{"id":12082,"date":"2012-12-02T11:27:39","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/?p=12082"},"modified":"2012-12-02T11:28:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:28:13","slug":"ravenswood-teldeschi-zinfandel-wine-tasting-paired-with-wit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/ravenswood-teldeschi-zinfandel-wine-tasting-paired-with-wit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravenswood Teldeschi Zinfandel Wine Tasting Paired With Wit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Mari Kane<\/p>\n

In late October, I attended a winemaker dinner with Joel Peterson, winemaker and \u201cGodfather of Zinfandel\u201d from Ravenswood Vineyards<\/strong><\/a> in Sonoma, California. The event was held at the Flying Pig in Vancouver\u2019s Yaletown, and as we tucked into plates of comfort food, Peterson stood up and began telling stories about the wines he brought to pair. The result was a humorous blend of history lesson and standup comedy that made me homesick for Sonoma.<\/p>\n

My favorite story was about Teldeschi Vineyards since my friend, Bill Wertzberger, makes his wine at the F. Teldeschi winery which I have visited many times. Dan Teldeschi is so frugal that he will pour yesterday\u2019s wine from a laboratory vial in order to avoid opening a new bottle. This kind of quirkiness seems to run in the Teldeschi family, as Peterson elaborated in this story of how he was able to buy grapes from Frank Teldeschi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the vineyard where I got one of my first winemaking lessons,\u201d he started.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vines were planted in 1900 and are still farmed by the same family that planted them. Dry farmed, cross cultivated, effectively organically farmed except they won\u2019t designate it organic because they are Italians. They don’t want rules at all. Don’t tell me what to do even if it\u2019s what I do anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1982, I need grapes, so I go to my mentor\u2019s farmer, Mike Teldeschi. Mike and Joe Swan don\u2019t get along, so he no longer sells grapes to Joe Swan. I figure maybe he\u2019ll sell grapes to me. I walk into his house and we talk about grapes, and he says, \u2018oh yeah, you work for Joe Swan. I\u2019m not selling you grapes because I hate him. And besides that, you have long hair.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI say, great, Mike. Is there anyone else who has grapes like yours?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says, \u2018Oh yeah, go see my brother. My brother loves guys like you. I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll sell you grapes. You know the grapes. They’re right across the dirt road from my vineyard. You should go see him, I\u2019m sure he\u2019s home.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle did I know these guys had a fight 20 years earlier. They hadn\u2019t spoken in 20 years. And so I headed down to Frank Teldeschi’s house.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had long hair and a beard, wore a lot of tie dye. Frank saw me and said, \u2018what do you want?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, I heard you had great grapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank said, \u2018Who sent you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, Your brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Yeah, he does that to piss me off, so you can get outta here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I turned to leave, Frank said, \u2018what\u2019s that in your hand?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, It\u2019s a bottle of wine, Frank, a bottle of zin I made. I thought maybe you\u2019d like to taste it if you were going to sell me grapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018It\u2019s lunchtime, you can stay for lunch.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sat outside under the big tree, his two sons show up from the vineyard, his wife Catarina, who\u2019s Italian, brings out fruit, homemade pasta, a fresh chicken, the pig that Franks shot in the vineyard. We finished off my bottle within 38 microseconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank says, \u2018That\u2019s good, too much oak for me. Maybe you\u2019d like to taste my wine.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe comes back from the barn and he\u2019s swinging a gallon jug that says Petry on the side. I\u2019m thinking, uh oh. Trouble. This is Dego Red, full of aldahyde, full of diea, and I\u2019m going to die! He fills my tumbler and I stick it to my nose to find out what the quality of my death will be \u2013 and it\u2019s pretty darn good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say, Frank this is good. How\u2019d you make it?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says, \u2018Can\u2019t tell ya. Old Italian secret.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, a half a gallon later, old Italian secrets are not so secret.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says, \u2018It\u2019s not complex. It\u2019s a little embarrassing: first of all you have to get the grapes ripe. The other guy who gets grapes here, he doesn\u2019t get them ripe enough. The other thing you have to do is you have to put petite sirah and carignan in your zin \u2018till you’re making it here in Dry Creek. Otherwise, it doesn\u2019t have good balance. I bring my grapes down to my yard when they’re ripe and I put them in my fermenter after I put ’em through my crusher.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThis crusher is really a grape grinder. It’s a box with slanted sides and a handle on the side of it. And his fermenters: he says, \u2018I used to use wood – this is the embarrassing part – but I use those big grey garbage cans.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says, \u2018sometimes I take stems out, sometimes I don\u2019t. It depends on how lazy I feel.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cNot being intellectual about it, he says, \u2018I put the lid on the garbage cans and take a week\u2019s vacation. I come back, I look in the cans. If I can still see skins and stems I push it down and put the lid back on the cans and take another week\u2019s vacation. In really good vintages I take three week\u2019s vacation. Then, I dump the cans into my basket press and press them all. I put it in my barrels, I leave it there for 6 months. I put it in these jugs, we drink it. It\u2019s not complex.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the wine was really good. We drink that entire bottle with his two sons, and by this time Catarina is drinking with us. Frank decides I like his wine well enough and he pulls out a bottle of his favorite muscatel. This is fortified muscat he made in 1955 and it\u2019s really good.<\/p>\n

