Mondavi I Block: old vines, great terroir
The first thing you notice about the I Block of Robert Mondavi’s To Kalon Vineyard is its beauty. To the west, a few hundred feet away, is the wall of the Mayacamas. To the east is the winery itself, with its famous arch and campanile. And here, where you stand on dry, fine dirt, you perceive how the vineyard gently slopes from the base of the mountains to where it hits the valley floor, just across a dirt path, and levels off. This is the Oakville bench, and the five-acre I Block, entirely planted to Sauvignon Blanc (called Fumé Blanc at Mondavi), sits in its tenderloin. The slight grade means that I Block is perfectly drained, even after a wet season like 2009-2010. Across that dirt path, on the vineyard’s flats, where the water settles, the wines are not so fine.
You notice, too, that the vines are entirely untrellised. They’re head-trained, bush-like plants grown in what’s called gobelet fashion (as in goblet), meaning the foliage forms into a rounded canopy of overhead leaves. More than half of I Block’s vines date to 1945, when head training was the norm; when old vines are replaced, their successors are trained in the gobelet style, notes Mondavi’s chief winemaker, Genevieve Janssens.
“And I Block is unirrigated,” she adds. “It doesn’t need to be watered. It’s so balanced, it takes care of itself. Our vineyard manager says it’s the vineyard where we expend the least amount of money and effort.”
When a vineyard is balanced, the wine it makes will be balanced, unless the winemaker screws up, something Janssens and her team aren’t going to do. The grapes are hand-harvested, with younger vines picked earlier. In the winery, only free run juice is used, “because when you squeeze the press [grapes], the juice has more bitterness,” Janssens explains. Grapes from younger vines tend to be fermented in stainless steel barrels, while fruit from older vines goes into oak barrels.
The wine benefits from this combination. “I Block is like a history of humanity,” Janssens says. “The young fruit is impetuous, with great energy. The older vines have the benefit of old age, with philosophy and complexity.”
After the juice has rested overnight in a cold cellar, it is inoculated—no wild yeasts here. The fermentation takes about 45 days, during which time the wine is stirred on its lees about twice a week, in the process known as battonage, which gives a creamy, pleasantly tart note to the finished wine. When fermentation is complete, the wine remains on its lees for an additional nine months. It is never put through malolactic fermentation, to preserve vitality. In the August following the vintage, both tank and barrel wines are blended in a stainless-steel tank. A few months later, the wine is bottled, then held back another nine months before release. Production is small; only 233 cases were produced in 2006, which is the current release.
I Block can be interpreted as the quintessence of 100% Oakville Sauvignon Blanc, although it is also, of course, the essence of To Kalon. Janssens’s Reserve Fumé Blanc contains some Sémillon, also from To Kalon; though that fruit is sourced from other blocks in the vineyard, it often is as great as I Block. But for an experience of the greatest Sauvignon purity, I Block reigns supreme. It is one of the few California Sauvignon Blancs to be ageable; the 1999 is drinking beautifully.
The first thing you notice about the I Block of Robert Mondavi’s To Kalon Vineyard is its beauty. To the west, a few hundred feet away, is the wall of the Mayacamas. To the east is the winery itself, with its famous arch and campanile. And here, where you stand on dry, fine dirt, you perceive how the vineyard gently slopes from the base of the mountains to where it hits the valley floor, just across a dirt path, and levels off. This is the Oakville bench, and the five-acre I Block, entirely planted to Sauvignon Blanc (called Fumé Blanc at Mondavi), sits in its tenderloin. The slight grade means that I Block is perfectly drained, even after a wet season like 2009-2010. Across that dirt path, on the vineyard’s flats, where the water settles, the wines are not so fine.
You notice, too, that the vines are entirely untrellised. They’re head-trained, bush-like plants grown in what’s called gobelet fashion (as in goblet), meaning the foliage forms into a rounded canopy of overhead leaves. More than half of I Block’s vines date to 1945, when head training was the norm; when old vines are replaced, their successors are trained in the gobelet style, notes Mondavi’s chief winemaker, Genevieve Janssens.
“And I Block is unirrigated,” she adds. “It doesn’t need to be watered. It’s so balanced, it takes care of itself. Our vineyard manager says it’s the vineyard where we expend the least amount of money and effort.”
When a vineyard is balanced, the wine it makes will be balanced, unless the winemaker screws up, something Janssens and her team aren’t going to do. The grapes are hand-harvested, with younger vines picked earlier. In the winery, only free run juice is used, “because when you squeeze the press [grapes], the juice has more bitterness,” Janssens explains. Grapes from younger vines tend to be fermented in stainless steel barrels, while fruit from older vines goes into oak barrels.
The wine benefits from this combination. “I Block is like a history of humanity,” Janssens says. “The young fruit is impetuous, with great energy. The older vines have the benefit of old age, with philosophy and complexity.”
After the juice has rested overnight in a cold cellar, it is inoculated—no wild yeasts here. The fermentation takes about 45 days, during which time the wine is stirred on its lees about twice a week, in the process known as battonage, which gives a creamy, pleasantly tart note to the finished wine. When fermentation is complete, the wine remains on its lees for an additional nine months. It is never put through malolactic fermentation, to preserve vitality. In the August following the vintage, both tank and barrel wines are blended in a stainless-steel tank. A few months later, the wine is bottled, then held back another nine months before release. Production is small; only 233 cases were produced in 2006, which is the current release.
I Block can be interpreted as the quintessence of 100% Oakville Sauvignon Blanc, although it is also, of course, the essence of To Kalon. Janssens’s Reserve Fumé Blanc contains some Sémillon, also from To Kalon; though that fruit is sourced from other blocks in the vineyard, it often is as great as I Block. But for an experience of the greatest Sauvignon purity, I Block reigns supreme. It is one of the few California Sauvignon Blancs to be ageable; the 1999 is drinking beautifully.