Tag Archives: Mason County

Pontotoc Vineyard Estate Tempranillo 2012

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A bit of a pre-release note for this wine; as at this tasting, it had been bottled about two weeks.

In speaking with the winemaker, Don Pullum, about this wine and the 2012 vintage generally, it seems the defining character that year was a forwardness of bright berry flavours. In response to this, Don kept a portion of the finished wine in tank, rather than barrel, to preserve some of that character through to bottling time.

An interesting approach and one that has certainly translated to incredibly bright primary fruit flavours in this wine. I left this a couple of days after I first tasted it; predictably, this led to a diminution of fruit and an increase in savoury flavours, whereupon this wine’s DNA becomes a lot clearer. There’s certainly a family resemblance to the initial estate release. Pleasing transparency into vintage, though.

Aromas begin with a plume of smoke wound around bright red fruit. At present, it opens almost entirely fruit-driven but gains a lot of complexity with air. The nose begins to show a range of dusty, floral, grassy aromas; the whole reminds me of walking through a lush field on a very hot day. It’s difficult for me not to think of the vineyard itself, which often bakes in forty degree heat and which smells not unlike this wine, in spirit if not in fact.

The palate is sweetly fruited and, in this quite, is different from the 2011. It’s a much more up front wine at this stage of its life, throwing red fruit in your face the moment you sip it. As a result, it’s a lot more accessible than the earlier wine, and I can see a lot of people preferring it for this reason. The fact that it has gained savouriness with air suggests it will head in this direction with bottle age, and I feel the wine will benefit from some short term cellaring at least, to build some of these flavours.

From what I tasted of the 2013 ferments and finished wine, the current vintage’s release will sit part way between the 2011 and 2012 wines, with both a good deal of savouriness and sweet fruit. I’m happy to have worked on that wine.

Note: For the 2013 vintage, I was an intern with Don Pullum, the maker of this wine.

Pontotoc Vineyard
Price: $NA
Closure: Cork
Source: Sample

Pontotoc Vineyard Estate Tempranillo 2011

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Although the Pontotoc Vineyard had been producing for many years, its fruit going to other wineries, this bottling is the first under the Pontotoc label, and the first of a planned line of estate Tempranillos. It’s the current release and there are a few cases left.

An impressive first release by any measure. This smells and tastes strikingly savoury, with aroma notes of hessian, dusty roads, sweet hay, underpinned by red fruits and sweet tobacco. It’s quite expressive and high toned, with a floral vibe that sets it apart from meatier expressions of Tempranillo.

The palate is again very savoury and only medium bodied. There’s an interesting mouthfeel at work, sort of slippery and rounded, though not without textural dimensions. More tobacco, savoury red fruits, hints of creamy oak (though not too much of an influence here), along with a delicious coffeed finish. A dusty, dirty impression on the palate strikes me as very Old World, and indeed this is quite restrained in terms of sweet fruit character. It all seems to me highly varietal. Tannins are chunky and sweet when they arrive.

This is a quiet, adult wine; anything but a showstopper, yet full of gentle charms nonetheless.

Note: I am currently an intern with Don Pullum, the maker of this wine.

Pontotoc Vineyard
Price: $US30
Closure: Cork
Source: Sample

Sandstone Cellars X 2009

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80% Syrah, 15% Touriga, 5% Nebbiolo.

Syrah, or Shiraz as I have labelled the ferment at Pontotoc Vineyard, features fairly regularly in Texas Hill Country wines. As a representative of the country that owns this grape, I’m naturally curious to see how it translates to an even hotter, dryer climate than we typically subject it to. This wine also contains a bit of Touriga Nacional and Nebbiolo, which is, at the very least, unexpected.

This wine is all about tannin; fine, rich tannin that blankets the tongue from mid-palate onwards. Syrah provides the dominant flavour components, which in this context means bright, red fruit, a bit of chocolate and a lot of floral notes. There’s also a gentle spiciness that lifts the flavour profile and adds layers of complexity.

