I have a love affair with Grenache - when made well, the first sip kind of takes over my senses and I am lost for a moment..…swimming in layers of flavours that make my head spin. I love the alluring ruby red colour, the bouquet of flowers, ripe crunchy sweet red fruit….. its body and weight and flavour …. how it dances so slow and soft on my palate. It’s like that feeling you get just before you kiss someone and you know you about to fall in love…for the first time…all over again.
Last week, I had very special date planned with such a wine - a bottle of Besson Birichino Grenache 2013. I have had this wine before, and as I looked at the bottle and glass before me - I knew I was about to fall in love all over again. Before I knew it, it was half gone and I was all out of sorts with disappointment. Because just like an amazing date - time flies by, the night has ended and you are left feeling good, buzzed and perhaps just a little bit bad ass over the guilty pleasure from your evening.
Grown all over the world from Spain to France to California and even Australia, this thin-skinned grape produces very rich, almost sweet tasting fruit with tannins that tantalize and tease you. It’s fresh and gritty and all about rustic elegance. (There are some really crap wines made from Grenache by the way, but this is not what this post is about.)
Birichino (meaning naughty/mischievous in Italian ) is led by John Locke and Alex Krause, a two-person company doing what they can with the space, equipment, and barrels they have. No fancy winery hall with floor to ceiling glass windows in the tasting room; They truck all their own fruit, have a few hundred old barrels, and “ make wine in a space we share with a friend in an industrial park in a ghetto in the heart of Salinas”. Yeah, I’d call that rustic.
Having long term contracts, Krause and Locke have pretty much all the say, even when it comes to things like pruning, canopy management and dates for harvest. Although they may not have come from winemaking families, these guys have worked with the likes of André Ostertag and Randall Grahm, and are now making their own beautiful wines in the Santa Cruz area of California.
The Besson plot, in which this Grenache comes from, is a 10-acre vineyard located 2 km from the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains facing northwestward, roughly 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer - just a short distance further inland from the cool waters of Monterey Bay. This, and the fact that it’s located in a more moderate climate helps retain the freshness and vibrancy of this wine.
“We have the opportunity to do something unusual”, says Krause. “ We make a Grenache that’s not baked heavy, or a jammy beast with raisined fruit. It can keep some verve and freshness. At Besson, the sandy decomposed granite soil with a little clay has a gentle north facing slope. At the eastern edge, it’s rockier and later-ripening, but there are no galets to be seen, and no radiating back of heat during the night. In fact, fog drifts over and rolls down the vineyard quite a bit at night….to the point where more often than not, we have October harvests.”
The Besson Grenache vines are 103 years old, and being that the area is dry farmed, no irrigation, the roots are very deep, work hard and handle water stress quite well. Krause has noticed that the last couple of vintages, the yields have gone down and with flowering earlier, means they harvest earlier as well. “ Grenache is really prone to shatter, and especially in the past couple of vintages, we’ve seen yields drop dramatically, as these wise old vines reduce the load of fruit to meet the available resources. What we got is fantastic, but there is very, very little.”
Photo: Birichino - old vine Grenache at Besson
So Birichino’s Grenache seems to be playing hard to get, all the way from California. Figures…. No matter, as I will take what I can get. I will keep my eyes peeled at SAQ shops, because not only is the Grenache and Malvasia Bianca available….I heard through the grapevine (pun intended) that the Vin Gris will be out in stores later this summer! So excited for this to be happening!
I have a second date planned with Birichino, or better yet the Besson vineyard itself. It’s a bit of a far stretched dream….but I see myself plopped down cross legged somewhere between the vines, drinking wine….and taking it all in. The smell of dried brush, mesquite and chillies roasting on an oil-drum BBQ by the vineyard crew, with a little Douglass fir scenting the air in the late afternoon as the cool air comes over the mountains from Monterey Bay. Even the bugs don’t bother me. With the warmth of the sun on my face, and I where I am meant to be, for that moment.
The Birichino Besson Grenache was made with the inclusion of a small percentage (7%) of dried Grenache grapes , where they get picked in a single layer in champagne picking boxes for 'resting'. The grapes are then dried with fans in the barn for 10 days, and fermented separately in 100% whole clusters. Maceration lasts for 40 days and nights as the structure builds, and then at last, softens. The rest of the Grenache grapes were also fermented with native yeasts, with about 15% whole cluster in a combination of stainless and macro bins. After fermentation, the finished wine was racked once after almost a full year in neutral barrels, and bottled unfiltered.
Photo: Birichino - Grenache getting ready to dry in the barn
Medium ruby in colour with garnet hues, with the slightest look of grittiness. The nose is highly scented with candied ripe cherries, flowers and pretty spice. The medium bodied wine has soft, abundant tannin, a plump mouth feel yet vivid and fresh with a great depth of crunchy, almost sweet tasting red fruit. The long finish goes from ripe cherries and blackberries to warm spice, to chocolate and then back to fruit again leaving a persistent elegant taste of pure goodness. Drink now or within the next 3-4 years.
Wine: Birichino Besson Vineyard Central Coast Grenache 2013
Grape: Grenache
Alcohol: 14.9%
SAQ Code: 12486386
Price: $24.85
Agent: Trialto Qc
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