It’s funny that for a place that gets slammed for having all wines taste the same, it’s surprisingly easy to find wines that taste completely different… The two wines below are case in point and each sees a very different up bringing with the results being, you guessed it, completely different. Which you’ll prefer will depend on your own personal preferences or mood at the time.

The 2006 Graff Family vineyards Grenache is in the same style as the 2005 and sees 20% of the juice spending 10 months in new oak and the remainder in used oak. It’s intense, ripe and sweet on the nose with raspberries, red fruits, spice and vanilla scented aromas and it makes up for its simplicity with sheer exuberance. The palate is upfront with big fruit, medium to full body and a rich, concentrated and lush texture. This picks up some structure on the finish but is a ripe, hedonistic California Grenache (90pts).

In stark contrast, the 2004 Outpost Grenache exhibits a much spicier, interesting and complex bouquet with perfumed vanilla, spice, white chocolate, candied black cherry, coffee and waxy aromas that would have me guessing that this wine sees gobs of new wood… and I’d be wrong. Per the domaine, this sees zero oak but is vinified with whole clusters inclusion. All I can say is that these stems add tremendously to the character of the wine and give it a decidedly oak’esk personality without actually screaming new oak. In the mouth this shows medium to full body with a core of sweet fruit, rich texture and slight hit of alcohol on the tail end of a nice finish. This bottle really took some air time to show well (think second day) but was worth the wait (89pts).

Don’t let anyone tell you that all California wines taste the same!

Salut and thanks for reading!
- Jeb

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Random Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.