Winemaker Notes
Pair with grilled meats, pastas with meat sauces, roast pork loin, beef stews, and beef or pork stir fries.
Blend: 51% Syrah 31% Grenache, 14% Mourvedre, 4% Counoise
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This 11-vineyard blend of 51% Syrah, 31% Grenache, 14% Mourvèdre and 4% Counoise represents an excellent value in the realm of expertly balanced but boisterously flavored wines. The fruity nose shows smashed raspberry, boysenberry, violet and potpourri, leading into a lively palate full of rose petals, exotic red cherries and turned earth. It's easy to drink yet intellectual as well.
Editors’ Choice -
Wine Spectator
A spunky blend, with personality, offering a lively core of blackberry, licorice and smoky cracked pepper flavors. Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Counoise. Drink now through 2023.
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.