541-752-7418 Sign In | Your Account

Search:

Avalonwine.com

Winery:
McCrea Cellars

$29.95 Regular

$26.95
in any 12 bottle order or Build a Case

Review:

This wine has a meaty, smoky richness. It is the winery's single most popular bottling.

Juicy, spicy, dense, and rich, with big black cherry flavors, and that characteristic hint of pencil lead, this is Mourvedre at its most extraordinary. Only 200 cases were bottled, the only bottling of Mourvedre in the Northwest from the tiny 3 acre plot at Ciel du Cheval.

Very different from what you think of as Mourvedre if you're a fan of the under $10 Spanish version, this wine is much more like the Mourvedre of Bandol, without as much of the "garrique" quality. There's a bit of gamey rusticity in this wine, but it's mostly a lush, unusual, fascinating red that shows a range of flavors in a framework of dense, black, rich cherry and plum fruit flavors. Quite a treat!

Mourvedre is a densely black red wine that requires a very hot climate to grow, and has traditionally been grown in Spain and in Southern France, especially in the area around Bandol, on the Mediterranean coast. It produces sturdy wines with good acid and some astringency, and can develop enticing blackberry aromas and flavors. Mourvedre makes meaty, intense wines that age well. There's a characteristic hint of what many people interpret as "pencil lead" in the mid-palette, and the black color and dense, opaque nature of the wine add to its reputation for wild and rustic flavors.

This is McCrea Cellars' third vintage of Mourvedre, and the only bottling of this varietal in Washington State. The cuttings are Beaucastel material sourced from Tablas Creek Vineyard, planted for McCrea in 1999 by Jim Holmes at his renowned Ciel du Cheval Vineyard on Red Mountain. Although their purpose in planting these grapes is for their southern-Rhone blend ("Sirocco"), McCrea bottled about 200 cases of Mourvedre in 2004 as a single varietal.