North Coast Producers Unite to Brand Mendocino Coro
Posted by bitsculptor on 09/06 at 11:54 AM
May 15, 2011 by Howard Hewitt
California hardly conjures up an image of a wine region struggling with an identity crisis. But there are areas of the Golden State that have never fully defined a winemaking niche.
A consortium of Mendocino County winemakers are counting on a Zinfandel blend called Coro to create market buzz. The Coro Mendocino group claims it is the United States’ first proprietary blend. “Coro” means “chorus” in Italian and Spanish, best illustrating the cooperative effort.
“Mendocino has never had strong representation,” said Paul Dolan, a partner in the Parducci Winery. “I’d say we still don’t have an identity in the marketplace. The Russian River is Pinot Noir, Napa is Cabernet. I’d say the Central Coast is somewhat in the same spot we are. It has taken these outlying areas a little longer to define themselves.”
Dolan, who worked at Fetzer before buying into Parducci, also produces his own line of wines. He started working on a blend at Fetzer in the 1990s that featured Zinfandel and Petite Sirah before joining Dennis Patton, now the winemaker at Golden Vineyards, to create Coro.
“The more I got into it the more I decided it would be a great venture,” Dolan said of the early days. “We invited a few winemakers to work with us on developing the concept. It took three or four months but we realized we had something.”
The key to Coro’s early development was the winemakers’ shared attitude to make Coro something special. The production protocol requires the Coro to have a minimum of 40 percent and up to a maximum of 70 percent Zinfandel. The approved second tier varietals may not exceed the percentage of Zinfandel. Those second tier wines are Syrah, Petite Sirah, Carignane, Sangiovese, Grenache, Dolcetto, Charbono, Barbera, and Primitivo. Wine makers can then add up to 10 percent from any single or combined vinifera source. And, of course, all of the grapes must be grown in Mendocino County.
Protocol requires an alcohol level between 12.5 and 16 percent, minimum of one-year barrel aging, use of a Coro label, and approval of a five-member selection panel. There can be no protocol parameters on the wine’s cost, by law, but most of the current members sell their Coro near the $37 price point. The first vintage was 2001 with winemakers currently selling the 2006 and 2007. The 2008 will be released this summer while the 2009 just went through the first of two pass/fail tastings.
“It took quite a long time to iron out those production protocols,” said Julie Golden, Golden Vineyards. “We discussed how we’re going to keep people doing what we wanted to do. We have quarterly meetings. We refine the protocol and define roles.
“But what really came out of it all is the collaborative exchange. It’s really not a business that’s run like a business. People enjoy it and we’ve worked really hard to see that it stays defined that way.”
Current Coro producers, as listed on their website, include Brutocao, Fetzer, Mendocino Vineyards, Golden, Graziano, McDowell, McFadden, McNab Ridge, Pacific Star, Parducci, Philo Ridge, Barra, and Weibel Family Vineyards.
Each winemaker creates a blend that doesn’t just represent Mendocino but also their own individual styles.
“Mendocino has a strong Italian heritage with Sangiovese, Barbera, Primitivo, and Dolcetto,” Philo Ridge winemaker and owner Fred Buonanno said. “But we are using grapes that have been traditionally grown here, hence our signature Zinfandel but also Syrah, Petite Sirah, and Grenache.
“People tend to think Coro will be homogeneous due to the Zinfandel base but it’s nothing like that. Graziano tends more to the Italian style while Philo Ridge has more Rhone characteristics. Yet, we’re following the same guidelines.”
Still, the county’s long history with Zinfandel remains at the core of the blend. “Some of the oldest vines in the county are Zinfandel, which showcases our heritage,” said Rich Parducci, McNab Ridge. “Zinfandel is planted from the red soils of Redwood Valley, down to McDowell Valley, over the Mendocino Ridge into the Anderson Valley.”
But with the Zinfandel requirement dipping as low as 40 percent, winemakers can use “all the spices in our rack,” Parducci said. “Usually, I run through all the wines I’m considering for Coro (three or four Zins, Petite Sirah, Syrah, Pinotage, Carignane, and Grenache Noir), tasting each and visualizing how each would work in the blend. Some never make it past that point; they don’t have what it takes or what I think it takes to be Coro.
