Introduction

Jon Bonné at jbonne@sfchronicle.com.

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By Jon Bonné

Top 100 Wines: From small labels, big flavors come

This year was all about thinking small. As in: small wineries, small vineyards, small amounts of wine.   

That isn't to say you won't find familiar names among the Top 100 Wines, but much of the most interesting winemaking on the West Coast is increasingly taking place on a small scale. These aren't cult wineries - it's more about vintners who prefer to focus on modest projects they can control from budbreak to bottle.

In part, that reflects the reality that it's difficult to build your own estate from scratch nowadays. Most of the innovation can be found in warehouses and leased facilities. If Bordeaux's large-scale ambitions were once a template, the model now lies closer to Burgundy, where nearly everything is writ small.

That's not a huge surprise, if you consider how big a role Pinot Noir now plays on this coast. It is by definition a grape that avoids being handled at scale. And so the Top 100 lineup of Pinot is dominated by small, esteemed labels - names like Skewis,  Bergstrom,  Littorai  and Cobb. 

Most Pinots that I tasted were from 2008, a memorable year in California and Oregon - for very different reasons. In Sonoma and Mendocino, '08 was grueling; first frost, then wildfires, wiped out a lot of fruit, and many wineries declassified their bottlings. There was still extraordinary wine, but much less of it.

In Oregon, 2008 was a wonder - a near-perfect vintage with late, long ripening that yielded profound wines. It was a tough task to choose a final handful. And because Oregon still believes in serious $30 Pinot, there is a bounty of affordable, delicious Pinots coming across the state border.

Prices for the best California efforts were somewhat higher, but plenty of serious wines remained shy of $40; others would be worth it at nearly any price. That said, the quality of cheap Pinot Noir stands to give the grape a bad name; it truly does not take to rubber-stamped winemaking.

It has been tough at times to find serious Sauvignon Blanc, but this year witnessed ever more vintners achieving profound results without succumbing either to the lavishness of barrel fermenting or the austerity of New Zealand knockoffs. Techniques ranging from lees stirring in steel barrels to fermenting in concrete eggs yielded noteworthy efforts, including from such longtime names as Grgich Hills  and Mia Klein's Selene. 

 Same with Chardonnay. No longer are we stuck between stainless-steel austerity and the baroque stylings of French oak. Ever more wines show judicious (but not minimal) winemaking applied to serious, powerful fruit.

Riesling is off like a bullet (so much so that top examples are harder to find), but the real innovation lies in other corners. Both in Rhone-inspired whites - take Wells Guthrie's skin-contact Roussanne from the James Berry vineyard - and in more unexpected options (Trousseau Gris,  even Gruner Veltliner),  there is a renaissance of serious white winemaking on the West Coast.

That includes a desire to knock down varietal walls; blends like Arnot-Roberts' old-vine field blend or the Massican Annia (a Friulian-style mix of Tocai Friulano, Ribolla Gialla and Chardonnay) show the potential for fresh, complex white blends.

When it comes to Cabernet, the real story was the fantastic 2007 vintage, both in California and Washington. The year provided an embarrassment of riches, including some of the best examples ever from lauded names like Spottswoode  and Dominus.

There were also terrific Syrahs to be found from Washington state, including a 2008 from Gramercy Cellars that could become a new benchmark, as well as from Sonoma and Santa Barbara. The Sierra Foothills, long struggling to spike on the radar, are making serious inroads as Rhone-inspired vintners like Berkeley's Donkey and Goat seek out not just Syrah but Grenache and Mourvedre. A prediction: Watch for high-altitude Grenache to stand out next year.

For that matter, Zinfandel is edging back from its sweet, high-octane excesses. Examples like those from Dashe Cellars  or Ancient Peaks  show that power can come without ponderousness. And some of Zin's historic counterpart grapes - Carignane, notably - are regaining traction as winemakers rediscover the virtues of affordable fruit from small holdover parcels that have survived the groupthink of modern viticulture. Rarely have there been better opportunities for California's wine past to help fuel its future.

So here's to thinking small, and to the growing trend of wines that reveal less sheer power and more attention to detail. These represent the best of what West Coast wine can offer.

Find Jon Bonné at jbonne@sfchronicle.com or twitter.com/jbonne.

Top 100 Wines 2009 » Top 100 Wines 2008 » Top 100 Wines 2007 »