We're please to present for the first time a selection of Pinot Noirs from Evening Lands - a winery dedicated to producing pristine cool climate Pinots and Chards from California and Oregon. 

This month your allocation is for one bottle of either:

• Evening Land Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir
   
• Evening Land Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir Tempest Bloom's Field
   
• Evening Land Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir Doc's Ranch
   
• Evening Land Sonoma Coast  Pinot Noir Occidental

(Your first choice might not be available, as we have limited amounts of each cuvée).

Santa Rita Hills:  Dark, powerful Pinot Noir with a dense, fleshy texture and rich fruity, earthy, spicy flavors that show graceful curves and energy. It's complex nose of red fruits, cola, and citrus peel is a wonderful surprise!
The 2009 Santa Rita Hills Cuvee Pinot Noir is a blend of Evening Land's estate vineyards and the New Kessler Hawk Vineyard planted on highway 246, west of Melville and Clos Pepe vineyards. This cuvee is a great example of the virtues of Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir - broad shouldered, but agile and energetic with great complexity and potential longevity. The aromas of ripe stone fruits mingle with mineral, salty and minty blackberry flavors and finishes with balanced acidity. Aged in 33% new French oak for 15 months, this wine was bottled without fining or filtration. Alcohol 14.1%. 500 cases produced.

Tempest:  The inaugural release from Evening Land’s newly planted vineyards at the Tempest Estate in the Santa Rita Hills. This wind-swept, mineral laden, and chilled sunlight terroir, produced Evening Land’s most distinctive wines. Planted with heirloom California selections of Pinot Noir at the highest density of vines per acre in the appellation, the Bloom’s Field vineyard makes wines of deep concentration, vibrant aromas, pure fruit, and elegant texture. Plums and wild strawberries follow a nose of kirsch, sea salt and exotic asian spices. Aged in 10 month seasoned French oak barrels for 15 months, this wine were bottled without filtration or fining.From young vines planted to Mt. Eden, Calera and Swan clones. Barrel aged in 10-month-old used French oak. Alcohol 14.1%. Only 200 cases produced.

Doc's Ranch:  Bright ruby-red. Sexy, highly perfumed nose displays raspberry preserves, candied rose, star anise, white pepper and a hint of woodsmoke. Clean, succulent red berry and floral pastille flavors show depth as well as energy and snap. Sharply delineated, youthful and very fresh, finishing with excellent clarity and persistence. This is delicious now. 92 points, Tanzer

Occidental:  Full, bright red. Youthfully tight but focused aromas of wild strawberry, cherry, Asian spices and tarragon, with deeper notes of cola and black tea. Highly concentrated dark berry and cherry-cola flavors are complicated by smoky herbs, licorice and candied flowers, with fine-grained tannins adding structural support. This densely packed but lithe wine finishes with impressive clarity and spiciness and an echo of floral pastilles. 92 points, Tanzer.

When word got out that Dominque Lafon had started making Pinot Noir in Oregon, it created quite a buzz. He has signed on as the consulting winemaker for Evening Land Vineyards (ELV), a wine label started in 2005 by former attorney and producer and director in Hollywood, Mark Tarlov, along with partners Danny Meyer (Union Square Hospitality Group), the Prieur family of Domaine Jacques Prieur, and Dorothy Cann Hamilton, founder of the French Culinary Institute in New York City and CEO of the James Beard Foundation. The name Evening Land Vineyards was inspired by the lure of Homer's ideal garden. A wedding gift to Zeus, the Gardens of the Evening Land bear witness to the eternal magic of the perfect orchard located just beyond reach and under the golden glow of the Evening's setting sun.

Evening Land Vineyards owns several vineyards in California, Occidental Vineyard in the Sonoma Coast (the source of Kistler’s Cuvee Elizabeth before it was acquired by ELV) and Odyssey and Tempest Vineyards in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. Pinot Noir from these two sites is crafted by veteran winemaker Sashi Moorman (Stolpman Vineyards) in Lompoc. Lafon declined to make Pinot Noir from California, claiming the wines were too extracted and high in alcohol. Instead, he consults with winemaker Isabelle Meunier on the Oregon Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.

