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Listen to owner Dan Tudor talk about Pinot Noir on Grape Radio
Hello again. Last month I talked about a recent business and pleasure trip in Thailand, Bali, and Tokyo, where Tudor Pinot Noir has just been added to menus at some exceptional restaurants and resorts.
More recently I've been in Hawaii, showcasing our wines while finding time to surf Alligator's, a terrific break near Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, and also kiteboarding at Kailua Bay on the East side and the Big Island. I have several cousins I love to visit there, all Californians who fell in love with the Aloha lifestyle.
I'm happy to say that Tudor Pinot is becoming more a part of that lifestyle. Our wines are served at the dining places many folks consider to be the best in Hawaii, Alan Wong's and Roy's. Zagat recently rated Alan Wong's as the number one Honolulu restaurant, and it earned the same position in a local newspaper's “Best of the Best” reader survey. Meanwhile, Alan Wong's and Roy's finished in first and second, respectively in another Honolulu paper's Fine Dining category.
It feels fantastic to know our wines have been chosen by such outstanding places! Based on meetings during my recent trip, we expect to be featured in a few more top restaurants very soon.
As those who have been to Hawaii recently know, a Big Island volcano has been rumbling and fuming lately. Big plumes of vog – volcanic gases mixed with smoke – have been drifting across the skies. In traditional island beliefs, that means the goddess Pele has something to say. The legend says that Pele likes gifts, and that something good to drink usually pleases her. Maybe, with Tudor distribution in Hawaii now expanding, someone will present her with a great pinot from the Sarmento Vineyards or Tondre’ Vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands, or the Balo Vineyards of Anderson Valley.
Those are some of our vineyard-designated wines from the stellar 2006 harvest. They are now being aged in bottle, waiting for their release this fall. The crop was light, which is great, because it brought the berries into the winery full of intense flavors. I predict that the 2006 wines will equal, or possibly even surpass, our very best vintage to date.
Good news from our new tasting room located in The Garden Bistro, a beautiful indoor/outdoor restaurant in Carmel Valley. Our opening day celebration was originally set for March 22nd, but had to be moved forward at the restaurant owner's request. More than 100 friends and fans showed up at the “postponed” event anyway. The Bistro was full, and the wines flowed. It was a great sign for the future. We're trying to nail down a new date, probably in early June, for the “Official” opening party. We'll send you an announcement by email a few days from now. As much fun as we had at the unofficial opening, the real one should be fabulous.
The next time you're enjoying a glass of Tudor Pinot Noir, it's possible that happy people in Bangkok, Tokyo and Bali are doing exactly the same. I've just returned from an extended business and pleasure trip through Southeast Asia – with time for kite surfing, attending a Balinese wedding, and enjoying some of the world's liveliest cuisine. I'm back in California to blend and bottle wines from our phenomenal 2007 harvest. While I'm busy with those vital steps, and with some great upcoming wine events (see below), arrangements are being finalized to send Wines to Thailand, Bali, and Japan. These are some of my favorite places on Earth, so it's going to be great to re-visit them annually as the exporting increases.
Meanwhile, we're now tasting from the barrels that hold our 2007 harvest. This is the best year we've ever seen. Better even than '06, which was phenomenal, the best pinot noir year we'd seen up until then. The wines have really dark color and just tons of fruit. They're massive and gorgeous wines, sweet on the mid-palate, with a long finish.
We will again make a single-vineyard wine from Tondre' Vineyards, and for the second year we'll bottle a single-vineyard wine sourced from Balo Vineyards in Anderson Valley. Our '06 from Balo is really exceptionally dark and rich, and will be released this fall. I hope you get the opportunity to experience it, and that you'll enjoy realizing that the '07 vintage, to be released in the fall of '09, may be even better.
Fruit from Sarmento Vineyards is also yielding a fantastically balanced, beautiful single-vineyard pinot. Sarmento is in the Santa Lucia Mountains, in granite loam nearly 700 feet above the floor of the Salinas Valley, above the fog. Sarmento’s vines get a strong dose of sunlight before they are rapidly cooled by ocean air in the evenings. These vines now eight years old, which is fairly young, have reached great potential quickly because of the ideal soil.
