Winemaker Notes
Ancient Vines Mourvèdre offers distinct chocolate characteristics, luscious deep plum, and concentrated cherry. This scrumptious and unusually delightful wine has a substantial mouth-feel followed by structured and balanced tannins. It’s a stunner, you should bring a bottle to your friend's house.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium to deep ruby-purple, the 2017 Mourvèdre Ancient Vines opens with notes of tar and potting soil over charcuterie, olive, fried herbs, cocoa and a core of baked blackberries and black cherries plus a hint of blue fruit. Medium to full-bodied, it gives up luscious dark fruits in the mouth, with a firm frame of lightly chewy tannins and great freshness, finishing long and savory.
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Wine Enthusiast
Very fruity, generous and mouthfilling, this full-bodied wine drenches the taste buds with berry flavors so ripe the berries would be falling off the vine. It offers great concentration, wonderful focus and good length on the finish. Best Buy.
Full of ripe fruit, and robust, earthy goodness, Mourvèdre is actually of Spanish provenance, where it still goes by the name Monastrell or Mataro. It is better associated however, with the Red Blends of the Rhône, namely Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Mourvèdre shines on its own in Bandol and is popular both as a single varietal wine in blends in the New World regions of Australia, California and Washington. Somm Secret—While Mourvèdre has been in California for many years, it didn’t gain momentum until the 1980s when a group of California winemakers inspired by the wines of the Rhône Valley finally began to renew a focus on it.
A large Northern California appellation centered on the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay AVA falls within the larger Central Coast AVA. The smaller appellations of Livermore Valley, Pacheco Pass, San Ysidro District and Santa Clara Valley AVAs fall within the San Francisco Bay boundaries, and all produce high-quality Central Coast wines.