December 19, 2007
Dunne on Wine: Grenache steps out of the crowd of Rhones Sacramento Bee
By Mike Dunne

At the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo's International Wine Competition earlier this fall, one class our panel judged was grenache priced at $20 and above.
This would be a kick, I thought, given that the black grape grenache plays a key role in some of my favorite wines, including The Holy Trinity by Grant Burge Wines, Patriarche by Holly's Hill Vineyards and Noir Grande Année by Domaine de la Terre Rouge.
Note that these are all proprietary blends. That's grenache's typical assignment these days: bringing bright notes of strawberry, cranberry and cherry to the earthier and spicier aromatics and flavors of other varieties with which it customarily is blended.

Those varieties generally are syrah and mourvedre, two other black grapes closely associated with the Rhone Valley in France, though in recent years also identified increasingly with Australia and California.

These sorts of blends, incidentally, are becoming so common that they now are grouped into their own informal classification, which goes by the shorthand "GSM" for grenache, syrah and mourvedre.

While such blends reflect the historic approach taken in France, where grenache often plays a role in wines from the everyday (Cotes-du-Rhone) to the more esteemed (Chateauneuf-du-Pape), they're relatively new for California.

For grenache, they represent a significant step up. The varietal's standing in California has suffered for decades because it has been marketed largely as a rosé or blush, due primarily to its inherently light color.

But nowadays, thanks to better clonal selection, better site selection for growing the grape, and better viticultural and winemaking practices, even grenache rosés speak more highly of the varietal.

But whether grenache as a stand-alone varietal has a future in California is uncertain. Even vintners in the Sierra foothills, where the grape is putting down some serious roots, are not on the same page about its prospects.

For the most part, they're upbeat but with a qualification: Grenache makes a fine table wine as long as it is given a jolt of some other variety, often syrah, to intensify its color and to firm up its structure. This sort of supplementation, however, is a common practice with many wines that go by the name of one varietal or another – cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel, merlot and so forth.

Carrie Bendick, winemaker at her family's Holly's Hill Vineyards in El Dorado County, is enthusiastic about grenache. Her 2005 version of the varietal is her first to consist solely of grenache. In the past, she's blended as much as 20 percent syrah into the grenache to give it more color and to round out its body.

"It depends on what the year gives us," Bendick says of her blending practices. In 2005, the wine's color, smell, build and so forth were just dandy on their own. "Grenache doesn't have a lot of color, and that inky color is what cabernet, merlot and syrah drinkers are looking for," she says, explaining how marketing considerations have factored into her blending decisions with earlier vintages...

Read the entire article here.

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