New Winery Visit-Frog's Leap-Awesome Petit Sirah!

I know there are a couple of threads about "organic" wine on here, and I was bicycling in Rutherford this weekend, so I decided to check out one of the more vocal Napa Valley proponents of "natural" wines-Frog's Leap.

Very impressed, to be honest! The red barn is beautiful, and the tasting house is a lovely example of rustic semi-craftsman style rural architecture. LEED certified, I understand. The grounds, also, are are stunning, with gardens, flowers, a view of the vineyards. A sit down tasting on a lovely porch. Cute dog running around enjoying herself very much visiting with the guests. What a lovely afternoon!

I found all of the wines to be quite restrained, even elegant, and delicious. Alcohol levels are below 14%. The chardonnay from Carneros showed blazing minerality and stonyness, with fantstic citrus fruit. I am not a fan of chardonnay, but I enjoyed this.

Similarly, the 2008 Merlot was lovely. Powerful cherry fruit, with elements of plum. Definitely some "dustyness" and anise and delicious herbs. Merlot is another Napa wine grape I don't always like, but I enjoyed this.

The 2007 Rutherford cab followed the same house style. Dark black fruit with elegant tannic structure. Lovely, lovely "dust." Kinda pricey, but nice.

The wine that made me the most excited, though, was the 2008 Rutherford Petit Sirah. Intense blueberry fruit. Not goopy, oaky, jammy or alcoholic, though. FRESH. incredibly fresh with great acidity. Underlying the blueberry was delicious intense herbs and meaty notes. I love Petit Sirah when it shows this kind of rustic character and wild and crazyness.

Fantastic wine!

So...what do you guys think about dry farming? This winery's vineyards are on the valley floor and they do not irrigate! does it make a difference?

Great place to visit. John is a remarkably good winemaker.

I bet even Lou Kessler would approve of your choice this time, Brian!

Confession...I joined their club.

If two grapes I generally don't love (Merlot and Chard) wow me...it is someone I want to support.

It was the few paragraphs that John wrote in defense of dry farming for the last page of a Wine and Spririts a while back that convinced me I had to give his wines a try. I have had the Zin while the Cab is still waiting. Liked the Zin enough to go out a buy more and I don't drink much Zin and none these days that does not start with Ridge.

I will let others comment about the benefits/disadvantages of dry farming. I do it with my small plot of vines but my rainfall levels are much greater than Napa and still I have had to pull out the emergency hoses when I almost lost some vines during last years drought.

I read the article also, Brian, and found it quite interesting. He benefits, for some of the vineyards, from a location quite near the Napa River, so I am guessing he gets higher groundwater here???????

I used to like Frog's Leap better than Frogs' Leap, but it's been years since I've tasted any of either.
There is, of course, a tale behind the apostrophe location, and it's longer than a frog's tail.

John

I'm a big fan of dry-farming, or should we say non-irrigated vines as that is the norm in Europe. In fact irrigation is not allowed in France for AOC wines. It's always seemed off to me that so many Napa and Sonama vineyards are irrigated. I know rainfall is low but it's higher than here in the Languedoc-Roussillon or Chateuneuf and the soils in Napa are more water-retentive too. While it's true that irrigation can be used wisely to iron out annual changes in rainfall and ensure that the grapes achieve "perfect" ripeness all the time, it has a dramatic effect on the root structure of the vine, encouragin shallow-rooting rather than deep-rooting. A lot of the terroir expression that you find in French wines comes from the way the root structure has adapted to the soil type. If you irrigate, you lose that major aspect of terroir.

It depends on what kind of wine you are trying to make but my experience everywhere in the world is that I prefer the flavour of wines made without irrigation.

Mr. MIller is correct.

The Rutherford Petite Sirah is grown on a parcel sold to Frog's Leap by the Galleron family.

The soil type and proximity to the Napa River prompted them to plant Petite Sirah.

I haven't tasted the bottling in several vintages, but the 2005 was simply fabulous.