Feature Article
Milla Handley’s Anderson Valley vineyard experiences
dramatic temperature swings with chilly nights following
hot afternoons throughout the growing season.
Finite Geography, Defined Flavor Profiles: Part I of an interview with Milla Handley
“There is a tightly defined range of grapes that we can get ripe on a consistent basis, and fairly consistent flavor profiles for those grapes as well.”
by
Thom Elkjer
September 1, 2006
Thom Elkjer (TE): How did you wind up with a foot in two appellations – Anderson Valley and Dry Creek Valley?
Milla Handley (MH): My father sold a small vineyard in Alexander Valley to buy one in the Dry Creek Valley appellation just before I started the winery here [in Anderson Valley]. The first year my father was ready to sell grapes, I was going to take all his Chardonnay. But the vineyard manager oversold the fruit and I got only enough for a couple of barrels.
So from the very beginning I was purchasing grapes in Anderson Valley. Eventually I was also getting the grapes from the family’s vineyard in Dry Creek. I make more Anderson Valley and Mendocino County wines than Dry Creek wines at this point, but I work in both appellations every year.
TE: How would you describe the differences between the two appellations?
MH: Anderson Valley is easy to define. When you drive in the valley, you can see the limits of the growing area: maybe a mile wide on the valley floor, maybe a mile and a half wide on the ridgetops. That’s it. It’s finite in size, and strongly influenced by the ocean. You can also see that the valley floor isn’t that flat, either – most of it is made up of moderate slopes.
TE: What are the dominant marine influences that you see?
MH: From our winery to the ocean is less than ten miles as the crow flies, so we get plenty of cool air all the time. Even when we don’t get fog, we get wind. So this really is a cool-climate growing area, not just in name.
TE: But doesn’t it also warm up, as we saw from the some of the heat storms earlier this season?
MH: You would think that the proximity to the ocean would make the climate pretty moderate, because out on the coast the temperature doesn’t change that much. It stays in a pretty moderate range. But just ten miles inland, where we are, it can get significantly hotter and colder. That’s because the high mountains on either side of the valley create an inversion layer that traps the cold sea air down on the valley floor during the morning and then superheats the air in the afternoon.
TE: In other words, they give the valley a wide diurnal range.
MH: It’s a huge diurnal range. We can get up to nearly 100 degrees during the day and come back down to the 50s overnight, and sometimes it will do that for days. During what we call “normal” summer weather, it can get into the 40s at night after reaching the high 80s or low 90s during the day. This has a big influence on flavors as well as the length of the growing season, how much moisture we get, and all kinds of things.
I was in Oregon at a Pinot Noir conference and people were saying that if you taste cinnamon in the wine, it’s due to carbonic maceration or whole cluster pressing. Well, maybe that’s what does it in Oregon. In Anderson Valley, I believe it’s the temperature changes which the grapes go through, day after day, all summer. The grapes retain a spiciness, that allspice and cinnamon that you can taste.
TE: The mountains also create some frost issues. In 2005, there was a frost on April 20th that wiped out big sections of Wiley and Kiser, the two vineyards furthest west in the valley. A month later, I walked through a Gewürztraminer block with Brad Wiley and there were no flowers at all. Nothing but leaves. He was just shaking his head.
MH: You have to assume we will have a dangerous frost every single year in this valley. It may not be a killing frost like that one, and it could be late rather than early, but it will come. A few years ago we had all our fruit hanging on the vines, just days away from picking, and it got down to 33 degrees one night.
TE: How late in the year was that?
MH: We sometimes finish picking the Chardonnay for still wine as late as November, but that’s unusual. Usually it’s more like late October.
TE: So let’s compare that with Dry Creek.
MH: Like Anderson Valley, Dry Creek Valley also has a warmer upper end, which is less influenced by the ocean and therefore gets more sun and more heat. In Dry Creek, that’s the area below the Lake Sonoma dam. In Anderson Valley, we just call it the “shallow end” or Boonville. But in general, Dry Creek Valley is less defined than Anderson Valley.
Our vineyard is less than a mile northeast of where the Russian River Valley appellation starts. The “Welcome to Dry Creek Valley” sign is at the corner of our property. They just drew lines to say where the Dry Creek Valley appellation ended and the Russian River appellation started. The soils are the same and the climate’s the same as northern Russian River, but if you’re standing here you’re in Dry Creek and if you walk over there, you’re in Russian River.
TE: What are the growing conditions in that part of the valley?
MH: Well, for starters, it’s not really much of a valley in that area.
