United States of Solera

Photo courtesy Nick Africano

A suite of American producers is using the fractional blending technique associated with Sherry-making to express an evolution of terroir.

WORDS Sarah E. Daniels

Sherry-makers in 18th century Andalucía, Spain had a problem.

Their experiments exposing wine to oxygen and aging wine under­ flor—a veil of yeast that forms naturally on the liquid’s surface—­yielded delicious results. But they were nowhere near stable enough for distant export.

Meanwhile, the Sherry they’d made and shipped successfully for centuries began to lose its international foothold. Though fortified to better withstand travel, these younger, dated bottlings were susceptible­ to wild vintage variation and struggled to retain popularity as other wines became increasingly available.

So the producers devised a way to make their wine as close to infallible as possible:­ the solera system.

FANTASTIC FRACTIONALS

“It’s essentially a very controlled process of blending… that provides preservation, consistency and control,” says Nick Africano, Sherry educator and founder of En Rama Sherry Co. and Buelan Compañía de Sacas bottling project. “Soleras age the wine and provide oxygen carefully and slowly.”

The solera system is a technique of wonder and balance. Traditionally, casks of wine are stacked in rows (called criaderas), with each row containing wine of the same type and age. None of the casks are completely full, so as to expose the liquid to a bit of oxygen. The bottom criadera (somewhat confusingly, called the solera) contains the oldest wine; each row above contains wine that’s progressively younger.

Periodically, some of the solera wine is removed to be bottled and its casks are topped off with wine from the row above. That row gets refilled with wine from the row above it, and so on, until the top criadera receives fresh wine from the new vintage.

A old solera system / Photo courtesy Nick Africano

After several years of continuous replenishment with younger wine, the solera casks become “a ‘base wine’ of sorts that has an average age of all the levels,” says Africano.

This fractional blending process provided the makers newfound control over their wine, with which they began to design the array of salty, fresh, nutty and rich styles that brought Sherry back into favor and continue to characterize the drink today. And so successful was the method to help stabilize, standardize and add complexity, it was soon adapted for the production of numerous other beverages, including Madeira, Marsala, Port and select Champagne.

Now, some three centuries later, a slate of American winemakers has taken to the solera system, too. But rather than shepherding their perpetually aged cuvées into defined stylistic categories, they’re using solera maturation to make wines that express an evolution of the site from which they came.

“Solera systems can serve as a metaphor to teach us the importance of community or what’s bigger than oneself,” says Africano, who feels the technique will be utilized more as weather conditions become increasingly inconsistent and difficult to predict. “The collection of all of the parts—vintages and barrels—can be greater than the individual.”

EXPOSING THE ELEMENTS

“I am very focused on site in our wines, and that holds true in [our] soleras,” says Deirdre Heekin.

At La Garagista, in Barnard, Vermont, she and husband Caleb Barker work biodynamically, farming American hybrid varieties (among other things) to create direct and distinct, low-intervention wines representative of the state’s cool climate and unique geography.

Deirdre Heekin of La Garagista in Vermont

They currently maintain four soleras made from La Crescent, Marquette and Frontenac Gris grapes.

Long interested in oxidative techniques, Heekin began aging glass demi­johns of wine under flor in 2014, but it wasn’t until Camila Carrillo came along four years later that she considered solera use.

“She came on as assistant winegrower. I asked what kinds of wines inspired her…and her immediate answer was Sherry,” says Heekin. “I thought of the demijohns [and] I wondered if any of them had oxidative solera leanings.”

Tasting through the vessels, Heekin says that they realized, “this is exactly what these wines wanted to be.”

What followed was Lost Causes & Desperate Cases, a joint project between the women meant to explore oxidative processes. To date, they’ve released five wines under the label, two of which are rancios, a style of oxidative wine made by placing its vessels in the hot sun, and all meant to be a study of a particular vineyard.

They are a “compilation of vintages,” says Heekin, “through which to experience our landscape and its expression.”

After complete vinification in late spring, wines they feel would be good candidates for the time-intensive process are singled out. Those destined for a rancio bottling are blended into the applicable solera, then moved outside for the summer. The others are kept separate, exposed deliberately to oxygen and placed in a location meant to encourage flor development while they wait to be layered into the corresponding solera.

Though the resulting expressions show many hallmarks of Sherry, “they also have their own unique personalities,” says Heekin. “They’re a lens to highlight the continuum of the wine [and] terroir from different angles,” she says, and not just the climate or soil, but also the “composition of flor or how the sun affects the aging rancios.”

“I see no downsides,” says Heekin, “[except] you have to have patience, which is a learned virtue for me, and not always easy! The benefits are myriad. It allows us to explore how these wines age over time.”

BOTTLING TIME

This pursuit to showcase an ensemble of influences and their development over time is what led Nate Ready of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm to begin a solera.

