Winemaker Notes
Fresh-cut herbs, red fruits, roses, forest floor, and roasted meats lead the way to this silky, sensation-filled wine. Flavors and aromas see-saw between savory and fruity, floral and earth, truffles and tobacco. Entering round and plush with velvety tannins, this wine expresses up and down motion as richness, acid, and tannin dance across the palate with secondary notes of graphite, cedar, and baking spices. It finishes with a lasting back-to-front brush of texture on the roof of the mouth.
Blend: 90% Syrah, 10% Mourvèdre
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
Vivid purple. Powerful, smoke- and spice-accented aromas of dark berry preserves, candied flowers, mocha and olive carry a suave floral topnote. Fleshy, sweet and deeply concentrated, offering palate-coating black currant, boysenberry, vanilla and baking spice flavors that turn livelier with air. Conveys an appealing blend of depth and energy and finishes with superb clarity, repeating florality and smooth, polished tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Authenticity is a blend of Syrah with 10% Mourvèdre and was aged for 19 months in 77% new French oak. Opaque in color, it's aromatically complex, with layers of savory charcuterie, leather, fried sage and thyme over rich Morello cherry fruit. Youthfully boisterous and structurally supple, it offers layer after layer of savory fruit and finishes very long and spicy. It's approachable now but will continue to evolve in bottle over the next 10+ years.
With bold fruit flavors and accents of sweet spice, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre form the base of the classic Rhône Red Blend, while Carignan, Cinsault and Counoise often come in to play. Though they originated from France’s southern Rhône Valley, with some creative interpretation, Rhône blends have also become popular in other countries. Somm Secret—Putting their own local spin on the Rhône Red Blend, those from Priorat often include Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. In California, it is not uncommon to see Petite Sirah make an appearance.
Paso Robles has made a name for itself as a source of supple, powerful, fruit-driven Central Coast wines. But with eleven smaller sub-AVAs, there is actually quite a bit of diversity to be found in this inland portion of California’s Central Coast.
Just east over the Santa Lucia Mountains from the chilly Pacific Ocean, lie the coolest in the region: Adelaida, Templeton Gap and (Paso Robles) Willow Creek Districts, as well as York Mountain AVA and Santa Margarita Ranch. These all experience more ocean fog, wind and precipitation compared to the rest of the Paso sub-appellations. The San Miguel, (Paso Robles) Estrella, (Paso Robles) Geneso, (Paso Robles) Highlands, El Pomar and Creston Districts, along with San Juan Creek, are the hotter, more western appellations of the greater Paso Robles AVA.
This is mostly red wine country, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel standing out as the star performers. Other popular varieties include Merlot, Petite Sirah, Petit Verdot, Syrah, Grenache and Rhône blends, both red and white. There is a fairly uniform tendency here towards wines that are unapologetically bold and opulently fruit-driven, albeit with a surprising amount of acidity thanks to the region’s chilly nighttime temperatures.