Doing a bicycle ride in my own county (Solano County) for a change, I discovered a tiny, hidden away winery on a dead end road in Green Valley, a small valley directly west, and over a range of hills, from Fairfield. It's a small, narrow valley with quite a bit of marine winds during the summer. Anyway, there's been grapes planted here for decades, but this little winery, GV Cellars, now has a tasting room
2004 Merlot Blanco. They don't grow white grapes, but they do make a nice rose-ish picnic wine-not totally dry (3% residual sugar). Intriguing orange on the nose and the initial palette. But...this wine is not as simple as it might appear, as the finish transitions to a nice, delicious savory note. For $9.00, this is awesome. They also produce a lovely, very dry Merlot Rose for $12. Impressive.
2004 Estate Merlot. Quite impressive. Very dry-this is not a Napa fruit bomb merlot. But-you better like tannins, because this monster has tannins. I like tannins, and I like the structure of this wine. This one might be interesting to hold onto for a while. There is still fruit here, of the blacker brambly kind. $20-a nice wine.
The 2004 Estate Cab was fine, but not as interesting at this tasting. The 2002 Estate Syrah was pretty nice, too. Some tannins here, black fruit and a lot of nice pepper notes. (cooler climate in Green Valley)
Still, the star of tasting was the Merlot and the Merlot Blanco.