2018 Turley Cinsault Bechthold Vineyard- USA, California, Central Valley, Lodi (5/30/2019)
Drinks like a 133yr old vined Rose’! Put a slight chill on it…contemplate what was going on in the world in 1886…WAY more fascinating than your typical rose’! Drinks like a Cru Bojo with the vibrant fresh crushed red fruits…pretty florals…racy and tart acids…saline crushed minerality. Very elegant and polished smoothness…easy drinking, yet keeps your attention. A fun and enjoyable wine…with a little history attached! (93 pts.)
Turley Cinsault the past few years has been an incredibly food friendly, light on its feet, all kinds of lavender and orange rind. Big fan for a restaurant BTG choice
Bought a few after tasting it. Doesn’t remind me of Beaujolais but it’s good for what it is and kudos to Turley for doing something other than big Zins. It’s quite a nice wine. I have a few Cinsaults from various producers and when I can find a couple of people who are interested, I want to taste them side by side. And I’m including Larry’s, since it’s one of the best around IMHO and it’s still my wife’s fave.
The 2019 is fabulous as well…seems a little more substantial, more tannic bite to it, yet a tick less abv at 12.4. Super vibrant and tasty as hell! In qpr, as well as hpr(history/price/ratio) Heaven here!
I like Tegan’s hand with Lodi wines…he seems to do magic with the hotter climate vineyards from the area, and are more to my liking than the established wineries from there. “Sinso”…seems gimmicky? Like lot of the other Lodi stuff imo.
I think there’s a newer generation slowly changing the perception of Lodi. Tegan and Bedrock certainly at the forefront, but also some of the smaller labels like Broc Cellars, Markus, Lodi Native etc.
Lodi is super-interesting area for numerous reasons - first, the Lodi Wine Commission has done an absolutely stellar job in classifying all the historic vineyards and there are signs and information telling you that you are in the heartland of grape growing everywhere. Also, except for Los Angeles County and maybe Amador, it’s probably the area with the oldest vines in America. Many of them older than most French vineyards in existence. It’s like viticultural archeology there. There’s no coincidence that you are able to find rare grapes and old vines there that just don’t exist anywhere else - there was never the financial pressure of high land prices (although that’s rapidly changing).
I think we’ll see a very interesting future for Lodi. Especially a leaner, more subtle Zinfandel wave emerging out of there.