Differentiating our Grenache Wines

We’ve always been big fans of the Grenache grown in the San­ta Ynez Val­ley, and are proud that we were the first win­ery bot­tling a sin­gle vari­etal Grenache in San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty in 1995. Since then, our Grenache wines have been a source of great pride for our wine­mak­ing team. Over the years, we have exper­i­ment­ed and pro­duced many dif­fer­ent bot­tlings of Grenache as we learned to appre­ci­ate the sub­tleties that our var­i­ous blocks of Grenache devel­op in the vine­yard. Our cur­rent Grenache port­fo­lio con­sists of four dif­fer­ent bot­tlings: the San­ta Ynez Val­ley Grenache, Estate Grenache, Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard Grenache, and the newest bot­tling Grenache Libre. Here’s an overview to help you appre­ci­ate how we look to high­light the dif­fer­ent fla­vors that Grenache pro­duces in our two vineyards.

Santa Ynez Valley (SYV) Grenache

The San­ta Ynez Val­ley Grenache is our largest and old­est sin­gle Grenache bot­tling. Dat­ing back to our very first vin­tage of the release in 1995, the SYV Grenache has always demon­strat­ed beau­ti­ful, pure, ripe Grenache fruit. The fruit for this wine is grown on both Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard and Thomas and Judith Beck­men Estate Vine­yard, from some of our old­est vines rang­ing in age from 25 – 28 years old. The wine incor­po­rates com­plete­ly destemmed fruit which under­goes a long, slow fer­men­ta­tion of 12 – 15 days. Aged for 10 months in neu­tral French and Amer­i­can oak bar­rels, the SYV Grenache is approach­able upon release and express­es lay­ers of pure Grenache fruit with fla­vors rang­ing from rasp­ber­ry to cher­ry to pome­gran­ate with a touch of white pepper.

Estate Grenache

The Estate Grenache is grown and har­vest­ed from our old­est Grenache vines plant­ed in 1995 on the Thomas and Judith Beck­men Estate Vine­yard in the Los Olivos Dis­trict AVA. The Estate Grenache high­lights the best char­ac­ter­is­tics of this site: its grav­el­ly, clay-loam soils and slight­ly warmer tem­per­a­tures when com­pared to Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard. Made from com­plete­ly destemmed fruit, the Estate Grenache ages for 12 – 15 months in 500L French oak pun­cheons. The Estate Grenache is the ripest and round­est (silki­est) Grenache in our port­fo­lio, exhibit­ing great fla­vors and aro­mas of Kirsch liquor, pome­gran­ate, red fruits, and bak­ers spice.

Purisima Mountain Vineyard (PMV) Grenache

The Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard Grenache is grown and har­vest­ed from Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard in Bal­lard Canyon AVA, from vine­yard blocks plant­ed in 1997 and 2015. This bot­tling was first pro­duced in 1999. The PMV Grenache is fer­ment­ed with 33% stem inclu­sion to add struc­ture and tex­ture before aging in 500L neu­tral French oak pun­cheons for 14 – 16 months. With the clay/​limestone soils and more mod­er­ate tem­per­a­tures found on Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard, this bot­tling demon­strates great ripeness, but the lime­stone slopes add a high­er lev­el of acid­i­ty and tan­nin that bal­ances the ripeness and cre­ates the most ele­gant of our Grenache bot­tlings, show­ing bright red fruits, spice, gar­rigue, and mineral.

Grenache Libre

Our newest sin­gle vari­etal Grenache bot­tling is the Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard Grenache LIBRE. Grown and har­vest­ed from Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard in Bal­lard Canyon AVA from vine­yard blocks plant­ed in 2003 and 2015, the Libre was cre­at­ed to high­light the fla­vor­ful fruit pro­duced by our un-trel­lised, free-stand­ing, head trained vines. Like the Purisi­ma Moun­tain Grenache, this wine is fer­ment­ed with 33% stem inclu­sion and ages in 500L neu­tral French oak pun­cheon but for a slight­ly longer peri­od. Com­bin­ing Block Eight, our orig­i­nal head-trained, own-root­ed Grenache, and Block One, our newest free-stand­ing block grown on the lime­stone slopes of PMV, this Grenache is our most struc­tured and age-wor­thy of our lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion Grenache wines.

Our port­fo­lio of Grenache wines is designed to suit all types of pal­lets and occa­sions. Start­ing with the San­ta Ynez Val­ley Grenache and fin­ish­ing with the Libre, our Grenache port­fo­lio evolves from wines that are more fruit for­ward and less tan­nic wines to cel­lar wor­thy, crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed wines that offer more struc­ture and nuance. Try some of our Grenache today and under­stand why we’re such big fans.