The Taurus was Mourvedre sourced from the Cline Brothers in Contra Costa under the power lines. Big Break I recall is/was the vineyard name. I was making wine with Sean in Bolinas from 2003-2013. And Casey yes I do remember the frbs well, I spent hours upon hours loading and unloading those f—-ing things all over the north coast then huffing them into the crusher/destemmer back in Bolinas time and time again. Every vineyard we rolled up on with those frbs the pickers would just be beside themselves. When they realized they would have to load the 300-400 of those one by one into that rickety cab over truck they would all look stunned and confused.
Brian, I had to backtrack with a WB Search to put my finger on where your name sounded familiar:
Did you bottle a “Poor Ranch” Carignan already??? Are we going to see any CoCo Mourvedre from West of Temperance? 
I need to get acquainted with WoT, for sure!
Drew. We are set to bottle our 2016 Poor Ranch Carignane in January. It is tasting very very lithe and beautiful now and thought the few months extra elevage would be good for it. For the reds we are also bottling an Eaglepoint Ranch sangiovese from Mendocino,a magnificent mountain site farmed organically by Roland Wentzel. We will also be bottling aglianico as well as teroldego.
I found a wonderful source for the Campanian white fiano in the Santa Clara AvA for 2017 and will be bottling a small amount of that as well in January.
As far as a Contra Costa mourvedre goes I have no immediate plans for it but I have been sniffing around some vineyards down there so who knows. I do love mourvedre.
I am lucky either way, Brian! I have a fascination with Santa Clara/San Benito as well.
I loved the Carignan from The Princess and the Peasant. I received an incredibly detailed history of the Poor Ranch via PDF - talk about a historically preserved site!
I love that Sean is wearing overalls.
Poor Ranch is beyond words in terms of its unrestrained beauty and power. I have many many stories to tell about that ranch as well as the wonderful people who live there. I consider myself very lucky to have stumbled upon such a spot.
When he’s in Bolinas, he dresses in a white tux.
Is that Teroldego from the same growers as the Fiano? It’s certainly a variety well suited to the SCV.
Our teroldego is from Clarksburg. The SCV is pretty scarce on teroldego as far as my experience goes.
We got it and Fiano from a vineyard that got grafted over to housing. The growers put in a bunch of stuff elsewhere when that happened. Don’t recall all of what they planted there, but was guessing both could be from that new site.
After a really weird week I uncorked this last night with Flannery tri-tip.
Bottle had some old wine stink but beautiful fruit, easily appreciated. Finish sadly hotter than I recall from other vintages, but wouldn’t put me off Orion in the future and didn’t stop me from killing this over four hours almost alone.
We loved work with Sean and will miss him. I totally agree it was full circle for him to work with us in releasing a Cabernet in his long career. Cheers!
1 Like