Flanagan

Eric Flanagan came to wine as a traveller. He visited growing regions from New Zealand to Greece and became fascinated by the way soil and climate turn the same grape into different wines. At the time he owned EMF Financial Products in New York. In 1999 he bought forty acres high on Bennett Mountain in Sonoma County, and in 2001 he and his eldest daughter Riley planted the first vine. For the next decade he ran the winery from his home in Colorado; in 2010 the family moved to Sonoma.

The growth since has been steady and deliberate. In 2011 Flanagan bought a ranch in the Russian River Valley planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. From the 2014 vintage he began bottling vineyard-designated wines from Ritchie and Bacigalupi. In 2015 he bought Gap’s View in the Petaluma Gap, and his vineyard fund bought Platt, on a ridge near the coast at Freestone. In 2016 he bought a winery and vineyard on West Dry Creek Road just outside Healdsburg, replanted it, and moved all production there.

It is still a family business. Eric and Kit live about a mile from the winery. Riley runs wholesale sales and has her own label, Riley’s Rows, a Sauvignon Blanc from the family’s ranch in Redwood Valley, Mendocino. The Beauty of Three wines are named for Riley and her sisters, Lola and Ruby.

Bennett Valley is a small, cool pocket of Sonoma County, tucked between Sonoma Mountain and Bennett Mountain, and it has never been as famous as its neighbours. It earned an early reputation for Merlot when David Ramey made the wine at Matanzas Creek, and Flanagan still makes a little Bennett Valley Merlot to keep that thread alive. The Syrah is the reason to know the place.

The estate ranch was planted in 2001 on a steep volcanic hillside. Small berries give colour and concentration, and the site gives the wine a tannic backbone that surprises people who expect California Syrah to be soft. It is all Syrah, raised in French oak with only fifteen per cent new barrels, so the wood sits behind the fruit. A recent vintage made a little over 350 cases.

The family says critics have compared it to Hermitage. James Suckling gave the 2016 ninety-four points and Jeb Dunnuck the 2019 ninety-two. I would put it closer to the northern end of the Rhône than the southern: pepper and violets, black olive, a cool, savoury finish. It ages well, and it is the wine I pour for anyone who thinks they know what California Syrah tastes like.

Ritchie Vineyard, in the heart of the Russian River Valley, was planted in the early 1970s to the Old Wente clone of Chardonnay on AXR-1 rootstock. AXR-1 failed across California when phylloxera came back in the 1980s, and most vineyards on it were pulled out. Ritchie survived, because the fine volcanic ash in its soil is poor ground for the louse. Those old vines are a large part of why Flanagan’s Chardonnay has the depth it has.

Just south of the Dry Creek estate, the Bacigalupi family farms more than a hundred acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Flanagan takes fruit from one of their top blocks. It is the vineyard that supplied the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay which won the Judgment of Paris in 1976. Platt, three miles from the ocean on prized Goldridge sandy loam, with Chardonnay blocks between 625 and 850 feet that often sit above the fog, gave Flanagan wines until 2022.

Gap’s View is a different animal: a valley-floor site on heavy clay loam in the Petaluma Gap, one of the windiest places in Sonoma, giving Pinot Noir with darker fruit than the Russian River. Since buying it in 2015 the family has replanted dead vines, strengthened weak ones, composted, pruned for fewer shoots and more moderate yields, and used worm tea as a soil probiotic. The vineyard is now certified sustainable. The estate Cabernet, from 2021, comes from a steep east-facing hillside at the Dry Creek winery.

Isabelle Mort grew up in Montreal, among more maple trees than vines. She studied winemaking and viticulture at the Canadian Food and Wine Institute in Niagara, then spent a few years working in Europe, from the steep slopes of the Mosel to the grand crus of Burgundy. Her interest in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay took her on to Central Otago, the Yarra Valley and back to Niagara before she settled in Sonoma. She joined Flanagan as assistant winemaker in 2016 and became director of winemaking in 2018.

The winery describes her approach as a search for the wine a vineyard wants to make, using both science and creativity, and without dogma. In practice that means early enough picking to keep brightness in the Chardonnay, new oak used with restraint, and Pinot Noir fermentations that are fairly short, nine to eleven days, with ten to twenty per cent whole clusters when the vintage calls for them. At Gap’s View about ten per cent whole cluster lifts the site’s dark fruit. The Beauty of Three Pinot is mostly kept in tank, with only a quarter in barrel, to hold its freshness.

The result is a range with a recognisable house voice and real differences between sites. The Gap’s View Pinot Noir, when it appears, is as good as the Sonoma Coast makes. The Russian River Chardonnay, from Ritchie and Bacigalupi, has weight and line at once.

More than any other grape, Pinot Noir is made in the vineyard.

Flanagan Wines