As widely reported in the wine press, Tarlov and his investment group signed a long term lease of Seven Springs Vineyard, a revered 100-acre Pinot Noir vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills appellation. Tarlov had been attempting to purchase the vineyard outright since 2004 without success. Seven Springs Vineyard was split by a divorce of the original owners of Seven Springs Vineyard in 2001 into Anden Vineyard, owned by Al McDonald, and Seven Springs Vineyard, owned by his former spouse, Joni Weatherspoon. When Joni died in 2003, her children took over ownership. The vineyard has been rechristened and unified as Seven Springs Vineyard under the ELV lease. Seven Springs Vineyard has been the source for Pinot Noir from several esteemed producers including Adelsheim, Bethel Heights, Cristom, Domaine Drouhin, Evasham Wood, Penner-Ash, Rex Hill, and St. Innocent. None of these wineries will continue to receive fruit after the 2008 vintage. St. Innocent will be the most affected as they source about a third of the fruit originating from Seven Springs Vineyard. Considerable investment by ELV is being directed at enlarging and improving the vineyard which has some phylloxera-damaged vines over twenty-five years old. A new trellising system and biodynamic strategies have been instituted.

Tarlov owns wineries in California, Oregon and France. The full-time winemaker at the winery in Salem, Oregon, Isabelle Meunier, previously worked at Le Clos Jordanne in Niagara, Canada, with former Oregon winemaker, Thomas Bachelder. Dominque Lafon consults. By 2010, production of Chardonnay, Gamay Noir and Pinot Noir was 7,200 cases, 44% of which was estate grown. The first wine, labeled ELV Celebration, was a Gamay Noir released in 2008. Two 2007 ELV Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noirs followed in 2009. By 2011, multiple Oregon and California bottlings followed including three wines from Seven Springs Vineyard in the 2009 vintage: Seven Springs Estate Pinot Noir, Seven Springs Estate "La Source" Pinot Noir, Seven Springs Estate Chardonnay "La Source."

The wines have a pricing based on a color coded system with a range from blue, silver, gold and white labels, with white being the most expensive at about $120 a bottle and blue the most expensive at about $35 a bottle.

The winemaker in California is Sasha Moorman and the winemaker in Beaune is Christophe Vial. Vial and Meunier are Lafon's proteges.

This new venture also features a partnership between several sommeliers and restaurant groups and ELV (Once). Some of the sommeliers will work with Dominque Lafon to produce special cuvees for their restaurants, including Daniel Bouloud’s Dinex Group and Jean-Georges Management in New York. Other sommeliers will partner with other winemakers of their choosing.

RECIPE:  Bacon Wrapped, Goat Cheese Stuffed Quail.  Serves 6-8

These tiny birds, stuffed with creamy goat cheese, make fun yet elegant turkey stand-ins. Since the quail are small and there's not much meat on each one, plan on serving guests two to three per person, and encourage them to chew the meat off the bones rather than trying to cut it off with a knife and fork.


Ingredients

    16 (4-ounce) quail, rinsed and patted dry (available by preorder from a specialty butcher)
    1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
    1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
    1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
    1/4 cup fresh thyme leaves
    8 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
    16 ounces soft fresh goat cheese
    16 sprigs fresh rosemary
    16 strips thick-cut bacon

Preparation

Season each quail inside and out with salt and pepper. Transfer to 1 to 2 large bowls, add oil, thyme, and garlic, and toss to combine. Refrigerate, covered, at least 1 hour and up to 48 hours.

Preheat oven to 500°F. Remove 1 quail from marinade. Stuff cavity with 1 ounce goat cheese and 1 sprig rosemary and tie legs together loosely with kitchen string. Wrap 1 strip bacon around breast and transfer quail, breast side up, to rimmed baking sheet. Repeat with remaining quail, using 2 to 3 baking sheets. Roast until just cooked through (cut into inner thigh; meat will still be slightly pink), about 15 minutes.

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