2017 Dirty and Rowdy Mourvèdre Old Vine Evangelho Vineyard - USA, California, San Francisco Bay, Contra Costa County (10/5/2020)
Frustrating day, so I wanted something reliably delicious. Dirty & Rowdy and Evangelho Vineyard both tick the boxes. The 2017 is fresh, lively and quite slurpable, with the typically sappy Evangelho fruit on display in a lighter form than in some years. That just makes it more delineated, and within a few minutes it fans out completely like a magician displaying a deck of cards. Fruit, earth, herb, spice - it's all there, and floating along an underlying structure that is all but invisible. Before I know it the glass is empty. The magician has turned another trick.