Rhône Rangers

In the 1980s, a small band of Californian producers teamed together to form the Rhône Rangers to promote wines made from varieties, such as Syrah, Grenache, and Viognier, grown in that great French region. Then in 1989, the Perrin family, who own Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, bought property in Paso Robles, together with their US importer Robert Haas. While waiting to establish the Tablas Creek winery, they imported cuttings directly from their property in the southern Rhône, making available for the first time other quality Rhône varieties such as Mourvèdre and Counoise as well as whites like Grenache Blanc.

The popularity of these wines is still small, but production and quality is rising. Paso Robles, with its warm climate and limestone soils, has emerged as the epicentre of Rhône styles of wine. It's not the only region though: Santa Ynez Valley further south makes peppery Syrah; the Sierra Foothills, hotter and higher, have great potential for wines from Mourvèdre; and, beyond California, Washington, with its more continental climate, also makes great wine from Rhône varieties.

At a Rhône Rangers event in San Francisco, I tasted a number of wines, some blends, some from famous varieties, and some from little-known varieties. Here are some of the highlights.

wines and their makers

Tablas Creek Terret Noir 2015 ($35)

There are 18 different varieties allowed in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, some of them rarely used and if so only for blending. As Tablas Creek have access to cuttings of all the Châteauneuf grapes, they have the chance to experiment with them and learn what the wines from the more obscure varieties actually taste like. They have just 0.2ha of Terret Noir, which they plan to use for blending but they've also made a varietal bottling to share the taste of this obscure variety. The grape has big berries and dark skins, yet, conversely, it produces a very pale coloured wine reminsicent of Nebbiolo. The wine is floral, herbal, and spicy, with red fruits and really dry tannins (again not dissimilar to Nebbiolo). It would make a fantastic pairing with a wide range of food (duck, game, meat, roast veg) and I hope Tablas Creek continue to make wine from the variety. ✪✪✪✪✪

On a side note, two people at the tasting described the tannins of the Terret Noir as "tacky." I've never heard this word used to describe tannins and it was equally confusing to Tablas Creek winemaker Neil Collins who said "that doesn't sound very pleasant." A dictionary has the following definition: "(of glue, paint, or other substances) not fully dry and retaining a slightly sticky feel: the paint was still tacky." So I suppose describing the dry tannins of the Terret Noir as tacky was accurate, but, given it usually refers to something that's cheap and low-quality, it's still not a word I'll be using.

Adelaida Vineyards Picpoul Blanc 2015 ($35)

Picpoul is allowed in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, although most white wines from there are blends of other varieties. Further west, Picpoul is the grape variety for Picpoul de Pinet on the Languedoc coast, one of the few French appellations that contains the name of the grape (other areas now technically have to spell it Piquepoul). The wines there are light, fresh, and acidic - Picpoul literally means "lip-stinger." Picpoul wines being made in Paso Robles are quite different, heavier and fuller-bodied, but still with a refreshing acidity - Adelaida's winemaker, Jeremy Weintraub, said the wine had over 9g/L of total acidity, which is remarkable in such a warm wine region. Adelaida's Picpoul Blanc was a great example of a balance between the rich ripeness coming from the warm climate of Paso Robles and the natural acidity of the grape. ✪✪✪✪✪

Qupé Roussanne 2012 ($30)

Under Bob Lindqvist, Qupé were one of the original Rhône Rangers. They're based in Santa Maria, making wines from Syrah, Grenache, Viognier, and, most notably, Roussanne and Marsanne. These are two of the great white grapes of the Rhône, but it's rare to see them elsewhere. Marsanne, which has a waxy, oily texture, is the base of white Hermitage in the northern Rhône, while Roussanne, which has more aromas and acidity, is at the heart of white Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Roussanne is my favourite because of the rich aromatics, acidity, and the easy way it takes to oak ageing. Both these grapes also age wonderfully well in bottle, maintaining their structure while developing mature, complex aromas: this wine was from 2012 and still felt young and fresh. ✪✪✪✪

Mourvèdre geek: where are the accents?

