2022 Bedrock Wine Co, Pato Heritage, Red Wine, Contra Costa County.
I tasted a nice selection of Bedrock releases this Summer with Chris Cottrell, one of Bedrock’s founding partners and the head of their Under the Wire Sparkling Wine label, and enjoyed catching up with him as he showed off a few classics, with this Pato Heritage Red Wine being one of my favorites on the day. This opaque purple/garnet 2022 Pato, mostly Zinfandel obviously, is very rich and concentrated, but still charming and shows a finesse that makes it a standout, with a full bodied palate of black raspberry, plum jam, dark currant , Mission fig, tart blueberry and cherry syrup, along with dark chocolate, a heady mix of spice and sagey Provençal herbs, delicate florals, a faint meatiness and cedary wood. There’s a powerful sense of abundance, opulence and pleasure here, with the ripeness of the vintage showing, though that is not to say this wine is flabby or over the top, but it should be enjoyed with matching cuisine, like a rack of lamb, short ribs and or brisket. The wine’s inner sweetness is kept in check by some Petite Sirah tannin and enough natural acidity to hold things nicely. Bedrock, led by Morgan Twain-Peterson MW, says that they embrace uninoculated fermentations (indigenous yeast), native malolactic and the use of whole clusters in fermentation when they can, not so easy with Zinfandel. They farm to make sure there is minimal handling or intrusive winemaking, as well as rarely or never fining the wines. They do what they can to avoid additions of things common in California like water and tartaric acid, and would rather use no oak than cheap oak. These things are not easy and Bedrock has the deal with a huge collection of vineyards, making what they do all that much more impressive.
Morgan Twain-Peterson MW and Bedrock have farming the historic Pato vineyard, owned interestedly by the Contra Costa Water District, since 2012 and made their first vineyard-designated wine from, what Morgan calls, this beautiful place in 2016. The vines were originally planted here back in 1905 and the site is located on the interior edge of Oakley, which is a pretty remote area of the East Bay. Twain-Peterson explains that this well-known site for top Zin producers, like Ridge, Rosenblum, Neyers and others have all made vineyard-designated wines from here in the past, and yet it still flies under the radar, I would say it is a sleeper in the Bedrock lineup. Pato, with mainly Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Mataro, is all own-rooted and planted on, as Morgan continues, the famous Delhi sands that define the area and gives these old vines a unique terroir dimension. The Pato wines are completely different expression of the area than Evangelho, owned and farmed by Bedrock, as the site tends towards slightly higher pHs and has a riper expression of the area. As Bedrock notes, here, dark fruit dominates, as seen in this 2022, partially they add due in part due to the larger percentage of Petite Sirah in the final blend. They also think that these deep sandy soils provide for a supple texture and polish here, but there is considerable fruit weight, that for me gives a hedonistic density. Those details very much shine through here in this 2022 Pato, which was, as per normal raised almost entirely in puncheon, I believe, with a small amount of new oak, which tames the beast, and allows for complexity, harmony and age-ability here, while also giving the immediate joys it delivers even now. In recent years, old vines in Lodi, Amador County and here in Contra Costa are proving to beat the effects of climate change and preserve California history, and there’s a lot to be grateful for in these Bedrock wines.
($40 Est.) 93 Points, grapelive