Fearless Summer Shipping From Dashe Cellars

Hot summer days may be perfect for enjoying fine wine, but they are definitely not great for shipping—until now! Beginning June 5^th, and running through September 19^th, UPS is back with its third year of the Summer Solution. This program ensures that your Dashe Cellars wines will travel from California to one of four convenient national shipping hubs in pristine, temperature-controlled conditions. We used this program last year with 100% success and customer satisfaction. Here’s how it works:

• The price and time of travel are the same as standard UPS Ground, with the exception of a set $8.50 surcharge regardless of the size of your shipment—so stock up for BBQ season!
• As an added incentive, Dashe Cellars will pay the $8.50 shipping surcharge
• Once your wines arrive at the hub, they go right onto a truck for normal delivery
• All standard wine club discounts apply
• Simply place your order by clicking here, select  UPS Ground shipping, and we will time your shipment accordingly

Here's the complete list of Summer Solution ship dates and eligible zipcodes :

History underscores Zinfandel's new tack

State's great grape finds footing in history, ambitious new wines

By Jon Bonné

Updated 3:03 am, Monday, March 4, 2013

Carole Meredith, the vine geneticist who solved the mystery of Zinfandel's origins, and husband Steve Lagier walk through their Zinfandel vineyard in Napa. Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

Of the thousand things that keep winemakers awake at night, label approvals rank near the bottom. But Carole Meredith has had good reason for insomnia.

Tribidrag.

That's the newly revealed historic name for a grape we know remarkably well: Zinfandel. Meredith had asked federal regulators to approve the first Tribidrag to be made in modern times.

In mid-February, her wish was granted. Next month, 70 cases of the first California Tribidrag will be sent out into the world. Technically it will be Mount Veeder Red Wine; the feds approved Tribidrag only as a fanciful name.

All grist for the nerdiest of the nerdy - if not for the fact that Meredith is also the vine geneticist who sleuthed out the mystery of Zinfandel's origins, finding it identical to an obscurity in a single vineyard on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, where it was known as Crljenak Kastelanski.

Now she and several Croatian researchers have added a significant chapter to Zinfandel's history. Ivan Pejic and Edi Maletic of the University of Zagreb, who helped Meredith with her earlier hunt, discovered a grape in the Dalmatian hinterlands called Pribidrag, as well as a 90-year-old leaf specimen from an herbarium in the city of Split. After several years, the researchers figured out how to extract DNA for testing. It revealed that the old dried leaf was, in fact, Zinfandel.

Grape had 'nobility'

Meanwhile, Zinfandel's - hence Tribidrag's - history kept stretching back in time, enough so that Tribidrag was used as Zinfandel's official name in wine authority Jancis Robinson's new book, "Wine Grapes." Historian Ambroz Tudor uncovered references as far back as the early 1400s; Tribidrag wine was traded with Venice across the Adriatic - significant enough to be referenced by name.

"What to me makes this so sweet," Meredith says, is that "not only did we figure out where in Europe Zinfandel came from, but it was important. It wasn't a junk grape. It had nobility to it."

All of which shines back on Zinfandel's current state. After a long wandering in the stylistic wilderness - from frivolous and pink to super-ripe and sweet - California's beloved grape has found a surer, more serious step. It is again the base material for wines that can, and rightfully should, be taken with as much gravitas as top Cabernet. Its best expressions provide as good a vehicle as Pinot Noir to explore the state's terroir.

It's too soon to herald its return from the seas of bombast. But an ambitious, and expanding, roster of wines provide the clues to a great Zinfandel revival.

That includes stalwart evangelists for Zinfandel's quieter side through the years - both the famous (Ridge) and the loyally esoteric (Napa's Sky Vineyards). It includes those like Mike Dashe of Dashe Cellars who have demonstrated that less can be more, especially in Zinfandel strongholds like Dry Creek Valley.....

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Urban Wineries in the East Bay: Where to Go

TwoGuysFromNapa.com

There is a thriving Urban Winery scene just waiting for you to discover it in the San Francisco East Bay.  The surroundings may have more asphalt, warehouses, and freeway sounds than a rural wine country experience, but you can still find fermentation vats, oak barrels, and skilled winemakers selling quality products out of tasting rooms here.  Since these Urban Wineries source their grapes from a variety of regions, wine tasting excursions to Oakland and Berkeley involve varietals ranging from Grenache Blanc and Riesling to Counoise, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, and Zinfandel.  In a good way.