Seven Oxen Mourvèdre 2014 ($42)

In contrast to Qupé, Seven Oxen is a new project and I tasted three of their wines from the 2014 vintage, just their second. Their winemaker is Bastien Leduc from south-west France, so he's used to working in the warm climate of Paso Robles. Because of the climate, late-ripening Mourvèdre works perfectly in Paso, the hot summer and warm autumn getting the grape gradually ripe. There were plenty of good examples at the Rhône Rangers tasting; Seven Oxen's Mourvèdre stood out with rich, ripe black fruit, warm mouthfeel, and dry (not tacky) tannins. ✪✪✪✪✪

Wrath Ex Anima Syrah ($25)

Oak abounds in California, so it's always refreshing to taste wines that have seen no new oak. There were quite a few wineries emphasising the lack of oak in the wines, so maybe the tide is turning. Wrath are based in Monterey, an area that has history with Rhône varieties (mainly because of Bonny Doon, another of the original Rhône Rangers). This Syrah is only aged in old oak, so the purity of the fruit really shines through. It also makes it easier to drink young, but there are plenty of complex black fruit and spice aromas. Even better, the lack of oak cuts down on the price. ✪✪✪✪

A lot of these Rhône Rangers are beginning to produce single-varietal wines (which is what I've focused on here) as a means of attracting consumer interest. Don't forget the blends, because that's what the Rhône itself excels in, but if these single-varietal wines can get people drinking wines from the wonderful range of varieties it can only be a good thing. And the love for these styles of wines is definitely spreading: I got to taste for the first time wines from Arizona! Grown at 1,700m altitude just an hour from the Mexican border, the Viognier and two Grenache wines I tasted were pretty good. If there's a future in Arizona for winemaking, maybe it will come from the Rhône...

Rune wines from Arizona, with labels by a local graphic artist

A Year in the US

It's now a year since I flew into the US. A lot has happened in that time: I've got married, gained my green card, and started working. I've tasted several hundred California wines and partially finished in San Francisco the WSET Diploma I started in Manchester. And day-to-day I've lived the American life that I'd only briefly witnessed on holidays and TV. Here are some cultural observations on the US, and maybe how the US has changed me.

view from the Mayacamas mountains towards San Francisco

tipping

Getting used to tipping no matter what the service - though it's usually good - took some getting used to. Buy a beer and tip a dollar, even if you've been waiting five minutes and the glass isn't full. Go to a restaurant and all of a sudden the expensive meal becomes very, very expensive when you add a gratuity - again, regardless of whether the food was good or arrived on time.

After a month or so, it became second nature to me, adding on the 20% without even thinking about it. And now I find myself complaining about not being tipped. I'm working in a tasting room, where I serve five pours of wine, talk extensively about wine and the weather, and look after each set of customers for around 45 minutes. And receive next to no tips. This has always been my problem with tipping culture: in certain situations you are supposed to tip (bars, restaurants, the hairdresser, taxis) and so you do; in others, there is no expectation to tip, and so you don't. Somehow I need to integrate the concept of automatic tipping into tasting room culture.

wine and regulations

Tasting rooms are unlike most found in Europe. They range in style - some are big and ostentatious, others are small and intimate, designed to reflect the ethos of the winery. Especially in the Napa Valley, tour buses and limousines pour into tasting rooms, depositing drunken groups of visitors eager to spend lots of money.

every winery has a dog

This is part of a very different wine culture. For a start, it's still young, to a certain degree recovering from Prohibition. Many drinkers like their wines sweet (even reds); others claim to abhor sweetness in their wines and complain about dry wines being sweet. Understanding of wine is very much varietal driven which results in a lot of resolute prejudice - "I don't like Chardonnay. It's too sweet."

Regulations are another hangover from Prohibition. A winery cannot serve food unless the customer buys wine with it: a concept I kind of like. Wine, such an integral part of the California economy, cannot be shipped to many other states because those states (Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennyslvania) don't want their people drinking too much booze. That's right, Louisiana, home of New Orleans, won't allow wine to be sent directly to people's homes.

driving

The US has one particular rule that makes driving a nightmare: you can both undertake and overtake cars. In theory, this opens up the road and makes passing slower cars easier. In practice, it leads to drivers hogging one lane because they're too scared to change lanes. And this often means four cars all lined up next to one another going the exact same speed. Roundabouts are scarce. Instead, there are stop signs at every junction at which every driver has to halt even if there isn't a car in sight. Outside a major city such as San Francisco, public transport is virtually non-existent. With this dependency on the car and rules which directly clog up traffic, driving in California is slow, often stop-start, even outside rush hour. It's the one negative aspect of living in this warm, sunny, wine-soaked state.

