We are small. Our hands, our feet, our minds are in the wine. We make wine from vineyards that are distinguished sometimes by being ignored. Our wines often do not resemble other wines, but we are not renegades. We are students. Our projects are not always experiments-- sometimes we know what we are doing-- but they are always acts of emulation, looking up at the work of others we admire.
Thus, "scholium," from the Greek <<scholion>>, which shares the same root as "school, scholarship." It signifies a modest project, not a preeminent one, undertaken for the sake of learning, understanding–hence a commentary, an essay, a study. But no matter how much we learn, no matter how interesting our studies, if the wines do not bring pleasure, they are worthless. And if they do not circulate, our work is empty. So we strive harder every year to disseminate the wine-- the wines have no business staying in the same place, consumed by only a few.
You may see our wines here, including the newest release, the river package. We have just completed barrel tastings of these wines on both coasts, and the tasters were happy. We look forward to hearing from you. |
|  |
| Pris: 150,00 DKK |
 We took a tremendous chance on Naucratis in 2009: we bought the whole vineyard-- all of the Verdelho it has to offer. We had met with such success that we hazarded-- even in July of 2009, when the economic health of the country offered no cheer or brightness-- to commit to the whole vineyard, and to nearly doubling the amount of Naucratis we would make. It is a daunting prospect; but the fruit was there-- we were essentially leaving it behind, out of caution. An odd time to abandon that caution.
Thomas MacCormack and Chuck Harrison of Lost Slough recognized what was at stake for us and farmed with such care that we worried that their even more rigorous practices might diminish the wine.
The fruit came in perfectly balanced. We had a remarkable completion of ripening-- the fruit hung almost 2 weeks longer than in 2007 or 2008, yet we harvested with much less sugar.For the first time ever,we harvested Naurcratis after LSB-- from a mountain vineyard in Sonoma. The cool of the Delta was undeniable this year.
And so, the fruit kept gaining in complexity daily; the cool nights kept the acids high; and some perfect balance of fog and cloud kept the sugars from climbing. It was a triumphant year for us to take this great leap.
The wine is powerful, as ever-- but not as rich as 2007 and 2008. It is ligher and more restrained; marked as much by its acid structure as its power. It is hardly fruity, but nonetheless redolent of stone fruits and melon. It is clean and direct; our reflection of a strong Gruner Veltliner.
We took a tremendous chance on Naucratis in 2009: we bought the whole vineyard-- all of the Verdelho it has to offer. We had met with such success that we hazarded-- even in July of 2009, when the economic health of the country offered no cheer or brightness-- to commit to the whole vineyard, and to nearly doubling the amount of Naucratis we would make. It is a daunting prospect; but the fruit was there-- we were essentially leaving it behind, out of caution. An odd time to abandon that caution.
Thomas MacCormack and Chuck Harrison of Lost Slough recognized what was at stake for us and farmed with such care that we worried that their even more rigorous practices might diminish the wine.
The fruit came in perfectly balanced. We had a remarkable completion of ripening-- the fruit hung almost 2 weeks longer than in 2007 or 2008, yet we harvested with much less sugar.For the first time ever,we harvested Naurcratis after LSB-- from a mountain vineyard in Sonoma. The cool of the Delta was undeniable this year.
And so, the fruit kept gaining in complexity daily; the cool nights kept the acids high; and some perfect balance of fog and cloud kept the sugars from climbing. It was a triumphant year for us to take this great leap.
The wine is powerful, as ever-- but not as rich as 2007 and 2008. It is ligher and more restrained; marked as much by its acid structure as its power. It is hardly fruity, but nonetheless redolent of stone fruits and melon. It is clean and direct; our reflection of a strong Gruner Veltliner.
VARIETAL verdelho
APPELLATION clarksburg
PRODUCTION 1701 cs
|
|
|
|
| Pris: 150,00 DKK |
 This is the partner of Naucratis, harvested from a few rows away in Lost Slough. The wine is a Gewurztraminer; dry, weighty, with the power to affront. We made only 22 gallons in 2007 and decided to put it into 500 ml bottles to stretch out the production-- from 7.5 cases to 10. We have kept this curious bottle size because the whole package (with photo of abandoned tractor on the front) is so perfect for the wine. It is serious because of its dry power, but is somehow the favorite wine of dance parties.
