Grove Street Winery Sonoma Cabernet 2004
Every year the Russian River Wine Road Association has a barrel tasting event aptly named the "Barrel Tasting Weekend". The event is held in March, costs very little, and gives people a chance to try a large number of wines still perculating (ok, not really perculating...) in barrels. This can be more of a tastebud trial than the usual wine tasting event, since most of these wines are not ready to be drunk, and for most people, probably best left untasted. But the winemakers are always happy to sell their wares before they are even bottled, giving them a chance to use the early monies for the things winemakers want most. New equipment, more vineyards, a home remodel, well you get the picture. If the money comes in early, they have fewer worries when the bottling is done. Less selling for one thing, and less risk as well. But one must be fairly certain of their own taste buds and the winemaker's skills to chance money on wine before it's finished.
To be fair, some of the winemakers offer wines that are closer ot being finished than others. And what some winemakers do just before bottling can make all the difference in the world. Blending, filtering, fining, and probably a half dozen calamities can befall wine before it hits the bottle. (So to speak.) A wine in barrel, in my opinion, (for what it's worth...) is not a wine in bottle.
With these caveats in mind, I went to Santa Rosa to pick up my cousin Mike and drove to Healdsburg where I had not visited since covered wagon times. The town is small, quaint, pretty, and touristy, and many of the wineries that have tasting rooms on or near the square are of the larger variety. Think Ferrari-Carano, Foppiano, Francis Coppola's New Winery, Gallo of Sonoma, and Rosenblum Cellars. But in among the large monied companies are a number of harder to find small wineries, and wineries that are small but have monied backers.
I'm not sure exactly where Grove Street Winery fits. If I understand correctly it probably fits the former, but has a fairly poor image and lackluster brand recognition most likely due to a number a poor vintages, lost years and wine movement between the Grove Street brand and the owner Peter Paul's (no Mary) higher priced label, ingeniously named Peter Paul Wines. Glaring holes in the vintages give an idea of the problem of brand recognition when product skips years.
Additionally, I suspect they are dependent on growers supplying fruit that is compatible with their pricing structure, which historically for the Grove Street product has been somewhat low in comparison to the rest of the area. Now I'm not going to complain about price. I'll be the first to say that the rush for winemakers and growers to recoup large expenditures in infrastructure, perishables, and labor, have given rise to wine prices that are outlandish, if not criminal. However, some of the high priced stuff's quality and taste cannot be had for less. So if you want the good stuff, get that second mortgage and fire away. I just got offered an $80 Pinot Noir from a five year old winery. That's what grandpappy called "gumption"!
Grove Street wines are mostly under $20.00, some as low as $10.00 and one, the 1999 Napa Valley Cabernet, $50.00. I'm guessing they bought fruit on spec and they paid too much. Just a guess....
But they have an attractive tasting room and some wine that is right for the price. The 2004 Cabernet, sourced at least 80% from Sonoma County, was what was offered at the last barrel tasting. I wondered about the missing Cab years of 2000, 2002, and 2003, but when I tasted the 2004 from pulled from the barrel with a glass thief, (get your own here for $4.50) I was amazed. This wine had characteristics of a great California Cab at what was going to be under twenty dollars! Deep color, intense fruit flavors, aromas of cherries and berries with just enough oak to please the palette; a wine that was as close to a Napa Valley or Oakville $100 wine I have tasted in a long time for anywhere close to the price. All they had to do was not over handle the juice. Let me rephrase that. Not touch the stuff!!! Just bottle it for crying out loud. How easy is that??
The trouble is, that when you produce wine for the masses, they (the masses, those sweaty bastards) you have to change a wine. They (the masses) want a wine that is clear not cloudy, and is drinkable NOW, without too much of the dry tannins encountered when drinking Cabernet without food. So they filter and fine, sometimes overly so in the attempt to make the wine more consumer friendly. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes not. In this case.... All the right notes are still there, but the high notes, the intense smells and ripe tastes are muted. Don't get me wrong, It's still dark and rich. It smells like Cabernet and tastes like it will age well for at least 10 years if you got that much time and space for storage, but somehow I think it could have been great. Maybe it was the day. Maybe the comparison to many bad wines tasted that day and obnoxtious well heeled, well dress people pushing their way into the tasting rooms, but this wine stood out like a tuxedo at a ball game.
But I guess more to the point, if you have hundreds or thousands of cases to sell and you normally sell wines in large chain supermarkets, can you sell a wine for $50 readily? Probably not. If you are in the business to make money, you have to turn the wine, not store it. And that I suspect is what Mr. Paul has decided. I would have done the same.
How much? At the winery barrel tasting they said about $17.00. That was months ago and things may have changed. The website does not show this wine yet, but insiders say it's available. Call the winery to find out. For my money, this will be a well received and reviewed wine, and probably a bargain besides! Stock up now if you can get it and be thankful they decided on affordability, not snobbery. It's still fine in my book!
A side note: According to the label, GSW donates a "significant portion of the proceeds" to charity. Mr. Paul is the founder of the Headlands Foundation. Check the link for information.
