this heaven gives me migraine

2001 Celler de Capçanes "Cabrida"

Region: Montsant, Spain

Composition: 100% Grenache

Background: After a hard day of wine tasting at Hospice du Rhône last Saturday, we took a little break and then ended up at Villa Creek for dinner. It seemed like everyone else at the tasting also ended up at Villa Creek, so we ended up eating at the bar. Even though we were very Rhôned-out, we chanced a bottle of wine with our salads and butternut squash enchiladas (which were really good, and I imagine Villa Creek is one of if not the most interesting place to eat in Paso Robles). This bottle won because it wasn't Syrah (I was pretty tired of Syrah at that point, and hadn't actually tasted much Grenache during the day) and it was some fancypants bottle that was part of a lot auctioned off at Hospice earlier and we figured when in Rhône... (har). There were 20 cases made especially for Hospice, which I believe indicates that the wine for those cases was bottled in a special bottle with the HdR logo marked in the glass and then auctioned off, and Villa Creek won the auction. I think we got the last bottle, and they were out of most of their several auction-won wines (and possibly their other wine, considering the festivities had been going on for days at that point, and the HdR crowd loves Villa Creek).

As for the wine itself, the area around Capçanes (right next to Priorat) has been growing wine grapes for a while, since before the phylloxera louse wiped out most of the vines in the 19th century. Few of the vineyards were replanted after that (those that were replanted were mostly Grenache), and some of those vines are still around today, making wine like this.

In 1933, five families making wine in the area formed a co-operative, the Cooperativa de Capçanes, and they now make wine from over 600-plus acres, and bottle it under the Celler de Capçanes label. (And are probably too busy making good wine to make that website anything other than a splash page, but that's okay with me. Just warning you in case you go there looking for info.) They have made improvements to their facility in the last few years, renovating a lot of the rudimentary setup that has been in use since the early 1900s. Back in the 1990's they gained some fame for making a decent kosher wine for the Jewish community in Barcelona, and went on to earn DO Montsant in 2002. This wine is their top of the line Grenache, made from the post-phylloxera-planted 100 year old vines, and is actually a blend of Garnacha del Pais and Garnacha Peluda. The wine spent 16 months in new French oak, and 4,800 bottles were made.

Notes: It was kind of dim in the restaurant, but this is a dark, inky, blue-purple with a pink edge. The nose is all cookies and spices with some sugared leather and crushed granite, and when first opened, I thought the nose was a little soft and closed (this is probably a little young to drink right now, albeit still tasty). It's very refined and elegant, with bright but not overwhelming acids and velvety tannins, and there is a lot of soft spice (but not cloying) throughout... spice like cinnamon and nutmeg. The finsh goes on and on and is all about the rocks-- minerals and more gravel. Some air did it good, and even though we were only able to get through half the bottle that night, it started to expand a little in the hour or two we spent with it. We stuffed it in the car overnight (I didn't want to waste it, and it was cool enough that it was fine and better there than inside with us) and hauled it home in a cooler on ice the next day, since it was hot, and that night it was a little more open and just as delicious, if not more so.

Cost: $60 at the restaurant, which actually seems to be close to the going rate for the stuff (I am finding from about $50 to about $75 online).

Overall: A

2001 Beckmen Purisima Mountain Vineyard Grenache

Region: Santa Ynez Valley, California, US

Composition: 100% Grenache

Background: Tom Beckmen and his son Steve planted the previously-unplanted Purisima Mountain vineyard in 1996, devoting it mostly to Syrah but also planting Roussane, Marsanne, Counoise, Mourvedre, and Grenache on its 365 acres. They tend to each plot in the vineyard individually, treating it according to its specific needs based on hillside location, rather than farming the whole vineyard as one plot of land. Beneath the thin topsoil of the land sits limestone subsoil (more common in France than California), which is difficult for the grapevines' roots to penetrate and causes the vines to struggle, resulting in small yields of concentrated fruit.

A funny note is that Tom Beckmen founded the Roland Corporation, and brought us the TR-808 in 1979 (you have most certainly heard the 808 unless you have been living under a rock since the 1970's-- go listen to Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" if your memory needs refreshing). He sold Roland in 1993, before starting Beckmen.

I picked this wine up a little over a week ago when I was down around the Central Coast for some wine bottling fun (more on that later). I really enjoyed all of Beckmen's wines and had an almost teary happy moment in the tasting room where I felt thrilled to be there and drinking their wines (no doubt the result of little sleep and general tiredness and too much wine, but I was still very moved by the wines I had). They have a lovely little tasting room near a pond, complete with a duck crossing sign, and it is a great place to visit (all dramatics aside).

Notes: This is a goregous dark ruby in the glass; a beautiful, clear blue-red. The nose is soft and floral, smelling of violet and berries (raspberries and blueberries), and, once it opened up a little, some coffee. On the palate it is full of red and black fruit along with more coffee and some licorice. The finish is spicy and full of tannins that make your mouth tingle, with a touch of cherry liqueur. Also present is lots of spice (baking spices), which makes me wonder what oak this wine has seen, some pepper, and a little bit of cardamom, which I don't always like but find pleasant here. This is a really rich wine... not totally overblown, but intense in a soft way. I would be interested to see how this fares a few years down the road, even though it is very pleasant right now. It isn't moving me to tears of joy like it almost did in the tasting room, but this is why you always try things twice!

Cost: $24

Overall: B+