Just make sure to plan your trip well as the regular tasting room hours at many of these wineries are limited (your best bet may be to make this a weekend getaway).  Keep reading, and we’ll tell you which of the Urban Wineries around Berkeley and Oakland are our favorites.

And if you’re wondering why anyone would think of putting wineries in the East Bay, then consider “the math” from the Shaffers at Urban Legend Cellars:  Ready-Made Audience + Good Raw Materials + Happy Winemakers = Urban Winery Good Idea.  

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Dashe Cellars: 

The French Connection

Mike and Anne Dashe

Wine lovers come from all walks of life, and a few wineries can count famous scientists among their fans. Dashe Cellars is no exception, and it was as much for the wine label featuring a monkey riding a fish as it was for what came inside the bottle.

“It was supposed to be a whimsical label, and the illustrator came up with the image out of her imagination,” says winemaker Michael Dashe, who owns the Oakland, Calif., winery with his wife and fellow winemaker Anne. “I got a phone call from Jane Goodall, the primatologist, who loved the wine and wanted to know how we came up with the label design. It was a highlight of our early days in the business.”

Founded in 1996, the now 16-year-old winery is known for more than just its labels. The winemaking couple has earned accolades for its top-shelf varietals, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Syrah, Riesling and Grenache. But Zinfandel seems to beat closest to the heart of Dashe Cellars. The pair’s predilection for what is considered by many to be America’s native wine grape has as much to do with the winemakers’ past as it does their preferences.

“We naturally tended towards Zins as our first wines simply because I had been assistant winemaker at Ridge Vineyards and had access to great grape growers in Sonoma,” Michael says. “People also knew me as a Ridge guy, so I knew I'd be able to at least have people look at our wines in the beginning if it was a zinfandel from someone trained at Ridge.”

The Perfect Blend

Ridge also was central to the couple’s meeting. Ridge lab manager Cherie Melka and her winemaker husband Philippe spent considerable effort trying to introduce Michael to Anne, a fellow graduate with Phillippe from France’s University of Bordeaux. At first, Michael resisted the idea of meeting Anne, who was working as master distiller the former Carneros Alambic Distillery at the time. Their divergent backgrounds had convinced him they would not be able to relate.

“I resisted dating a French woman for reasons known only to my younger self, thinking we wouldn't be able to communicate well,” Dashe says. “Boy, was I wrong. We met in 1995 and got married in 1996.”

The couple’s marriage coincided with the founding of Dashe Cellars and, with dual backgrounds steeped both in Old World and New World approaches to winemaking, set the Dashes off in a unique winemaking direction. Yet both were steeped in the other’s traditions even before they met.

California native Michael Dashe, who began brewing his own beer age 15, eventually converted his focus to winemaking, receiving a master degree in oenology from the University of California in Davis in 1987. Before taking the position at Ridge, Michael studied at a variety of wineries around the world, including Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, arguably the premier Bordeaux winery, where he learned a great deal about tannin management. He brought that knowledge with him back to California, and its influence shows in his wines today.

Anne Dashe, a native of France’s Brittany region, studied biochemistry and science at the University of Bordeaux, but it wasn’t until an internship at Chateau La Dominique in Saint-Emilion that she fell in love with winemaking. After receiving her degree in 1991, Anne moved to California, taking a position at Chappellet Winery in St. Helena, followed by a period at Napa’s Seavy Vineyards before becoming brandy-maker and research enologist at what eventually became RMS Brandy Distillery, and has since been sold to Beringer Blass.

“Anne and I have both wanted to use the great expressive fruit that we get here in California, and give more of an Old World subtlety and texture for the wines,” Michael says. “Our decisions on selecting vineyards make it easier for us to produce wines with slightly higher acidities and lower alcohols, specifically because we like those kind of Old World characteristics in the wines.”

Urban Wine Guerillas

But that wasn’t the only characteristic to separate Dashe Cellars from other wineries. There also is a little matter of the winery’s location just blocks of Jack London Square in downtown Oakland. Dashe Cellars wasn’t the first urban winery, but it remains one of the few, Michael says, and the location comes with its own opportunities and challenges.

