WTN: Massa Harina

[David M. Bueker]

• 2021 Desire Lines Riesling Experimental Series #10: Old Durney Massa - USA, California, Central Coast, Carmel Valley (6/26/2023)
  This wine takes me back in time. I remember the Durney Winery. Back then I didn’t realize that there was Riesling planted. I also did not know that eventually someone would rediscover that Riesling, and give it some serious love and care. Nostalgia is what made me try this wine. That and Cody’s clear skill with Riesling. Having now tasted a bottle over the course of a full week, which I rarely do, I will happily go back for more if it is offered again. The balance is just to the off side of dry, but with firm finishing acidity it does not present at all sweet. The fruit is to the crisp and even a touch tart end of the spectrum, with a finishing note of grapefruit pith making my mouth water for another sip. There’s excellent mid-palate depth, so it feels more substantial, like a Pfalzer (which I have noted before in Cody’s Rieslings) rather than a Mosel trocken. This bottling stands with the Cole Ranch and Wiley bottlings, as another expression of Riesling transmitted through a specific, notable place in California.

poor Durney; wrong place wrong time, I think. There was just no way to marshall anyone's attention when they came along. I remember liking those wines, and buying them for the store I bought for at the time ('79) but it was just another face in the crowd, and no one had the bandwidth, at that time, to integrate another one.

[David M. Bueker]

They managed to eke out some level of existence until the mid/late 1990s. They never converted to the bigger is better style, which hastened their inevitable demise.