The best tasting note on this is: “Screw Cab. This is what California wine is supposed to be. The age of the vine, the ruggedness, the stubbornness. This is California at it’s best.”
This wine shows strawberries and iron, cherries and herbs. You get the lean minerality from the Mourvèdre and the juiciness of the Zin. A generous mouthfeel, giving and juicy with the backbone and structure to imply age worthiness.
This wine was allowed to ferment naturally and aged in neutral French oak barrels.
2018 Kobza Field Blend
$28.00
The original 1902 planting at the Wirz vineyard, this head trained, own-rooted block at the Wirz vineyard is mostly Mourvédre and Zinfandel, with a bit of Carignan and Pfeffer / Mourtaou blended in. There is some Mission (Rose of Peru) and Palomino in here as well. And who knows what else really.
Old Vine Field Blends hold a special place in my heart, as they are a testament to a time in history.
California wine growing goes back to the 1780’s with Listán Prieto, AKA Mission. Planted by Spanish Missionaries, many of those vineyards fell away with the secularization of the missions. In the mid 1800’s, French and German farmers were moving to the Cienega Valley to seek their fortunes in the gold rush. Théophile Vaché and his brother moved to San Juan Bautista and planted the first vineyard in 1851, a few years before Agoston Haraszthy, who planted in Sonoma in 1856 and is often given the credit of being the Father of California Wine. But Vaché was first, and the Cienega valley, perfectly placed along the San Andreas Fault with soils of limestone and schist, was the perfect spot to launch this new California wine region.