A California Winery Blog

Chris Knap writes — that Bruce McGuire’s experiment with Grenache pays big dividends.

Tuesday, December 20, 2007

Chris Knap Wine Columnist
The Orange County Register

When Alexis Lichine wrote his definitive “Guide to the Wines and Vineyards of France” in 1979, the southern Rhone village of Gigondas, purveyor of one of the best Grenaches in the world, rated less than a single paragraph.When Robert M. Parker released the second edition of his “Wines of the Rhone Valley” in 1997, Gigondas got more than 50 pages.Between those two observations lies a whole book about the waning influence of Bordeaux and Burgundy, the influential palates of the late 20th century and the brash new influences that have turned the wine world on its head.

For our purposes here, suffice it to say that many sophisticated wine lovers (and wine makers) now prize a grape that was once considered a footnote fit for the back of the book.

 So it is with Bruce McGuire, winemaker for Santa Barbara Winery. McGuire planted two acres of Grenache in the warmest part of owner Pierre Lafond’s Santa Rita Hills vineyard, still a cool site for this warm-weather grape.The grapes for this second bottling from that planting were picked in early October and the wine aged in used Hungarian oak barrels.The wine is at once soft and powerful, with a nose of cedar and dark berries and flavors of cherry, raspberry and blackberry with notes of briar on the finish.
Tannins are sharp on first opening but fade as the wine gets oxygen and becomes much smoother and subtler. I expect it will continue to improve for at least two years.The wine’s power is belied by its voluptuousness. I suspected the alcohol was high, but when I checked the label I was stunned to see it was 15.7 percent.In his book Parker calls Gigondas “a robust, chewy, full-bodied, rich, generous red wine … (with) muscular, unbridled power that is fine-tuned in the best examples.”
To my taste McGuire has managed a similar trick here. Try it with Provencal-style beef stew or any rich, meaty meal on a cold winter’s night.

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