San Francisco

I've lived in some interesting cities - cocky Manchester, dirty Dublin, and mad Madrid - but my visits to San Francisco have revealed a city quite like no other. It's unforgettably beautiful, surrounded by water and mountains, rising on its own small peninsula. It's vibrant, each block revealing its own character, bars and restaurants driven by youthful enthusiasm. There are established, well-to-do areas and edgy quarters still emerging from industry and neglect. On one visit, a taxi driver described it to me as "beautiful but dysfunctional," which is very accurate. The city is full of roadworks and construction, trying and failing to keep pace with a constantly growing population, bringing traffic to a regular standstill. Rent prices are impossibly high, and commuters sit in rush hour traffic around the city for hours on end. For all its attractions, I'm not sure I could live in San Francisco.

the wine itself...

Napa Valley wine is uniformly expensive and uniformly Cabernet Sauvignon. There are some extremely good wineries in Napa, but I wish there were more variety and more affordable wines available. Land in Napa is so expensive, though, that it's difficult to make wine without having to charge high prices - which is why everyone sticks to Cabernet because that's what customers will pay money for.

The price of wine is not only a Napa problem. California wine is either dirt cheap or expensive. Far too few wines offer truly good value for money. Here in California, that doesn't matter too much as people are willing and able to pay, but if California is to compete on the global stage with Chile, Argentina, South Africa, or Australia it has to produce more competitively priced wines.

Outside Napa, there's wonderful variety. Name a grape and someone somewhere makes a varietal wine out of it. Sonoma produces everything from Pinot to Zinfandel, with obscure French and Italian varieties in between. Paso Robles has exceptional Rhône blends. Santa Barbara and around is known for Pinot and Chardonnay, but has perhaps the greatest potential in California for Syrah. And then there are the hippies in the Sierra foothills, sometimes - whether deliberately or accidentally - producing great wine at decent prices.

...and other drinks

I'd argue that California is still behind the rest of the States in its craft distilleries - although in Germain-Robin they have the original and best, producing brandies from cool, wild Mendocino as good as the greatest Cognacs. I am surrounded by great breweries, all producing very drinkable, hoppy IPAs as well as their own distinctive creations: Bear Republic in Healdsburg, Lagunitas in Petaluma, Sierra Nevada in Chico, and, best of all, Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, as well as a host of up-and-coming microbreweries. It's a good time for a beer drinker to be in California.

boo to the metric system

I've become so accustomed to fiercely dry, hoppy IPAs that on a brief trip back to the UK the malty bitters I'd been drinking all my life were quite a shock to the system. Other aspects of American life I've found more difficult to become accustomed to. The US is the only country I've ever visited which defiantly avoids the logical metric system: recipes call for cups and ounces; temperatures are only given in fahrenheit; the twenty-four hour clock is never used; and an American pint is smaller than a British pint, one unit of imperial measurement I am familiar with.

Californians talk about the weather a lot, even though every sunny, warm day is the same as the last. A life of sunshine and no rain - now that's something I've begun to take for granted.

Paso Robles besides the Rhône

A young wine region such as Paso Robles allows opportunities to experiment, as imaginative winemakers explore the different possibilities the area affords. There are over 40 grape varieties grown, including Zinfandel and Spanish and Italian varieties, besides the Rhône blends Paso excels at. There is also a major brewery which makes an eclectic range of beers, as well as a distiller and a producer of Port-style wines. It all makes for a fascinating region to explore, not just for wine and drink but for food too, as there are some excellent restaurants.

Zinfandel

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the few Paso Robles wineries were mainly producing Zinfandel. From the blisteringly hot days, the wines were big and robust, the wines of cowboys and outlaws. The grape has now largely been uprooted by Rhône varieties such as Mourvèdre and Grenache, but wineries are still making some Zinfandel with mixed results.

The Lone Madrone Bailey Ranch Zinfandel 2011 ($37) is a superb example of Zinfandel at its most expressive. From a dry-farmed vineyard and head-trained vines, this is a proper, perfumed Zin: violets and roses, blueberries and damsons, oak and vanilla. Likewise on the palate, with a savoury, peppery kick to the finish, with juicy fruits and high acidity, with some dried fruits coming through as well. Lone Madrone also produce another powerful wine with some Zinfandel in the blend. The Will ($45; 47% Grenache, 33% Petite Sirah, 20% Zinfandel) has an upfront fruity nose of raspberries, cherries, and blackberries; the palate is more interesting, with pepper and liquorice, vanilla and oak, gripping tannins, and a fresh, high acidity.

