Uncorked Ventures Blog

September 2, 2015 | Mark Aselstine

Ranchero Cellars 2012 Carignan

The highest rated bottle of Carignan ever according to Wine Spectator is heading to our wine club members right now-learn something about the woman behind it, as well as the grape itself:

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I'm joined today by a bottle of wine that I think deserves some attention by itself. It's a 2012 Carignan from Ranchero Cellars. Ranchero Cellars is located down in Paso Robles. The winemaker and owner Amy has become somebody who we've shipped wines from in the past couple years. She works with our friend Anthony Yount from Denner on a Brouhaha blend, which is kind of a crisp, acidic white. We know her work pretty well, and during the last large-scale Rhone Rangers, I made a point to go and try this. Which I was then not surprised when I saw Wine Spectator came out a month or two ago and rated this the highest rated Carignan they've ever had anywhere, France included.

Carignan as a grape, let's go to the hat for a minute, since you may have heard of it, you may not have. At one point it was the widest-planted grape in all of France. They had something called the wine lake that happened in the late 80's, and that was in large part, the Rhone and Languedoc planted a whole ton of grapes. They planted so many grapes, in fact, that the entire European wine market was drawn down by those. In essence, they had over planted, they had an oversupply, and so everything got a heck of a lot cheaper. As you might imagine, the French government wasn't very pleased, so they actually were paying farmers to pull out their vines. In large part that was Carignan.

Carignan's known as something, if you have dry, hot conditions but if you can water it a lot, it will grow. You get yields that are sitting at ten tons per acre, perhaps more, and that's why you see it both in the quote unquote wine lake in France, but you also see it used as part of large-scale production in California's Central Valley. This obviously is not that, at 94 points from Wine Spectator. There's about half the grapes come from a vineyard up in Mendocino County, and about half come from a vineyard down in Paso Robles. I think that's a nice combination. I think one of the things that you'll run into sometimes with Mendocino County fruit is that it's almost too acidic and you almost can't get your kind of brain around how a red wine can be as acidic as a lot of whites that you like. Also, sometimes in Paso you're missing some of that acidity. I think Amy does a good job of combining those two here, and I think the results obviously speak for themselves.

Ranchero Cellars, worth a look on a number of different levels. She focused on Rhone varietals, both on the white and red side. Carignan is a favorite of the wine maker, and so that's something that you should look into. Although I'm guessing at $32 or so retail and 94 points from Wine Spectator, these are going to be gone by the time this video goes out there. First, congratulations to Ranchero, and then second, I hope our wine club members enjoy them this month. I likely don't have any extras.

Once again, I'm Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I hope you've enjoyed a short history of Carignan and of Ranchero cellars. Amy makes some great wine, and both deserve your attention, and I hope everybody's having a good week.

Sep 2, 2015 at 2:35 PM