TE: Good point. Back in the mid to late 1800s, maps show that it was called “the Plaines” or “the Ranchos.” The Alexander Valley appellation shares part of that plain as well.
MH: It’s a very wide plain, with warm weather and very, very deep soils, and it doesn’t frost as much as in Anderson Valley. The Chardonnay there ripens four to six weeks earlier than our estate Chardonnay in Anderson Valley. Part of that is the soil, and part of it is the climate.
TE: In 2001 you replanted a few acres of the Dry Creek Valley vineyard, but you chose not to put in Zinfandel, even though you make Zin already (from Redwood Valley in Mendocino) and Zinfandel is a signature grape for Dry Creek Valley.
MH: I felt that the soils were too deep. The really spicy, fun Zinfandel I like from Mendocino County comes from poor soils or no soil. They have that kind of site in parts of Dry Creek, on the benches and hillsides, but not at the bottom of the valley where our vineyard is. So we planted a few acres of Syrah and Viognier instead. The remainder of the 19 acres is Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, which do very well there.
TE: The folks in Dry Creek Valley have recently made a big point of emphasizing that they make great Cabernet Sauvignon and have all the Bordeaux varieties planted in the valley. They also talk about various flavor profiles from different parts of the appellation: the eastern benches, the western slopes, the upper end of the valley, and the lower end.
MH:
That’s another big difference between Dry Creek and Anderson Valley. There is a tightly defined range of grapes that we can get ripe on a consistent basis, and fairly consistent flavor profiles for those grapes as well. We can’t grow Cabernet in Anderson Valley. We can sneak in some Syrah way up high on the ridges, and there is some Sauvignon Blanc in Boonville, but those are exceptions.
In general, we’re limited to the Alsatians, sparkling wines, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Because of the natural tendency of our grapes to ripen with high acids, there’s also a structural profile. Anderson Valley wines don’t tend to be huge, but they still give you a lot of flavor.
TE: Dry Creek Valley wines are generally not huge either, compared to, say, Napa.
MH: Nothing is big anymore compared to Napa!
This interview is the first in a two part series. In the second portion of our interview with Milla Handley, she answers questions about how winegrowing, winemaking and wine-tasting have changed in Anderson Valley during her nearly three-decade career. Milla also addresses the rumours about the possible discontinuation of the Handley Cellars sparkling wine program.
~ Thom Elkjer, Mendocino Regional Correspondent
To comment on Thom Elkjer’s writings and thoughts, contact him at t.elkjer@appellationamerica.com
Milla Handley (MH): My father sold a small vineyard in Alexander Valley to buy one in the Dry Creek Valley appellation just before I started the winery here [in Anderson Valley]. The first year my father was ready to sell grapes, I was going to take all his Chardonnay. But the vineyard manager oversold the fruit and I got only enough for a couple of barrels.
So from the very beginning I was purchasing grapes in Anderson Valley. Eventually I was also getting the grapes from the family’s vineyard in Dry Creek. I make more Anderson Valley and Mendocino County wines than Dry Creek wines at this point, but I work in both appellations every year. TE: How would you describe the differences between the two appellations?
MH: Anderson Valley is easy to define. When you drive in the valley, you can see the limits of the growing area: maybe a mile wide on the valley floor, maybe a mile and a half wide on the ridgetops. That’s it. It’s finite in size, and strongly influenced by the ocean. You can also see that the valley floor isn’t that flat, either – most of it is made up of moderate slopes.
TE: What are the dominant marine influences that you see?
MH: From our winery to the ocean is less than ten miles as the crow flies, so we get plenty of cool air all the time. Even when we don’t get fog, we get wind. So this really is a cool-climate growing area, not just in name.
TE: But doesn’t it also warm up, as we saw from the some of the heat storms earlier this season?
MH: You would think that the proximity to the ocean would make the climate pretty moderate, because out on the coast the temperature doesn’t change that much. It stays in a pretty moderate range. But just ten miles inland, where we are, it can get significantly hotter and colder. That’s because the high mountains on either side of the valley create an inversion layer that traps the cold sea air down on the valley floor during the morning and then superheats the air in the afternoon.
TE: In other words, they give the valley a wide diurnal range. MH: It’s a huge diurnal range. We can get up to nearly 100 degrees during the day and come back down to the 50s overnight, and sometimes it will do that for days. During what we call “normal” summer weather, it can get into the 40s at night after reaching the high 80s or low 90s during the day. This has a big influence on flavors as well as the length of the growing season, how much moisture we get, and all kinds of things.
