Raising the bar at Patz & Hall, I’m Tom Simoneau with today’s wine minute here to say this past week I tasted through the current releases from Patz & Hall and had a chat with James Hall the winemaker. Our conversation included their oak regime. He uses 35 – 80 percent new French oak. The oak staves are dried for 3 years at the cooperage in France. Does it make a difference where the oak is dried? As it turns out, James did an experiment by drying a palate of staves in Carneros. He ran a trial aging the same wine in a barrel dried in France vs. a barrel dried here. The difference was night and day. The French aged barrel was superior. He concluded it has to do with indigenous bacteria, rainfall, and the French say for best results, it needs to snow on the wood at least once. Go figure. For a taste look for the Patz & Hall 2009 Pisoni Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir a vibrant blue-purple in color, all strawberry liquor and lifted brown spice, 5 wine stains, $85. At Patz & Hall great wine is no accident.