Pomar Junction also produce an expressive, serious Zinfandel (Zinfandel Reserve 2011, $54), with ripe fruits on the nose overladen with perfume; on the palate, it's a toasty, oaky, meaty wine, with a subtly spicy finish. Less successful is the J. Lohr Gesture Zinfandel 2011 ($25), which is too much like strawberry jam. Although the oak balances the jamminess on the palate, this is too much of an old-fashioned Zinfandel where it's all about the fruits and too little about the structure of the wine. The Eberle Zinfandel 2011 ($28) is better; still too fruity, it does have a cocoa, black pepper backbone to it.

Spanish varieties

The Spanish name of Paso Robles suggests a town with a heavily Hispanic influence. Only one winery, though, specialises in Spanish varieties, as well as a few Portuguese. These wines were good enough to suggest that more wineries should follow the example of Bodegas Paso Robles. I tasted two whites, Galicia 2013 ($25; 100% Albariño) and Garnacha Blanca 2013 ($27), the latter having appealing citrus fruits and an almond, almost bready finish. Many of the reds are Tempranillo based, though winemaker Dorothy Schuler is not afraid to experiment with lesser known varieties such as Graciano. The signature red is ¡Viva Yo! 2010 ($29; 90% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon), an earthy, gamey wine with an engaging mixture of red and black fruits, and a savoury, spicy mouth. The Iberia 2005 ($45; 33% Tempranillo, 31% Touriga Nacional, 25% Graciano, 11% Tinto Cão) is a mature blend of Spanish and Portuguese grapes, with a smoky, leathery character to add to the plums and blackberries. My favourite wine was the Vaca Negra 2009 ($33; 43% Mourvèdre, 36% Tempranillo, 21% Garnacha). This combined all the best of Paso Robles - Rhône grapes, albeit with a Spanish influence, and imaginative blending.

Italian varieties

I am yet to be convinced that the great Italian varieties Sangiovese and Nebbiolo work out of their Tuscan and Piemonte homelands, but one wine I tasted disproved that theory. The Eberle Sangiovese 2011 ($24) is a good wine, with red fruits, oak, and liquorice, but a little simple. The Lone Madrone Bollo 2007 ($60) is something else though, and one I would love to taste alongside a Barolo or Barbaresco. It has a very floral nose of violets, roses, and irises, with strawberries and cherries: with its garnet colour and inviting perfumes, this is very Nebbiolo. The palate delivers too, with big, heavy, powerful tannins washed with high acidity. For a wine from 2007, it's still going strong. This is a big wine that still has delicate red fruits; complex, maturing, but lively.

view from Lone Madrone

beers

For such a hot, barren, wild area, one would expect a healthy supply of beer to whet away the still days. Lone Madrone make cider, a tradition which has sadly been usurped throughout California by winemaking. I only got to taste one, the Bristols Original Cider ($9, 7.5%), which was an intense farm cider, with bitter apples and a juicy acidity. Nine ciders are made in total.

The main brewery of Paso Robles is Firestone Walker, who make a series of imaginative, and slightly difficult, beers. They made their name with the Double DBA (12%), an intense dark beer with coffee, caramel, toffee, and dark chocolate, which has the overall feel of vanilla ice cream and the dried fruits of a Pedro Ximenez sherry. Two complex saisons are made; the Opal (7.5%) has a slight sourness to it, with a gentle farmyard, countryside nose, with sour apples and pears and cinnamon. The LIL Opal (5.5%) is a proper stinky beer, with oranges, tangerines, and marmalade adding to the brett and mushrooms. Despite all those strange flavours, it's extremely refreshing on the palate, with high acidity and a lightly oaky spiciness. Two beers only available at the brewery are the Hefeweizen (4.7%), an outstanding wheat beer which has won awards in Germany, and the Stickee Monkee 2014 (13.4%), a one-off beer that's been aged in Bourbon barrels and had brown sugar added to it. It has sweet whiskey flavours of oak, coconut, and leather, as well as molasses from the brown sugar (I would have guessed it had been aged in rum barrels). The high alcohol and sweetness are balanced by the spicy flavours of pepper and anise. Not a beer to drink a lot of, but much to appreciate.

