The Santa Cruz Mountain Wine Growers’ Association Wine Club
Winepick of the Week: Savannah Chanelle 2004 Syrah
Are you feeling a little “blah” about your social wine circle? If so, I heartily recommend that you look at joining The Santa Cruz Mountain Winegrowers’ Association Wine Club.
Historically I have avoided wine clubs for the same reasons I have avoided Club Med and other such all-inclusive vacation packages. I don’t like to have it predetermined where I spend my money or where I have breakfast. However, I have found that the local wine club has provided me with great wines that often are not sold in retail stores and often from wineries not open to the public.
The wine club offers a “red only” choice, a “pinot noir” only choice, or a “varietal” choice. Wines are shipped every four months; a four-bottle shipment usually costs about $130 with tax and shipping charges. I’ll be the first to admit that this is a tad pricey, but, assuming that there are several times a year when you want to serve a better wine and you don’t want to gamble thirty-plus bucks on wines you are not familiar with, then this could be a practical solution. So far all the wines I have received from the wine club have been top flight and well worth the tariff.
In addition to the convenience of getting 16 bottles of top-notch wine delivered to your door every year, the wine club gives you two free tickets to either the Vintner’s Festival or the Passport wine events. These tickets have a retail value of $60. Plus, members are invited to attend an annual “wine club members only” barbecue. All these events give you the opportunity to rub elbows with winemakers and people who love local wines. And your membership gives tremendous support to the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers’ Association. For information, call 685-Vine (8463).
In a recent shipment from the wine club, I received a bottle of Savannah-Chanelle 2004 Monterey County Syrah. This wine has some nice age on it and is ready for drinking now, or could be aged for years longer. The grapes come from a nearly inaccessible vineyard 1,700 feet up Chular Canyon in Monterey County. At that altitude the grapes receive wonderful full sun almost every day and cooling fog at night. One of the benefits of wine grown in much of this region is the fog. When the sun strikes the dew-covered grapes it creates a warm little incubator inside each grape; each grape then “stews” its way to a fuller, riper fruit than those found in other parts of the state. Hotter, drier climates cannot produce as full and as rich a fruit as in this region
Savannah-Chanelle winemaker Tony Craig (an ex-Shakespearean actor and former winemaker at David Bruce Winery for 12 years), explained, “I press the syrah grapes early in order to retain the full-fruit flavor of the wine and to repress the effects of the tannins.” Craig does not feel that syrah goes well with oak, so his wines are aged in older barrels that have already imparted their oakiness to other wines.
I felt this wine was so muscular that I could arm wrestle it, but then I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed by a bottle of wine. The wine has the viscosity of port, and leaves huge, gooey legs all down the glass. It would go great with beef Bourgogne, or any grilled meat; buffalo meat especially could match this wine’s heft.