“Once I’ve decided on the lots I’ll be using, the blend dictates which direction I’ll go. Maybe the wine needs structure so I back off the Zin and blend in Petite Sirah to round it out. I routinely make and taste blends over a period of a few days.”
The Parducci family has made wine in the region for more than 75 years so he relies on historical insight to numerous Mendocino vineyards to source his fruit.
All of the producers talk enthusiastically about the cooperative effort exceeding expectations.
“We truly enjoy the collaboration that goes into making Coro with our fellow winemakers,” Buonanno said. “It helps us to understand what different folks are looking for in wines and helps us hone our winemaking skills.”
But Buonanno knows Coro has to expand to be successful. The Coro consortium does not submit the wines for review and is self-funded, limiting marketing abilities. “What we have to do better is evangelize Coro to our brethren,” he adds.
“Most people have never heard of a consortium of winemakers or a ‘prescribed’ winemaking method. But once they do hear about it they find it very intriguing. The whole concept of winemakers doing blind judging to help competitors to make the best wine that they can leaves people feeling good about the program.”
Dolan, one of the biggest names in the Mendocino region, still finds the cooperation amongst producers to be Coro’s biggest achievement. “It was a super pleasant surprise,” Dolan recalled. “When we were going through the process of trying to identify varieties and looking at the label I was shocked they decided to use the same look and feel.
“I was on the other side of the fence. I didn’t think that was a particularly good idea. But it was more important to me that there was agreement. When they started down that path, I became a strong supporter and believer.”
2007 Coro Mendocino Wines
- Brutocao Cellars: 45% Zinfandel, 25% Primitivo, 20% Syrah, 10% Dolcetto
- Fetzer Vineyards: 63.3% Zinfandel, 18.4% Syrah 18.3% Petite Sirah
- Golden Vineyards: 45% Zinfandel, 30% Petite Sirah, 15% Syrah, 10% Sangiovese
- Graziano Family Wines: 51% Zinfandel, 11% Petite Sirah, 11% Barbera, 11% Sangiovese, 11% Dolcetto, 5% Primitivo
- McDowell Valley Vineyards: 51.3% Zinfandel, 24% Petite Sirah, 14.8% Syrah, 3.6% Touriga Nacional, 2.4% Grenache, 3.9% Other Reds
- McFadden Farms: 60% Zinfandel, 26.8% Syrah, 13.2% Petite Syrah
- McNab Ridge Winery: 49.5% Zinfandel, 29% Petite Sirah, 11.25% Syrah, 4.85% Carignane, 3.1% Grenache Noir, 2.3% Pinotage
- Mendocino Vineyards: 70% Zinfandel, 24.4% Syrah, 5.6% Cabernet Sauvignon
- Parducci Wine Estate: 47% Zinfandel, 45% Syrah, 8% Petite Sirah
- Philo Ridge: 60% Zinfandel, 20% Petite Sirah, 20% Syrah
Howard W. Hewitt is a former career journalist who writes a bi-weekly newspaper column in Indiana. he also writes about value wine on his blog, Grape Sense – A Glass Half Full.
The original article can be read here.
Winemakers
Bottles
Winemakers
A statement zin
Posted by bitsculptor on 09/06 at 11:51 AM
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
At some point in 2002 a group of Mendocino County vintners was getting restless. What could they do, collectively, to make a statement, to show the world how old plantings of zinfandel, carignane and petite sirah could taste when blended together by a group of winemakers with a singular goal?
Coro Mendocino became that goal, created by Fetzer consulting winemaker Dennis Patton, who was also making blends for nearby Golden Vineyards, and Paul Dolan, still president of Fetzer at the time.
They persuaded a lineup of fellow winemakers to join their cause, all of whom would make their first Coro blends using 2001 juice already in barrel: Sam Gabrielli of Gabrielli Winery, Greg Graziano of Graziano Family of Wines, Casey Hartlip of Eaglepoint Ranch, Fred Nickel of Brutocao Cellars, Sally Ottoson of Pacific Star and Bob Swain of Parducci.
