textures and the barest touch of green leafiness." It was a tough act to follow.
Description: From Sinai Hill, southern Stellenbosch. An old Chenin blanc single vineyard from 1978. Planted on South-East facing contours as dry-farmed bushvines rooted on weathered in-situ granite soils. Overlooking the shores of False Bay a mere 3.5km away.
2. Sandlands
This Amador County wine, from head trained vines planted in 1979, was subtler with more subdued acidity but with a beautiful grapefruit juice streak.
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| By the end of the day, Tegan had poured a lot of wine....(Photo from his instagram post) |
AN ENTHUSIASTIC, VIBRANT WINE CULTURE
Chenin fervor abounded, expressed in the exuberant display of Chenin hats, abundance of expensive oysters ($38 a dozen), lamb sausage hot dogs, basil
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A few years ago, one Chenin fan made an underground and unauthorized T-shirt homage to Chenin evangelist Tegan Passalaqua
CALIFORNIA'S CHENIN O. G.'s |
KINDRED SPIRITS | ALL FROM MASSA
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Jenna Davis, winemaker at DuMOL with the 2023 vintage
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