A Sonoma Saturday, If You’re so In-Clined

Hi guys. Just a quick post about a little jaunt we took up to the lower reaches of Sonoma, just above Carneros, the other day.

The “Pendulum” wine club up at the Cline winery was hosting one of their release parties for the latest club shipment, and though we had picked up our selections a couple of weeks earlier when we were in the ‘hood, these events always provide a fun, festive opportunity to taste a couple of dozen offerings, including myriad wines that aren’t part of the current club selections.

It’s one of those clambakes wherein parking attendants are hired for the occasion, directing you with professional precision just where on the lawn to park the Lisa Marie, the barrel room is ringed by the “stations of the cross” pouring locales, and cooperage is upended to provide resting spots for your glass as well as catered small bites.

The Cline club is a fave for us here in CoCo County; the Cline and Jacuzzi families have solid rootstock in our little Oakley burg, and many of their bottlings reflect the municipal vineyard holdings that they maintain and hold in estimation high enough to designate the real estate on the bottles’ labels. As posted before when Kathy and I began this project of gumshoeing vineyard sites in our area, Cline made it easy: Their Big Break, Bridgehead and Live Oak patches just happen to be named for Oakley roads.

On Saturday, Kath and I worked our way through the hymn book that was the wine card for the event. Among the 20+ selections were an “Oakley White,” (though I suspect that that’s just a callback to the fam’s roots; not much, if any, white grapes grown around here), an “Oakley Red,” and the new 2011 release of the Big Break Zinfandel.

Bisected by Burlington Northern railroad tracks and surrounded by sporadic walls of eucalyptus trees (not mention terminating at the parking lot of the veterinarian for our rescue kitties, Fritter and Baklava), Big Break Zins routinely deliver that outrageous hint o’ mint that K and I dig in certain Sonoma Cabs and other offerings sourced from funky varietal terroir.

Sometimes, ‘tis a puzzlement: Yul often read in the various wine rags the latest entry in a teapot tempest about wine alcohol levels; lately, I’ve been trying to digest the charge that, as vine rootstock can not digest rock or mineral, the idea that any white can taste “flinty” or “ of mineral” is deluded. Tell that to Chablis.

Just sayin’.

In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got a little more of that Cline “Small Berry” Mourvèdre from CoCo County?