I was looking for something that would go with a lamb-eggplant-green-pepper stew with some Anaheim peppers and red pepper paste in it. I needed something big and fruity, and this did the trick beautifully. 85% grenache, 15% syrah; 15.1% ABV. From Unti’s own vineyards in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma.
This was balanced from the get-go, with lots of plummy fruit but it’s restrained by the standards of California Rhones. It has what I want in grenache – softish tannins with good fruit. With air, it became sweeter and fruiter, with more red fruits and some dried strawberries. At the same time, some harder tannins showed up. (I was less keen on those.) It wears its 15.1% remarkably well, as it did when I first tasted this at the winery in January. Fifteen percent on a label is normally a red warning flag for me but, as I said, I liked this enough at the tasting room to buy some.
This should be drunk in the next couple of years, I think, as the alcohol will likely become more prominent as the fruit steps to the rear. But it’s very nice now. 88-ish for me (a good, solid score for me). $31.50 at the winery. I have a hard time finding serious Southern Rhones I like this much at that price point.
I remember on my first visit to the winery nine or 10 years ago, Mick Unti said that he thought grenache had a lot of promise in California, but that it had been grown mostly in the Central Valley, where it didn’t really belong. Unti’s wines have gotten better and better since then, and this one seems to vindicate his faith in the grape. (According to Unti’s website, their grenache was planted in 1998 from cuttings from Tablas Creek and Alban Vineyards and they include one-third stems typically.)
As it happens, I had a 2011 Domaine du Gour de Chaulé - Gigondas (a Neal Rosenthal import) last night in a restaurant. It’s a very similar blend – 85% grenache, 10% syrah and mourvedre, with the balance cinsault. It was darker and had a lot of hard tannins that I guessed at the time were from syrah (though they probably weren’t given the mix). It was much less pleasurable than the Unti.