2022 Leo Steen, Casa Verde, Red Wine, Redwood Valley, Mendocino County.
The 2022 vintage version of Leo Hansen’s Casa Verde is dark garnet in the glass and is ripely quaffable with a plummy medium bodied, showing away a nice mix of red and black fruits, spice and delicate floral notes. The Casa Verde Red Wine, just like the previous vintage is a Redwood Valley sourced blend of mainly Grenache and Carignan, but with some Barbera, Cabernet Sauvignon and even some French Colombard white grapes, which is generous and delicious stuff that feels fresh, fruit forward and quaffable. The carbonic like style makes for a smooth medium bodied wine that comes from all organic and dry farmed 70 year old vines with sandy loams and clay based soils, which sees warm days and cool nights that delivers concentration and nice lively acidity. For this wine Hansen used a native yeast fermentation and a short maceration period with a very gentle extraction before racking it to a combination of stainless steel and used French oak barrels where the Casa Verde red wine saw 16 months.
Leo Hansen, of Leo Steen Winery, formerly a sommelier from Copenhagen Denmark, who has a well rounded background, having done stints in Alsace, Loire, Champagne and Burgundy to Spain and Italy. As noted before here at grape live.com Hansen, who moved to California in 1999 to, as he notes, immerse himself in winemaking, finally landing at Alexander Valley’s Stuhlmuller Vineyards, where he became the winemaker. At that time, in 2004, Leo also started his own label, Leo Steen wines, which allowed him to make wines more to his personal tastes, leaning on his old world palate. Hansen, to achieve his goals, uses a variety of fermentation methods and a combination of aging vessels in his wines to showcase each vineyard and terroir with transparency in his wines, this, he has done very successfully in his latest set of wines, especially in his Grenache, Cab Franc and the collection of Chenin Blanc offerings, which are his main focus. After meeting Leo Hansen a few years ago now and being introduced to his wines, I have really become a big fan of his Leo Steen lineup, which all impressed me, and I highly recommend checking them out.
($25 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive