A glass of wine is an enticing collection of flavors waiting to unfold on our palates. With each sip, our taste buds are awash with the fruit flavors, acids and tannins that titillate our senses. Every mouthful reveals a wine’s individual style, structure and character that either reaffirms our expectations of a certain type of wine or creates a new standard by which we will judge other similar wines in the future. Then there are wines that are so unique, so individualistic that when we have them it is as if we have never sipped this type of wine before. This is what I experienced on a road less traveled. While tasting over two hundred different wines, from over thirty wineries and vineyards along the winding backs roads of Paso Robles California I came upon the unexpected, an uncommon reward for my efforts—a new style of wine. These wines evoked such new taste sensations that the usual comparisons with other such wines were inadequate. As a way of setting these sumptuous Paso Robles wines apart from what others “label” as “Rhone Clones” or “Bordeaux Blends” I created a new term, California-French to exemplify their unique individuality. Referring to these wines as “clones” of the Rhone Valley or merely “blends” from the grapes used in Bordeaux is inaccurate. They are wines with exceptional richness and texture, in a class by themselves.
Wine producing countries, states and regions all have, what I call “personalities” or certain taste sensations that are associated with and expected from their wines. Good examples of wines from the Rhone Valley in France, such as Cote du Rhone, are light to moderate in body with mildly spicy fruit flavors, low tannins and moderate acids. Typical wines from Bordeaux on the other hand, will have more body, noticeable tannins, moderate acids and fruit flavors that are reminiscent of currants as well as non-fruit flavors such as smoke, tobacco or chocolate. Referring to a particular wine as a Rhone Clone or Bordeaux Blend, with similar taste characteristics as those from these two French wine producing regions, is a popular and until now an accurate way of describing such wines. That was before I tasted wines from three vineyards in Paso Robles California. Each vineyard produced wines of such unmatched style and character that they demanded their own unique descriptive category, hence the term—California-French. Next month we will “taste” the wines and meet the vintners and vineyard owners of these extraordinary wines.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. By Robert Frost
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