San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Erin Pooley
Age: 34
Location: Napa
Watch her because: Her label Little Frances is a love letter to Australia’s best-kept secret, Semillon. Most Americans probably haven’t heard of Semillon. If they have, they likely associate the white grape with sweet wine; it often forms the base for Sauternes. But Erin Pooley was raised with a completely different context for Semillon, growing up in Sydney, Australia, with a wine collector father who loved aged versions from the nearby Hunter Valley. “I was raised on tertiary flavors in wine,” Pooley says.
Committed to a wine career from an early age, Pooley spent her early twenties working in Australia, Canada and Europe before finally settling in California in 2010. Semillon was still on her brain. “The nuances you find in aged Semillon — I wanted to see if I could find those here,” she says.
California Semillon isn’t exactly a booming category, but Pooley found a compelling planting at the Luschinger Vineyard in Lake County. “It was a total afterthought in the vineyard,” Pooley says. As in Bordeaux, Semillon is often planted in minor proportions to blend with Sauvignon Blanc — Lake County’s calling card.
Pooley picks her grapes dangerously early; the 2015 Semillon is just 10.7% alcohol. “I’m always worried I won’t get enough alcohol,” she says. “But with Semillon, that’s just where the wine tastes balanced.” Any riper, and the wine can become oily and flabby, lacking acidity. Her earliest vintages were bottled under the label Wei Chi, but in the 2014 vintage Pooley re-branded to Little Frances. Why? “My middle name is Frances, and I’m quite small,” she says.
For Pooley, who has a day job managing direct-to-consumer sales at DuMol, bringing out the beautiful side of Semillon is about aging in bottle, not barrel. She ferments her Semillon in stainless steel, and bottles it early the following winter, at which point she puts it away for at least three years. A long aging regimen for a white wine, granted, but Semillon is a late bloomer. “A transformation happens in bottle,” she says. “It becomes a whole new person.”
In a reversal of the norm, while Pooley encourages her customers to hold off on opening the Semillon, she is releasing a Merlot intended for early drinking. “I do need this to be a viable business, so maybe some faster-turnover wines would be beneficial to me,” she says, “to support my Semillon habit.”
Try Erin’s wines: Start with the Little Frances Luschinger Vineyard Semillon 2014 ($24), which is just beginning to come around. Despite its meager 10.9% alcohol, the wine is lavishly textured, tasting of almond skin and lemon zest on the palate. Pooley also makes a charming Chenin Blanc from the Heringer Vineyard in Clarksburg ($21 for the 2017 vintage), whose tangy richness recalls crème fraiche.