Power, aromas key to Hanna success

There's a brain trust at Hanna Winery in Healdsburg and it's behind our wine of the week winner -- the Hanna, 2008 Russian River Valley Chardonnay.

Jeff Hinchliffe said the winemaking team -- which includes Chris Hanna as well as Marti Quan and Tom Bertoli -- meets twice a week to contemplate a wine's progress and direct its course.

"For instance, instead of bottling the 2009 chardonnay in September, we re-barreled it in new Burgundy barrels and will bottle it in December," he said.

Hinchliffe said the most challenging part of making chardonnay is "knowing that at this level everyone is making good wine. The subtleties become important.

"We use native yeast to ferment our chardonnay and the little buggers can be finicky and difficult to grow."

One concern Hinchliffe doesn't have when it comes to chardonnay is worrying people will lose interest in chardonnay.

"Great vanilla isn't going anywhere," he said. "No combination of cultivar and winemaking technique gives as much pure deliciousness as chard."

As for the house style of Hanna's chardonnay, Hinchliffe said he aspires to make wine that is "powerful, with warm aromas of apple, pear, butter and hazelnut, flavors that are rich, succulent and bright, and never clunky, bitter or sweet. . . . I love it when I taste a wine that elicits audible joy."

While Mother Nature's antics bringing cooler weather to this year's harvest have caused delays in ripening, Hinchliffe said he isn't bothered in the least.

"I honestly love it," he said. "It's bucolic brinksmanship."

Hinchliffe says he was originally going to be a brewer until he sipped the 1981 Dry Creek Vineyards Fume Blanc.

"I was captivated by the aromas and flavors of that wine," he said. "I realized then I wanted to unlock the secrets of Vitis vinifera (the grape vine)."

Wine writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik @pressdemocrat.com.