2019 Newfound Benchland Carignane, Mendocino County

Tasting note

Lightly floral with juicy plum, red cherry, underripe blackberry, and a Nebbiolo like tar characteristic.

Our thoughts

100% Carignane is a pretty unusual – and, in places, maligned – wine, the grape variety derided in its native southern France where heavy cropping can deliver rustic tannins. Here, however, in the hands of a small, family-owned winery in the Sierra Foothills, and made in tiny quantities, it shows lifted, blueberry and floral tones. Just what one would expect from a thoughtful producer which has renewed its vineyard through sustainable practices, from grazing goats to cover crops, all aimed at encouraging natural compost and negating the threat of forest fires. An archetypal example of new-wave California, this is the antithesis of the conventional UC Davis school of winemaking, instead taking cues from the European old school via use of whole bunches, low sulphites, wild yeasts and minimal intervention.