2019 Desire Lines, Mourvèdre, Experimental Series #5 – Bedrock Vineyard, Sonoma Valley.
This very rare Experimental small lot 100% Mourvèdre by winemaker Cody Rasmussen, the assistant winemaker at Morgan Twain-Peterson’s Bedrock Wine Company and owner of this vineyard, is one of my favorite wines of the year and an absolute stunner in the glass with powerful depth, vinous fruit and complexity that makes it a truly world class effort, rivaling some of the world’s best wines made rom this varietal! This Bandol inspired Mourvèdre is beautifully purple inky in the glass with heady aromatics and a densely packed full bodied palate with crushed blackberries, black cherries, plums and dark currants leading the way in the mouth along with dark florals, snappy spices, cedary wood and wild herbs providing complex background accents. The richness and structure here is fabulously compelling and this wine certainly has a raw sex appeal, from nose to finish it doesn’t put a foot wrong and there is tons of potential for long term aging, much like the wines that inspired it, like Bandol legends such as Domaine Tempier, Pradeaux, Gros Nore and Terrebrune to name a few. This Mourvèdre, with delicate earthiness and contrasting savory elements, showcases the vineyard and vintage to near perfection, delivering an awesome performance, hiding its serious tannins behind the year’s concentrated fruit, which is almost plush and nicely rounded in feel and it lingers on and on with violets, creme de cassis and peppercorns. Rasmussen, along with his wife Emily’s Desire Lines Wine Co. which was founded after the 2015 vintage, have put out a killer set of offerings, including some impressive old vine reds.

The Desire Lines Experimental Series #5 – Bedrock Vineyard Mourvèdre was sourced from two small blocks of old-vine Mourvèdre, planted on a rocky, north-facing knoll that runs gently down to Hooker Creek to the north here in this historic Heritage site that is well known for its 1880s planting of Zinfandel, these vines and the vineyard are obviously very important to Rasmussen, who has a huge love for this place and has almost unrivaled access to it! Rasmussen’s Bedrock Mourvèdre was fermented with 40% whole cluster and raised in barrel for fifteen months without racking, as he notes, in a combination of 228L and 600L barrels. The stem inclusion, he says, adds a lovely bit of spice to the nose, the subtle carbonic effect, due to the whole bunches, adds a little flesh to the palate, and the combination of barrel sizes, Cody continues, teases out both breadth and tension in the finished wine. As mentioned here, this stellar lineup of small lot and handcrafted wines by Cody Rasmussen, who, as explained above, is the assistant winemaker Bedrock Wine Company, along with his wife Emily have carved out a niche for themselves with these Desire Lines Wine Co. offerings, this is one of the best newer California wineries to emerge in recent times. While as also noted here, their Syrah bottlings are their signature wines with the Griffin’s Lair and Shake Ridge versions being some of the best modern expressions of this grape in California. I also am greatly impressed by their awesome Dry Rieslings, especially the Cole Ranch, the Wiley and organic Massa Estate versions. If you are lucky enough to have this bottle, be sure to decant it and enjoy it with robust cuisine to allow it to full open. I highly recommend getting on the Desire Lines mailing list to get access to these gorgeous wines, like this one!
($38 Est.) 95 Points, grapelive

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