The first in an extensive series of wine events featuring Tudor pinot noirs was the Rock & Roll and Wine Event, held February 30th at Studio 54 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Then the World of Pinot Noir festival rolled out on March 7th and 8th. at Shell Beach, which lies in between Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo. If you had tickets, you were among the lucky ones. The event sold out completely, and people are already buying tickets for '09.
Saturday, March 22nd, is the date set for opening our new tasting room in Carmel Valley. It's going to be in a section of The Garden Bistro, a really pleasant, casual yet upscale restaurant at 6 Pilot Road, just off West Carmel Valley Road and about 10 miles southeast of Carmel . There's both indoor and outdoor seating, and if you buy a bottle you can enjoy it there at the restaurant. Three other lines will also be available, including Radog, which I produce, plus Oh Wines and Otter Cove Wines, which are created in Monterey County by my good friend Richard Oh.
It's going to be a great day. Between 11 AM and 2 PM, the tasting will be free, and The Garden Bistro will also welcome you with free appetizers during those hours. Daniel Barducci is the new owner of The Garden Bistro, and he recently brought an excellent French chef on board. His food is exceptional, and so is the service and décor. Whenever I bring friends there, they remark on how much it is like being in Paris.
One week later is another event really worth knowing about, Expectations are running very high for the first annual Pebble Beach Food and Wine event on March 27-30. It will replace the annual Masters of Food and Wine event that formerly was held at the Highlands Inn. The organizers, who are also old friends of mine, are expecting 35 celebrity chefs and 200 wineries. There will be events held at several different places along the 17 mile Drive, so it should be truly beautiful.
Right now we're back in the winery doing our final round of tasting from the barrels, to make certain we'll create the best possible blends and vineyard designates from this outstanding pinot harvest. This may be a good time for you to visit our website for details about membership in the Tudor Premier Club. It will guarantee you early notification of every new vintage that's ready to release, and give you first choice. Allocations are either for six bottles or 12 bottles, and you'll receive a discount, yet there is never any obligation to purchase. You will also be notified of exclusive members-only events.
Ernest Tubb and his Texas Troubadours, a very popular country band of many years ago, once recorded a holiday song that asked listeners, “How'd you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?” As it turns out, this holiday season I'm only a few hundred miles away from Christmas Island, visiting the island of Bali. I'm writing this month's newsletter from the city of Ubud, on a post-harvest, post-crush vacation that will include business days in Thailand, where I'll meet with people in the very young and ambitious Thai wine industry. Thai and all the other highly flavorful Southeast Asian cuisines can go beautifully with wine, a fact which I intend to explore to the maximum on this trip.
Ubud is a city that presents the full range of magic and charm to be found on Bali, with accommodations from five star resorts to backpacker-approved little bungalows, views that inspire a wish to be here forever, and vibrant local arts. They include the art of cuisine. Friends and I dined last night on Balinese-style roast suckling pig, a recipe I'm determined to learn and pass on to you.
Meanwhile, back in the Tudor winemaking facilities in California, one of the best crops of pinot noir grapes I've ever seen is now transforming itself into what we believe will be a stellar release in the Fall of 2009. As with all our vintages, it will be a pure expression of berries from the finest family-owned vineyards in the Santa Lucia Mountains, made in small fermentations and mixed by hand, aged in French oak barrels, beautifully balanced, ripe and lively on the tongue.
Whether you spend Christmas on Christmas Island, in the snowy high Sierras, or in your own cozy home, we want to send you our best wishes for happy and soulful holiday celebrations with lots of family and new friends and old. If you'd like to include Tudor wines in those warm occasions, or to send bottles as gifts to the wine lovers on your list, there's still time right now to place your order directly from our web site, www.tudorwines.com. We're extending a 10% discount on orders of a case or more.