spirits

Many of the wineries I've visited throughout California are keen to stress their sustainable practices. Villicana Winery take this concept a step further by reusing the left-over juice from pressing to make grape-based spirits, under the Re:Find label. There is a vodka, which has a nice citrus, spicy character, a cucumber vodka, and a gin, made with seven different botanicals. Not being a huge vodka fan, it was the gin I found most interesting with lots of citrus aromas from the coriander, lemon and orange peel botanicals, and delicate floral aromas from the lavender and orris root, finished off with a bit of spice from the grains of paradise.

Visiting Re:Find was a reminder of the US's bureaucratic laws towards alcohol, distant off-shoots of Prohibition days. In California, only grape-based products can be sold on-site; all other products must be sold through a third party. Therefore, the distillery could only sell the two vodkas and the gin in bottles labelled as "brandy" - legally so, as they are grape-based. In sites elsewhere in California, the bottles are labelled vodka and gin - which is what they actually are.

"Portuguese Style Dessert Wines"

Violeta 2006

The road up to PasoPort is a steep dirt track lined with the labels from the winery's bottles, all of which feature distractingly glamorous portraits of 1920s women. Opened only in 2008, the winery is still a ramshackle affair, but the wines are interesting and beautifully packaged. There's a pot still on site which is used to make the base spirit for fortification, and they hope to start producing liqueurs and grappa. A mixture of Portuguese and international grapes are sourced to make port-style wines; in the tasting room, the term "port" was used quite liberally, but the wines are labelled "Portuguese style dessert wines." One is made from Zinfandel ($35), but it's the more traditional Violeta (2006 $40, 2009 $36), made from the Portuguese varieties Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão, and Souzão, that worked the best. Violets on the nose, with blueberries and blackberries; deep, rich fruits on the palate, with chocolate, cocoa, and black pepper.

places to eat

Paso Robles is a small town, but there are plenty of good places to eat. For lunch, Bistro Laurent is perfect: a small patio that catches the afternoon breezes serving delicious salads and a light onion soup. In the evening, La Cosecha has seriously good food, with a relaxed, lively atmosphere. Buona Tavola is a laid-back Italian restaurant with fresh pasta dishes. When you're done eating, Pine Street Saloon is a great place for a beer and live music.

All in all, Paso is a wonderful area to visit: an up-and-coming wine region still discovering itself and willing to experiment, with plenty of other drinks to try when you've had enough wine. Everyone is friendly and helpful, and at the end of the day there's good food to be found. If you ever make a road trip along the California coast, Paso Robles is a must stop.

Paso Robles: All about the Rhône

The name may be Spanish, but the flavour of Paso Robles is very much French. I was in the centre of this sleepy, relaxed, and very friendly town having lunch before visiting wineries and a sudden wave of nostalgia for the south of France came over me: the sun, the breeze, the food, the air all reminded me vividly of the villages of Rhône and Provence. As I learnt exploring the area's wineries, I wasn't the first person to make this discovery: Paso Robles is producing wines straight out of those two wonderful French wine regions.

The full name of Paso Robles is El Paso de Robles, "the pass of the oaks." Once known for its hot springs and almond trees, Paso is now an emerging wine region, with over 200 wineries. Vines have been planted since the end of the eighteenth century, but it is only in the last twenty years that the region has grown and come to prominence: in the early 1990s, there were just twenty wineries. Zinfandel was the grape most associated with Paso Robles, but now it's Rhône blends, both red and white, that are really making the name of the region.

where

Paso Robles is on the California coast, three hours south of San Francisco. It's wild territory; many of the vineyards are on rolling, sun-soaked hills miles away from anywhere. The days are baking hot, although, as with the other coastal Californian regions, fog rolls over in the mornings. The nights are cool too: while temperatures in the summer reach as high as 40ºC, they can fall to 15ºC once the sun sets.

grapes

The best wines in Paso Robles without doubt come from the grapes of the south of France: Roussanne and Grenache Blanc are the base for the best whites, producing nutty, aromatic, creamy wines, with Mourvèdre, an underappreciated grape that shines in Provence, the standout black grape, backed up by Grenache and Syrah. Cabernet Sauvignon is also planted, but I don't see the area as ideal for any of the Bordeaux grapes. Zinfandel is still grown; the wines I tasted were mixed. Spanish and Italian grapes are experimented with: I tasted one outstanding Nebbiolo and some interesting Tempranillo-based wines.

