2022 Hibou Assyrtiko - USA, California, Central Valley, Clements Hills (8/25/2023)
My buddy Brent says "hey, I got a bottle I want you to try I really enjoy this wine". Awesome, free wine!
I look at a bottle and don't recognize the producer. I see assyrtiko, cool, I love wines from Santorini. Then I see Lodi. Brakes lock up. Huh? Let's go! BTW, never heard of the Clements Hills AVA.
Color is medium bright gold. The nose is yellow pair and honeysuckle flower. I was thinking this was probably going to be fairly sweet, shame on me. Flavors of Bright yellow fruit and a significant floral note. Middle of the palate is mineral and acid, good balance. Very long finish. My goodness, this is a significantly complex wine.
Randy took me to that vineyard last year. Couldn’t believe Assyrtiko either. There were a few grapes left on the vines and they did taste good, fwiw. Look forward to trying wines. Raj Parr made wine from there too. (I assuming there isn’t more than one Assyrtiko vineyard in Lodi.)
Thank you for this. I love most Greek expressions of this grape - have yet to have one not from Greece. Don’t know if I’ll ever see it here north of the 49th but on my radar now.
I think the comment about sunshine may be right (haven’t seen stats) but are the soils the same? I don’t tend to think of volcanic in California but perhaps that’s my ignorance.
Perlegos Brothers planted that Assyrtico a few years ago. They also own Stampede vineyard which is always producing great Zins. They make an Assyrtiko under the Perlegos Family label too.
Do they grow the grapes in vine baskets, like on Santorini? I wouldn’t think it necessary (they do it on Santorini because of the winds), but who knows what other things the unusual training could provoke.
Just for the record, the average temp in Lodi is below Paso Robles average temp. The Mokulemne River and the delta keeps it in check. So, it doesn’t really deserve this reputation for being a hot region anymore than Paso does.
Lodi is the region with the oldest average vine age in CA (my guess), so the quality has always been there. It’s just that I don’t think Lodi did a great job with the vinification always - and it could certainly do with Paso’s marketing team! But the quality is there to to see in all the old vineyards with the new winemakers coming through and I think this will be evident over the next 10 years. If Lodi wine region was a stock - buy it.
I highly recommend Randy Caparoso’s book Lodi! that covers all the great vineyard history of the region. A beautiful book.
Exactly. The Syrah I make from the small Knowles vineyard was planted in 1964 and smuggled in from Australian Shiraz cuttings. It’s certainly one of the older plantings of that variety in CA and is still today own rooted.
