I was given the opportunity to finish kyles bottle bottle on Wednesday night.
Quick background.
My two favorite varietals are Syrah and Grenache (in that order.) I drink predominantly California wines and don’t have much experience with old world Grenaches and Grenache blends. I do enjoy Spanish Grenacha quite a bit I think it more closely resembles new world wines than the old world wines produced just north of it.
I drank this on its own late in the evening after a busy evening packing for a long weekend away.
Notes:
Visual- clear pale ruby, surprisingly light for a California Grenache. No sediment.
Nose- very aromatic perfume quality to it, full of fruit and definitely comes across as young. Black cherry, strawberry, baking spices, hint of vanilla. Really beautiful nose.
Palate- the wine is dry, medium bodied, edging towards light bodied. Tart acidity, no tannins to speak of. Balanced well for food not for sipping. Very flavorful. Cherry, strawberry, tart red fruit possibly raspberry. The tartness kind of leaves a sour note in the finish that is not really my cup of tea. My guess is with appropriate food it’s fantastic.
This is very different from Grenaches from California that I typically enjoy, if tasted blindly I would have been convinced it was north coast Pinot noir. If I had purchased it here with out lab rat notes I would have been unsure of what to think. The most similar Grenache I have had is from inspiration vineyards who used Grenache instead of Pinot noir one year to fill in for Pinot when his fruit source dropped out. It was made in a very similar style.
Thanks for the opportunity to flex my palate a bit and try something different.
This tartness so many of you are reporting is not acidity. It’s a typical element of Santa Cruz Mountains and to display it is one of the main reasons I made this wine.
While the term is used in other ways, this is what I mean by “minerality.” There’s a whole chapter about it in my book, Postmodern Winemaking.
We don’t know what this is, but we can say quite a bit about it. It’s not acidity, and does not affect either pH or TA (titratable acidity). It’s typically found in wines grown on certain soils: limestone (Chablis), schist (Douro ports and table wines), slate (Mosels) and decomposed granite (Lake County and the High Sierras, but we also see it in wines from living soils (WineSmith Faux Chablis). Santa Cruz Mountain wines always display this.
As some of you have indicated, this energy in the finish is not everybody’s cup of tea. However, as a winemaker, it’s part of the secret of making wines that don’t stimulate salivation (which contains proteins that are death on tannin structure) yet still have an energetic palate. We don’t understand why, but these wines also have amazing longevity, which is why Chablis is typically aged a decade before drinking.
Many of you have remarked on this wine’s freshness, and I expect it to have a pretty broad drinking window, say a decade hence in a good cellar.
Interesting. So minerality cuts through food? We tasted the Grenache with food and it was too tart but then tasted with BBQ chicken/rib tips (light in the sauce) and man did your wine complement the food beautifully!
Am I way off in using mushroom as a descriptor? I got earthiness in the aroma that reminded me of shrooms or even truffles.
Yes, I mention wild mushrooms in my own description. Nothing at all like a market mushroom or portabello; for me something like a morelle or porcini - sort of meaty and savory. I also get that herbal element, which is also typical of Santa Cruz Mtns because the vineyards are so small and the surrounding herb aromas dissolve in the wax cuticle bloom on the berry skin. The French call their mix of droughty herbs “garrigue,” and the Corralitos sub-appellation has something similar: bay laurel, sage and rosemary.
But I think its a mistake to think of this nose in such a reductionist aroma wheel sort of way. The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and I’d like to challenge you lab rats to describe the emergent properties of the whole wine.
There is a profound sexiness to this wine’s bouquet that hits you instantly, after which you try to dissect the elements. Too many wine descriptions sound like grocery lists.
When I was at U.C. Davis, they ridiculed holistic terminology, but to me, it’s the essence of great wine. One technique is to suggest what musical modality would pair with the wine. For this, I’d choose Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Pavoratti’s Il Rondine Al Nido, and Bob Seger’s Down On Main Street.
Clark, are there any wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains you would recommend visiting? You Vintners Voicemail made me excited to visit when I’ll be up for a wedding in May.
Yes, an endless array. Be warned: though adjacent to SFO, it is mountainous, so prepare for car sickness and limited numbers of wineries per day.
'Bout time to learn about AppellationAmerica.com, which I edit - a 30,000 page website with every AVA and winery in the US and Canada.
The SCM page is quite rich. Start with my two video lectures Part 1 and Part 2 on the six sub-appellations we invented. I also have three articles on SCM there on Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Bordeaux varieties. Laura Ness’s articles are also fabulous, and there’s a meditation by Randall Grahm.
I didn’t know you were still associated with Appellation America. I really need to spend some time on that site, such a wonderful resource that I haven’t visited in awhile. Thanks for the reminder!
]