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| Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle |
I met Esther at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers at Meadowood Napa Valley, and saw her talent and her zeal in its budding stages. She has blossomed into one of the most influential wine writers in America as the wine critic at the San Francisco Chronicle. Esther exhibits endless energy for wine and writing about it, and her perch from the Bay City in Northern California offers her a vantage point that few wine writers have these days. Thankfully her audacious ardor supplies her wide range of subjects with a sincerity of spirit. Please welcome Esther into the bottle room.
What wines do you have standing up right now?
Well, I have a lot of wines standing up right now, maybe a few dozen, because I've run out of space in the wine racks and wine fridges in my apartment. I have a whole wine cellar at the Chronicle office, but I haven't been working from there since March 2020, so my apartment and garage have become quite crowded with bottles.
What’s the last great wine you drank?
An amazing Sancerre last weekend — the Edmond Vatan Clos la Neore 2017.
Are there any classic wines that you only recently had for the first time?
I wouldn't say I've had any "classic" wines recently at all!
Describe your ideal drinking experience (when, where, what, how).
A small group of family and friends, a good, simple meal, at a time of year when it stays light late.
What’s your favorite wine no one else has heard of?
These days it's hard to keep secrets. Does everyone know about WalterScott by now? Those wines (from Oregon) are incredible. The joy of my job is that if I do discover something that's not very well known, and if it's from California, I can write about it. Like the EnTirage sparkling wine, a strange late-disgorged project from Sonoma County that I wrote about a few years ago. I've actually seen it on a couple local wine lists recently, which surprised me, because there's not very much of it. Another one some folks might not know about is Taken from Granite, a label that essentially rebottles the best wines made under Gideon Beinstock's tenure at Renaissance Winery. (Here's avery long piece I wrote about that whole situation.)
What wine should everybody drink before the age of 21?
Sparkling wine? Off-dry Riesling? Those seem like good palate primers. Don’t throw the kids straight into Barolo.
What wine should nobody drink until the age of 40?
No idea. I'm not 40 yet!
Who in wine — winemakers, winery owners, writers, retailers, collectors — active today do you admire most?
Jancis Robinson, Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, Eric Asimov. Those are all writers. I won't name any tradespeople so as not to convey favoritism.
Do you count any wine as guilty pleasures?
I feel no guilt about any of it, but I absolutely have a taste for sweet wines, especially Madeira, Sauternes and TBA. I also enjoy drinking that kind of cheap, limey Sauvignon Blanc that basically just tastes like a margarita.
Has Covid19 changed the way your approach wine?
Yes. It makes me think I drink too much of it.
Has a wine ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?
No. I keep wine away from my personal life as much as possible.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a wine recently?
I've been learning a lot about smoke taint recently. One interesting thing I've found is that at certain concentrations, smoke taint can have a similar effect to low levels of TCA — the wine might not taste recognizably smoky at all, but it just tastes kind of muted and bland, with a clipped finish.
What moves you most in a wine?
Expressiveness. Energy. Liveliness. I know I'm supposed to say "balance," which, sure, but the truth is I can get behind an off-balance wine sometimes if it has something delicious to convey that really stands out.
What do you really wish you understood about wine?
How to get more people to want to read articles about it on the Internet.
Which styles do you especially enjoy drinking? And which do you avoid?
I'm still trying, but I really struggle to enjoy orange wines.
Generally speaking, I drink more white than red.
How do you organize your wines?
Not very well. My apartment wine storage situation is haphazard, and I don't even want to think about the state that my cellar at the Chronicle is in, after very little upkeep over the last year and a half. I don't use CellarTracker or any special software, but I do have some spreadsheets so that I can at least remember what I have in some of my less accessible bins in the garage. To the extent that I have any organizing principles, my "nice" wine fridges at home tend to be full of older California reds.
What wine might people be surprised to find in your racks?
Cheap Prosecco. I cannot stop making spritz cocktails!
What’s the best wine you’ve ever received as a gift?
A bottle of Bruno Clair Bonnes Mares. I visited Bruno Clair with a friend a few years ago and fell completely in love with the wines. Last year I ended up writing a letter of recommendation for business school for that friend, and he gave me a bottle to thank me. It was very generous and meant a lot to me because of the trip we'd made together.
I'm also grateful to people for introducing me to truly special wines I'd never tried before – not as a gift but as wines we shared together. The writer William Kelley poured me my first taste of Richard Leroy, the Anjou producer, which completely blew me away. The winemaker Kevin Harvey introduced me to Benanti Pietramarina when I was writing a story about his Carricante project a few years ago.
How have your drinking tastes changed over time?
My drinking tastes seem to be always changing. My appetite for richer wines versus leaner wines, and funky wines versus cleaner-tasting wines, has waxed and waned over time.
Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What wine did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last wine you set aside without finishing?
The last wine I couldn't finish a glass of was a Beaujolais. I guess I won't say which producer. It was all brett. I am totally on board with a little brett in Beaujolais, but to me this was offensive. Luckily my drinking companion didn't mind and finished my glass for me.
What wine do you think everyone should try?
Hanzell Chardonnay.
You’re organizing a dinner party. Which three people from the wine world, dead or alive, do you invite?
André Tchelistcheff, Robert Mondavi, Julia Child (is she from the wine world?).
What wines are you embarrassed not to have drunk yet?
No embarrassment! I have zero shame about my drinking history. But I do someday hope to taste Chave from my birth year, which I understand was a good vintage over there.
What do you plan to drink next?
I have a mountain of samples to get through. We'll see which of them makes it to the dinner table.
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