“The advantages, of course, are that we are close to customers and to the restaurants and retailers who carry our wines,” says Dashe, who lives with his wife across the bay in San Francisco. “The disadvantages are that it is difficult to get people to realize where you are and that you are making excellent wine even though you're in a city and to come to a tasting room in an urban environment. But now that there are more urban wineries, it will be much easier to attract people in the future to our tasting room and prove that ‘garage-ists’ can make extremely good wine.”

Dashe wines, several of which are distributed in Madison by wholesaler L’Eft Bank, have won their share of awards. But tasting a number them across the spectrum indicates an overall quality and unique approach that are no doubt the results of the winemaking couple’s combined background and cross-cultural pollination.

“I do the everyday winemaking work, selecting vineyards, making vineyard and picking decisions, managing the cellar activities such as fermentation, barrel selection and aging, deciding on specific winemaking techniques,” says Michael. “Anne and I both do all the blending trials together for the wines, so she has a dramatic impact on the taste and textures of the wines.”

A Bevy of Zinfandels

That dual influence shows, particularly in the Zinfandel’s the winery produces.

The 2010 Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel ($24), the latest iteration of one of the winery’s first releases, pours a deep purple with reddish hues into the glass. The Zinfandel blend, with 16% Petite Syrah and 1% Carignane, has a blackberry/black pepper nose with a touch of minerality, flavors that carry over to the palate and enhanced by the wine’s fine balance, layered characteristics and velvety texture.

The 2009 Zinfandel Florence Vineyard ($32) offers a 100% Zinfandel varietal produced from younger vines. The same deep purple color and black cherry notes characterize the wine, which also sports notes of lavender on the nose and earthy/spicy qualities and a pronounced, persistent finish.

The 2009 Zinfandel Late Harvest Dry Creek Valley ($24 for a 375 ml) is one of the winery’s most surprising and delightful offerings.  The vines, grown on a rocky hillside, struggle to survive. The resulting grapes, harvested in late October, yield concentrated and complex juice that offers a flavor profile significantly more complex from the other Zins. Add aromas of cranberry, plum, vanilla and cocoa to the nose and black currant, chocolate and vanilla to the palate and the result is a delightful, well-balanced dessert wine.

Older vines play a significant role in the 2008 Louvau Vineyards Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel ($32). The vines produce limited quantities of jet-black concentrated fruit, resulting in a wine that pours a reddish black. Spicy and even floral notes enhance a nose dominated by stone fruits, and the palate enjoys the wine’s velvety mouthfeel, soft tannins and a long finish of black raspberry, stone fruit and spices.

The Wild Children

But Dashe Cellars has taken yet another departure from the normal California winemaking approach, one that honors both the background and roots of their wines, Michael says.

“We enjoyed the wines we made, but as time went on, we looked for vineyards and clones that would produce wines that were more like the wines we enjoyed from the Loire and Beaujolais,” says Michael. “We created the "Les Enfants Terribles" series of Zins and Grenache that were more European in style.”

The 2011 McFadden Farm “Les Enfants Terribles” Zinfandel ($24) benefits from its organically grown Mendocino County grapes and native yeast fermentation.  The 100% Zinfandel wine pours an unusual ruby red, much like a Gamay, with a wild strawberry/white pepper nose underscored by an earthiness and minerality. The aroma elements carry over to the palate, which features a velvety texture and clean, lingering finish.

The 2011 “Les Enfants Terribles” Dry Creek Valley Grenache ($24) follows much the same pattern.  Fermented from Sonoma Valley fruit, the wine pours a lighter strawberry red as befits the grape. The aroma and palate are much the same in their flavor elements as the Zinfandel in the series, but with lighter, brighter and almost wilder characteristics. In both cases, grapes more organically grown serve the wines well and help define the future of the industry, Michael says.

“Some of our vineyards are certified organic, but even those that are not certified are farmed as if they were organic vineyards,” he says.  “They produce the best fruit for "natural" winemaking, and since we don't use cultured yeast we need as natural of a microflora on the grapes as possible. This is also the path for having wines reflect the vineyard's terroir and to make wines that are uniquely reflective of the place that they're grown.”

From a winemaking perspective, the approach makes sense for Dashe Cellars. Based on the couple’s wines, it’s seems like it could be a sound strategy for winemakers from both the Old and New Worlds, regardless of whether they have a monkey and fish on their labels.

Sense of Restraint About Zinfandels

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

By ERIC ASIMOV

Published: December 20, 2012