2016 Chateau Duplantier Red - Rideau Vineyard

Raspberry preserves, garden sage, candied red plum. Maraschino cherry, cold charcoal, boysenberry pie filling. Fresh lavender and desert rose, prickly pear and manzanita bark. Plump licorice, baked strawberry, and cranberry liqueur highlight a surprisingly bright and aromatic nose that oozes pronounced notes of pure candied fruit. Fennel and anise gradually emerge bringing a fresh herbal impression that imparts distinctly savory fringes to the otherwise firmly fruit-driven attack. On the palate fruit does finally subside allowing braised beef, tanned leather, and sandy loam to interject a touch of meaty and earthy complexity. Broad and mouth-filling yet surprisingly elegant; well made, well executed, and well balanced. Full bodied with elevated tannin and medium acidity. This 2016 Chateau Duplantier Red by Rideau Vineyard is a delicious and characterful Rhone blend from California's Central Coast.

While the widespread success of Rhone blends is a relatively recent phenomenon in California, this unique genre has quickly emerged to become a true crowd-favorite across the state. This bottling, crafted by Rideau Vineyard using a blend of 32% Syrah/27% Petite Sirah/22% Grenache/19% Mourvedre sourced from a few vineyards in California's Central Coast, is a wonderful example of a distinct style that has become so wildly popular in the past few decades. It is juicy, succulent, and complex, marrying just the right amount of natural herbal nuance behind an exceptionally delectable fruit-focused core. Each of the varieties included in the blend contribute their own distinct impression and each is easily discernible in the final blend, and yet together they form a wine that is greater than the sum of its parts. Awesome stuff.