Spicerack Vineyards
2018 Spicerack "Red Rhône Blend"
92 points, Highly Recommended
Wine Enthusiast Magazine, October 2020
This unusual blend is more about its sum than its individual parts. Part delicate and aromatic, part robust and mouth-filling, it extolls that wonderful and wild "garrigue" of the Sud de France. Layered and textured, honest and yet complex, it was a blast to produce.
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Wine Specs
Vintage
2018
Wine Profile
Vineyard Notes
Three Rhône varieties grown across five incredibly diverse and sustainably-farmed sites. Hand-pruned, hand-picked, and hand-sorted. - 45% Syrah: Shadowbrook Vineyard (Mendocino) - 45% Mourvedre (aka Mataro): Zaca Masa (Santa Ynez) 45%, Curtiz (Santa Ynez) 35%, Shokrian (20%) - 10% Grenache: Zaca Masa (Santa Ynez) 60%, Thompson (Alisos Corridor) 40%
Production Notes
Minimal handling of six unique lots let each of them shine in different ways. Hand picked between September 29 (Mendo Syrah) and November 15 (Shokrian), all were destemmed and cold soaked in tiny tanks to extract flavor in the absence of alcohol. Once they warmed up, we let them start with "prevailing" yeasts and later used a neutral yeast to move things along. Averaging two weeks on the skins, we pressed just before dryness and matured for fourteen months in neutral (80%) and new French oak (20%) with zero (Grenache) or two (Syrah) rackings. One eggwhite clarified the blend before bottling.