If you find it more convenient to visit a store in your area, a quick look at the site will show you how dramatically our list of retailers has continued to grow. California currently holds the lead with almost 50 at this writing, but our highly-rated pinot noir is also found at outstanding wine shops throughout the United States.
A final thought: As your holiday present to yourself, why not join our new Premier Club? You get a guaranteed spot on our allocation list, with never any obligation to buy. Membership puts you first in line for either a 6-bottle or a 12-bottle purchase before any future Tudor wines are released to the trade. On top of that, you'll have access to Member Only Events, future discounts, and an amazing discount – right now, today – of 20% on all current releases.
November 2007 Harvest Report and Newsletter -
Good news! We were able to complete our harvest just before the rainstorms arrived. At this writing, we've got almost 63 tons of Pinot Noir pressed and barreled down. Our total harvest should result in close to 4,000 cases of both blended and single-vineyard Tudor Pinot Noirs.
As I've mentioned, this year's berries were small but intense and the overall yield per acre was modest. These things promise a really excellent, exceptional vintage.
Now, while we monitor the barrels, our sights are set on February. That's when we will begin to taste and blend, and really experience the developing promise of this great harvest. Release is scheduled for fall of 2009. One year prior to that, in the fall of 2008, our 2006 vintage will be released. That's good, because supplies of our current release, the 2005 vintage, are growing smaller by the day. I really recommend checking out our newly started wine club, where you can guarantee yourself an allotment of Tudor Pinot without committing to buy. It's a different way to run a wine club, but we can do it because we're sure of selling all our wines, and we want to reward loyal customers.
I went back out into the vineyards after the rain and saw early evidence that there will be an abundant supply of porcini mushrooms this year. If you haven't tried it yet, one of the best things to enjoy with a good Pinot Noir is a rich, homemade Porcini Risotto. I'll give you a recipe that's been popular in the Tudor family for a long time. If you use dried porcinis, they go into the dish early, as if they were meat. If you use fresh porcinis, treat them like vegetables and add them when the risotto is close to being ready. Fresh porcinis will be more subtle, dried ones will be more intense.
Dan’s Porcini Mushroom Risotto Recipe
1 large Yellow Onion, chopped course
3 oz Pancetta Diced
1 oz Dried Porcini Mushrooms, rehydrated and chopped, reserve water (add to broth and heat)
4 table spoons Extra Virgin Olive oil
1 tomato, chopped course
1 ½ cups uncooked Arborio Rice
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/3 fresh porcini slice ¼ inch thick
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Sauté Onion and Pancetta in olive oil for 3 minutes, add the rice and stir thoroughly (2 min.) to coat the rice with oil, add hot chicken broth one cup at a time while stirring. Continue stirring and adding broth as it is absorbed by rice. Add the fresh tomato, cheese and fresh porcini and stir for several minutes. Salt and pepper to taste!
I promised in the last newsletter that I would share stories with you about the Tudor family's grape growing and wine making heritage, which traces back over six centuries and is rooted in Croatia. Croatian wines aren't well known in the United States, but that's because Croatia spent so many decades under Communist rule. Trade to the West was curtailed, and hundreds of acres of wine grapes got uprooted. All that has turned around in recent years. Many vineyards are being re-planted, and in time we'll probably see the Old World wines of Croatia in our stores.
(Of course, Tudor Wines draw on those ancient traditions – so you don't really have to wait!)
After I got started making notes on the family's history, I realized that I need to schedule talks with several relatives to make the story as complete as possible. But here is a beginning...
My grandfather was quite a big guy, about six-foot-six. That's still an exceptional height today, but nearly a century ago it was nearly gigantic. Dinko “Dan” Tudor disembarked from an Atlantic crossing at Ellis Island in 1917, then took the train across the country to join cousins who had already settled in Delano, California. With his size and strength he quickly found employment with PG&E, installing telephone poles around the San Joaquin Valley.
Delano is a short drive south of Fresno, and is known as the Table Grape Capitol of the World. My grandfather soon joined his cousins, doing what they had all learned in Croatia – cultivating grapes. Pretty soon after that, some family members helped him buy 40 acres of his own, an empire that he gradually expanded as years went by.
