On my most recent trip to Sonoma, I popped by the highly recommended Mounts Winery. A tiny little shack hidden in the hills of Dry Creek, this is the kind of winemaker one-on-one experience I crave every time I visit a winery. Admittedly, his wife Lana is usually behind the tasting table, but I came on a day when winemaker and third-generation vineyard owner, David Mounts, was able to host my small little group through a tasting of current releases himself.
When a wine is good. No. When a wine is outstanding. Full-on, stop eating, stop talking, focus all senses on the wine in hand — outstanding. It makes you want to understand where it came from, how it was produced, and — most importantly — who made it. This. This Passagio Wines 2014 Grenache. This is one of those wines. Thank you to Cindy Cosco, owner and winemaker of Passaggio Wines, for sharing this with me. I honestly can’t wait to meet you in person so I can hear (and taste) your story in person and share it with my little wine-loving world. Cheers!
Grenache can be a hard grape to grow, let alone enjoy as a single-varietal bottle. Traditionally used for blending purposes, Grenache’s tendency toward high acidity and fruit forward flavors make it the ideal backbone for Rhone-style blends like GSM, contrasting and thus balancing the heavier, heartier, and earthier components (in this example, Syrah and Mourvèdre). So when I see a single-varietal bottle of Grenache, I simultaneously smile and cringe (my face is probably quite the site at that point) because I’m excited at the prospect of a Grenache, but experience has led me to predict disappointment. On the one hand, the grape is what it is: bright, fruity, acidic. On the palate this amounts to a simultaneously austere and flabby wine — lean, yes, but without structure or purpose (much like a person can be skinny with a high percentage of body fat, aka skinny-fat). On the other hand, wine producers, knowing what the purity of the Grenache grape will produce, tend to want to mask these features with excessive amount of new oak. On the palate this becomes the actual definition of flabby — the fruit, the acid, the oak all maintain their individuality, never melding together to create a balanced body (much like that same skinny-fat person eating a high protein diet to try to gain muscle without working out — he or she will just get, well, fat).
There is, however, an achievable balance when it comes to Grenache. But it requires the right variables to be in place — namely the terroir, the climate, and a skilled winemaker. Welcome to Tercero Wines 2011 Grenache.
Tercero Wines — this is a new one on me. And no wonder since Larry Schaffer, owner and winemaker of Tercero has only been working under his own label since 2006 and “really did not put 100%” into the brand until 2012. But Larry is no stranger to the winemaking business. Though originally in the educational and trade publishing industry, he made the courageous career leap to enology and is the former Enologist for Fess Parker Winery where he was once dubbed “Winemaker to Watch” by my very own SF Chronicle. But Larry’s real dream was to make his own name in wine with his own label. Again, Larry made a bold decision — he left the big-name brand and started Tercero.
Can you say “impulse buy?” It was my birthday, I was stocking up on wine at (three guesses) Safeway, and my favorite color is pink. So — why wouldn’t I pick up a bottle of wine mysteriously labeled “Notorious Pink”?
Ok, let’s get something clear. My favorite color is pink, and I do like a good rosé, and I might be a bit of a girly girl (sometimes), but I do not like girly-sweet wine. So, being the somewhat knowledgeable wine drinker that I am, I did read where this was (France) from and what it was made from (Grenache), and noted that the color wasn’t cotton candy pink (side note: I do not like cotton candy). So, I used my deductive reasoning that aside from the cutesy name — this is a real wine a real wine lover can enjoy. (BTW I was right…)
