Riddle Wines David Girard Vineyard Sparkling Roussanne El Dorado 2020

Jeremy Riddle is the kind of winemaker who feels called to his practice. We were introduced to him through our friend Tom Sherwood (anyone remember BXT from a few months back?), who described Jeremy as the “mad scientist” type. Tom was not wrong. We initially had blocked twenty minutes to taste Jeremy wines, and an hour later we were still rattling off questions about bead texture, acid retention, and biodynamic farming. This man is an encyclopedia and an incredibly passionate winemaker – fact! In true ACME style, this brand is so new that we had to push off this feature until his website was up and running for you all to enjoy. 

Riddle Wines was created because Jeremy craved an outlet to exercise his winemaking philosophy: cut out any additions or heavy-handed winemaking methods and explore what the varietal has to offer. He works with vineyard owners who don’t use any herbicides or pesticides and practice farming methods that take the whole vineyard biosystem into account: the roots, birds, flora and microbes. Jeremy confessed to obsessing over his wines and says that he even “sleeps near my barrels most of the year. My fear is stagnancy, and I’m a bit insatiable. At the end of the day, I am an old school and nerdy winemaker that is pursuing the perfect wine.” 

While we loved every wine that Jeremy shared for us, his sparkling Roussanne was, by leaps and bounds, our favorite. Roussanne is a white wine grape native to the Rhône wine region in France, where it is often blended with Marsanne. Most white varietals are neutral and take to the winemaker’s hand placidly, but Roussanne is an outlier in the sense that it is robust, waxy, and heady. It takes a smart winemaker to coax this varietal into something palatable, and Jeremy certainly has the brain and gumption to do it. The fruit for this wine is sourced from the David Girard Vineyard in El Dorado County. The vineyard boasts an elevation of 1,500 ft (about the height of the Empire State Building), and benefits from strict organic farming practices. Jeremy followed traditional sparkling methods and bottled the wine sur lees for 8 months before disgorgement. Allow us to explain that geeky sentence further. After blending and second fermentation, sparkling made in the traditional method used in Champagne is left on its lees (dead yeast cells) for period of maturation in the bottle. Once aging is complete, the bottles are rotated in a riddling rack to loosen the sediment created. The purpose of disgorgement is to expel the deposit that collects in the neck of the bottle because of this riddling process. Jeremey disgorged this wine on April 10th, 2021. The result is a wine with texture that has incredible finesse. The bead (bubbles) is soft and all-consuming, and the aromatics of crisp apple and pears are reminiscent of Spring encapsulated in bottle. Pair this with a dozen fresh oysters and allow your inner wine geek to shine!