\u201cLets just say by the time I get up from the table at 4:30 I\u2019m feeling no pain at all. I head off to my car thinking the back seat\u2019s a really good place to take a nap.
\n\u201cFrank says, \u2018what\u2019d ya come for?\u2019
\n\u201cI came to buy grapes, Frank, but you\u2019re not selling. But, great lunch, thank you.
\n\u201cHe said, \u2018I kinda like you. You seem like a nice young man. How many grapes do you think you want?\u2019
\n\u201cI said, four tons.
\n\u201cAnd he said, \u2018four tons?\u2019
\n\u201cI think, wow, that\u2019s not that many grapes to get excited about.
\n\u201cHe says, \u2018The other guy that buys grapes here will never miss four tons. I\u2019ll give you four tons. But I don\u2019t want you hanging around here. If my brother sees you it\u2019ll give him too much satisfaction. If the other guys sees you it\u2019ll just piss him off. And besides that, you\u2019re one of those young winemakers who\u2019ll want to tell me how to grow grapes. I been doing this for 50 years and I don\u2019t need your help. You just come when I call.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, that’s fine Frank, but I have conditions too. You give me the grapes from the same patch of grapes you get your grapes from, you pick them at the same time you pick your grapes, and you give me the same blend you’re going to use for yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I can do that,\u2019 and we shook hands and when I left I said to myself, I\u2019ll never hear from that S.O.B. again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, crush rolls around and I get a call from Frank.
\n\u201cHe says, \u2018grapes are ready.\u2019
\n\u201cI said, Fantastic, Frank, when do you want me there?
\n\u2018Tomorrow morning, 3 o\u2019clock.\u2019
\n\u201cI say, 3 o\u2019clock? You can\u2019t see at 3 o\u2019clock, Frank.
\n\u201cHe says, \u2018That\u2019s the point. Nobody will see you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never picked grapes that early, but the next year I get eight tons, the next year I get twelve tons, and the next year I got 20 tons. So let\u2019s just say that we could no longer pick in the dark. Today, I get the entire vineyard.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank would never let me vineyard designate it because he didn\u2019t want to offend the other guy who got grapes from this vineyard. But when Frank died, John and Catarina came to me and said, \u2018We\u2019re ready to let you vineyard designate the wine. Please do it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is the result. It doesn\u2019t taste that much different than what Frank did. It has a little more oak, it\u2019s from Dry Creek bench land, Tuscan red hills sort of soils, has a little petite sirah and carignan, and it tastes pretty darn good. Lots of black cherry, lots of vanilla, lots of really cool stuff. So, enjoy!\u201d<\/p>\n

We did enjoy the 2009 Teldeschi Vineyard Zinfandel, which, despite its density and intensity, proved to be the most elegant of the flight. Its finish seemed never ending and it paired amazingly with the braised organic beef short rib.<\/p>\n

The wine and food were as enjoyable as the story, but not nearly as funny.<\/p>\n

Footnote: the guy who Frank said would be pissed off if he sold Peterson his grapes? He was from Gallo, another winery known for familial infighting. Typical of Sonoma.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mari Kane<\/strong><\/a> is a wine writer and blogger from Sonoma County, now living in Vancouver. Her wine blog is Tasting Room Confidential<\/strong><\/a> and you can follow her on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mari Kane In late October, I attended a winemaker dinner with Joel Peterson, winemaker and \u201cGodfather of Zinfandel\u201d from Ravenswood Vineyards in Sonoma, California. The event was held at the Flying Pig in Vancouver\u2019s Yaletown, and as we tucked into plates of comfort food, Peterson stood up and began telling stories about the wines he brought to pair. The result was a humorous blend of history lesson and standup comedy that made me homesick for Sonoma. My favorite story was about Teldeschi Vineyards since my friend, Bill Wertzberger, makes his wine at the F. Teldeschi winery which I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mari-kane","category-wine-picks"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12082"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12113,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions\/12113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}