A Rhône style blend of 50 percent Grenache, 24 percent Mourvèdre, 22 percent Syrah, 3 percent Carignan, and 1 percent Cinsaut, bottled in magnum and aged for five years in my cellar. It’s a wine I’m familiar with, having worked for the winery shortly after this vintage’s release. It was one of winemaker Randall Grahm’s most successful new-millennium wines, and one of his favorite vintages, too.
The body is now a medium garnet color with a clear rim. It offers a fragrance of washed linen, cherries, lemon peel, anise seed, and crushed herbs. The wine’s armature of acid and tannin has never been robust, owing partly to the softness of Central Coast Grenache, but with bottle age has become even more pliant and supple, and now carries cooling garrigue and black cherry notes along on a velvety wave. Delicious now, but the magnum, at least, could age even longer.
13.5% abv | $85 on release (sample; no longer available)
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