Decanter at Home: Vérité masterclass 2008 and 2018

Last chance: You can still buy tickets to watch this Vérité virtual masterclass and taste the wines, via the Decanter at Home series – book here

Driving to Vérité on a sunny day in November is as I imagine arriving in The Shire in Tolkien’s fiction.

As you leave the constant stream of traffic on Highway 101, within moments you are winding down narrow country lanes, through rolling countryside, under arching trees that lattice frame the Pacific blue sky. You pass burnished vineyards bright with ruby and orange leaves, the new green grass already pushing through the rows after the longed-for rainfall.

Bucolic, verdant, there is more fresh air than you know what to do with as you roll down the window. There is so much beauty. Little wonder Pierre Seillan chose this corner of Sonoma County to animate the late Jess Jackson’s request to ‘Make me a great Merlot’.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the six Vérité masterclass wines

Of course, Pierre saw far beyond the surface of the region’s natural beauty – or, rather, far beneath. He recognised the power of the shifting tectonic plates, resulting in myriad volcanic, living soils.

He knew the cooling Pacific influence would promote inherent freshness as well as the need for canny and careful vineyard decisions. And he saw the multiple elevation possibilities that transform one vineyard into many blocks, and knew they would give the winemaker more options and encourage greater complexity

Pierre was also keen to explore the possibilities of a new world, free from the rigid French appellation contrôlée legislation, despite decades creating and witnessing quality in Southwest France, Loire and Bordeaux.

The Vérité trio

Jess and Pierre met thanks to their wives. Despite the language barrier, they formed a bond that would lead Pierre to uproot his family from Bordeaux and move to California.

In 1998, Pierre fulfilled Jess’ vision and released their first Merlot-based wine, simply labelled Vérité, as it was only ever tabled to be a single project.

But Pierre surprised Jess with another wine that year: a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend they christened La Joie. The third wine, Le Désir, followed in the 2000 vintage – a Cabernet Franc which was Pierre’s love from his years in the Loire, his desire fulfilled with Sonoma grapes.

Le Désir, La Joie and La Muse (what the first Merlot-based wine was renamed) are all wines that honour the grape variety, the place and the vision.

Hélène, Pierre’s daughter, remembers the family’s arrival in California through the eyes of a 9-year-old child: she was less impressed by the natural beauty and more alarmed by the culture shock. She adapted, of course.

In conversation, Hélène pinpoints 2006 as the year she found her true vocation for wine. She went back to Bordeaux in February of that year and worked in the vineyards, bonding with the pruners. She says this experience allowed her to make sense of the bigger wine picture; a sense of the connections, and her own role.

‘It’s the people who bring it alive’ she says, their hard manual labour that turns into wine. Hélène worked her first Vérité vintage in 2008, and she has worked alongside her father ever since.

They have vineyards in four Sonoma appellations: Bennett Valley, Alexander Valley, Knights Valley and Chalk Hill. Over the years, as their understanding of the sites has deepened, so the micro-cuves they work with have increased.

The innate truth of each parcel

They liken it to having more colours with which to paint. Theirs is not the pursuit of making a ‘perfect wine’. Instead, they minutely explore the diversity that is Sonoma County, attempting to give flavour and form every year to its innate truth – its vérité. They see their task as respecting the uniqueness of each parcel.

The essence of the work, according to Hélène, lies in recognising each lot’s peculiarities and traits and transcribing its signature in vinous form. Each parcel is vinified and aged separately to create the elements of the wine’s architecture. The blending process takes place several years post-harvest. Each wine grows into its finished state piece by piece slowly, respectfully, uniquely.

Pierre and Hélène make this micromanagement of structural layering sound easy. The wines themselves are indeed effortlessly elegant and present themselves as complete pieces, not fractured. However, there are two structural components, intrinsically linked, worth commenting on since they are a continuous thread across all the wines and are, arguably, the secret to their beautiful ability to age.

The first is the wines’ intrinsic freshness coming from a level of acidity which is a notch higher than many Californian wines. It lifts and polishes everything in the glass, to make the wines shine, from the aromatics to the flavours right through to the finish.

The second is the nature of the tannins, remarkable in their ability to mesh so completely with the other elements in the glass. They are unquestionably present yet seamlessly integrated, firm yet fine, persistent yet plush. As the wines develop and mature, the tannic finesse they show even in youth, turns to cashmere in their second and third decade.

Wines to savour not rush

Hélène explains that grape tannins need to be treated with immense care in California, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. In the heat and dryness of a typical growing season, grape skins develop prodigious thickness which gives colour and massive tannic structure. A longer hang time will see skins softening as sugars rise and acidity falls.

They pick earlier than many, to preserve the freshness, but then have to manage the thick skins in the cellar ‘very, very gently’ she says.

These are wines to savour, not to rush. They are exquisite in their youth on the nose but reward patience and start to unfurl only upon reaching their first decade in bottle. They embody the ‘peacock’s tail’ analogy, as their essential qualitative elements begin to reveal themselves only as they evolve.

Some 23 years on and the Seillan and Jackson craft continues. Construction of a beautiful, cathedral-like barrel cellar and new winemaking facility is underway at the estate. There is no desire to make changes other than those dictated by nature, but it will give them an opportunity to welcome more guests to experience the wines at source.

I encourage everyone to visit this special corner of Sonoma, this Shire of California wine country. In the meantime, taste its profound and beautiful truth in the Vérité wines, made with care and a deft touch by people perfectly in tune with their surroundings.

See tasting notes and scores for the six Vérité masterclass wines

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