500 ml bottle
VARIETAL gewurztraminer
APPELLATION clarksburg
PRODUCTION 180 cs |
|
|
|
| Pris: 290,00 DKK |
 The name comes from Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, the Prince of Venosa– a winemaker who toiled for years, alone, on a tiny estate outside of Rome. I will not retell his story here, but just say that when I heard it, my breath caught within my chest and I thought that I was reading Poe or Aeschylus, and not the weekday New York Times.
"His caves" because the Prince did not release any wines that he made from 1986 till his last vintage in 1994; I imagine him not only tending his two miniscule vineyards, but in his caves, communing with nine years' worth of work, a complex, sedimented isolation.
The wine is a skin-fermented Sauvignon from Farina. It is from a different section of the vineyard than the LSB, from richer, loamier soil, and from a different, much more honeyed clone of Sauvignon. It is the same section that made the Cena in 2005, but in 2006 there was no botrytis at all. The grapes came in rich and fat; so fat that I thought that I had to bleed them to make good wine. So I determined to treat them like red grapes and destemmed then into a large fermenter from which I immediately bled off 20% of the juice. They spent the next 3 weeks there; first in a cold-soak and then with once or twice daily pumopovers until the wine reached 4 brix. Then I drained the wine to almost all new oak and allowed the fermentation to finish with complete leisure. The wine went dry in July 2007, and revealed complexity and pleasure beyond what I had ever hope for. The wine is honeyed from the fruit and new oak, but stern, complex, many layered from the skin fermentation and the pips. It has none of the excesses of the Cena. It is reticent rather than boisterous, withdrawn, like the Prince. |
|
|
|
| Pris: 370,00 DKK |
 Babylon: this wine is now at home in many civilized dining rooms, but it is still fierce, nearly barbaric.
Its source is a remarkable vineyard, in Suisun Valley– far enough from Napa to represent the mysterious, distant East. People farm differently, vines have a different aspect, one does not feel at home on the way to this vineyard. But then one reaches it and its excellence announces itself immediately: the vines are perfectly balanced, restricted in their growth, with clusters that are few in number and small-berried. A natural cover-crop grows beneath them.
The wine is the prize jewel of the 2005 harvest. This wine is perhaps less astonishing than the 2005 Cena, but it is much more beautiful, much more direct. It is our best Babylon yet; the clear culmination of our effort and learning in the vineyard. We managed to grow the grapes in 2005 without irrigation, in the midst of a very vigourous cover crop, and the vines responded by thinning their own fruit. We had to witness the terrifying phenomenon of clusters spontaneously shrivelling on the vine, day after day, as we waited for perfect ripeness in the vineyard. Not shrivelling from heat, sun, drought-- this would have affected every cluster nearly evenly. Rather, one cluster among four or five or ten would suddenly stop ripening, begin to dimple, then lose all turgor, and within a few days, look like a dessicated corpse. It was not beautiful-- except that we knew that every remaining cluster would be stronger, perhaps had been stronger from the beginning-- that the vine had chosen for us, and had chosen according to the most exacting, and deeply hidden, criteria. How could we not make good wine? |
|
| Pris: 450,00 DKK |
 Our second year of the new regime that defines our best red wines: fermentation only in wooden puncheon with initial foot-treading to break up the grapes; only gentle punchdown with hands or feet (no mechanical devices, rarely even a stainless tool), long, slow fermentation with slow, cool maceration as the winery becomes drowsy after harvest.
We set new heights in our own winemaking with this vintage of Androkteinos. The fruit is syrah from Hudson in Napa. As always, we waited for the skins to become slack before harvest; for the fruit itself no longer to smell like fruit, but to smell like leather and serrano ham as we walk the vineyard.
Grower and winemaker alike were intimidated by late season rains, but we waited, as the fruit lost its freshness and began its decay still on the vine. We seized that moment of inflection, from fruit to rot, and harvested. The wine is pure and strong; it has complexity, and layers to unfold, but has no reticence. It is marked by black olive and rosemary now, in its youth; and the extinguished campfire aroma that comes from making the wine with whole clusters. Its power does not seem to come from tannin, but from something bloody and explosive linked to its acid spine.
VARIETAL syrah
APPELLATION carneros
PRODUCTION 99 cs
THE LIST |
|
|