Winemaker Notes
This is a delicious wine, featuring sweet cherry and dark berry notes, lots of spice, violets, and licorice. A smooth texture and medium bodied. This builds in richness and depth in the glass and has fine polished tannins with good length.
Blend: 45% Syrah, 55% Grenache.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is a perennial overachiever, but the 2015 is even more so than usual. The aromas are bold and ripe, offering notes of cherries, ample garrigue and hints of tar. The wine is rich and velvety on the palate, folding in notes of chocolate, baking spices, plum and dried herbs. Drink now–2025.
Best Buy
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.
Gently rolling hills covered by large, round stones on south-facing slopes, Costieres de Nimes is a substantial IGP zone that was formerly considered part of the Languedoc. Today it is included as a section of the southern Rhone; its climate, topography and wines put it more in line with that appellation. Grenache is its most important red variety, along with Mourvedre, Syrah and Carignan. Half of the production here is rosé.