Winemaker Interview Volume 2 Littorai Part 1

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Winemaker Interview Volume 2 Littorai Part 1

We had the pleasure of interviewing Ted Lemon (Littorai) and Kazuto Chiba (La Hortensia) on June 15, 2010. We had lunch at Ekki Bar & Grill, a modern grill inside the Four Seasons Hotel Marunouchi that offers premium Japanese beef, the freshest seafood from the Tsukiji fish market, and high-quality vegetables from around Japan. We spoke to Ted and Kazuto about terroir in California, organic winemaking, and wine trends.

Ted Lemon
Ted Lemon began his career by studying Enology at the Universite de Bourgogne. He apprenticed at several famous estates in Burgundy: Domaines Dujac, De Villaine, Roumier, Parent and Bruno Clair. He was the first American ever hired as a winemaker and vineyard manager of a Burgundian estate, Domaine Guy Roulot in Meursault. In the United States, Ted has worked as winemaker and consultant to many prominent wineries.

Littorai's philosophy of winegrowing is inspired by Ted's years in France and is based upon the concept of terroir. Terroir based winemaking postulates that wine of a single place produced by a single estate, is the greatest expression of winemaking.

Kazuto Chiba
Kazuto has worked in the restaurant business since 1992. After spending some time at Westin Tokyo, Kazuto relocated to California to study at Napa Valley College. Prior to becoming the Head Sommelier at La Hortensia, Kazuto was a sommelier at the famous Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford, Napa, as well as at Citabria in Nishiazabu, Tokyo.

Michael Khoo (iwine) : Thank you for coming, everyone. I just want to start by introducing Mr. Kazuto Chiba, the head sommelier for La Hortensia, a new restaurant that just opened in June.

Yoshi Takemura (iwine) : And we're celebrating Ted's visit to Tokyo over a glass of 2007 Littorai Charles Heintz Chardonnay.

All : Cheers!

Ted Lemon : What kind of a restaurant is it going to be?

Kazuto Chiba : It's going to be a French restaurant. But the unique thing about it is that more than 80% of the wines on the list are going to be American wines.

Ted : Interesting!

Kazuto : It's a challenge. Most customers who go to a French restaurant expect to drink French wines, so our goal is to have American wines that taste like French wines. I created a category on our wine list called "Bridge Wines," so everyone knows that these are American wines that taste like French wines.

Ted : What kind of food will your restaurant be serving?

Kazuto : Modern French. We will have two different prix-fixe menus, but we'll also have an a la carte menu, as well.

Ted : Is the chef Japanese?

Kazuto : Yes, he is. He has a lot of experience cooking different types of cuisines. So he uses a lot of ingredients from different countries.

Ted : What's the "French dining scene" like here in Tokyo these days? I seem to remember, in 2007, that there was the old-school, classic French genre that wasn't doing particularly well in Tokyo.

Kazuto : You're right. However, there are still chefs who have been trained by those "classic French chefs," and they absolutely believe in that style. At the same time there are "new-style" chefs who are opening new restaurants, and they believe in trying newer things. Modern or classic, I think each has a market they cater to.

Ted : Is the clientele a mix of local Japanese, tourists, and business people?

Kazuto : Mainly Japanese foodies, locals and business people. The whole classic vs. modern topic is very interesting. After working many years in a classic French restaurant, I got a job as a Head Sommelier at Citabria, where we served mainly American wines with a modern French menu. I learned that many people don't even consider modern French as being part of French cuisine.

Yoshi : So what years did you make wines at Roulot in Burgundy?

Ted : Fall of 1982 through 1984.

Yoshi : Not the easiest vintages to work with, huh?

Ted : Well, as you know 1982 turned out to be a very good vintage, nobody knew it at the time, though. 1983 was more challenging, and 1984 was VERY challenging.

Michael : What made you want to come back to the US?

Ted : I felt like I had done what I could for the estate. I looked around at other opportunities in France, but none of them really interested me. So I felt like I should at least see what was going on in California, and I saw a lot of interesting things happening.

Yoshi : And you settled in Sonoma Valley because you felt that that was the best terroir for Pinot Noir in California?

Ted : No, I worked in Napa Valley for seven years after that. When Heidi and I started Littorai in 1992, I had been in a tasting group that tasted only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from mostly Burgundy, California and Oregon. That tasting group was held once a month and all the wines were served completely blind. We had tasting themes like "Find the two Domaine Dujac wines in a flight", "Find the two Combottes in a flight." We did all kinds of things, everything blind. It was a really great, serious tasting group. Steve Kistler, Helen Turley, Burt Williams, and Tony Soter were members of that tasting group.

