Wine Sales Continue to Make Registers Go KaCHING!
You probably knew this already, but wine sales were definitely up this holiday season. People are in a merrier mood than they’ve been in a while, even if they’re not celebrating the prolonged California drought. So far, the only thing dry about this year is the weather.
What’s the fastest growing variety in recent sales trends? Online sales site, wine.com, reports that sales of cabernet were up 58% in 2011 over 2010. That’s winemaker Jeffrey Patterson crafting some dynamite House Family Winery cab, above. It’s bold, muscular, satisfying stuff, with all the cigar-laden, tanned saddle leather cabness that makes it the King.
Holding the number two sales position, at least on this site, is no longer chardonnay, but pinot noir. That’s quite an interesting trend. Good news for merlot makers, too: sales were up by 43%: maybe an early indicator that the merlot-bashing phase has passed? That Burrell School “Honor Roll” merlot is as bodacious as a Right Bank Pomerol beauty, at half the price, jam-packed with wild cherry and mocha goodness.
The wine.com site reports sales of tempranillo and sangiovese on the upswing, and in the white category, chenin blanc, muscat, torrontes and gruner veltliner are also trending higher. What does this mean for the future? I’ll put my money on tempranillo and torrontes, but chardonnay, cab and pinot are always going to be the go-to wines, so don’t go ripping out your chardonnay vineyards just yet. Smart folks, like Testarossa, are planting more.
Recently added to the bounty of chardonnay choices is the 2010 Testarossa Dos Rubios chardonnay, from the newly planted Dos Rubios vineyard, in the Santa Lucia Highlands. It’s a joint project of grapegrower Kirk Williams and the boys at Testarossa, Rob Jensen and winemaker, Bill Brosseau. Dos Rubios means “two redheads,” a nod to the ruddy crops atop the beans of both Rob and Kirk.
This is a grippy and very self-confident teenager of a wine, with a healthy dollop of oak that needs to integrate a bit (it was just released), but lots of ripe golden apples with pleasant notes of caramel and roasted hazelnuts. (14.1% alcohol, $39)
In a slightly different category, leaning more towards brighter acidity, plentiful citrus notes, classic minerality and livelier mouthfeel, is the 2010 Testarossa Santa Cruz Mountains chardonnay (14.1%, $32). The oak here is less evident and more integrated, making the wine race across the palate, instead of sticking to it like cleats. It’s like reading a book in hardback vs paperback (oh, did I just date myself irreparably?). Somehow, it’s just easier and the print is bigger. This is a delight to drink, and is reminiscent of the Boekenoogen 2007 chardonnay, an SLH classic.
We are so lucky we have real data points about chardonnay. Can you imagine how other people have to suffer, with the pitiful, but ever popular, choices available in this beverage? What is it like to never know how amazing chardonnay can actually be? Rule #1, avoid chardonnay with a “California” appellation designate. My money is on pretty much on any chard from the Central Coast or the Sonoma Coast, and that gives you plenty of choices.
But then, there are many things we, who share this blessed haven called the Central Coast, have that we take oh, so very much for granted. Everywhere around us is food: the salad bowl and the grapevine of America. You cannot turn around without stepping on a head of lettuce, or a stalk of brusselers. We’ve got avocados, lemons and strawberries like McDonald’s has fries. Imagine, just for a moment, living in a place where there is no agriculture, no broccoli, no grapes. Zero. What a dull place, you might say. Ah, could be.
But if that place were so singularly, spectacularly beautiful, that gazing on it filled you with a sense of profound quiet: the kind of peace that surpasses all human understanding. I think that is a line from some catechism I memorized and never quite comprehended. Until, that is, I saw the awesomeness of Monument Valley for the first time. 
You’ve seen it in Westerns, in Jeep commercials and in a dozen other auto-related ads, but you haven’t truly seen it until you’ve driven into the Navajo Tribal Park in the extreme northeast corner of Arizona, on the Utah border.
Here, you’ll find just a few hearty Navajo, living as they have for a couple of centuries, many of them
with no electricity or running water. A typical homestead is a combination of traditional wood and mud hogans, a sheep pen and a trailer, or a prefab house. Each door, on the humblest of dwellings, faces east, to gather in the glory of the sunrise, the promise of a new day.
There are no gardens, no fields. The only obvious living green things are scrubby little juniper and pinon pine bushes, too small to call trees. There’s also the occasional cedar. Here, at nearly 7k feet, the air is wondrously clear, lucid and bone dry. You can see for miles in every direction, and each way you look provides a new assortment of beautifully-sculptured mesas, buttes and spires, ruddy in hue, and magical in shape. Further distant are snowcapped peaks, and from this place, the Navajo can see all four directions and the boundaries of their universe.
I marveled that the most primitive of all homes had by far the most captivating views. It is a testament, and an example, better than any I know, of what it means to be connected to the land: to be part of its terroir. 
You may not ever dwell there, but once you have seen this place, it becomes a part of you, a vision that haunts you like a fine wine, but leaves you at peace, knowing it is all still there, as you remembered it. And, that each morning, some aged Navajo man will sit upon his rickety front porch, facing east, praying for the dawn. And he, for that simple, heartfelt prayer, will again be rewarded.
As we begin this new year, let us remember, daily, to be truly thankful for all that we have. And let us never forget the simple beauty of that first ray of dawn.
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