I was in Oregon at a Pinot Noir conference and people were saying that if you taste cinnamon in the wine, it’s due to carbonic maceration or whole cluster pressing. Well, maybe that’s what does it in Oregon. In Anderson Valley, I believe it’s the temperature changes which the grapes go through, day after day, all summer. The grapes retain a spiciness, that allspice and cinnamon that you can taste.
TE: The mountains also create some frost issues. In 2005, there was a frost on April 20th that wiped out big sections of Wiley and Kiser, the two vineyards furthest west in the valley. A month later, I walked through a Gewürztraminer block with Brad Wiley and there were no flowers at all. Nothing but leaves. He was just shaking his head.
MH: You have to assume we will have a dangerous frost every single year in this valley. It may not be a killing frost like that one, and it could be late rather than early, but it will come. A few years ago we had all our fruit hanging on the vines, just days away from picking, and it got down to 33 degrees one night.
TE: How late in the year was that?
MH: We sometimes finish picking the Chardonnay for still wine as late as November, but that’s unusual. Usually it’s more like late October.
TE: So let’s compare that with Dry Creek.
MH: Like Anderson Valley, Dry Creek Valley also has a warmer upper end, which is less influenced by the ocean and therefore gets more sun and more heat. In Dry Creek, that’s the area below the Lake Sonoma dam. In Anderson Valley, we just call it the “shallow end” or Boonville. But in general, Dry Creek Valley is less defined than Anderson Valley.
Our vineyard is less than a mile northeast of where the Russian River Valley appellation starts. The “Welcome to Dry Creek Valley” sign is at the corner of our property. They just drew lines to say where the Dry Creek Valley appellation ended and the Russian River appellation started. The soils are the same and the climate’s the same as northern Russian River, but if you’re standing here you’re in Dry Creek and if you walk over there, you’re in Russian River.
TE: What are the growing conditions in that part of the valley?
MH: Well, for starters, it’s not really much of a valley in that area.
TE: Good point. Back in the mid to late 1800s, maps show that it was called “the Plaines” or “the Ranchos.” The Alexander Valley appellation shares part of that plain as well.
MH: It’s a very wide plain, with warm weather and very, very deep soils, and it doesn’t frost as much as in Anderson Valley. The Chardonnay there ripens four to six weeks earlier than our estate Chardonnay in Anderson Valley. Part of that is the soil, and part of it is the climate.
TE: In 2001 you replanted a few acres of the Dry Creek Valley vineyard, but you chose not to put in Zinfandel, even though you make Zin already (from Redwood Valley in Mendocino) and Zinfandel is a signature grape for Dry Creek Valley.
MH: I felt that the soils were too deep. The really spicy, fun Zinfandel I like from Mendocino County comes from poor soils or no soil. They have that kind of site in parts of Dry Creek, on the benches and hillsides, but not at the bottom of the valley where our vineyard is. So we planted a few acres of Syrah and Viognier instead. The remainder of the 19 acres is Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, which do very well there.
TE: The folks in Dry Creek Valley have recently made a big point of emphasizing that they make great Cabernet Sauvignon and have all the Bordeaux varieties planted in the valley. They also talk about various flavor profiles from different parts of the appellation: the eastern benches, the western slopes, the upper end of the valley, and the lower end.
MH:
That’s another big difference between Dry Creek and Anderson Valley. There is a tightly defined range of grapes that we can get ripe on a consistent basis, and fairly consistent flavor profiles for those grapes as well. We can’t grow Cabernet in Anderson Valley. We can sneak in some Syrah way up high on the ridges, and there is some Sauvignon Blanc in Boonville, but those are exceptions.
In general, we’re limited to the Alsatians, sparkling wines, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Because of the natural tendency of our grapes to ripen with high acids, there’s also a structural profile. Anderson Valley wines don’t tend to be huge, but they still give you a lot of flavor.
TE: Dry Creek Valley wines are generally not huge either, compared to, say, Napa.
MH: Nothing is big anymore compared to Napa!
This interview is the first in a two part series. In the second portion of our interview with Milla Handley, she answers questions about how winegrowing, winemaking and wine-tasting have changed in Anderson Valley during her nearly three-decade career. Milla also addresses the rumours about the possible discontinuation of the Handley Cellars sparkling wine program.
~ Thom Elkjer, Mendocino Regional Correspondent
To comment on Thom Elkjer’s writings and thoughts, contact him at t.elkjer@appellationamerica.com
