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APPELLATIONS Bordeaux Bandwagon While the tourist side of Baily Winery happens at the tasting room just off busy Rancho California Road (Temecula’s main wine route), we meet Phil Baily at his spotless—and bless- edly quiet—winemaking facility on De Portola Road, just a couple of miles to the south. Although Baily marks its 25th anniversary this year, “the first 15 years were experimentation,” Phil modesly suggests. With so much experience under his belt, Baily has taken a stand, varietally speaking. Although he does make other wines (“Those who don’t are shooting themselves in the foot,” he avers), he’s a confirmed believer in the Bordeaux creed. His classy Meritage spends 18 months in barrel before blending and another twelve after the cuvée has been assembled. Largely driven by Cabernet Sauvignon, the wines include between 30 and 40 percent Cabernet Franc and have traditionally been rounded off with Merlot, although in the most recent edition (2007) Phil substituted Malbec—a grape he’s obviously excited about. He just bottled his first varietal Malbec, and it’s spot on the money. With an additional one to three years of bottle age (under Nomacorc) before release, the Baily blends are among Temecula’s gems—soft, voluptuous yet structured, full of style and ready to drink upon release. “Is Temecula a substitute for Bordeaux’s terroir?” we ask Phil. He takes a sip of his supple 2004 Meritage, with its licorice-laced flavors and lovely bottle bouquet, and simply replies: “Terroir is overrated.” Also on-board with Bordeaux is Stuart Cellars, where Susan Stuart shows us her stately 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon and her limited-release 2005 Long Valley Red, a heady Meritage that includes all five Bordelais grapes. At Briar Rose Winery, housed in and around a storybook-style cottage, owner-winemaker Les Linkogle prac- tices unorthodox techniques such as three-month maceration and ultraviolet sterilization on his long-aged Cabernets and blends, the most expensive of which have price tags of three digits, making them some of Temecula’s costli- est offerings. Wiens Family Cellars is perhaps a proto-typical Temecula winery in that winemaker Doug Wiens (one of the four Wiens brothers involved in the business) makes a wide spectrum of wines, from Syrah to Sangiovese, from Pinot Gris to White Port, and the winery caters heavily to drive-by traffic. But one of the winery’s strong suits is its Meritage, a Bordeaux-influenced blend with jammy, black-fruit flavors. We tasted it in the stylish Wiens barrel room, fitted with state-of-the-art (and expensive) sliding barrel racks manufac- tured in Spain. Susan Stuart of Stuart Cellars. The vine cuttings shown were grafted this winter. 86 / the tasting panel / april 201 1 Other Directions “I think Temecula is going in the direction of Italian, Spanish and Mediterranean wines,” says Ponte Family Esate winemaker Mark Schabel. An Classy Bordeaux-style blends: Phil Baily keeps tabs on his Meritage in the Baily barrel room. Dorian and Les Linkogle run pictur- esque Briar Rose Winery. alum of both Scheid in Monterey and Cuvaison in Napa, Schabel heads up a winemaking program that treads down the path toward Tuscany—not surprising given owner Claudio Ponte’s Italian-Argentine roots. With input from Argentine enologist Daniel Gomez and viticulturalist Dr. Enrique