By the mid-noughties, Californian wines had become boring. It seemed like all anyone wanted to do (with a few exceptions) was please Robert Parker and make densely concentrated, low acid wines with lashings of new oak. Anything in a heavy bottle tasted the same and the craze for these ‘cult wines’ was driving prices ever-upward. Many buyers, myself included, switched off from caring about California, but unbeknownst to us there was a small group of winemakers rallying against the massiveness. Now the revolution is fully underway and Arnot-Roberts are at the forefront…
Childhood friends Nathan Roberts and Duncan Arnot-Meyers founded their winery in 2001, after Nathan had spent years as a barrel maker (he now makes all the barrels for Arnot-Roberts) and Nathan had made wines at Caymus, Groth, Acacia and Kongsgaard.
Initially their focus was just on making great Californian wines, but when the cool 2005 vintage gave them wines in a more austere, high acid style than the region was used to, Nathan and Duncan reacted completely differently to practically everyone else in California – they loved them. Ever since then they have looked to source only cool climate fruit and minimise interventions, with a view to making wines that are pure, elegant and the antithesis of the souped-up fruit bombs that are still an all too common result of the points chasing culture that continues to dominate.
It was a couple of years ago that I heard about the rebellion that was starting to gather pace in California, with Raj Parr of Sandhi and Nathan and Duncan at Arnot-Roberts emerging as the poster boys for the backlash. Journalists like Eric Asimov (New York Times), Jon Bonné (SF Chronicle) and the USA’s natural wine champion Alice Feiring were talking up this new wave of subtle and understated wines, and the scramble was on to get allocations from the best producers.
I tasted a couple of the Arnot-Roberts wines while in the USA and was seriously impressed, but my attempts to get an allocation came to nothing. Then, last year, Alice Feiring gave a presentation at the Real Wine Fair about the ‘new California’ and among a group of stunning wines the Arnot-Roberts stood out as the most interesting. Again, I tried to get the wines but their 2,000 case production had sold out immediately after release. Our contact wasn’t a waste of time though, as when our shop manager Joe followed it up with another request for the wines just before the bottling, our persistence was rewarded with the first ever allocation of the wines for the UK market.
We were assigned small quantities of three cuvées, one of which has already sold out after a rogue salesman promised it all to one of our best restaurant clients. The others will be gone in the blink of an eye, but we made sure to put aside enough bottles of the Syrah for the members of the Wine Club.
The wine in this case is the 2011 Central Coast Syrah, which weighs in at a whopping 12.9% alcohol and is a blend of fruit from a few different plots (Nellessen, Griffin’s Lair, Alder Springs and Clary Ranch) in the cool climate zones of Sonoma and the Sierra Foothills. It is fermented using natural yeasts and aged in barrels for a year (a small percentage of them are new) before being bottled without fining or filtration and minimal sulphur. It’s a refreshing wine, both in how it tastes but most of all in what it represents – the new California has arrived.
As the newbie here at the shop, my time is spent absorbing as much as I can – jumping in on the tastings, samples, and in general just always feeling a little lost. I’ve just come back not long ago from a short trip to the continent (as the lone American here I really enjoy calling it The Continent) which included a stay in the Basque Country of Spain around the town of San Sebastian. A warm September it was there with temperatures in the high 20’s. With weather like that red wine just didn’t seem appropriate, especially when browsing the very wide selection of pinxtos on offer in the bars. Pinxtos also known as Basque tapas, are piled high on platters from, oh, about 10am. The morning starts off with some of the town’s older clientèle enjoying a glass of beer or a txakoli and maybe a hefty slice of tortilla.
Eating takes on a new meaning here as well. After spending a couple of years in Italy I thought that Italians knew how to eat (and believe me they do) until I went to San Sebastian. All day, everyday, from sun rise to sun set people were eating. Ice cream, pinxtos, cakes, tortilla, chips, hamburgers, sandwiches, jamon,etc. etc. etc. — no reference to the time of day, the weather or any other external factors, it was really an amazing spectacle. This continued well into the night, ending it seemed around 3am when people finally left and went home. In the mornings, things slumbered to life slowly — bakeries filled up, people drank coffee and had some breakfast, and then BANG back at the eating. Astonishing. And the financial crisis? It seems people there are dealing with it by consuming as much as they possible can.
As you may have noticed from our 
Make Mine a Half
If I had a pound for every time someone made the unfounded presumption that my job automatically gives me carte blanche to drink wine all day, I would be a few quid better off. Contrary to the shared belief held by my family, friends and the rest of the U.K. populace, working in the wine trade does not automatically make you a consummate imbiber of all things alcoholic. This is not to say that the opportunity to immerse oneself with alcohol on a daily basis is far from hand – there are a myriad number of tastings and sample bottles continuously doing the rounds.
Despite relatively easy access to alcohol I’ve just never been a big drinker. I can’t easily polish off a bottle of vino in one sitting – sad but true – and 750mls is 375mls too much for my delicate constitution, whether it’s a school night or the weekend. Unfortunately, my problem is not halved (excuse the pun) by using my fiancée to settle the balance, as she’s 9 months pregnant.
Purchasing a 75cl bottle therefore gives me an unwanted headache (before I even put glass to mouth) and an inner dialogue weighing up the pros and cons of buying a full bottle vs a half. In favour of the 75cl option we have the wide variety of choice, something that can never be replicated when it comes to halves. The relative cost of buying a 75cl against a half also warrants careful consideration and inner discourse – if I buy a half bottle at over half the price of a 75cl am I short-changing myself? A counter argument to this, however, is loss of quality experienced by returning to the same bottle a day or two later – no amount of argon or oxygenated pumping will make the wine as fresh as when it was first opened.
At Roberson we are proud of our small but succinct selection covering the majority of regions and styles. If you want stylish Chianti to go with your midweek pizza, a First Growth Bordeaux to accompany a filet mignon or a Muscat to soothe your post-meal sweet tooth, you will find it. So if, like me, you want a wine that satisfies your craving but doesn’t give rise to the 75cl dilemma, do like I do, and make yours a half.
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