The long, hot summers of the San Joaquin are best for table grapes, not wine grapes, so the only Tudor wines during this era were the ones my grandfather made for his own family and friends. He would make at least one barrel every year, even through the years of Prohibition, when it was still legal to make wine for private consumption. There was also a barrel of home-made wine vinegar, for my grandmother's kitchen, as well.
I first started thinking about making wine when I was a kid, in the early 70s. My father bought 49 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near Soquel, and was among the first people to plant wine grapes in the area. Unfortunately, at that time few Americans had sophisticated knowledge of wine. The market wasn't steady enough, so he had to pull out the vines and become a cattle rancher.
My real introduction came in 1982, when I was a very young guy. Louis Lucas, a cousin from Delano, happens to be one of the great pioneers of Central Coast wine making. He got started there around 1970, and little by little adapted viticulture techniques that had been passed down in the family. His vineyards have supplied a long list of top wineries, including Korbel, Chateau Montelena, Ridge, Rusack, Daniel Gehrs, and Bonny Doon. And, of course, his own wineries, Lucas-Lewellyn Vineyards and Mandolina.
I lived for two years right in the middle of the 1,700 acre vineyard he and partners owned in Tepusquet Canyon, on the eastern side of the Santa Maria Valley. I did just about every job that leads to wine. At harvest time I was in charge of testing all the blocks, determining the perfect time to pick. That's still one of my favorite parts of the whole process. In spring I drove an old water truck around the vineyards, keeping the spraying crews supplied. I have no idea what year that truck was made, but I remember it had old style fenders that kind of stuck out like batwings over the wheels, and that they creaked and flapped whenever I had drove over bumps. It had no doors, and no seat belts. It was not the kind of equipment you would show to an OSHA inspector today. Of course, times were lean for the pioneers of the industry, at least until 1991, when 60 Minutes made Americans aware of what was called “The French Paradox.” When people heard that drinking red wine was heart-healthy, demand shot up and production began to climb.
That's my first installment about the Tudor family's long history with grapes. We also grew lavender in Croatia, just as they do in the Santa Ynez Valley and the Rhone Valley of France. Next month I'll take you deeper into the past, and back to Croatia, where numerous cousins still run vineyards and make wine. I promise you, you are going to meet some wild characters.
October 2007 Harvest Report and Newsletter -
I mentioned in last month's newsletter that prospects looked great for the 2007 Pinot Noir crop. Well, those tiny and intense berries are now coming in. I can't wait to start working with this year's grapes! It has been a really cool growing season, with only a small jump in heat as August turned into September. The vines are beautifully balanced, with just slightly less fruit on the vines than leafy canopy. The berries I've inspected are so small that many have only a single seed, while many others have no seeds at all.
Next month I'll have some Tales From the Crush, and stories from the Tudor family's 600-year heritage of making wine.
Bradley Gray Writes About Tudor Wines.....
Tudor wines – A continuation of a 2,200-year family tradition
Have you ever taken the time to read brochures from wineries? It seems to me that most of them use exactly the same text: “Family owned,” “handcrafted,” “traditional,” on and on and on. This is usually accompanied by a stock shot of a misty-eyed winemaker fondling grapes in the vineyard, and a Photoshopped image of the gardens and fountain outside the tasting room. “The so-and-so winery has been handcrafting wine in the traditional Burgundian (or Bordeaux or whatever) style for generations...” Sound familiar?
When we think of wineries with “generations” of family involvement here in the Sonoma Valley, the places that come to mind are the Bundschus, the Sebastianis, the Gallos.
Tudor Wines, based in the Santa Lucia Highlands, has all of that stuff on its Web page. They make pinot noir. “Handcrafted”? Check. “Traditional”? Check. “Family owned”? Sure enough. No tasting room, so no fountain. Sorry. But here’s the kicker! The Tudors have been making wines and growing grapes since 200 years – before Christ!