 

Tablas Creek

The modern story of Paso Robles begins with Tablas Creek, the region's standout winery. Over forty years ago, Robert Haas, a New York wine importer, brought the wines of Château de Beaucastel into the US, forming a strong relationship with the family at the same time. Together, they formed the dream of establishing an American equivalent of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape producer. After many years of searching for the perfect spot, in 1989 they bought land a few miles west of Paso Robles, in 500m high hills not far from the Pacific Ocean, where the soils and climate matched those of the southern Rhône. Such was their dedication to replicating the French wines, they imported cuttings from Beaucastel's vineyards, which spent three years in quarantine at Cornell in New York before being grafted on to vines in Paso Robles. The first vintage was 1997, since when Tablas Creek has led the way for Paso Robles becoming a region for the Rhône varieties.

The flagship wines are the Esprit de Tablas red and white, which until 2011 were called Esprit de Beaucastel. The white is one of my favourites, a stunning example of the great whites that can be made from the Rhône varieties. 64% Roussanne, 26% Grenache, and 10% Picpoul, the 2011 I tasted has a nutty, honied, creamy, round nose, with bitter grapefruit and apple on the palate, with a long, rich, full finish. I also bought a bottle of the 2006, which I can't wait to taste. Its red sibling is 40% Mourvèdre, 30% Grenache, 21% Syrah, and 4% Counoise: the wines of Paso Robles are at their best as blends rather than single varietals. The wine has rich, ripe black fruits - blackcurrants, blackberries, and plums - with a smoky, toasty nose; the acidity is high and fresh, with structured tannins and an oaky, peppery finish. It is easy to see this wine developing leather and game characters, and the 2010 I also tasted already had those qualities, as well as being a touch smokier and earthier, but with a gentle, subtle tannic finish.

Both these wines cost $55; Tablas Creek also produce two more affordable Rhône blends under the Côte de Tablas name. The Blanc 2012 ($27; 34% Viognier, 30% Grenache, 30% Marsanne, 6% Roussanne) is fruity and aromatic, with peach, pear, and apricot, while the Rouge ($35; 60% Grenache, 25% Syrah, 10% Counoise, 5% Mourvèdre) has lots of red fruits, with a dry, slightly smoky finish. The range of Tablas Creek wines is excellent, but it's the white blends that really earn the winery's reputation.

other Rhône blends

Tablas Creek produce plenty of single varietal wines - of particular interest was the Grenache Blanc 2012 ($27), a complex yet refreshing wine with hay and fennel, as well as apples and almonds - but it's their blends which really shine. It's the same in the rest of Paso Robles.

Halter Ranch

Next door to Tablas Creek is Halter Ranch, a winery which owns 281 acres of land but still only produces 12,000 cases a year. The old Victorian house on the estate was the location for the 1990 film Arachnophobia; it's now undergoing quite a change, with a new winemaker from nearby Justin, which has been taken over by a multinational, and plans to expand production to 40,000 cases by 2017-19. The wines do feel that they are in transition, but with lots of potential. The 2013 Côtes de Paso Blanc ($28; 75% Grenache, 20% Picpoul, 3% Roussanne, 2% Viognier) is barrel fermented with four months on its lees, giving it a nutty, yeasty character, but with fresh crisp citrus fruits.

Along the road back to Paso is Lone Madrone, owned by Neil Collins from Bristol who has been Tablas Creek's winemaker since the outset. He too produces two superb Rhône blends: the 2011 Points West White ($35; 50% Roussanne, 26% Picpoul, 20% Viognier, 10% Marsanne) is aged in mainly neutral oak but with 10% new Russian oak and has a beautiful creamy, rich vanilla texture, with pear, peach, and banana; on the palate, the refreshing acidity stops the wine from being too heavy. The 2010 Points West Red ($35; 32% Mourvèdre, 28% Counoise, 20% Grenache, 20% Syrah) has blackberries, blueberries, cherries with a long earthy, smoky finish and light spices.

