Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Groundwork Grenache shows remarkable balance and vitality. TASTING NOTES: This wine is fresh, frisky, and bursting with pleasing fruit. Enjoy its active aromas and flavors of red fruit and mineral notes with grilled veal chops in a zesty red wine reduction sauce. (Tasted: December 5, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
Very light in the glass, this highly quaffable and very affordable bottling offers aromas of cranberry and cherry on the nose alongside scents of cinnamon and loamy soil. It's evenly presented on the palate, with cranberry, orange-rind and brown-spice flavors that prove refreshing yet exotically complex.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Grenache is a value-priced effort that offers up a Pinot Noir-like style in its spied red fruits, kirsch, Herbes de Provence, and white pepper aromas and flavors. Medium-bodied, rounded, and supple, it's a seamless, lightly textured, flavorful effort to enjoy over the coming 4-5 years. It's a good value.
Grenache thrives in any warm, Mediterranean climate where ample sunlight allows its clusters to achieve full phenolic ripeness. While Grenache's birthplace is Spain (there called Garnacha), today it is more recognized as the key player in the red blends of the Southern Rhône, namely Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Côtes du Rhône and its villages. Somm Secret—The Italian island of Sardinia produces bold, rustic, single varietal Grenache (there called Cannonau). California, Washington and Australia have achieved found success with Grenache, both flying solo and in blends.
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.