Tudor Wines is run by cousins Dan and Christian Tudor. Their family began growing grapes and making wine around 200 B.C. in a town called Velo Grablje. Velo Grablje is on the Island of Hvar off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.
The Isle of Hvar is the second-largest Adriatic island. It has been considered the “Croatian Madeira,” and the temperate climate there is perfect for grape growing. It continues to be the primary industry there.
The Tudor family emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s, where they settled in Delano, just south of Fresno. There, they continued the family tradition of grape-growing, and to this day the two family branches (Dan Tudor & Sons and Vincent Zaninovich Farms) are among the largest suppliers of table grapes in the U.S.
In keeping with family tradition, Dan Tudor began making wine as a hobby in the early 1980s. He won several awards as an amateur winemaker while working under cousin Louie Lucas at Tepuesquet Vineyards in 1982. Dan and Christian formed Tudor Wines in 1999, specializing in Santa Lucia Highlands pinot noir. They produce less than 3,000 cases annually, and they have been gathering accolades from major wine publications. Dan handles the winemaking while Christian covers the business side.
Their wines are really impressive, if you can get a hold of them! Their 2003 pinot noir was one of the best California pinot noirs I’ve ever had (see review below).
Dan Tudor can be a tough guy to get in touch with. When not on the road promoting his brand, he’s usually surfing near his home on the Monterey Peninsula. When he’s not surfing, he’s usually in Pebble Beach collecting wild mushrooms. Most of Dan’s mushroom hunts end with photographs of the day’s score being e-mailed to friends and business associates. Dan and Christian have enlisted the help of Larry Brooks, who acts as consulting winemaker. Larry’s background includes stints at Acacia (founding winemaker), Echelon (founder, winemaker), and executive winemaker for the Chalone Group’s pinot noir houses.
The Tudors source their grapes from several family-owned vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands. They have a second label, a central coast pinot called Radog, which features a dog on a surfboard on the label. It retails for $23.
2003 Tudor pinot noir, Santa Lucia Highlands
This is a big, fleshy, amazing noir with enough fruit character for three wines! The amazing thing here is that there is enough structure and acidity to carry this wine a long way. Flavors of black cherry, rhubarb, cola dominate up front, and then give way to subtle brown spice, vanilla and tangy acid. Get your hands on some if you can! It goes fast. $36 to top
For Immediate Release
Contact: Bradley Gray/Gray Matters Communications
(707) 694-4542 Bradley@vom.com
Tudor Wines Gain Recognition with Style, Quality and Terroir
Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir Producer Creates World Class Wines of Remarkable CharacterMonterey, CA Tudor Wines is emerging as one of the new “top echelon” American cult wineries. Founded in 1999 by cousins Dan and Christian Tudor, they specialize in small, handcrafted lots of Pinot Noir from family-owned vineyards in the celebrated Santa Lucia Highlands. Tudor Wines represents a continuation of a 2,600-year family history of winemaking and grape growing.
Tudor’s wines are characterized by delicate nuance brought by dedicated winemaking. They feature impeccable balance, handcrafted elegance and reasonable pricing. The winery’s first release, the 2000 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, is reflective of the spectacular family-owned vineyards where the grapes were grown. It showcases gorgeous cherry and berry nuance, silky texture and a long, vibrant finish. Only 1,400 cases were produced.
Dan and Christian’s family has been making wine on the island of Hvar on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia since 200 B.C. In the early 1900s, they came to America and began growing grapes in California, where they are still one of the state’s largest producers of table grapes. Tudor Wines is a proud continuation of this amazing viticultural family history.
With the current popularity of Pinot Noir, Tudor has widened their distribution to include most of the United States. They have been met with national critical acclaim, and their reputation has blossomed into a “cult-wine” status amongst knowledgeable consumers.
Christian Tudor acts as the winery’s General Manager, while cousin Dan Tudor and Consulting Winemaker Larry Brooks (co-founder of Acacia, founder of Echelon, and long-time manager of Chalone’s wineries) create world-class Pinot Noirs.
For more information about Tudor wines, call (831) 224-2116, or visit www.tudorwines.com.
