Wow. Always something weird about this winery, but back in the day they produced some pretty epic, classic Cabs and Cab blends.
Gideon Bienstock was the master winemaker but he left years ago - cannot recall when - to Clos Saron.
I have dropped notes over the years on this winery, which for a long time, had a large back library of offerings at very respectable prices, but my failure rate with the corks drove me crazy. But when one of the wines was on, they were just flat out lovely, and reminiscent of old California.
There was also a podcast about the Fellowship (“Revelations”) and some of the allegations recently.
I have been there! Pretty surreal experience.
I haven’t been back, but I did inquire a couple of years ago and was told that they do tastings by appointment.
Anyway, definitely very troubling news. Agree that the wines can be epic. I still have maybe six or eight bottles of various stuff from them.
Thanks for the posting Robert. I thought there had been allegations before but this seems much more serious. I finished my last bottle from the winery on Thanksgiving, 1992 late harvest Riesling. The cabs are even better. I think Gideon is still selling the “Taken from Granite” wines which he made while at Renaissance and then repurchased the complete bottled production a few years ago. The Esther Mobley article on Renaissance is a great piece of wine journalism. There’s a nice group of wineries still farming and making great wines from the old Renaissance vineyards.