Verticals of Ramey’s Hyde and Ritchie Vineyard Chardonnays
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
The invitation from David Ramey was one that I couldn’t resist. “We’ll taste my Ritchie and Hyde Vineyard Chardonnays as far back as I still have bottles. And if we find a tired bottle, I’ll open more until we get a good one,” he said. “My Chardonnays need time in the cellar, and none of them should be over the hill, even at age 15. If we find a bad bottle, but then the next one is full of life, the problem has to be the cork. That’s the only variable.”
This was a bold claim, particularly as most California Chardonnays are best within the two or three years after their release and all but a handful of producers suggest drinking their wines within six to eight years from the harvest. On the other hand, Ramey is a long-time student of Burgundy and an indisputable master of Chardonnay. Back in 1987, while at Matanzas Creek, he was the first California winemaker to whole-cluster press non-sparkling Chardonnay in order to minimize oxidizable tannins in his wines, an approach that has since become the industry standard. Since that time, no other winemaker on the West Coast has bottled a larger range and volume of outstanding Chardonnays. One almost takes the constant stream of 90+-point Chardonnays for granted from this remarkably consistent winemaker.
Hyde Vineyard
And Ramey is convinced that the wines he’s making today will age even better - and more consistently - than his past vintages, since he has switched entirely to molded agglomerated Diam corks as of vintage 2013. He uses Diam 10s (i.e., “guaranteed to remain free of cork taste and organoleptic deviation” for at least ten years) for his Chardonnays and the denser Diam 30s for his Cabernets and Bordeaux blends. Beyond their purity, these corks also provide for more consistent oxygen transmission rates than traditional corks and do a better job of preserving the free SO2 in wines, thus slowing the evolution of the wine in the bottle. (On the subject of corks and other factors critical to the longevity of Chardonnay, see my accompanying video interview with Ramey.)
David Ramey’s Long Chardonnay History
Over the past 30+ years, David Ramey has served as winemaker for Matanzas Creek, Chalk Hill, Dominus Estate and Rudd Estate, and he made Chardonnays at all of them. Christian Moueix allowed Ramey to begin his own label (Ramey Wine Cellars) in 1996, while he was at Dominus, with a wine from Larry Hyde’s vineyard in Carneros, which Ramey made in the Luna cellars with his friend John Kongsgaard. Ramey added a Hudson Vineyard bottling to his line-up in 1997, then began making Russian River Valley and Carneros Chardonnays in 2000. He introduced Cabernet to the Ramey Wine Cellars portfolio in 2001 and added Syrah in 2005. The 1998 through 2001 vintages were made at Rudd Estate, but then Ramey moved his operation to Healdsburg, sharing space to vinify in 2002 and then moving into his own facility the following year. Ramey made his first major purchase of vineyards in 2012 when he bought a 75-acre property on Westside Road across from Williams-Selyem, which includes 32 acres of Chardonnay vines and 10.5 of Pinot Noir.
David Ramey on Corks and the Ageability of Chardonnay" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1501081867154-Screenshot.png">
David Ramey on Corks and the Ageability of Chardonnay
At the outset, Ramey offered sizable quantities of such “appellation wines” as his Chardonnay Russian River Valley and Chardonnay Sonoma Coast, which he has always described as his village wines, as well as smaller quantities of vineyard-designated wines—Hudson and Hyde vineyards at the beginning (he dropped Hudson after the 2011 vintage), then Ritchie in 2002, Platt Vineyard in 2009 through 2014, Woolsey Road in 2012, and Westside Farms in 2014. He refers to the latter wines as his premier crus (a less-modest producer, or one less familiar with the wines of Burgundy, undoubtedly would have elevated them to grand cru status). And he will offer a Rochioli Vineyard Chardonnay with vintage 2015, from fruit he purchases from the Rochiolis.
