Wine Garage Red Wine
North Coast 2008

This is a blend of Grenache and Mourvedre from Shannon Ranches in Lake County, and old vine Carignane from Solano County. Clay Shannon farms these vines himself and the vineyards are on a hillside that is extremely steep. During harvest, it had rained a bit and the Grenache was ready to pick but they couldn’t get in the vineyard with the tractors. There are precautions that you take when you are driving a tractor on a steep vineyard: you wear a harness to keep you from falling out and you install a roll bar so you aren’t crushed from a tip-over. I heard a story from a friend winemaker entailing a worker who had the roll bar on but didn’t lock himself in so when he flipped the thing he was thrown from the cab and the tractor rolled over him. He lived but was crippled for life. We were to pick the Grenache first since the Mourvedre wasn’t quite ready. Well when the tractors finally were let in the Grenache was a tad over-ripe, so we picked the Mourvedre and co-fermented them both together. A gamble that paid off with a classic Rhone style blend, this wine is really loaded with flavor and structure. Dark and brooding - the aromas explode from the glass. Strawberry, mineral, blackberry, and currant all intermingle with the senses. Sweet cassis, strawberry flowers, coffee, chocolate, leather, black pepper, clove, earth. The Carignane provides beautiful mineral and acid to bring in all the components to this tightly structured wine.

Retail: $29.99 - Club $19.99

Wine Garage Red Wine “Field Blend”
Contra Costa County 2009

When we first decided to make wine back in 2006, I had asked Ehren Jordan if he had any Zin that he could spare during harvest. He did, from an old vine vineyard in Pope Valley, we crushed 5 tons that year and made a pretty yummy wine. I wanted a yummier wine the next year. Once again I went to Ehren, the winemaker for Turley Estate, perhaps the cultist of the cult Zinfandel producers in all the land. This time it was grapes peeled off his Pato Vineyard contract in Contra Costa Co. Ehren was a partner in Neyers Winery, acting as the winemaker. Neyers also took Pato fruit and was struggling to sell it so they let me have 10 tons. Awesome wine was made. We did the same deal in 08. THEN in 09, Bruce Neyers, without telling me – the person who was helping out on his grape contract by buying almost 20 tons of grapes off him – canceled his contract with Mr. Pato. Dave Phinney, the whiz kid rock star from The Prisoner fame, snatched it all up from underneath me. I was out, no fruit.

The growers in Contra Costa County are a group of old-school farmers from Portuguese and Italian decent, many are still family members of the original growers who planted the vines 120 years ago. They are close knit and suspicious of strangers. Many have been burned by fancy pants vintners from Napa Valley in the past and it is hard to break into their circle. So what did this not-sofancy pants vintner from Napa Valley do? He called the King, Matt Cline. From Cline Cellars, formally that is (he had a falling out with his brother), Matt pretty much was a god in Contra Costa County (C.C. Co.). When Cline was starting up, they specialized in old vine varietals from C. C. Co. and he saved the asses of many of those farmers when it was more chic to make wine from Napa and Sonoma than C. C. Co.

So one day Matt took me under his wing and we headed up to the town of Oakley to look at vineyard and scope things out. We had lunch in this Italian Diner where all the old farmers have their lunch and he introduced me around and that is where I met Dan Gonsalves, all five feet two of him. We made a date to go look at vineyard a few weeks later where Massimo and I met him in the parking lot of a Target store. Right next to the parking lot, between a 7-11 store, was a teeny Old Vine Vineyard of Zinfandel, with some Carignane and Mataro mixed in haphazardly. Dan had little blocks all around town tucked between apartment houses, chain stores, and restaurants. Back in the day everything was vineyard. During the housing boom in the 90’s, most of the beautiful 100 years old vines were ripped from the earth to plant houses and stores and schools. I had asked Matt what his favorite vineyard was in Oakley and he replied with, “WAS right over there where that empty school sits…and my second favorite was where that apartment house is – half empty”. When the housing boom ended, there weren’t enough people to fill all the houses and schools that were built and then the mortgage crisis hit and a lot of those houses sit empty, foreclosed on. So Dan, Massimo, and I drove around and picked blocks that we liked and the result is this delicious wine. Mostly fermented in neutral barrels so the fruit really stood out, and it does. What a fruit bomb. Super black in color, I get blackberry jam, strawberry pie, plums, and orange rind on the nose. Blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, black cherry, cigar, granite, chocolate all dance in the mouth. The finish is forever.

Retail: Regular $29.99 - Club $22.99