AKA Mourvédre, this juicy wine is a grown up who has stopped partying, had kids and is totally in the zone about where they are in life. It is rolling with black tea and licorice, it is giving ripe cherry with floral undertones vibes of roses, plums and orange zest. The palate opens to an elegant and pretty mouthfeel, with red and black fruit and a hint of fine herbs. This is an incredibly structured wine coming from head trained old vines grown in sandy soils. It is serious, refined and developed. I would expect this to evolve with time and become more nuanced and finessed.
This 2019 Old Vine Mataro was picked at 24.2 Brix and fermented it in oak fermenters for 19 days. It was pressed off into neutral Burgundy barrels and aged for 18 months. During this period, it was racked once and a single dose of sulfur was added. The 2019 Mataro was bottled in May of 2021 unfined and unfiltered, so Vegan. No additional sulfur was added at bottling.
98 cases produced.
2018 Erggelet Brothers Mataro
$34.00
“We called the wine Mataro because that is what it is genetically. Cuttings were brought over from the Basque Country. Most of the immigrants here at that time were Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. They knew it and planted it as Mataro. In the 40’s they started to call it Mourvédre. We didn’t want to draw a correlation to the Rhone or southern France because we didn’t want people to assume a stylistic connotation. We didn’t know if it was going to go in that direction. It has been an exploration, picking it later, picking it earlier. We have been working with the different aging choices, trying to figure out what the most appropriate program is for this grape from here. As soon as you call it Mourvédre people will have expectations about what it should be like, they’re going to tell you that you should be making it in large oak, you should be making wine the way Mourvédre is made in Southern France. We very much didn’t want to say this is a wine made in the style of bla bla bla. We hear that all the time in the Napa Valley. Why can’t you just have balls to figure out the stuff from here, you know, and then put that out. That’s the idea here.”