Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 32

Top 100 Wineries

Hermann J. Wiemer

Hirsch

NEW YORK | FINGER LAKES
Lengthy fermentations of carefully farmed fruit produce
consistently delicious wines at Wiemer.

CALIFORNIA | SONOMA COAST: FORT ROSS-SEAVIEW
Legendary for Paciﬁc-driven pinot noir, Hirsch also makes one of
the New World's most site-expressive chardonnays.

FRED MERWARTH

ONE OF THE PIONEERS OF WINEMAKING IN New
York's Finger Lakes, Hermann J. Wiemer purchased 80 acres of land on the western side of
Seneca Lake in the 1970s. He believed the gravelly soils and the lake's tempering effect would
provide good conditions for vinifera varieties. A
native of Bernkastel in Germany's Mosel region
whose familial winemaking roots stretch back
three centuries, Wiemer grafted riesling onto
American rootstock to plant his ﬁrst vineyards,
later expanding their varietal mix. In 2003, Fred
Merwarth took over winemaking duties, and
he and his wife, Maressa, took over the estate
in 2007. Merwarth, working with Oskar Bynke,
a Swedish agronomist, has deepened Wiemer's
commitment to sustainable farming, using biodynamic principles for 33 acres. The move made
a difference in 2018, Merwarth says: An especially wet and rainy summer caused crop losses
of up to 90 percent in some of their organically
farmed blocks while the biodynamically farmed
parcels in the same vineyard were at nearly
full production. To compensate for the smaller
yields, they made signiﬁcantly fewer wines than
they do in a normal year. What they did make,
though, is excellent. -C.W.

JASMINE HIRSCH

2018 Sonoma Coast Estate Chardonnay ($60,
96 points) Hirsch planted a block of chardonnay on
a west-facing sandstone ridge in 1994 for Williams
Selyem, and those same vines provided fruit for Kistler's Hirsch bottling from 2000 to 2005. Now, the
grapes go into this Estate Chardonnay, along with
fruit from a block planted in 2003. David and Jasmine ﬁnd that the younger block provides textural
richness while the original planting lends acidity and
minerality to the wine. The cool 2018 season produced a wine with ornate complexity and depth of
ﬂavor-California coastal casual, yet precise. (610
cases)

2018 Seneca Lake Dry Riesling ($20, 93 points)
If riesling's spiritual home is the Mosel, this came
to the Finger Lakes by way of Alsace and the Rhône,
with vibrant ﬂoral scents that would delight gewurztraminer or viognier enthusiasts. A passion-fruit acidity and peach-tart richness keep it from getting too
ﬂowery, and the wine's energetic intensity keeps it
feeling lively.

FOUNDED:

1979
OWNERS:

Fred & Maressa
Merwarth,
Oskar Bynke
WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

2018 Seneca Lake Magdalena Vineyard Riesling
($35, 93 points) Magdalena was planted in 1999
at a warm site on the western side of Seneca Lake.
Merwarth believes its deep soils were an advantage
in 2018, when summer storms dropped as much as
seven inches of rain in two hours. Despite the challenges, meticulous selection and careful sorting
produced a quietly generous wine built around juicy
fruit ﬂavors deepened by a nutty creaminess; pinging
acidity keeps it lively. If you must drink all of it the day
you open the bottle, give it a vigorous decant.

ACRES OWNED:

90
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

20,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

95%
32

FOUNDED:

1980
OWNER:

David Hirsch
WINEMAKER:

Jasmine Hirsch
VITICULTURIST:

Everardo Robledo

Fred Merwarth
2018 Seneca Lake Magdalena Vineyard Cabernet Franc ($37, 92 points) With scents of jalapeño,
black pepper and ﬂint, and dark raspberry ﬂavors
enriched by eight months in new Hungarian oak barrels, this is snappy but muscular, ready to take a chill
for charcuterie or shine beautifully out of the cellar
alongside a summery tomato pasta.

WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2021

IN 1978, IT MAY HAVE SEEMED romantic for David
Hirsch to buy 1,000 acres of land as a reforestation project. Today it might seem pragmatic
or, at least, beneﬁcent. As Hirsch began to convert the far-coast ridges from sheep pastures to
trees, a friend suggested he plant some vines as
well. As it turned out, the tops of the ridges, two
miles from the Paciﬁc and well above the fog
line, were an extreme but often, in fact, a beneﬁcent place to grow pinot noir and chardonnay.
By 1987, Hirsch had become a full-time farmer,
working with Everardo Robledo to expand on
his early plantings, reaching the current 72 acres
by the early 2000s. After his success selling fruit
to the likes of Williams Selyem, Kistler and Littorai, Hirsch set out to establish a winery in
2002. His daughter Jasmine joined him to help
sell the wine and, in 2015, took over as general
manager after David was sidelined by a tractor
accident. As she and David worked more closely
together, they began studying biodynamics and
transitioning their farming practices. In 2019,
Jasmine took over winemaking. By then, she
had absorbed some of the expertise of two leading far-coast talents-Ross Cobb, who made the
wine at Hirsch from 2010 to 2015, and Anthony
Filiberti, from 2016 to 2018. -J.G.

2017 Sonoma Coast Raschen Ridge Pinot Noir
($85, 94 points) David Hirsch planted this ridge in
2002 and '03, a west-facing site by the winery that
continues eastward over the hill to a more protected
slope. This 2017 develops across a long arc of ﬂavor and time, with fresh scents of hen-of-the-woods
mushrooms and deep, earthy fruit. (525 cases)

ACRES OWNED:

72
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

8,300 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

97%

2017 Sonoma Coast Reserve Pinot Noir ($85,
92 points) A barrel selection from Hirsch's oldest
blocks, this shows rich oak before revealing its fruit
provenance in scents of beach rose and cool ocean
air. Tight and austere, it should blossom in the cellar.
(790 cases)

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020

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