2004 Francis Tannahill Jack White

I’m not even sure where to begin with this wine. It’s one of Oregon’s rarest (only 37 cases were made) and most difficult-to-find wines (who would be crazy enough to try and sell it?) to locate. So I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Several years ago I was at a trade tasting in Chicago. There were hundreds of wines and dozens of winemakers, all jammed into a trendy Chicago restaurant designed to look like the inside of a circus tent. Which was the perfect setting for this wine. At about the time I thought my palate was about to give up the ghost, one of my employees came running over and said, “I may have just died and gone to heaven. You have to go find Sam Tannahill and ask for the Jackass. It’s hidden under the table.” I didn’t know quite how to interpret that statement so I went to see for myself. After all, I’ve seen stranger things than a jackass under a table at a trade tasting, but you never know.

Sam Tannahill is usually a cool, calm and collected fellow (think young Elvis Costello, but without the contemptuousness) but he was clearly nervous about this wine he had hidden under the table. It didn’t have a label and it had the oddest light orange color with flecks of pink. Was it a rose? Was it an Oregon attempt at sherry? Was it a white wine? Sam wasn’t sure himself, but he did say “I’m pretty sure my wife (co-winemaker Cheryl Francis) isn’t happy about this wine. In fact, she calls it the ‘jackass wine’ because that’s what she thinks of me for making it.”

One taste and I could see why Cheryl was concerned. The Jackass was so impossible to classify that it would probably befuddle the average wine retailer’s ability to pigeonhole it. It would be hard for some clerk to say, “this is like a poor man’s Priorat” or “we like to call this baby Salmon-Billecart” when the Jackas doesn’t really taste like many other wines on the planet. The Jack White (either Cheryl has forgiven him or the BATF wouldn’t) is an equal-parts blend of Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, with all the fruit coming from the organically farmed Quail Run Vineyards in southern Oregon. Nothing unusual about that, right? Well, Sam took those grapes and fermented them on their skins like a red wine, then aged and macerated the juice on its skins for six months. At dawn on Easter morning in 2005 the wine was pressed and then aged in old oak barrels for an additional 16 months. Then it was bottled without filtration in August 2006. You see, Sam is a fan of those radical Northern Italians and Slovenians like Gravener, Radikon and Movia, folks who are returning to the way wine was first made in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. Of course, those wines all cost 40.00 to 100.00 a bottle.

The other thing that drew me to this wine was its connection to another Oregon winemaker, the late Jimi Brooks. Sam and Jimi had talked for years about making a wine like this but they just never found the time. Or, as Sam likes to say, the courage. Then Jimi died way too early in September 2004 and Sam decided to find both of those missing ingredients. I am a big fan of Jimi Brooks and was lucky enough to hang out with him a bit when I would come home to Oregon on visits. Sometimes we get a little jaded, with life and with wine. Just when you are plugging along something like the Jack White comes along to remind you why you fell in love with wine in the first place. It’s exciting, it’s interesting and when it is this good you just want to share it with other people so you can talk about it. And it reminds you to slow down, pay attention and appreciate the beautiful things that tend to fly under your radar. Wine is one of life’s simple pleasures and sometimes we forget that. Jack White. Hmm. There’s a lyric from a White Stripes song that Jack White wrote that says:

“And there was a time when all I wanted
Was my ice cream colder and a little cream soda
Oh well, oh well”

Drinking the Jackass can take you back to those times. I promise. But for those skeptics out there, here’s what the Jack White tastes and smells like. It smells like you are getting ready to drink a fino sherry that was somehow made with apricots and almonds. But there’s an orange marmalade quality lurking in the background of every sniff. Is this thing going to be sweet or dry? Should I be drinking this orangeish-tinted liquid out of a snifter or a wine glass? Where’s my Wine Advocate review to tell me what this should taste like? See what I mean? Right off the bat it has you talking to yourself like a halfway house outpatient after a cup of Dunkin Doughnuts coffee. Then you taste it. One sip and you realize this is unlike any other wine you have ever tasted before. Unless you are lucky enough to drink a lot of Gravener, Movia or Radikon. There are white flowers, white peaches and a crazy nuttiness in every taste. But that’s just the first layer. The second layer tastes like you crushed an apricot on a rock and then threw the apricot away and licked the rock. I don’t like to think of grape vines as straws sucking up flavors from the ground,but these grapes do grow up out of friable volcanic soils and quartz. Maybe there is something to this terroir stuff.

Sam Tannahill did a note about this wine awhile back and he stated, “if you like Tom Waits, Bob Dylan in 1965 and the 1961 Lincoln Continental you will love this wine. Iconoclastic, pure and uncompromising, this wine is unique. A tannic white with flavors and aromas that are intense and unforgettable…Will you like it? We do not know and we are not sure this is a wine to be liked in the traditional sense. It is a wine to be appreciated and, if possible, understood. Ageability? Certainly 10 to 20 years.”

Michael Alberty
Head Storyteller

Storyteller Wine Co., Portland, Oregon

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 9:59 am and is filed under CELLARING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.