Feels like #shrovetuesday came a month early. A varietal #negoce feast with @PearcePredhomme
Nicholas Pearce and Will Predhomme form the intermutual Ontario wine agent and sommelier-consultant union extraordinaire. If you’ve not met them, tasted with them or traveled to South Africa with them, you have not yet lived. Pearce-Predhomme are the proud papas of wines made in Oregon and South Africa. Their mission is as builders and facilitator-importers of wines from their favourite appellations. Three days ago I tasted their most recent releases.
Hyland Vineyard is a rather large 185 acre plot on a south-facing bench in the foothills of the Coast Range near McMinnville in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. French winemaker Laurent Montalieu makes the pinot noir for Pearce and Predhomme at the Northwest Wine Company.
The Helderberg (Afrikaans) or Clear Mountain (English) is the ancient place in South Africa’s Western Cape from which the boys draw their chenin blanc. The bush vines are found in the southwestern-most corner of Stellenbosch adjacent to False Bay. Their first kick at the red blend can is a syrah-cinsault schlepped off of old bush vines on antediluvian Helderberg Koffieklip (ironstone) soils. Both wines are produced in collaboration with winemaker-oenologist Jacques de Klerk and Alex Dale’s Radford Dale brand at The Winery of Good Hope in Stellenbosch. Here are the notes.
@mgodello & @willpredhomme getting geeky on the new @pearcepredhomme releases.
Pearce Predhomme Pinot Noir Hyland Vineyard 2015, Mcminnville Ava, Willamette Valley, Oregon (Agent, $39.99 plus HST, WineAlign)
It was Eyrie Vineyards’ David Lett who started this whole volcanic pinot noir thing 40 years ago and it is here out of this single, heritage vineyard in McMinville where Nicholas Pearce and Will Predhomme are laying négoce roots. This pinot noir is from a Pommard clone with opposing and complimenting ripeness and anti-ripeness attributes, located on a monster hill of 185 acres. The wine is made at the Northwest Wine Company by Laurent Montalieu and in 2015 we are witness to a pattern forming (or joining, depending on your vantage point) for McMinnville pinot noir. Here very floral with a sous-sous-terre saline current and richness that is forever held at bay by rock, viaduct geology and that specific Oregon salumi cure. A bit ferric in the best New World possible way. Really chewy pinot noir, not dangerous mind you because I’ll get over it and so will you. That’s volcanic for you. The alcohol cut above is honest at 13.6 per cent, not uncommon for Pommard and its inherent greeneess, which is a thing in terms of heredity and perpetual genetics. Ah, clonal selection, though certainly not clinical. Nice choice of vintage too. There were 120 cases made. Drink 2018-2022. Tasted January 2017 @PearcePredhomme @Nicholaspearce_ @WillPredhomme
Pearce Predhomme Chenin Blanc Whole Old Vine/Wild Ferment 2016, Clear Mountain, Stellenbosch, South Africa (Agent, $19.99 plus HST, WineAlign)
Made at Radford Dale Winery and in homage to the afrikaans nomenclature for Clear Mountain known as the Helderberg, this is the second vintage of the Pearce-Predhomme chenin blanc. Comes from a rugged and ancient place of decomposed granite, quartz and Koffieklip, the great geological qualifier containing iron, mica and phosphorous. This striking and “sublieme” chenin from the négoce duo of Nicholas Pearce and Will Predhomme was harvested two weeks early in the hot vintage of ’16 with the Strook Vineyard providing the laser acid and the Bankrupt Vineyard (planted in 1988) nurturing the mother to infant skin-contact portion. The boys and their captain (Radford Dale winemaker Jacques de) Klerk made use of more young vine fruit partly due to vintage but also to temper richness. No matter how early you harvest chenin blanc from the Helderberg there will somehow always be this viscous, cotton picking candy note. Once into barrel this became “a wine that almost made itself,” admits Predhomme, with no sulphur addition. It’s labeled and literally is 12.56 per cent alcohol and as a follow up to the ’15 it furthers the rock salt grip and yet also seems compressed with melon-rich goodness. Wiser men than this group were not always able to balance wild South African west, ultra-phenolic ripe chenin blanc with raging acidity, but here the twain is traversed. It was bottled very recently so it will sit and settle, to be released on or around April 1st. There are 540 cases available. Drink 2017-2020. Tasted January 2017 @deklerkjacques @Radforddale @WineryGoodHope @WOSA_ZA @WOSACanada
Pearce Predhomme Syrah/Cinsault Whole Cluster/Wild Ferment 2016, Koffieklip, Stellenbosch, South Africa (Agent, $19.99 plus HST, WineAlign)
The whole cluster vacuous bubble has yet to burst and rain exquisite aromatics so you are wise to engage in a full-on, get wet splash, to release the reductive hounds of charm out of the Koffieklip. The licit dyad of Nicholas Pearce and Will Predhomme are banking on an emphasis from freshness by Syrah and for the thin-skinned Cinsault, whole cluster and wild ferment treatment off of unirrigated bush vines. “Buried in the hail” of the whole and wild is two per cent fruit from Wildcard Vineyard, bush vines of unknown varietal. Could this be the catalyst to tie the room together in the inaugural red’s simple twist of fate? The quadrant realized falls somewhere on the space-time party continuum between Radford Dale’s two geekonic labels Thirst and Nudity, at once fresh and gulpable and then conversely structured and corporeal. The SC carries in its joint DNA the funk of Thirst in minor capacity and then the paradigm shift moves into the weight and intensity of the other. Though seeking attention and love, it persists a bit liquid chalky and grainy in the tannic structure, with a gamy bit of (ferric) blood on the tracks. The stanzas of complexity should make you think not on it as just a one hit, one-year wonder, but as a whole album side of a wine to gulp over three years time. There were 458 cases made. Drink 2017-2019. Tasted January 2017
Good to go!
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