Notes from 3/25 Rhone Rangers tasting in San Francisco

I attended the 3/25/12 Rhone Rangers Grand Tasting in San Francisco, and wrote a report for the Grape-Nutz.com website. A portion of the report is below - there are more comments plus tasting notes on nearly 100 wines from 23 producers here:
Rhone Rangers – 15th Annual San Francisco Wine Tasting

Report on the 15th annual wine tasting presented by the Rhone Rangers, on Saturday & Sunday, March 24-25, 2012, at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The event focuses on current releases of Rhône-varietal wines from member wineries in the United States.

This year’s event included two tasting seminars on Saturday afternoon and a winemaker dinner and auction on Saturday evening. Sunday featured a morning tasting seminar followed by the Grand Tasting and silent auction in the afternoon. I was not able to attend the seminars this year, so the tasting notes below are all from the Grand Tasting.

The Rhone Rangers organization is a non-profit group, which promotes the enjoyment of Rhône-varietal wines produced in the United States. Although the term “Rhone Rangers” has been used since the 1980s to describe some of the early champions of Rhône-style wines in the US, the organization itself was not founded until 1997. There are now nearly 200 wineries from California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Michigan, and Virginia that are members of the Rhone Rangers.

Nearly all of the wineries pouring at the event were from California, though there were also a few from the Pacific Northwest. I tried to visit a mixture of “tried and true” producers and newer or less familiar producers at the tasting. Many past favorites – including Beckmen, Jemrose, Lagier Meredith, Qupé, and Skylark – continued to present impressive wines. A few of the more established producers – such as Curtis and Quivira – look to be on the upswing. And several newer wineries – Petrichor, Sanglier, and Skinner among them – showed that they will be worth watching.

I found more noteworthy Rosé wines at this year’s Rhone Rangers tasting than has been the case in past years. I think that more wineries are treating Rosé as a “serious” wine these days, not just as a byproduct of bleeding off their reds. And there was a lot of diversity among my favorite reds of the tasting – more Syrahs than any other variety but including a number of other varieties and interesting blends too. In fact, diversity was a key to this Rhone Rangers tasting – there were lots of wine styles on display, a result both of vineyard sources all over California (and Oregon too), and of different winemaking philosophies and methods. For Rhône-style wine lovers, this really is an event not to be missed.

Some Favorites

WHITES & ROSÉS
Beckmen 2010 Grenache Rosé
Curtis 2010 Viognier
Domaine de la Terre Rouge 2009 “Enigma”
Folin 2011 Viognier
Jemrose 2010 Viognier
Lagier Meredith 2011 Rosé of Syrah
Martian 2011 Grenache Rosé “Down to Earth”
Quivira 2011 Rosé
Qupé 2009 Roussanne
Sanglier 2011 Rosé
Truchard 2010 Roussanne

REDS
Andrew Murray 2009 “Espérance”
Beckmen 2009 Purisima Mountain Vineyard Syrah
Holly’s Hill 2009 Mourvèdre “Classique”
Jemrose 2009 Syrah
Lagier Meredith 2009 Mondeuse
Petrichor 2009 “Les Trois”
Quivira 2009 “Elusive”
Qupé 2009 “Sonnie’s” Syrah
Sanglier 2009 “Boar’s Camp”
Skinner 2010 Grenache
Skylark 2008 Rodgers Creek Vineyard Syrah

Nice write up on Grape Nutz Ken. You really made your way around the room. I don’t think I got to half the producers you wrote up. One of the “new to me” producers that made a real strong impression was the Petrichor that you highlighted. I’m with you on the Skylark Rodgers Creek as well.
In general, I was more impressed with the whites than I had been in previous years. It seemed that everyone I liked had thrown a bit of white grenache into the blend, and the resulting wines showed more tension and minerality than most showed a few years ago.

I was hoping to get to a few more producers than I did, but I always spend more time than I expect talking with people I know at these large events - can’t complain though! The Skylark Rodgers Creek Syrah has been a favorite for the past few years - I think it’s becoming one of the best cool-climate Syrahs in California (grown in the Petaluma Gap). And Petrichor was indeed a find, though I should have expected no less for a wine made by Duncan Meyers (of Arnot-Roberts).

I’ve felt the whites at Rhone Rangers have been taking a step up overall in the past couple of years, and as mentioned, more Rosés than usual impressed me this year too. Looking forward to tasting more of these wines at Hospice du Rhône later this week.

Thanks for the report, Ken.

This is great to see, and I hope it signals a trend. There is a possibility that this is just an effect of having 2 very cold vintages in 2010/2011 where a lot of warm weather loving S. Rhône grapes simply struggled to get ripe, and rosé became a reasonable save. Anyway, however a trend starts, if the wines start to gain a following (and I believe they have) then perhaps it can continue.

Ken,

Great seeing you and Al at the event . . . even though you guys didn’t taste any of my wines! That said, you HAD just tasted through 100 or so of them at my tasting room not too long ago (-:

Great to hear about the roses you tried - I’m digging more and more from CA and feel that more folks are taking them ‘more seriously’ as well . . .

Keep up the great work!

Great seeing you too, Larry. It did seem like about 100 of your Tercero wines that my friends and I tasted with you a couple of months ago! [cheers.gif]

A little bummed that I missed the seminars this year but the Grand Tasting was fun. As usual, the event was very well organized and lots of good wines to taste.