c – "What were you trying to
accomplish with this tasting?"
MH – "I think what I was trying to
demonstrate was that Merlot/Franc blends, in Carneros and
Southern Napa,
in the right places, and made with the intention of (making) a wine that will
age and develop, can do so – and will become interesting within a
reasonable period of time. I’ve known that for awhile – I suspected it
a long time ago, and I think we demonstrated that it’s true.
Now – I also wanted to show: ‘Hey, this
is what we’ve done.’"
c - "I wonder if you had it in your
mind that this was going to be a ‘breakout’ event for you?"
MH – "I’d be happy if it were. You
know, we’ve had good success placing the wines, and we get what I
consider to be a good price. There is a Merlot ‘backlash’ now –
(laughter) and well there might be, actually, because there is a lot of
really – I would say - offensive Merlot – offensive to me, because I
love the variety – on the market.
You know, a variety gets popular, for the
right or wrong reason, and everybody wants to plant it - to follow the
market. So, it gets planted in every cow pasture and every swamp, and a
bunch of bad versions are produced, and folks say: ‘Oh, we didn’t
really like that variety as much as we thought – it makes some lousy
wines.' Whereas that has happened to Chardonnay, certainly, it has
happened to Cabernet, it has happened to Zinfandel at least once – and
it’ll happen to Syrah, too.
My real thinking about this was to focus on
Merlot as a noble variety that has an appropriate place, and that it’s
not all angular, green and weedy from flat, damp places."
c – "I shared a couple of thoughts
with you when I left the tasting – I was really impressed with the
consistency of the wines over a period of time. I thought that up until
the '89 vintage the wines showed characteristics of older wines with more
spice and complexity, but from '90 up to the current vintage the wines
showed amazing consistency…and it has been my thought that quality
houses and winemakers are able to minimize the differences in
vintages."
MH – "I guess consistency of style
is definitely a goal for me. Anything you buy that you want to buy
repeatedly, that comes out once a year, like a barrel or a wine or a
cheese or an olive oil, or a car. You want to know what you’re getting
into and the more important that thing is to you, the more important it
is, I think, to know that you’re touching base with a tradition of taste
– interpreted as wine, or cheese, or automobiles. What you’re looking
for is the interesting, gradual evolution of it. Some who make
wines jump this way to follow the market, then jump this way to follow the
market, jump the other way to follow the market – there’s always going
to be those people and they’re always marketing commodities.
I conceive of myself as trying to artfully
interpret what the agriculture I live in offers – that’s what I
consider ‘fun’ – that’s my idea of ‘good work’.
And so - having said all that – I think
that you want to show the vintage, you can’t help but show the vintage,
but you want that vintage to be the 93 Havens, rather than just the 93.
You want the 94 - radically different - to be the 94 Havens rather than
just the 94. So, unless you are industrially mowing down the differences,
all your little decisions are going to come together to make that style.
Winemaking is thousands of little decisions. I like vintage variation, but
I also like to show ‘the house’."