This is a gentle wine to smell and taste, which is ironic given its abundance of firm, fine tannin. The whole is medium bodied at most, and at this stage it tastes entirely primary. More red fruits, spice, tea leaf and bitter chocolate. As with the aroma, this wine’s palate gives the impression of being built in layers, one placed softly over the next until a complete flavour profile is constructed. There’s a soft prettiness to this that I really admire.

While tasting, I wished for more strangeness from this wine, an odd note or something structural to mark this as more eccentric. Perhaps my reaction to it comes from a certain familiarity with its flavour profile, given my background with Shiraz-based wines. To be sure, this is very far from any Australian wine I can think of in terms of palate structure and character, but compared to some other Sandstone wines, its flavours are less challenging, and more immediately understandable.

Note: I am currently an intern with Don Pullum, the maker of this wine.

Sandstone Cellars
Price: $US35
Closure: Cork
Source: Sample

Sandstone Cellars IX 2009

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75% Tempranillo and 25% Touriga Nacional.

This wine is particularly interesting to me because it’s a blend of the two red varieties that seem to be emerging in this part of Texas as the most promising viticulturally and when vinified. In fact, more than one winemaker here has called Tempranillo the red grape of Texas. All this on the basis of a very few years’ experience; I guess the results have been pretty striking.

This isn’t without challenges; for starters, neither grape is typically as cuddly as Syrah, nor as immediately understandable as Cabernet Sauvignon. Both can be savoury, angular and meaty, with fairly demonstrative structures. Things become interesting, though, when you place these characters up against Texas terroir, which tends to produce lighter, more elegant wines.

I reckon the Sandstone Cellars IX is a pretty good demonstration of what happens. This is indeed a medium bodied wine, its colour wanting a bit for density. So far so typical. Then you smell it and are struck by how demanding this wine is. There are few concessions to inexperience here; this is a stridently angular, adult wine, full of umami-type aromas like soy and roast meat, along with sweet tobacco and snapped twig. There are occasionally hints of bright red fruit that tease one by shining clearly then quickly disappearing into the wine’s mesh of savouriness.

In the mouth, a repeat of the aroma profile’s predominantly savoury notes, with lovely fruit (dark this time) and sweet, sweet tannins. Indeed, this is a very structured wine, and despite its vintage shows no obvious evidence of bottle age. The aroma’s tensions resolve nicely in the mouth, and I particularly like the way flavours bounce from slightly sweet to firmly savoury and back again.

There are certainly more approachable wines in the Sandstone library, as there are in tasting rooms throughout this region, but for distinctiveness of character this is second only to the Sandstone Cellars III.

Note: I am currently an intern with Don Pullum, the maker of this wine.

Sandstone Cellars
Price: $US35
Closure: Cork
Source: Sample

Sandstone Cellars III 2006

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A blend of 52% Mourvèdre, 21% Primitivo, 16% Grenache, 10% Touriga and 1% Tempranillo. Chris has previously written about this wine, and his note strikes me as both an accurate representation of the wine and a prescient expression of the excitement that I’m feeling as I work my way through Texas Hill Country. Of all the Sandstone Cellars wines I’ve so far tasted (and there have been a few), this presents perhaps the most distinctive flavour profile, a fact for which its most important constituents (Mourvèdre and Primitivo) must be responsible.

At first taste, this is more Zinfandel than anything else: it has a liqueurous spiciness I associate with the variety, as well as characteristic power and density. It throws such a wide range of aromas, though, so many of which are dustier, darker and more sinister, that Mourvèdre’s influence becomes more and more clear. Notes of camphor, aniseed, dark fruit and spice all intermingle, as well as a leathery note that is surely part bottle age. No shortage of complexity, then, in this highly distinctive aroma profile.

