This is a pre-arrival offer for two wines that, I believe, will delight you, then maybe confuse you… and then delight you again.
If you’ve bought, drank or heard about the world’s most famous desert Riesling “Heavy Water” or the evocatively named rosé, “Strawberry Mullet,” then you’ve at least come across the curious world of Cutter Cascadia.
If you haven’t heard of any of this, well, please read on; I’ll try and be brief. Although, to be honest, summarizing Michael Garofola’s one-man project Cutter Cascadia is not easy.
Today we offer a Dolcetto and a Zinfandel, though neither bottling has any very obvious connection with what you might expect from those grapes.
More than nearly anyone else we work with, I have trouble condensing the efforts of Cutter Cascadia into any single, easy-to-digest line. Which is of course part of the beauty.
What you should know is the following: Michael farms very specific, eccentric parcels in what remains one of the most extreme, misunderstood and confusing terroirs in the U.S.: Oregon’s Columbia Gorge.
Beyond that, it seems to me, every wine is its own, unique, deeply felt narrative. This may seem trite, but the wines are wildly original, even though it’s my sense that that is the last thing Michael wants – to be novel or, god forbid “hip.” But in working through the best way forward with curious grapes from a curious place, there are no precedents.
Just exploration.
I love Michael’s writing. I find it so matter-of-fact, so obviously honest that I figured I’d just cut and paste some of his writing, below. Please read it, for real – he covers everything from mortality and the meaning of meaning, to trunk disease, David Bowie, the legend of Louis Comini, Paul Draper and Deadwood. You’ll like it.
Both wines are very limited and will arrive in March.
To order, simply email orders@vomboden.com!
2019 Cutter Cascadia Dolcetto “Ashes to Ashes” – $27-$30 SRP
I like this wine a lot; it is brisk, with dark fruit, savory yet also beautifully perfumed, with sweet-fruit aromatics, fresh and mineral. I wrote to Michael and told him how much I dug the wine, adding that “I’m not really a Dolcetto kinda guy,” not really knowing if anyone really considered themselves a “Dolcetto” person. Michael responded:“Yeah I get it, there really aren’t Dolcetto people out there, like say there are Nebbiolo or Pinot or RIESLING people, but Dolcetto was always appealing to me simply because of my background in Italian wine. It’s soif-fy and serious all at the same time. I make it for immediate consumption of course and it’s pretty and floral and plummy (I like the spice on the 2019 due to the whole cluster), but it can age pretty well too, with all of its tannins. From the standpoint of where the Gorge is currently, it remains, I think, one of the varietals that is really well suited to the climate here, although it remains a difficult grape to manage. It’s very sensitive, in short, to literally everything. The block I farm at von Flowtow [the site], at nearly 1000 feet, was my first vineyard out of my viticulture classes. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of that place, at least my vines (there only like 477 of them at last count). To be fair, this parcel is the rug rat of the vineyard, always looking a little like hell, especially late summer on, but I always liked the fruit and the wines despite how gnarly it is. It’s the ugly mutt that has a lot of personality. I’ve often conjectured that it’s the problems (like trunk disease) that give it character (and I even ran an experiment in 2017 that gives this some credence to this theory, but that’s for another day).
I then asked him about the name, “Ashes to Ashes,” which, especially after the summer fires of 2020 seemed very poignant, like it had to be pregnant with meaning. What I got in return was something brutally honest, and not really what I expected, though as someone who worked as an artist for nearly 10 years, it reverberated. He wrote: “I know, I know… I mean, on the one hand I think for me ‘Ashes to Ashes’ just sounds cool. It’s a nod to Bowie, of course… Bowie, always Bowie. But, what I suppose is most vital is that the name reflects my interpretation of where I’m at right now in the COVID world. Having seen my career obliterated by the pandemic like so many others, the vineyards I work with and my little wine label are all I am left with… and that’s ok. You have to admit to yourself that it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter that I do any of this and really the only thing I glean from any of this is the work itself in all of its engrossing ways. The work becomes you at a certain point, but none of it really matters to anyone except yourself, who has the simple pleasure of spending your time in such a way. Sure, someone who lives 2,500 miles away might drink this and enjoy it but to create something from nature that has no guarantees and is made for the simple joy of doing it is enough. There are bigger problems than my little .61 acre block of Dolcetto I manage, I get it, and if everything goes away tomorrow it’ll all be the same. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Sorry if that doesn’t really help you on your end, but I guess for ease you can always say I upgraded from a Badfinger reference to a Bowie one?”
