Augieland: The Wine Workshop Marcassin Tasting

Helen Turley exists in a weird space in winemaking. She is definitely one of the most influential winemakers in the world, while being the closest thing we have to a traditionalist winemaker in America. She practices classic Burgundian winemaking, encouraging her varietals to be as much as they can be within the terroir of California through torturous practices. Helen gets every bit of character a grape has to offer and jams all of it into the glass. In the vineyard she limits fruit per vine, plants very densely and lets the fruit get as mature as nature will allow. In the winery she uses natural yeast, new oak, and leaves the juice on the lees after fermentation. The results are wines uniquely stamped to the places they are made while clearly guided by the hand of a person with conviction.

Wednesday night I went to The Wine Workshop tasting of Marcassin wines at the Algonquin hotel and had the opportunity to taste six of her chardonnays from four vineyards, and six pinot noirs from three vineyards. As a result of Helen’s fame and respect, her wines trade at a rather dear price for those of us not on her mailing list (the waiting list for the mailing list is about 5,000 people long, I have been on it for two years and at the time I signed on it was estimated at a 5 years wait) although, to her credit, the prices offered those on the list have always seemed quite fair. So scarcity and price make the opportunity to taste Marcassin wines both vertically and horizontally a seldom occasion.

The reason to jump at such an opportunity when it arises is because these are California wines born of the California earth, and the ripeness achievable buries nuance as such, so they tend to seem uniform to a palate that is drawn to the more obvious subtleties (sic) of the colder parts of the world. While drinking any one of them it is easy to see that, although these are big, boozy, and extracted, they are affected by the place they came from. Tasting one next to another, varying touches can show through the heavy-handed flavor California naturally imparts on its wines and the uniqueness that makes these each special can shine; by sampling vineyard next to vineyard and vintage next to vintage you can see the terroir show through. We had:

Marcassin Chardonnay Three Sisters Vineyards ’01
Nose: butterscotch, ginger, cantaloupe,
Palate: viscous, boozy, rich, long finish, pineapple becoming melon, with citrus notes

Marcassin Chardonnay Upper Barn Alexander Mountain Estate ’01
Nose: tarragon, skunk, ginger, honey, white stones, popcorn
Palate: big, long finish with ginger, stones, glass, and spice cabinet

Marcassin Chardonnay Marcassin Vineyard ’01
Nose: tuille cookies, ginger snaps
Palate: ginger, corn bread, more focused acidity

Marcassin Chardonnay Marcassin Vineyard ’99
Nose: honeysuckle, ginger, tuille cookies, chalk, butter, cashews
Palate: balance and integration fruit to booze to acidity, citrus, guava, and herbs

Marcassin Chardonnay Marcassin Vineyard ’97
Nose: roasted cashews, petrol, apricot kernel, wheat
Palate: tart with orange notes, hugely mouth filling with a long lingering finish

Marcassin Chardonnay Lorenzo Vineyard ’95
Nose: oxidized, butter, honey, marmalade, and peaches
Palate: this wine was clearly not what was intended; it had butter notes and diesel notes but it seemed to be completely botrytiscized. I don’t know whether or not Helen encourages or discourages botrytis in the vineyard (based on all her other practices, I would assume it is allowed to some degree) but the nose on this wine was incredibly like a ’75 d’Yquem. Nothing like the other Lorenzo chards I have had in the past, but hard to call it bad.

Marcassin Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge ’01
Nose: slate, smoke, cinnamon, burning brush
Palate: sweet-woody tannins, black cherry fruit

Marcassin Pinot Noir Three Sisters Vineyards ‘01
Nose: boozy, touch of barnyard, blueberry, anise, cut grass
Palate: raspberries

Marcassin Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge ‘00
Nose: guava, slate, chrome, chilies, barnyard, cloves
Palate: boozy, sweet fruit, linear tannin, tart acidity, red apples, herbs, ponzu

Marcassin Pinot Noir Marcassin Vineyard ‘00
Nose: funky, raspberries, wood, hung meat, clay, pretzels
Palate: boozy, red apples, juicy red fruit, sweet tannin

Marcassin Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge ‘99
Nose: herbs, capsicum, slate, banana
Palate: boozy, raspberries, crushed fruit red apples, sweet tannins

Marcassin Pinot Noir Blue Slide Ridge 98
Nose: boozy, funk, cinnamon, toffee, stones
Palate: boozy, raspberries, black cherry, red apples, sweet tannins

Would you use any of these words to describe a Burgundy? Some. Do you have to describe these wines as Burgandian? Yes, because what they are doing in Burgundy is creating the greatest wine each piece of property will support, and as a result make some of the most pleasing wines out there, as does Helen. If there was some amazing year in which somehow Burgundy got California’s weather they would make the same wine Helen does, they recently came close look at ’02. To argue that hers merit less respect because making them seems easier in her chosen terroir ignores the gallons and gallons of insipid juice with no other character than being Californian all around her. It’s like discounting Madonna’s hugely successful and long career because she is sexy.