Vintage 2022

Bechtold Cinsault Old Vines, Birichino

Birichino
Product Code: AB02ZZRC

Tasting Notes

The Birichino Bechthold Vineyard Cinsault Old Vines is a delightful red wine from the Lodi region of California. The wine is made entirely from Cinsault grapes, which are sourced from the famous Bechthold Vineyard – one of the oldest surviving Cinsault vineyards in California. This wine offers a unique taste profile that is distinctly different from other reds. It has a bright and energetic spirit with an abundance of juicy red fruit flavors and aromas such as cherries, pomegranate, and raspberry. The soft tannins and crisp acidity provide a smooth mouthfeel with a satisfyingly long finish. This is a highly recommended wine for anyone looking for a refreshing and vibrant wine that is a cut above the rest.

Profile

Cinsault
Red
12%
USA
California
12
Cork
Birichino
Yes
75cl
VeganVegetarian

About this product +

Producer >

Alex Krause and John Locke founded Birichino in Santa Cruz in 2008. Drawing on a combined four decades making wine in California, France, Italy, and beyond, they are focused on attaining the perfect balance of perfume, poise, and puckishness. Sourcing from a number of carefully farmed, family-owned, own-rooted 19th and early 20th century vineyards (and a few from the late disco era) planted by and large in more moderate, marine-influenced climates, their preoccupation is to safeguard the quality and vibrance of their raw materials. Their preference is for minimal intervention, most often favouring native fermentations, employing stainless or neutral barrels, minimal racking and fining, and avoiding filtration altogether when possible. But most critically, their aim is to make delicious wines that give pleasure, revitalize, and revive.

Viticulture >

For those new to this wine, the Bechthold Vineyard, planted in 1886, reputedly constitutes the oldest block of Cinsault on Earth close to the Mokelumne River, in a climate moderated by evening breezes from the Sacramento River Delta. This is an historic little neighborhood. The Shinn Family’s old Carignane vines lay around the corner from Bechthold. The Shinns have been farming their land since the 1850s. Even the families are intertwined – Matt Shinn’s wife Evonne is a Bechthold. No wine is more emblematic of the Birichino style than Bechthold Cinsault Rouge. These are the only grapes on which we perform saignée. They grow in a very hot area, an area beloved and derided for its large scaled, often lazy, high alcohol caricatures. So here we have a somewhat artificially concentrated wine from an indisputably hot area, already known for concentrated wines, produced by a house known for modestly proportioned wines, and yet somehow, unaccountably, it is hardly our lushest red, and indeed our most superficially diminutive. It is important to emphasize the “superficially” bit, for while it tips in at a mere 12.0% alcohol with an unimpeachably civilized greeting; the handshake squeezes more forcefully than anticipated. It acts like nothing so much as an old school Cru Beaujolais – all violets and room temperature molten rock.

Winemaking >

Fermentation was native, and elevage was 10 months in a mix of old puncheons and neutral French barrels before we racked it for the first time up into the bottling tank, and bottled unfiltered.

Awards +

its` been featured in the MW exam that Harriet`s taken, and awarded various point scores, written about by Jancis Robinson in the Financial Times and many other publications, but we don’t really pay attention to such stuff , sorry.

Ratings +

Ray Isle, Food & Wine, Sept 13, 2024

The Bechthold Vineyard, planted in 1886, has what are reputedly the oldest Cinsault vines in the world, not just California (a southern French variety, the phylloxera plague in the late 1800s essentially wiped out most of the country’s vines). Bechthold is farmed organically and without irrigation, and from it winemakers Alex Krause and John Locke make this shimmering, light-bodied, peppery red.”-

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