2019 Cutter Cascadia Zinfandel “Come On, Come On” – ~$35 SRP
This is an impossible wine to explain. On the first day, the wine was so savory, to say nothing of it’s tensile, almost satiny-brisk energy, that I had a hard time contextualizing this as a Zinfandel. One day two, that perfumed fruit started to show itself, but still, it is simply unlike any Zinfandel I have ever had… and I mean in a brilliant way. Most expectations you have regarding Zinfandel will just not be relevant here. I guess you could think Zinfandel meets Jura Trousseau meets something from a very esoteric Northern Italian DOC? …but that’s a very thin rope to hold on to, admittedly.
As before, Michael’s writings are sharp and honest:
“The cuttings in this block at Hillside came from the stock that Louis Comini had planted in the 1870-80’s’ish on Mill Creek (now called the Pines Vineyard). They were planted on their own roots in 1983/4 by Harold Haake (the current owner) and Lonnie Wright. The legend is that Comini, an Italian stone mason who came over and worked on the Cascade Locks dam project and was, by all accounts, a very mysterious character, had brought the vines from Italy as that’s where he came from… but he was a northerner, from Emilia Romagna or Lombardi, though I think that I’ve also seen it written that he was from Liguria. Anyway, it could certainly be possible that he brought them from there (Italy at large) as he could have simply been working in the South (lots of stone quarries down there) before he came over, but I really don’t know and, frankly, I really doubt that. (My great grandfather was also an Italian stone mason that came to America to flee poverty and/or troubles at large.) When you’re traveling light, I can’t imagine the one thing you’d bring from your homeland would be grape vines? But, on the other hand, I guess I can afford to be cynical here. One local journalist who claims conventional wisdom conjectures that the Zin vines planted by Comini were old Cornell clones that were introduced to California in the 1850’s with railroads connecting California to Oregon for the first time and came up that way. But it remains a mystery either way and I simply don’t have enough time to dig that deep nor do I really care altogether that greatly: I would rather have the Deadwood-esque feel to the story.
As a sommelier, or former somm, or whatever, I know with absolute resolve, that I have never had anything like this wine, let alone a fucking Zin. It’s more like Trousseau or Alpine Neb than any Zin I’ve had… and furthermore, it’s probably the only Zin I’ve ever had an inability to put down from chugging incessantly despite my knowing better. Harvest in 2019 was an unmitigated mess for the Zin: a shit show, so much rot. The rows I had planned on taking were soup on the pick day and I then in that moment, before the picking crew showed up, I walked the block to pick four sequential rows at the top of the block that looked the most consistent and least screwed up. It happens. Even with that, the crew and I were crawling in and out of picking bins sorting all shit-looking fruit… which, as I now understand with great conviction, is not as much a challenge as it is impossible with Zin as it often rots from the inner cluster out due to its compact, gargantuan clusters (they crush themselves under their own weight and pressure), even with a good bloom spray program to to 9’s, which we have I must say.
I don’t know where my idea for 100% whole cluster began, but whatever or whenever that formulated, I certainly convinced myself thoroughly and went all in in 2019 as well in 2020. In the 2019 mind you, the wine is not only whole cluster semi-carbonic, but the cap was managed only by means of daily pigeage, no punch downs or pump overs through fermentation whatsoever. I think mostly I went this route is because I feel there is an herbal quality in Zin that rather than mask it or bowl it over with something else, I leaned into that characteristic or tone in which made it such a challenge, in order to, in short, get to understand its boundaries. Furthermore, what I can contribute to the world of Zin that Mike Grgich or Paul Draper haven’t done better anyway? Why not make it my own rather that attempt a half-ass cover song? Zin (or anything for that) gets lost with over ripeness or extraction or oak, but there is with whole cluster a layer in the wine so unique that it cannot be mislaid once it has been put in place. In short, this was my first stab at Zinfandel in this place: the place won’t change from year to year but the vintages as well as my interpretation will slide with my working understanding of how to work with it in the vineyard. It’s my hope the center will hold.
I hope this helps?”