The St Amant Tempranillo, a truly tempting Tempranillo that's not from Spain.
96% Tempranillo, 2% Touriga Nacional and 2% Souzao from Amador County, California. The wine was aged for 16 months in a combination of French and American oak (32% new).
The St Amant Tempranillo has an SRP of $18 and is available at that price. Only 565 cases produced. Sample submitted for review.
From the bottle:
Since 1981, St Amant, a small family winery has pursued the road less traveled, handcrafting delicious wines from Spanish and Portuguese varieties. Our Tempranillo is grown in our Amador County vineyard and sits in a relatively cool site that is carefully farmed to produce the highest quality grapes. This wine is a big, chewy, well-structured red with full, round aromas of spice, tobacco, and dark fruits. It has a ripe mouthcoating texture that provides a good lengthy finish.
14.9% Alcohol
Today we're revisiting a wine that introduced us to just how good Tempranillo from outside of Spain could be. We last tasted the 2008 vintage and found it to be a revelation. Let's fast forward five years and see if the 2013 vintage can live up to the high standard of its predecessor.
The 2013 St Amant Tempranillo begins with a big, glass-filling aroma of dark fruit, tons of spice, licorice, mint and more. The wine tastes dense, rich, chewy, tannic and delicious. Blackberry, plum, black tea, tobacco, more spice, cola, licorice and a little vanilla all combine seamlessly in this full-bodied wine. It also features a great texture - mouthcoating (as they state on the label) is the perfect word to describe it. It ends dry and long with lots of spice and lingering tobacco.
See a listing of local retailers selling the St Amant Tempranillo here.
