Taittinger's Blendo-O-Matic

Domaine Carneros makes champagne just like in the old days...kind of.

Jim stood to the side of JJ and Isaac, the two visibly shivering in the cold cellar. We'd come unannounced, but Jim greeted us cordially nonetheless. Over coffee some days earlier, he'd informed us that they were in the process of blending the base wines which over the course of the next several years would become champagne. He had described the process in terms that sounded like one of those math word problems. They had 60 thousand gallons of wine from several different vintages that needed to be mixed together uniformly before the process of making sparkling wine could continue. Since there were only four empty 1000 gallon tanks available, however, it was a tedious process of pumping each of the vacant tanks a quarter full from one batch, adding another quarter from another batch, and so on, until each of the four tanks was full of the appropriate mixture. Then they pumped the new blend back into the same tanks from which the differentiated batches had come. Before it was all over, Jim and his crew would pump almost 250 thousand gallons of wine in order to mix the 60 thousand gallons.

JJ and Isaac danced from foot to foot, hands jammed into pockets whenever possible, as Jim explained all of this. As cellarmaster, Jim could come and go--and did so--as part of his myriad duties. But the two younger men, apparently in their 20s, had to stand and watch with a focused attention as the pump droned on and the level within each tank reached the appropriate mark. Meanwhile, the temperature dropped in the cellar as the tanks containing the blended base wines were cooled by pumping refrigerant between their double walls; within a week or two all of them would be layered with up to an inch of ice. This cooling crystalized the tartrates suspended in the liquid, which then dropped to the bottom of the tanks. When they were pumped out, the minerals would be left behind.

Despite--or perhaps because of--the mild winter weather without and the absolutely frigid environment within, JJ and Isaac obsessed over the coming spring. Each had applied for work to various wineries in New Zealand in order to have employment during the slow months here, and they'd just discovered that they had landed jobs in wineries across the road from each other, a totally coincidental occurrence. They were situated in the north end of the south island, a growing wine region that already bears a startling resemblance to its California equivalents. We'd recently passed some time with a friend who regularly travels there for the fly fishing, and he took a few days off to visit the wineries. Just like the Napa Valley, he said. Wouldn't know the difference if you didn't know the difference.

We'd traveled to New Zealand on business once in a past life, but our visit restricted us to the areas around Aukland, a very northerly city on the north island. Already by the mid-80s New Zealanders were indulging in their own versions of what was then being called nouveau or California cuisine, a concept centered around the idea of eating fresh ingredients simply prepared to highlight the raw materials as opposed to elaborate sauces and other concoctions that generally disguised native flavors. Given its location, New Zealand abounds in fresh seafood and produce, so it easily and naturally rivalled what was considered rather cutting edge in California.

But we talked of the women instead, a topic surely more interesting to a couple of men in their 20s. Due to a quirk in English immigration patterns, the little country ended up with a surfeit of pretty girls with blonde hair, blue eyes and peaches-and-cream complexions of Rubenesque quality. We shared this observation, and the boys couldn't wait.

Following Jim, we abandoned the youngsters as he took us deeper into the establishment, stopping at one point at a tank containing the latest blend of base wine. He invited us to fill our glass from the tank, and we subsequently tasted a not unpleasant but raw, unfinished product one might associate with an immature jug wine. Before we were done, we sampled several base wines, including those comprised exclusively of pinot noir or chardonnay. Ultimately, these would become sparkling wines designated as blanc de noir or blanc de blanc, respectively.

Then Jim took us to the tank containing the dosage, the mixture of liquid sugar and alcohol that would be added to the base wines in order to create the in-bottle fermentation that resulted in bubbles. We found it indescribably sweet, but tantalizing at the same time because of the slight amount of spirits detectable. It makes great pancake syrup, said Jim as we reveled in the flavor.

We continued through the facility, a state-of-the-art grape refinery pervaded by the latest technology science could provide. A new building boasted solar panels on the roof and a lab busy all the time with staffers running tests on this or that chemical compound in the various lots of wine. Much has been automated, and even the time honored task of riddling by hand has gone the way of the machine.

After the dosage has been added to base wines, the new mixture is left to ferment in the actual champagne bottle which will one day be taken home by some celebrating buyer. A soft-drink type bottle cap tops it off temporarily, until the final stages of the sparkling wine production process. During the fermentation, these bottles typically spend a year or two sitting neck down in racks, and they're gently rotated a quarter turn every couple of months--riddling. This encourages the dust-like residue of the in-bottle fermentation to settle down into the neck. After this has happened, the sparkling wine is almost ready for sale. But first, the necks of the bottles must be frozen and the bottle caps removed; as this happens, an icy plug comprised of a little wine and that residue pop out as a result of the bubbly pressure still extant within the vessel. Then the cork, foil and wire are applied.

In times past, producers accomplished the riddling by hand, a time-consuming operation of mind-numbing proportions. Jim knows this better than any because he was the man who did it. He decided that there must be a better way, and he figured it out.

Unknown to most, Jim posesses a rather singular past. During the Vietnam War, he was a naval electronics expert who worked with the latest technologies, in this case concerning sensers and targeting, something along the lines of leaving a beeper somewhere which helped aircraft deliver ordnance to the correct address. This dictated short trips into North Vietnam with Navy SEALS. The resultant expertise with electronics allowed Jim to help create the mechanical riddling machines that now do the miserable job once the bane of certain human beings, most specifically Jim.

Now, the riddling is accomplished by machines that essentially hold the equivalent of several racks of bottles, and the machine, holding these bins up in the air, rotates the container a quarter turn. It accomplishes the same thing as hand riddling, but rather than turning hundreds of individual bottles, you turn one box full of vessels instead.

After this most enlightening sojourn in the depths of dark cellars, we emerged to a gloriously clear Carneros winter day of bright blue sky and billowing clouds. We proceeded to the patio of the grand winery and ordered some of the house red.

Domaine Carneros presents one of the finest wine tasting experiences anywhere for many reasons. Affiliated with the French Tattinger family, the brick building replicates the chateau in Champagne built by some nobleman several hundred years ago. Dominating a hillside with commanding views of where Napa meets Sonoma, the establishment fairly reeks of a sense of grandeur. However undeserved, the patron can't help feeling like an aristocrat.

The house red appeared, in this case a particularly fine one: it's a pinot noir called Famous Gate, after the trademark architectural feature at the entrance to the grounds. The making of a red still wine from the grape usually disguised here as a white sparkler started as the inspiration of a long-gone winemaker who Jim described as possessed of genius. Though departed, he is not forgotten, and his legacy holds up well even in his absence.

We were in a contemplative mood by now, and Jim looked into the near distance, indicating the Di Rosa Art Preserve in the hills below. See that kind of pubic triangle of trees over there? he queried. There's a reservoir just beneath it, and back in the '70s Rene Di Rosa had great parties up there during the summer.

He described familiar antics. We knew such parties well, and whatever you've heard about the '70s, good or bad, they were extraordinary if you knew the right people, and the right places, hidden around Napa and Sonoma counties.

Just extraordinary.

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