TN: My first Bedrock - '12 Evangelho

I’ve seen so many references to Bedrock wines here that I figured I should try one out. I went for the 2012 Evangelho Vineyard Heritage, since I remember some good zins and mataro/mourvedres coming out of there in the past. Bedrock’s web site says the 2012 is 40% carignane, 38% mourvedre, with the remainder zinfandel, palomino, alicante, and mission. Quite a combo!

It’s a lovely wine, with lots of dark berry fruit at first and some acidity, all very well balanced. (I decanted a half bottle about 45 minutes ahead.) It was perfect with pasta on a frigid night. It reminded me a lot of Ridge Geyserville – not surprising since it’s a field blend with a substantial amount of carignane and Morgan Twain-Peterson says on the label that he “picked at sane sugar levels.”

The half bottle remaining on day 2 (not refrigerated), was still fresh and showed the acidity a bit more prominently, along with more reddish fruits. It was as if there was a dose of barbera in there to create a little acidic tension with the carignane. Maybe that’s the palomino and alicante.

At $35, I’m not running out to stock up, but I definitely want to check out other Bedrock offerings.

Nice note John. I’m a huge fan of Contra Costa old vine field blends.

That’s a good place to start in the Bedrock portfolio. Now search out a 2012 Compagni Portis to see what he does with a white field blend.

Is his style a rebellion against his father’s style at Ravenswood? Those just seemed to get bigger and bigger over the years.

I see no rebellion, but perhaps a somewhat lighter/more nuanced take on a grand theme.

He’s trying to be traditional in what he does with Zin but more importantly he wants to express the vineyard more than an individual variety. It’s tough not to be big with Zinfandel and do the grape justice. The field blends allow him more diversity. Last years Evangelho had more Zinfandel (40% Zinfandel, 25% Mourvedre, 15% Carignane, and 10% mixed whites) and this year he went predominately to Carignane (40% Carignane, 38% Mourvedre, with the remainder Zinfandel, Palomino, Alicante, and Mission) because he liked how the vineyard expressed it.

Think Mike has pretty much nailed it here, John. I thought Joel’s Ravenswood SingleVnyd Zins were
remarkably consistent over the yrs. If anything, they’ve been toned down a bit over the last 10 yrs
or so (Joel is still very much involved in the style/winemaking of the Ravenswood SV Zins).
Not that I’d know Jack$hit about them…only followed them from the very start…the '76 Vogelsen.
If anything, I’d say that Morgan’s Bedrocks are a bit more nuanced and reflective of the vnyd’s terroir and
a bit less oak-driven than his Dad’s.
Not that I’d know Jack$hit about them…only followed them from the very start.
And I agree w/ Brian that Morgan puts a bit more emphasis on field-blends than Dad did…maybe they’re
a bit more old-timey than Dad’s.
Tom

I think your snort key is stuck, Tom.

This was my favorite New World wine tasted recently. I have a very Euro-oriented palate at this point, and I swooned enough to write a mash-note email to Morgan about how much I enjoyed it.

Jim, great post – and I think somewhat revelatory. As several of us have been posting about, and Jon Bonne has written about, there exists now a group of winemakers who are blurring the lines between “Euro” and “New World.”

Morgan is highlighting this “new wave” with the most distinctly and uniquely California wine of all – historic, mixed variety field blends. He is not the first (Joel Peterson continues along this path and Paul Draper has been doing this with the Whitton Ranch mixed blacks for a longtime - Geyserville), but he and others are opening the eyes of wine lovers with spectacular examples like this one from Evangelho in Contra Costa.

I’m lucky that Evangelho is pretty close to my house, and I drove up to meet with Morgan & Chris to photograph their picks this year. It was really instructive to see how all this comes together to make a special wine. The things you’ll notice:

First, what a remarkable terroir. Old vines planted on their own roots in pure sand. Phylloxera doesn’t live in sand so these are some of the few ungrafted vinefera vines in the entire world. The Contra Costa heat has dessicated the entire landscape, yet this vineyard’s proximity to the bay brings a cool breeze even on a hot day, and the deep roots allow these vines to stand green and thriving with no artifical irrigation.

Next, the farming. Contra Costa doesn’t normally fetch premium wine prices, so it’s typical to see these beautiful vineyards overcropped to squeeze every penny out of the vines. But, Bedrock pays premium prices for the grapes and they are there every week to ensure the vines are farmed to high standards (the same is true of the Turley blocks as well.) You can walk through the vineyard and you don’t need anyone to tell you where the Bedrock or Turley block ends, because suddenly the vines aren’t suckered or pruned to the same standard.

Then, you see the pick happening, taste the fruit, it’s ripe and vibrant with still a bit of crunch, and you find out this pick is happening as much as two weeks before anyone else is calling it. You can’t help but wonder, what is everyone waiting for… Does this look underripe to you?

Anyway, you see a lot of effort and know-how to take a great vineyard and turn it into great wine. It’s not difficult to understand why not everybody is producing wines at this level.

Regarding the “rebellion” thing, I don’t want to discount anyone’s tasting experience but honestly I don’t get it and don’t think anything could be further from the truth.

Lori and I had an experience about 10 years ago where we had guests who wanted to go zin tasting and we took them to the Ravenswood SVD tasting room. We left with our friends scratching their heads, about how reserved and structured the wines were. To me this has always been the Ravenswood style but maybe there were certain vineyards or vintages that make people say they had gone fruit bomb. We have long since dropped Rosenblum for this very reason, but we never felt that way about Ravenswood and I’m always surprised to hear it.

That said, obviously Morgan is establishing his winery in a very different era than Joel did. Ravenswood was busy educating people on what “Zinfandel” meant, and he helped pave the way for people like Morgan to market “mixed blacks” or “heritage blends” in a way that never would have flown 20-30 years ago. The customers who are flocking to Bedrock today are in a place to understand the blends, and to appreciate wines with freshness and balancing acidity, in a way that would never have been the case for Ravenswood.

That’s a key point, Larry. Winemakers in California have made field blends for years, but many were considered little more than jug wines - and I suspect that’s how a number of growers and producers treated them. But the interest in making more serious field blends has grown over the past 15-20 years, with buyers willing to pay more for them, allowing for more careful farming and winemaking methods than had sometimes been the case in the past.

Here’s a good article on California field blends from the SFGate website in 2006 that includes some familiar names and vineyard sites:
Field of blends / Interplanted vineyards produce some of California’s most captivating wines

Great link Ken! I ran a tasting group at my office and about 6 years ago used that article to support and educate a field blend theme. And everyone thought I was nuts.

My bad! I was thinking of Rosenblum, whose wines went over the edge for me some years back.

To quote Lillie Tomlin, “Never mind.”

John - that makes a lot more sense.

I have a very distinct memory of tasting my last Rosenblum, at our local wine shop. It was like cherry flavored Jolly Ranchers dissolved in vodka. I sat down the glass and said to Lori “I think I’ve had enough from these guys.” She agreed.

I tasted there in 2006 and there were only a few decent things. I spoke with someone that same week who had sold grapes to the winery for years and was aggravated because they were asking him to pick later and later, which mean significantly lower tonnage per acre.

The time when you could mention Rosenblum in the same breath as Ravenswood and Ridge ended years ago.

And remarkably, this is following a period in the late-'90s where WS was bestowing huge scores on them, skyrocketing demand, and reinforcing this style.