http://www.beyondnapavalley.com/blog/winemaker-profile-greg-la-follette-of-the-winery-tandem/ Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:03:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://www.beyondnapavalley.com/blog/winemaker-profile-greg-la-follette-of-the-winery-tandem/comment-page-1/#comment-64 Beth Niles Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:09:14 +0000 http://www.beyondnapavalley.com/blog/?p=367#comment-64 As Haydn's sidekick for our visit with Greg LaFollette, I'd like to second everything he said and by way of emphasis, mention that when I asked Greg about who is in the driver's seat on this Tandem adventure, Nature or himself, he didn't bat an eyelash, " nature", he uttered. You know he's telling you the truth when you've just sampled the same pinot clone from three different elevations on Sonoma Mountain and they run the gamut from local garrigue (fennel) , to smoke and spice, to floral. These are true vins de terroirs, woodsy, smoky, sensuous, elegant, and yes, a little sauvage at times with fantastic aromatics. With tannins in proportion, hints of new oak, luscious mouthfeel, Greg is elevating wines finely balanced between an Old World elegance and New World accessibility. This combined with a passionate commitment to biodynamic farming, whole cluster pressing (and a little human pressing, too) native yeasts, minimal additions of SO2, unfined/unfiltered gives you the sense that Pan is afoot when you open a bottle of Tandem wine, and the muse herself is not far behind. As Haydn’s sidekick for our visit with Greg LaFollette, I’d like to second everything he said and by way of emphasis, mention that when I asked Greg about who is in the driver’s seat on this Tandem adventure, Nature or himself, he didn’t bat an eyelash, ” nature”, he uttered. You know he’s telling you the truth when you’ve just sampled the same pinot clone from three different elevations on Sonoma Mountain and they run the gamut from local garrigue
(fennel) , to smoke and spice, to floral. These are true vins de terroirs, woodsy, smoky, sensuous, elegant, and yes, a little sauvage at times with fantastic aromatics. With tannins in proportion, hints of new oak, luscious mouthfeel, Greg is elevating wines finely balanced between an Old World elegance and New World accessibility. This combined with a passionate commitment to biodynamic farming, whole cluster pressing (and a little human pressing, too) native yeasts, minimal additions of SO2, unfined/unfiltered gives you the sense that Pan is afoot when you open a bottle of Tandem wine, and the muse herself is not far behind.

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