The biggest producer in Paso Robles is J. Lohr; he set the winery up in 1974 and it now produces 1.6m cases a year. Although they're still family owned, this is such a huge enterprise that production is split in two: the white grapes are grown in San José and the black in Paso. Nevertheless, the wines I tasted, which were fairly small production, all had character without being overly complex. The 2013 Gesture Roussanne Viognier Grenache ($35) has a delicate floral nuttiness, with bananas and pineapples, with a dry, mineral finish to round off the wine's creamy texture. The 2012 Gesture GSM ($30) is mainly Grenache, but the Syrah and Mourvèdre give it a smoky black fruit backbone. As with the white, the flavours are upfront and friendly, with a good structure, but lacking an involving complexity.

Nearby is Eberle, another well-known winery that was at the forefront of the development of Paso Robles as a wine region. Set up by former footballer Gary Eberle in the 1980s, the wines offer extremely good value, as do many of the region. The Côtes-du-Rôbles white and red are two more good examples of Rhône blends. The white ($24; 57% Grenache, 39% Roussanne, 4% Viognier) has peach, apricot, and honeysuckle on the nose, with a creamy, textured palate finished with a grainy, dry, nutty feel. The red ($22; 45% Grenache, 23% Syrah, 23% Mourvèdre, 11% Durif) offers strawberries and blackberries on the nose, with smoky oak and vanilla. There's a good structure to the wine, with black fruits, oak, and spices.  

Pomar Junction, further south than the other wineries beyond the town of Templeton, is a relatively new winery whose first vintage was in 2008. The land was bought by a family of vineyard managers in 2001, and this is their first foray into winemaking - and a successful one at that, as their wines have won plenty of awards. The Côtes de Pomar 2013 ($34; 40% Roussanne, 40% Grenache, 20% Viognier) is a rich, complex, spicy wine with pineapple, cinnamon, and white pepper. As the name of the winery suggests, there is a strong railway theme to the winery - there is an engine and carriage on site - and each of the wines either has an associated name or image. The Crossing GSM 2011 ($45; 40% Mourvèdre, 30% Grenache, 30% Syrah) has a perfumed nose of red flowers and sage, with developing flavours of cedar, smoke, and toast; blackberries, plums, and currants on the palate, with a dry, oaky, spicy finish.

All of these wineries produce interesting single varietal wines too, but it's the blends that fully express the nature of Paso Robles. This emphasises the European sensibility of the area, with its concentration on blends and soils, but it also underlines the development of American wine away from single varietal wines towards more complex blends and an appreciation of terroir. Rhône grapes are the most successful of the region, but by no means the only ones planted. In my next blog, I'll be looking at the non-Rhône side of Paso: Zinfandel, Spanish and Italian grape varieties, as well as beer and spirits.

Flight of Fancy: A Merlot Tasting

All of the classic grape varieties are haunted by cheap versions that can put a drinker off for years, but none has been dragged down quite like Merlot. It's seen as the wine drunk by those who don't really like wine that much - lots of juicy, jammy fruits and not much else - yet Merlot is a vital component in some of the world's greatest wines and without it the world of wine would be a much poorer place.

fa-fa-fa-fashion

More than any other black grape, the popularity of Merlot has been subject to the whims of fashion, particularly in the States. In 1991, a television documentary called French Paradox was aired in response to neo-Prohibitionist health lobby groups which equated all forms of alcohol with all forms of drugs. The documentary discussed the claim that wine, particularly red, was a staple part of a meal and good for the heart. This helped transform Americans' drinking habits, turning them from white wine and sweet rosés, and Merlot suddenly became the wine to drink. 

Unfortunately, this resulted in a lot of cheap, commercial Merlot flooding the market. By the time of Sideways (2004), it was all too easy to joke about, and dismiss, Merlot. Despite the supposed Sideways effect, though, Merlot is still the third most popular varietal wine in the US after Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The real joke of Sideways is that any wine connossieur knows that Merlot is one of the great grapes and only an unthinking wine snob would automatically place Pinot Noir above Merlot. It's just that there's a lot more cheap Merlot around than there is Pinot.

where it's grown

The heartland of Merlot is Bordeaux, where it is the most planted grape. On the Left Bank, where Cabernet Sauvignon is the most important grape, Merlot is needed to soften the heavy tannins of Cabernet and to give the wines some fruity structure. On the Right Bank, it often stands on its own, or with small doses of Cabernet Franc, in famous appellations such as St-Emilion and Pomerol, producing wines that don't need as long to mature as their Left Bank counterparts and are full of ripe red fruits. The wines of Pomerol are particularly fashionable - and expensive - these days because the expressive, complex wines drink young yet age well.

