Tried these two last night w/ dinner:
1. Garryana Riesling WillametteVlly/OR (mature vines, some botrytis cinerea; 104 cs; 13.3%; www.GarryAna.com) McMinnville 2015: Light gold color; pleasant light mango/pineapple/R some piney/forest floor bit simple nose; lightly tart/tangy pleasant mango/pineapple/R bit piney/PineSol/forest floor flavor; med.long piney/forest floor light floral/mango/pineapple/R lightly tart finish; a bit on the simple side but altogether a pleasant R. $26.00 (AV)
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2. CambriaEstateVnyd&Wnry Syrah TepesquetVnyd/SantaMariaVlly (13.5%; www.CambriaWines.com) Julia&Katie Jackson/Sisters/SantaMaria 2013: Very dark color; very strong boysenberry/blackberry/Syrah light toasty/oak slight peppery/cold-climate Syrah lovely nose; fairly tart light toasty/oak/smokey rather peppery/c-c strong blackberry/blueberry/Syrah flavor w/ light smooth tannins; very long rather toasty/oak some blueberry/blackberry/Syrah finish w/ light angular tannins; a pleasant/attractive Syrah one step above the Qupe CC Syrah but not nearly as good as any of the adjacent BienNacido Syrahs. $24.00 (AV)
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A wee BloodyPulpit:
1. Garryana: New wnry to me. Owned by Evan & Sarah Martin. In order to amp up the WillametteVlly terroir expression in their wines, they are aged in barrels made from Quercus garryana, harvested from the forested slopes of the WillametteVlly. So their wines get a double shot of the WillametteVlly minerals, first from the minerals sucked up by the grapevines, then from the minerals in the oak barrels. The wine just oozes w/ terroir.
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2. Cambria: This property was founded in 1986 by Barbara & Jess Jackson, in a partnership w/ RobertMondavi. Mondavi bailed out after Constellation started to drive things South. The vnyd was planted in '70-'71 by LouisLucas and known as TepusquetVnyds. They made wine for a number of yrs under that (plug-ugly) label. Louis, now of Lucas&Lewellyn and Tocatta wines fame, is one of the real pioneers in SantaBarbara grapegrowing, but seldom gets full credit that he deserves. Louis is an absolute hoot and a real pleasure to be around. One of the varieties, in addition to Chard & Pinot, was Cabernet. Waaaay too cool there to make good Cabernet. As he tells it, Louis gleefully takes full credit for trashing SantaBarbara's reputation for growing good Cabernet...though I would say that BrooksFirestone didn't help their reputation any at all, either. It's only been in the last 5 yrs or so that SantaBarbaraCnty as developed a reputation for great Calif Cabernet. It's interesting to speculate what would have happened if Louis had had the preseince to plant Syrah at Tepesquet.
Tom