Winemaker Notes
This wine is quite good used as an aperitif. It doesn't need food to show at its best. In some ways, it is a meal all in itself. It will work with foods that might dominate more delicate wines. Thai and Indian cuisine come to mind. It might be very interesting to try this with crab cakes or other shellfish appetizers.
As with most white wines, this one will be near its maximum flavor impact after six months of bottle age. This coincides with the recommended optimum time for consumption listed above. A particular caution with aromatic whites such as Viognier, Gew urztraminer, Riesling, and Malvasia is that they are bottled with higher levels of sulfur than other wines and so need a bit more time to recover from the bottling process.
-Larry Brooks, Consulting Winemaker
Full-figured and charmingly floral, Viognier is one of the most important white grapes of the northern Rhône where it is used both to produce single varietal wines and as an important blending grape. Look for great New World examples from California, Oregon, Washington and cooler parts of Australia. Somm Secret—Viognier plays a surprisingly important role in the red wines of Côte Rôtie in the northern Rhône. About 5% Viognier is typically co-fermented with the Syrah in order to stabilize the color, and as an added benefit, add a subtle perfume.
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.