Young Hagen Wines

Tim interned at Kosta Browne in 2010 and went to work for Thomas Rivers Brown at Outpost on Howell Mountain in 2011. Brown is one of the most sought-after winemakers in Napa, and his team makes wine for a long list of small estates; working under him is an education in how many ways there are to get a wine right. Tim became cellarmaster, and in 2013 he made the first Young Hagen there, three barrels of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from a vineyard on Occidental Road between Sebastopol and Occidental, farmed by Charlie Chenoweth.

He is now Director of Winemaking at Thomas Rivers Brown Winemaking and the winemaker at Bydand and Vermeil. Young Hagen stays small on purpose, in quantities measured in barrels, and each wine is meant to tell the story of one site in one year.

The Platt Vineyard is in Freestone, on the far West Sonoma Coast, on a hillside above the little town of Bodega. The exposure is extreme and the weather cold; at flowering the chill thins the crop on its own, so the yields are small and the fruit concentrated. Young Hagen has its own block there, 0.87 acre of Old Wente Chardonnay on the western edge of the vineyard, looking out at the sea. Tim says it is his favourite place to take guests.

The 2016, the first Platt Chardonnay he released, was five barrels: twelve months on its lees in French oak, 20 per cent new, and another eight months in tank before bottling. The 2018 on our list made 120 cases. We have the 2019 too, so you can see what a year in bottle does to a wine with this much acidity.

Platt’s extreme exposure and cold climate produces wines of great intensity, salinity, tension and acidity.

Young Hagen

Wendling is in the part of Anderson Valley locals call the Deep End, one of the last vineyards before the town of Navarro, where the valley runs out toward the coast. Paul Ardzrooni owns and farms its twenty acres. It was planted in 2010 on Bearwallow-Wolfey soils and gives small clusters of very small berries at low yields. The 2021 made 119 cases, and Tim calls it the best Pinot Noir Young Hagen has made.

The 2022 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir is the first Sonoma Coast blend since the very first vintage in 2013: Jenkins Ranch in Sebastopol, Gunsalus in Green Valley, and a dash of Riddle. Riddle is Jim Riddle’s vineyard on Stoetz Lane northeast of Occidental, seven miles from the ocean, right at the morning fog line, where Young Hagen has two blocks, clone 115 on the steepest slope and Pommard. 170 cases.

The Young Hagen cellar is restrained. The early Pinots used 12 to 15 per cent whole clusters, some fermented apart and blended back, and 20 to 25 per cent new French oak; the wines spend eleven to fifteen months in barrel on their lees. The Chardonnay gets the same light hand and a long rest in tank. Nothing is pushed.

This is what you get from someone who has worked in other people’s cellars since 2010 and knows exactly how much to do. The wines are small, they are precise, and they taste of cold places near the sea. For anyone who wrote off California Chardonnay ten years ago, Platt is the bottle to start with.