There is no new Caifornia Wine Country show this week, due to a live NBA basketball game in our usual time slot on our home station KSRO in Santa Rosa. Here is an edited repeat of our October 31, 2018 show featuring Eva Dehlinger and Dominic Foppoli.

Eva Dehlinger tells how her father founded the winery over 40 years ago. Dehlinger Winery is small, independent family-owned and operated in the Russian River Valley. They specialize in four varietals, Chardonnay, Pinot, Cabernet and Syrah. Eva is the winemaker and general manager.

She became a winemaker by being born onto a farm and having a strong connection to agriculture. She studied environmental sciences at Stanford. She thought she would become a brewer and started studying brewing at UC Davis, then had an epiphany and realized she needed to work with wine.

Dan got to know the winery when it was founded in the 1970s. When Dan started writing about wine, it was hard to find the wine. Dan had to travel to Sonoma County to taste it. Dan says that at the time, nobody had heard of Pinot Noir from Russian River Valley. They were pioneers, it was considered very obscure there. Russian River Valley wasn’t even an official appellation then and Dan says the roads weren’t even marked correctly and he got lost.

Dominic tells about the Foppoli home ranch in Windsor. They have produced Chardonnay since he was a kid. Christopher Creek was started in 1972 and he took a chance to buy the winery six years ago and never looked back. They make about 40 different wines now.

They taste a 2014 Russian River Valley Chardonnay, unoaked. Dan says it’s very gentle with a fresh fruit component. Dan says that the newer drinkers like a Chardonnay that is more delicate and not so oaky. The 70s or 80s style wines were fleshier. Today better quality wine making means a more delicate approach to oak. Dominic says his first wine was unoaked because he couldn’t afford oak barrels. Barry says this has a silky texture and harmonious flavors. Dan says it’s soft but not lacking in acidity. Eva says it’s very fruity and fresh and would have a broad appeal.

Dan says this is an example of the new style of wine in Sonoma County. He thinks the mid-palette richness comes from the skin contact. That’s when you leave the juice in the tank, were the juice is in contact with the skins.

The next wine coming up is an Orange Wine, which is made with even more skin contact. Dominic says that traditionally they make a barrel of orange Chardonnay and one of orange Viognier every year. You leave a white wine on the skins, like a red wine.

Eva’s white wines are made with minimal skin contact and they do not make orange wine. The goal is to extract more different flavors and she thinks Viognier is good for that. Dan says the skin contact white wines tend to want to spoil so a winemaker has to be very strick with sanitation. Dan tells of a wine from the Jura region in France, which have a very strong odor. This one is cleaner and fresher. It has just enough of the “orange” style to still taste the Viognier. Dominic says they only make 25 cases of it. Eva says orange wine is atyical and controversial in the US.

Next they taste a 2015 Dehlinger Chardonnay, which is a counterpoint to the one they just tasted. This is a traditional oaked Chardonnay, no skin contact, barrel fermented and aged for a year on the lees. Dan says this is the way that oak should be done. Eva says it is unfiltered so it retains a lot of textures and flavors.

Dominic remembers drinking Eva’s father’s wines when he was a kid. Their family estates are about two miles from each other as the crow flies.

Next they taste the 2015 Dehlinger Altamont Pinot Noir. Altamont refers to the soil type on their property. 2015 was a very classic vintage in the region,