I attended the 6th Annual TAPAS Grand Wine Tasting on Tuesday June 23rd, and wrote a report for the Grape-Nutz.com website. A portion of the report is below – there are more comments, photos, and tasting notes on 89 wines from 25 producers here:
6th Annual TAPAS Grand Wine Tasting
Arizona winemakers – Kent Callaghan of Callaghan Vineyards, Todd Bostock of Dos Cabezas WineWorks,
Maynard James Keenan of Caduceus Cellars, Tim White of Arizona Stronghold
Report on the 6th Annual Grand Wine Tasting presented by TAPAS (Tempranillo Advocates, Producers, and Amigos Society), on Sunday, June 23rd, 2013, at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio of San Francisco, California. The event features the most extensive annual tasting of US-produced wines made from Iberian grape varieties.
TAPAS is a non-profit trade association formed in January 2006. The group’s stated mission is “to promote Tempranillo and other varietal wine grapes native to the Iberian Peninsula, and wines produced from them in North America.” Including Tempranillo – the sixth most widely-planted grape in the world – a total of 36 different grape varieties are currently recognized by TAPAS. In addition to the annual tasting in San Francisco, the organization also promotes International Tempranillo Day (November 14th this year) and International Albariño Day (August 3rd this year) to celebrate those two varieties. They’ve also developed the “Nuevo Spanish Wine Trail” – a route that links the member wineries through the western US. There are currently nearly 100 members of TAPAS, located in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Texas.
Overall Impressions
The TAPAS event always offers a great opportunity to sample domestically-produced wines made from Spanish and Portuguese grape varieties in one setting. This year’s event was held in a new and smaller venue than at Fort Mason where it was held the past couple of years – this seems to be part of a movement away from Fort Mason for wine events. The new Golden Gate Club venue worked well for the size and format of this year’s TAPAS event. The Grand Tasting took up the two larger rooms of the building, while seminars were held in one of the smaller rooms. Overall, it felt like a comfortable space for the event, and it offered a more intimate setting than at the vast Fort Mason pavilion. As has been the case every year, the event ran smoothly throughout – TAPAS Executive Director Heidi Stine, her staff, and the many volunteer helpers again did a fine job of planning and running the event.
Seminars
The TAPAS event featured two seminars prior to the Grand Tasting this year. The first seminar was entitled “¿Arizona? Growing Spanish Varieties in the American Southwest.” This brought together four notable producers from Arizona – Maynard James Keenan of Caduceus Cellars, Tim White of Arizona Stronghold, Todd Bostock of Dos Cabezas WineWorks, and Kent Callaghan of Callaghan Vineyards. Wine educator David Glancy moderated the panel (filling in at the last minute for sommelier and Bay Area wine shop owner Peter Eastlake).
The first modern winegrape plantings in Arizona date to around 1980, and some of the vineyards that these four wineries source from have been around for nearly 30 years. One of the keys to being able to grow quality winegrapes in Arizona is higher elevation – the elevation for most of the vineyards for the four wineries ranges from about 2,300 feet to 4,900 feet. This helps to temper the daytime heat, and it was noted that the hottest summer temperatures in the vineyards typically reach only the mid-90s, with a 25-35 degree diurnal swing.
A difficulty faced by growers in Arizona that is not shared by most in California is dealing with the summer “monsoon” rains that are common in the southwest. Late-developing and late-ripening varieties that are not prone to rot do better for this. It was pointed out that Zinfandel in particular does not fare well with the summer rains. As with many other places, frost can be a problem – Kent noted that he lost about 85% of the crop from his Sonoita vineyard in 2011, getting only ⅓ ton per acre that year. I asked whether there has been any move toward organic or biodynamic farming in Arizona, and we learned that this is found in few of the state’s vineyards, with “sustainable” growing about as far as most are taking it now. I imagine that with more experience in growing winegrapes there, we may see more growers trying organic and perhaps biodynamic farming in the future.
All four Arizona winemakers have recently collaborated on a project called Kindred. They produced a wine from the 2011 vintage that combined three barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon with one barrel of Tempranillo. I liked a number of the eight wines we tasted at the seminar, and I thought the Arizona Stronghold Mourvèdre and the Caduceus “Sancha” were particular standouts.
The second seminar was “Defining American Tempranillo," moderated by Richard Jennings of RJonWine.com and the Huffington Post. The panel included several fine producers of that variety – Markus Bokisch of Bokisch Vineyards, Matt Hughes of Six Sigma Winery, Andrew Wenzl of Abacela, and Louisa Sawyer Lindquist of Verdad Wine Cellars.
Markus started out with a discussion of the current state of Tempranillo in the United States. Just within the past year, research has found that the parents of Tempranillo are Albillo Mayor (an Iberian white variety) and Benedicto (a now-rare red Iberian variety). Tempranillo itself is likely less than 1,000 years old. The US has about 1,400 acres of Tempranillo planted among 15 states, with around 1,000 acres in California. Planting of the variety in the US has boomed since the late 1990s. It was pointed out that there are not many Tempranillo clones available yet in the US, but more should be coming soon.
We moved on to a discussion of winemaking techniques with Tempranillo, centered around barrel-aging and blending. Richard mentioned that he feels longer barrel-aging will be of benefit to many US Tempranillos, and that this is something that seems to have gained hold in recent years. Louisa said that her early Verdad Tempranillos would have been better if they had gotten more barrel aging – she now ages them in barrel for about 18-24 months plus a year of bottle age prior to release. Andrew noted that Abacela is making a “Gran Reserva” style Tempranillo with 4-year barrel aging, and Dave Corey of Core Wine Company, who joined in the panel discussion, said that his current Tempranillo was barrel-aged for 52 months. A fair number of producers are using American oak for some or all of their barrel aging, and Markus noted that American oak can work better with this variety than with some others.
