Vinography Unboxed: Week of 9/1/24

Hello and welcome to my weekly dig through the pile of wine samples that show up asking to be tasted. I’m pleased to bring you the latest installment of Vinography Unboxed, where I highlight some of the better bottles that have crossed my doorstep recently.

This week included a few more Pinot Noirs from Nicolas Jay, the joint project between Jean-Nicolas Méo (of Burgundy’s Domaine Méo-Camuzet) and music entrepreneur Jay Boberg (co-founder of IRS Records). All four wines are worth seeking out as distinctive expressions of Willamette Valley. I particularly enjoyed the single-vineyard wines from Nysa Vineyard and Bishop Creek, both of which were planted in the late 1980s, and are now (own-rooted, and organically dry-farmed) in their maturity showing lovely complexity and individuality.

This week I’m also happy to recommend a couple more wines from Virginia. Indeed, these three wines are among the best I’ve had from the state. The Cave Ridge Vineyards Fossil Hill bottling offers wonderful red and blue fruits with great elegance and balance. Likewise, the King Family Vineyards Meritage manages to be medium-bodied and restrained while offering ripe expressions of fruit.  The “Spark” from Hark Vineyards is perhaps a little less elegant, but no less tasty. All three are excellent ambassadors for Virgina’s potential, and highly recommended for anyone who may be unfamiliar with the state’s viticultural potential.

I’ve been tasting the wines of Tierra Roja for some time. Proprietor Linda Neal brings a level of passion and personal dedication to her estate that is admirable in a valley with so many absentee vineyard owners (she does business under the name Obsession Wine Company, after all). The 2021 vintage is perhaps the best in a decade from Tierra Roja. The wine is made in the modern Napa style—big-boned and ripe, but not over-extracted and with a surprising elegance that results in a powerful wine, but one that is not overbearing—a sweet mouthful of fruit that isn’t jammy. Ultimately, another example of why I think 2021 is such a great vintage in Napa.

Crosby Roamann is a wine brand run by Juliana McBride and her husband Sean. Transplants from Brooklyn, this pair spent more than a decade living and working in Napa before deciding to launch their own label named after their respective grandparents. This week I’m tasting their Syrah from the Petaluma Gap in Sonoma County, as well as their Merlot-dominated red blend from Napa Valley. The Syrah is perhaps at an awkward stage of its evolution in the bottle, showing a little reduced at the start, but there’s excellent acidity here that suggests it may age into a more complete version of itself. The red blend is more seamless and approachable now, though I would personally wait a couple of years to see what it can really do. The winery makes much of sustainability and the carbon-neutral status of its wines, which is quite admirable, but I can’t help but wonder why they persist in using such heavy glass. Going with lighter bottles would presumably make them not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative!

Finally, I’m thrilled to have gotten a chance to taste what I believe is one of the most impressive debuts in Napa in quite some time with a great story behind it. Cuong Pham fled Vietnam in the late 1970s as part of the huge exodus around the war. In the United States, he became an engineer at Apple, then an entrepreneur, eventually founding Red Boat Fish Sauce company, the successful and rather ubiquitous purveyor of this crucial Vietnamese ingredient to restaurants globally. In 2021 he purchased land on Soda Creek Road in Napa Valley, and hired winemaker Nova Cadamatre to make his first wine, Dôi Dá (“Rocky Hill” in Vietnamese) which was recently released. This first vintage is made from purchased fruit, but the 9-acre estate vineyard will come online in three to four years. This initial wine seems to be to be an incarnation of…