“I made this one starting in 2011 from one block at Shake Ridge right below Anne’s house. It’s on wire. She has three plantings of Tempranillo. There was the original planting. There’s one that is head trained that John Lockwood has made. And then there’s this one, P2, which is on wire. It’s budwood that Marcus brought over from Ribera del Duero. I never thought of it like a Rioja but more like a Ribera wine. I think of Ribera wine as more modern and more varietal driven, like more Tempranillo focused than blended with Grenache or other things. The tannins can be pretty monolithic, so over the years making this wine, I dialed back the extraction, and basically try to pick at the right moment to preserve the natural acidity, but still having tannins that are fully ripe. The nice thing with Tempranillo is unlike some other varieties, especially Cabernet, you’re not really fighting against pyrazine. You can pick early, relatively speaking, but end up with firm tannin. No surprise there, if you let the wine age a little bit longer, the tannins resolve quite a bit. That’s something that doesn’t really behoove one who’s trying to have a side hustle wine project, cellaring the wine for years before release.
I’m pretty happy with the wine and I think drinking through the previous six vintages, the wines are doing great- they’re aging well, drinking well. That’s pretty cool to see. It’s cool to be getting to the place making wine where you can go back to older wines and think, this is coming along, doing cool things. It seemed important to me to make a red wine, and a Spanish variety. I’d never made a Tempranillo before, I didn’t even know anyone who made one, so it’s been a voyage of discovery. There’s a hillside stony quality to the wine, I like the structure.” – E.F.