It was mentioned that blending with other varieties, such as Garnacha and Graciano, can often add to Tempranillo. In particular it can help raise the acidity, as Tempranillo on its own tends to have a high pH. The seven wines we tasted at the seminar ranged from 80% to 100% Tempranillo (with two of them being 100% varietal). There was plenty of diversity among these wines, with my favorites being those from Abacela and Verdad.
Grand Tasting
Due to the smaller venue for the tasting this year, the number of wineries pouring at TAPAS decreased slightly, but there were still about 40 producers at the Grand Tasting. There were wineries from Arizona and Oregon as well as California. In addition to the tasting, there was a silent auction during the event, with proceeds to benefit various TAPAS programs and projects. There was also the “TAPAS Wine School” during the tasting, held in one of the Golden Gate Club’s side rooms – this featured Sommelier Ellen Landis leading an "Exotic Iberian Varietals” tasting, and Wine Chef Tony Lawrence leading a session on “American Albariños.” I was focused on the Grand Tasting so I was not able to take advantage of these two separate tastings.
Even with fewer wineries pouring this year, I still was not able to taste at all of the producers’ tables that I’d hoped to. Baiocchi, Fenestra, and Jeremy were among those that had poured some good wines in the past but that I missed this year. And a few past favorites such as Forlorn Hope and Truchard were not pouring at this year’s tasting.
I liked a number of wines from some of the lesser-known Iberian grape varieties planted in the western US – Arinto, Verdejo, Graciano, Souzão, and Touriga, for example. It’s definitely a broader palette than just Albariño and Tempranillo these days. One interesting trend I noticed was that several wineries were using Petit Verdot in their Tempranillo-based blends (or blending a little into varietally-labeled Tempranillo). I had not realized how many examples of this that I’d tasted until afterwards, so I did not ask producers why they chose Petit Verdot as a blending grape with Tempranillo, but this is something I’ll be sure to check into in the future.
I found that I preferred a higher percentage of the white and Rosé wines that I tasted than the reds this year. Nearly all of the whites I tried were made in stainless steel, neutral oak, or a combination of the two, which lent them a freshness that went well with the generally-lighter white Iberian grape varieties. While I enjoyed a number of the reds, I felt that some producers made questionable choices with regard to their oak programs, both in terms of how much new oak and what type of oak. I found some wines to be overly-oaked, and some presented a particularly woody or resiny character, neither of which I find attractive. But I think that most of these wineries are still very much in the learning stage of how to best make wines from Iberian grape varieties, so hopefully these are issues that will be resolved in future vintages.
Louisa Sawyer Lindquist of Verdad Wine Cellars
Overall, the producers who have well-established track records with Iberian grape varieties did very well again this year, with Abacela, Bokisch, and Verdad leading the way. Others such as Folin, Kenneth Volk, Longoria, Pierce Ranch, Quinta Cruz, Riaza, and St. Amant stood out as well, while a number of other producers poured some very good wines. Newcomers Egan and Gordian Knot look like they could be wineries to watch. Favorite wines came from many parts of California as well as Arizona and Oregon. I did not make a separate category for favorite dessert wines this year, though the ones I tasted from Quinta Cruz and St. Amant stood out.
I thought that wine quality was generally good this year, though there is clearly room for improvement. Making quality wines from Iberian grape varieties is still a very new venture for most wineries in the US, and it should be no surprise that it is taking some time for growers and winemakers to get a handle on these grapes and wines.
It’s still far too early in the game to know whether the types of wines showcased at this year’s TAPAS event will remain a niche in the overall wine market or will gain broader acceptance. There certainly seems to be the potential for much wider planting of Iberian grape varieties in the US, with many areas where they seem to be well-suited to the climate and soil. The good turnout at the TAPAS tasting again this year points to solid interest on the part of wine consumers, and I expect that we’ll continue to see growth in both the quantity and quality of these wines in the future.
Favorites
Whites and Rosés
Abacela 2012 Albariño
Abacela 2012 Grenache Rosé
Bokisch 2012 Albariño, Las Cerezas Vineyard
Callaghan 2010 “Ann’s”
Dancing Coyote 2012 Albariño
Egan 2011 Albariño
Gordian Knot 2011 Albariño
Kenneth Volk 2010 Verdelho
Pierce Ranch 2011 Arinto
Quinta Cruz 2011 Albariño
Riaza 2012 Verdejo
St. Amant 2012 “Miss Independent” Verdelho
Verdad 2012 Albariño, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard
Verdad 2012 Grenache Rosé
Reds
Abacela 2009 Estate Tempranillo
Arizona Stronghold Site Archive 2010 Mourvèdre
Bokisch 2010 Monastrell
Caduceus 2010 “Sancha”
Core 2008 Mourvèdre
Folin 2009 Estate Tempranillo
Kenneth Volk 2010 Touriga Nacional
Longoria 2010 Tempranillo
Pierce Ranch 2009 “Cosecheiro”
Quinta Cruz 2009 Touriga
Riaza 2010 Graciano
St. Amant 2011 Souzão
Verdad 2010 Tempranillo, Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard
Markus and Liz Bokisch of Bokisch Vineyards