All posts tagged: Rhone Varietals

Featured Wine of the Week – Solminer 2018 “Rubellite”

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Happy New Year and welcome to our first Featured Wine of the Week for 2020! Today we’re drinking a wine from Sominer called “Rubellite.” This wine is 72% Syrah, 27% Grenache, and 1% Riesling. It’s from Santa Ynez Valley in California. If you’ve been following me, you know this is my type of wine. I love wines from this region, and especially Syrahs. So, let’s dive in! Solminer is a labor of love between a husband and wife team. They were Certified Organic in 2014 and Demeter Certified Biodynamic in 2018. Their focus is on natural wines. They use chickens, donkeys, sheep, bees, fruit trees, native plants, compost, and herb teas(!) to encourage the health of the vineyard. The most notable varietals they planted were the Austrian Grüner Veltliner and Blaufränkisch, which have flourished. Solminer even makes a skin contact “orange” Grüner! The Rubellite Syrah/Grenache blend we’re drinking today is described as “an experiment gone incredibly well.” It was fermented with natural yeast and spent seven months in neutral French oak. It is unfined and …

Featured Wine of the Week

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Even when I was a new wine drinker, there was something about Rhone varietals that I loved more than anything else.  I would take a Syrah any day over a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot.  Can you believe it?  However, there was something so juicy, so spicy, so lovely about Rhone varietals that I just fell in love with them. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, some Rhone varietals include Syrah, Viognier, Grenache, Grenache Blanc (a different varietal than Grenache – not the white version of one), Mourvedre, and Rousanne, to name a few. Most recently I’ve become enamored of GSMs, or Grenache/Syrah/Mourvedre as a blend.  So, when I went to a local wine bar the other day, I asked for one.  What I got was a 2016 Kivel Stadt Cellars “Father’s Watch” Red Blend.  It was a GSM, with one addition:  32% Carignane.  This wine was completely unexpected. Since I went into it blindly at first, I thought I was drinking a wine from France.  It was earthy, with bit of …