“I liked the idea of a communal wine, to come up with something special that gave our area a differentiation,” said Swain. “The initial talks on Coro were wide open. It was interesting to be in on the initial conceiving of a wine type; as a group we had to come to a mutual understanding of what we felt expressed best the area we were making wine in.”
What they decided early on was that the goal would be to make a wine that could only have come from Mendocino. And to the founding vintners of Coro, which means chorus in Italian, that means zinfandel first and foremost.
Zinfandel has to be a minimum of 40 percent, maximum of 70 percent of the blend they make. From there, there are choices - among them syrah, petite sirah, carignane, sangiovese, grenache, dolcetto, charbono, barbera and primitivo, as long as no one of them exceeds the percentage of zinfandel. From there it's what the group calls “free play,” the chance to use up to 10 percent of any other kind of grape.
“Having that base gives a common, familiar background to the wines without making the wines too similar,” added Swain. “The 70 percent max restriction was because when we were setting up the wine type we purposely wanted to make sure that the wine could not be classified as just another zinfandel.”
The wine has to be sourced entirely from Mendocino vineyards, of course, and made entirely at a winery in the county as well. From there there's a gobbledygook of chemistry and labeling parameters as well as a timetable each vintner must adhere to.
And then it gets interesting. Each wine is submitted to a selection panel of five people, three of whom must be fellow Coro winemakers, who taste the initial wines and decide if they pass or fail. The majority rules.
Bernadette Byrne runs SIP Mendocino, a tasting room and wine shop in Hopland where the Coro wines can be found.
“Folks out walking the streets and stopping in to tasting rooms are introduced to these wines at each tasting room and are very impressed with the wines,” she said. “I tell them about the collaboration, and the very tough standards that the Coro group has, the challenging ‘pass/fail' tastings and how each winemaker feels that they have actually grown into being a better winemaker because of their involvement with the Coro program.”
Vintners must apply to join Coro and may leave the group whenever they wish. Annual dues are $500.
People have left, notably Graziano, Gabrielli, Ottoson and Hartlip, from the early days. New members this year include Weibel Family Vineyards & Winery and Barra of Mendocino.
“The ups and downs have been mostly financial, not of the group but of the individual wineries that have come and gone,” noted Swain. “A couple have left because they did not take the program seriously enough, did not make it to tastings or missed submittals of wines and they were not able to have wines that met the quality level expected by the group.”
Margaret Pedroni made the 2008 blend for Weibel, a family winery based in Lodi with 500 acres of Mendocino vineyards throughout the Redwood and Potter valleys. For her 2008 blend, she used 51 percent zinfandel and 49 percent petite sirah, aging it for 18 months in French and American oak. Not a shy wine at 14.9 percent alcohol, it's fruit forward and complex, full of black fruit aroma, predominantly blackberry. Only 44 cases were made.
“Since Coro is a blend, it is exciting to make,” Pedroni said. “I personally like Rhones to blend with zinfandel. I have found that the varietals from Bordeaux or Burgundy are more difficult and somewhat challenging to blend with.”
Swain, on the other hand, made 168 cases using 43 percent zinfandel, 28.5 percent syrah and 28.5 percent petite sirah and followed a similar barrel-aging plan, 18 months in French and American oak. The syrah adds a distinctively meaty, smoky tone to his wine.
Eight other wines were made in 2008 and have just been released, from McFadden Farms' 69 percent zin blend to Fetzer's 40 percent zin, 39 percent syrah and 21 percent petite sirah. They're all testaments to the group's commitment and zeal to show what Mendocino fruit can do even in a troubled vintage.
“2008 was the most challenging because of everything nature threw us in one year,” said Swain, acknowledging 2008's double whammy of frost and smoky fires.
The first blind tastings of the 2009 vintage were held in January, with Claudia Springs Winery a new participant in the program. Video postings of the rigorous tastings are slated for broadcast on Coro Mendocino's Facebook page as they happen over this year.
Virginie Boone is a freelance wine writer based in SonomaCounty. She can be reached at virginieboone@yahoo.com.
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The orginal article can be found here.
Zinfandel blends promote wine region
Posted by bitsculptor on 09/06 at 11:47 AM
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This article is from the July/August 2004 issue of Practical Winery & Vineyard Magazine. Order current or back issues here.
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