In Italy, cheap and cheerful single-varietal Merlots are produced in Veneto and it can form part of expensive Bordeaux-style Super Tuscans. The unheralded Lazio region around Rome is also capable of producing high-quality Merlot. At their best, Italian Merlots are powerful oaky Bordeaux-style wines with Merlot on its own, with other Bordeaux grapes, or with Sangiovese.

Washington State is the best area in the US for Merlot. In 1991, having decided there was no point in competing with Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, the Washington Wine Commission decided that Merlot would be "the Washington grape" - coincidentally just a few months before the French Paradox documentary was aired. The Washington wine industry boomed as a result, though with too many cheap, easy Merlots. Some great single-varietal Merlots were and are still produced, though as elsewhere I still think it's at its best as part of a blend with the Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc - and Washington produces some exceptional Bordeaux-style wines.

Chile produces wine from just about every major grape, but Merlot has been the most important in leading its boom in the last twenty years. However, a lot of the wine sold as Merlot has actually been another historic Bordeaux grape, Carmènere, or a mixture of the two. New Zealand has made its reputation on Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, but there are now many exciting wines coming out of the country from other grapes. Merlot is at its best to the north, particularly in and around Hawke's Bay.

what it tastes like

Merlot is a difficult grape to pin down. Its popularity, particularly in the US, is down to its"smoothness": that is, fruity and juicy and not really tasting of anything interesting, but at least it's good for your heart. More expensive and complex wines will have all sorts of flavours: strawberries, raspberries, plums, blackcurrants, and figs; cinnamon, cloves, and liquorice; game and chocolate. It all depends on where it's produced - a moderate climate like Bordeaux or a warm climate like Washington - and the aims of the producer - how much oak? single-varietal or blend? straightforward and juicy or complex and ageworthy?

 

what we tasted

My diploma starts officially on Monday, so I thought I would get in the mood with a flight of Merlot based wines. Although I knew what the wines were, they were presented to me blind, meaning I had to make an educated guess as to which wine was which.

Château Certan Marzelle Pomerol 2004 (Wine Society, £30)
There were three tell-tale signs that this was old school and not New World: the paler colour (medium ruby), the slightly lower alcohol (13.5%), and the high acidity. The garnet rim also suggested there was some age to it. Despite being nine years old, though, the fruits - plums, cherries, strawberries, and blackcurrants - were still fresh, ripe, and full of flavour. The grainy tannins, high acidity, and toasty oak all balanced perfectly. The spicy finish was long and lasting.
Verdict: outstanding. This wine is 100% Merlot - definitive proof that great wine can be made from Merlot on its own.

De Toren Z Stellenbosch 2010 (hangingditch, £30)
A really powerful wine and very different from the previous one. This time the proportion of Merlot was 55%, made up with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and a little bit of Petit Verdot. The oak was smoky rather than toasty, with lots of black fruits. There was also a minty herbaceousness to it, which I guessed came from the Cabernet Sauvignon but may actually have been the Merlot. Both this wine and the Pomerol could have done with decanting, as they both really improved as the night and following days wore on.
Verdict: very good. The alcohol was perhaps too high at 15% and the acidity not quite high enough, but this is an impressively expressive wine that will age for another five years at least.

J Lohr Merlot Paso Robles 2011 (hangingditch, £18.50)
The Pomerol was 100% Merlot, but given its subtle complexity you perhaps wouldn't have guessed it; with this wine, though, it was clear from the start. Lots of flavours, but all of them quite shallow: oak, cherries and plums, and cloves. There was also a greenness to it that at first reminded me of peas, but I eventually realised was underripe fruits.
Verdict: good. Simple flavours but lots of them; tannins lacking; not especially complex.

overall verdict

An outstanding wine, a very good wine, and a good wine: not a bad score for poor old Merlot. The tasting demonstrated how, rather than being a uniformly fruity, jammy wine, Merlot is capable of very different expressions in different areas, according to the winemaker, the climate, and the blend. I still think you need to choose a wine made from Merlot carefully, but if you do so, you will be surprisingly pleased by the complexity which you find in the bottle.