Locations CA California Red - Unusually Good • Reverse Wine Snob®

A fantastic, albeit unconventional, red blend.

A truly unusual blend of Petite Sirah, Barbera, Tempranillo, Syrah and Grenache from vineyards throughout Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and the Sierra Foothills, California. The wine spends 10 months in French oak barrels.

Sample submitted for review. The Locations CA California Red has an SRP of $22 and is available for as low as $16. Ready to buy? Check your local retailers. 15,000 cases produced.

From Locations Wine:

Geographic diversity is what Locations – CA is all about. Provided with a wide assortment of microclimates and soil profiles to exploit, it can be a winemakers dream. With a goal in mind to create a blend that showcases the best of the Golden State, we navigated the famed appellations of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and the Sierra Foothills for prized fruit. Once secured, we were able to apply some creativity with the blending components to ultimately settle on a wine worthy of Locations. Inspired by our international projects, the same philosophy is applied to this third release.

15.5% Alcohol

While our past experience has shown that you can pretty much always rely on these unique blends from Dave Phinney to be quite good, it’s still always a bit of a shock to see exactly what goes into each of them. The California version, home to so many popular red blends, is no exception, combining renowned Italian (Barbera), Spanish (Tempranillo), and French (Syrah & Grenache) grapes with one of our favorite California value varieties, Petite Sirah.

The Locations CA California Red, this being the CA-4 designation (2014), begins with a very pleasant aroma of blackberry, grape jam, violets, spice, a bit of bramble and more. The wine tastes fantastic with a rich, smooth and thick mouthfeel full of blackberry, plum, licorice, pepper and spice. It is a bit hot (no surprise at 15.5% alcohol) but it works in this wine since the flavors are so big and rich. Lots of oaky notes lead into the rich, dry, savory and long finish. It does need some time to open up when first popped but after that, wow, this is an excellent, extremely flavorful wine.

Looking for more of the best red blends under $20? Click the pic below to check our giant listing along with more information on this popular style of wine!