Yoshi : Wow, who's who.

Ted : Yes, so after tasting with these guys for about five years, I was convinced that the two areas that were of most interest to me were the "true" Sonoma Coast or Willamette Valley. I felt that those two areas had the most potential. I was convinced that I can make a world-class wine from these areas.

Yoshi : The idea of joining Josh Jensen in Mt. Harlan and planting vines in limestone didn't cross your mind at all?

Ted : I spent the 1982 harvest with Josh, just before I went to work for Roulot, so I knew the area. I tasted a lot of old Chalone wines. I had become very enamored with those wines but I didn't feel like there was much to discover there. The tasting group that I was in helped me forget the idea of limestone. I really no longer saw limestone as being the key to Pinot Noir. I had too many great wines that weren't from limestone.

Yoshi : Interesting.

Ted : In fact, some of us who are not limestone producers now look at it like, "Wow, this Pinot Noir is really good, and it's even from limestone!"

Kazuto : Ted, I'm a big fan of your Mays Canyon.

Ted : Are you? Thank you.

Kazuto : The reason why I like the Mays Canyon is because I can surprise my customers with that wine. Most customers have a hard time believing that that wine is from California.

Michael : How about this wine (2007 Charles Heintz Chardonnay)? If you were to taste this wine blind, would you think it was from California?

Kazuto : Absolutely! This wine is exactly in the "Bridge" category that I was talking about earlier. It's richer and riper compared to a Burgundy, but it has the freshness and acidity you normally don't find in California wines. It's unmistakably a California wine, but very elegant.

Michael : Best of both worlds!

Kazuto : That's the phrase I was looking for.

Ted : The problem with Thieriot and Mays Canyon is that they are both frosty sites. As soon as there is any frost, half of the production is gone.

Yoshi : Ted, I know you make several different single vineyard wines, but do you make all the wines the same way?

Ted : Absolutely. They are made the same way, bottled the same day, same percent new oak, same barrel maker. EVERYTHING is the same, except for the site.

Kazuto : How do you retain this freshness in your wines?

Ted : Part of it is that we've traditionally picked a lot less ripe than most other wineries. For most of the big-name California producers, our picking ripeness would be really low. For the last four or five years, we've used about 10% stainless steel barrels, and I really like how it adds the wine a bit more focus, liveliness, and tightness. What I try to do is to make wines in the style I want to make, not in the style that critics may like.

Yoshi : The Sonoma Coast seems too big to be one appellation. The climate must be different from one end to the other?

Ted : In my opinion, I think Sonoma County, in general, could have done a better job with AVAs. On the other hand, I think Napa County has done a pretty job. So to answer your question, for us, AVA is the vineyard name.

Kazuto : We need something that makes us easier for us to explain the differences in the wines. So while I don't rely entirely on AVA names, it's a good reference tool to have as a sommelier.

Yoshi : So Ted, you believe in single-vineyard designations for all your wines because you believe in terroir and the uniqueness of each piece of land. From my experience, with California wines, single-vineyard bottling don't taste much different from one another. There have been times when I felt that blending would have made a better and more complete wine than single vineyard bottlings. Do you have an opinion on that?

Ted : Here is an analogy. If you were a chef who was asked to cook Indian food but you've never tasted Indian food before, I guarantee you, you're not going to make Indian food. If you've never been exposed to the language, you can't speak it. So for most American winemakers, their exposure to European wines is very limited. So they don't talk the language of terroir. They've never been taught it. So it's not reasonable for us to expect them to make wines with terroir, especially in an environment where the whole "rating system" doesn't reward wines for "speaking of a place." There are also winemakers like Josh Jensen, Paul Draper, and others who clearly have an idea of terroir. But it's a small minority.

Ted : Most of "terroir winemaking" is about saying "no." But Americans are tinkerers and that doesn't jive well with the terroir thing. As a result, you have wines that taste the same.

Yoshi : I've always thought that single-vineyard bottling was directly tied to marketing. For example, any wine that has the name Hirsch on the label could be sold at a higher price than, say, a "regular" Sonoma Coast wine.

Ted : Undoubtedly. That's the frustrating part of American wine. It's a bit like Burgundy in that you ask yourself, "What's the appellation on this wine and how much did I pay for this wine?" and you're utterly disappointed. It's that same gut reaction you have when you taste a California wine that has some famous vineyard name on it, and you say to yourself, "What? A California wine is probably technically correct, whereas the Burgundy is probably flawed."

Kazuto : Well, culturally, I think it's "wrong" to blend Musigny with Chambertin, for example.

Yoshi : Absolutely, history plays into this.