Ready refers to the way he and cofounder China Tresemer manage their Hood River Valley estate as “the wild side of permaculture,” meant to “promote as much life and diversity as possible and then connect all of these types of life—fungal, bacterial, plant, animal, person—at the levels of soil, leaf, cellar and table.”

As its name implies, the property is indeed a farm, home to cows, pigs, fowl and other animals that roam the grounds and play a large role in grooming the vineyards, edible gardens, forests and wild flora. Around 100 grape varieties are cultivated, intermingled in half-acre blocks that are used to create vivid and nuanced, site-driven field blends.

Everything is meant to grow and thrive in symbiosis, and solera use is seen as a natural extension of this ethos.

Ready produces two solera-aged wines, each from a different plot: Atavus and Moonhill Farm.

Hiyu Atavus / Photo Courtesy Hiyu Wine Farm-Kyle Johnson

EMBRACING THE CLIMATE

Though similarly focused on showing­ this progression, Nancy Irelan, co-­owner and winemaker of Red Tail Ridge Winery in Penn Yan, New York, also sees the solera system as an ideal way to embrace the challenging climate of the Finger Lakes.

With deep, glacier-formed lakes, substantial weather swings and a variegated soil composition, the region can be a dynamic and unpredictable place to make wine.

The solera “leverages the unique character of the Finger Lakes and the diverse vintage to vintage variation that we experience,” says Irelan. “Each addition to the mother base combines the best expression of that vintage with the optimal components from previous years [to create] a collage of flavors, aromatics and textures.”

At her LEED-certified sustainable winery on the northwestern shore of Seneca Lake, Irelan maintains just one solera system that was started in 2018, from which she produces a single réserve perpétuelle, a solera-style méthode Champenoise sparkling wine.

The process is a bit different than those used by Heekin and Ready. Rather than cycle wine through a series­ of vessels as it ages, vintage blending takes place in a single stainless-­steel container, layered on top of the base wine’s lees and without any headspace for oxygen. When the base wine is ready, liquid is drawn off and bottled with a bit of yeast and sugar to promote a second fermentation in bottle to create bubbles, a process called tirage. The container is then topped with the exact percentage of new wine as was removed.

Each addition includes a range of grapes, “depending on what the season and mother nature give us,” says Irelan. “Thus far, additions have encompassed Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Zweigelt.”

The third edition of the cuvée—­a Brut Nature fittingly named Perpétuelle Change—is now being disgorged and will be released after a brief bottle aging.

Much like the process Irelan uses to make the wine, she says it’s an approachable­ yet complex expression, which marries textural and autolytic-influenced notes of toasty brioche with an evolving spectrum of fresh citrus and floral tones. It’s all drawn together by bracing acidity and minerality resemblant of classic Champagne.

“We are doubling down on this wine,” says Irelan. “It’s the one style of wine that we can craft at an incredibly high caliber of quality, year in and year out, no matter what mother nature throws at us, [and] we can do it naturally, with little-to-no intervention.”

CAPTURING THE COAST

That balance of timeless, burnished finesse and vivid youth associated with réserve perpétuelle sparklers is what first attracted winemaker Mikey Giugni to the idea of solera maturation.

A California native, Giugni learned to make sparkling wine while working harvest in Tasmania. It was there, immersed in nature and surrounded by vineyards, he was inspired to start his own winery showcasing the Pacific Ocean’s influence on his state’s viticulture.

Upon returning home to California’s Central Coast in 2012, he established Scar of the Sea in San Luis Obispo, sourcing fruit from organically and biodynamically grown vineyards across the region and intervening as little as possible in the cellar.

Mikey Giugni of Scar of the Sea / Photo courtesy Scar of the Sea-Summer Steab

Two years later, he tasted Bérêche Reflet d’Antan, an icon of the réserve perpétuelle category drawn from a reserve begun in the mid-1980s, and knew he wanted to make something similar.

“Once I had the wine, I really wanted to start my own solera,” says Giugni.

Choosing to focus solely on Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay, he initiated a reserve that same year and layered four vintages into it before releasing the first version. It was savory, mineral and energetic; not quite Bérêche, but a sparkling success.

Ultimately, however, he decided to pivot.

Rotating wine through three barrel-­aged solera stocks based on his original 2014 vintage, Giugni now produces a distinctive, still nonvintage Chardonnay.

“The solera helps the wine pick up autolytic characteristics, as well as some oxidative notes,” he says. “The young wine blended [in] brings energy, reduction and freshness.”

Rich and compelling, with a streak of bright mineral salinity to balance out oxidative flavors, it most definitely evokes the nearby ocean.

“It is meant to tell the story of the place without the vintage,” says Giugni. Though he produces just a miniscule, 100-case run of the wine annually,­ Giugni thinks the results are well-worth the time-consuming technique used to make it.

“If I had the space and budget, all my Chardonnay would be made in this process,” he says.