The palate is amazingly dense and impactful, yet never rises above being medium bodied. This both strikes me as very Texan and very new; indeed, I can’t think of too many wines I’ve tasted that house this particular set of muscular, dark flavours within such an elegant frame. The flavour, in fact, suggests port at times, perhaps due to the Touriga. Tannins are chunky and thick when they appear, which they do quite far back in the wine’s line.

This is elegant, delicious, distinctive and ageing gracefully. More than all that, though, it’s a milestone in the invention of Texas, Texas Hill Country and Mason County wine.

Note: I am currently an intern with Don Pullum, the maker of this wine.

Sandstone Cellars
Price: $40
Closure: Cork
Source: Sample

Sandstone Cellars III

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First off, allow me to note that I did not pay full retail for this wine. A couple of years ago, I had to travel to San Angelo, Texas to do some work at a local hospital. It was cheaper to fly to Austin and drive, so I did; I passed Sandstone Cellars on the way over to San Angelo, thought it looked kinda interesting, got my work done there, and stopped in on the way back. I thought the wine was damned good and bought a bottle; leaving Mason, the town where the winery’s located, I checked my email and saw that they’d sent an email a few hours earlier, so I made a U-turn and headed back to the winery to chat a bit more. They offered the bottle at half price; I met them half way, and that’s the story here. So: I paid $30, which – now that I’ve finally opened the bottle – feels like I ripped them off for $10.

Right. First time I’ve had this wine, second Sandstone Cellars wine I’ve ever tasted. What’s it like?The first impression I get is of whatever you call the tea leaf equivalent of coffee grounds. If you make a pot of tea – and I’m thinking something malty like, say, Assam – and leave the used tea leaves aside, they tend to smell like this, especially if (say) someone’s made lavender Earl Grey out of them; think vanilla, orange blossoms, just a touch of smoke and cedary wood. It’s lovely, and it doesn’t remind me of anywhere else I can think of. Nice to see that the second bottle I’ve had from Mason County is as idiosyncratic as the first: both have been of uniformly high quality, and it seems that Don Pullum, the winemaker (do check out his Twitter feed if you haven’t), is definitely onto something here.

And how does it taste? First off, it’s tannic (still). Firm, dusty, blocky tannins a go go. It’s also nicely acidic; the overall mouthfeel doesn’t approach the silky smooth California profile I’m used to (think higher alcohol and a bit of residual sugar). Fruit’s here too, thankfully: more than anything, I taste Zinfandel, but the label tells me we’re mostly working with Mataro here; I don’t sense the Mataro particularly save for the smoky-floral notes on the nose. To me, this wine shows a real tension between the fruit, tannin, and acidity; although there’s plenty to love about the vanillin, cherry-blackberry fruit, it’s slightly attenuated by the acidity (think food wine). That being said, part of what makes this wine such a pleasure is its tension: it’s the vinuous equivalent of a tritone.

The finish… yes, Dorothy, there is a finish, and it’s very Bach: four part harmony all the way down. Sweet fruit, nervy acidity, lingering tannins, and spice, not staying in any one key too long before nervously jumping to the next.Sitting here thinking about this wine (and the people that made it), I find myself wondering if there’s a place in most folks’ wine cellars for this kind of thing. Looking at CellarTracker, for example, I see that there’s less than a dozen bottles of every wine they make represented on the Internet. They don’t ship to California, I couldn’t find a bottle in Dallas to save my life last year, and this kinda bothers me. Look, I know I’m something of a hipster when it comes to wine: I prefer the experimental over the tried-and-true, I’m always up for things I haven’t heard of from places I can’t pronounce, and novelty is more interesting to me than safety. Part of this is of course financial: unlike my Dad, I grew up in a world where first growth Bordeaux costs as much as a month’s rent. Much of my drinking has necessarily been local or obscure: if you can’t afford Pingus, might as well make the best of Bierzo.

Even more: as a Californian, I’ve always been especially open to things that are (strictly speaking) unique to my region and my cultural traditions. Field blends (‘mixed blacks’) for example: drinking something like that is a tangible link to the past I share with everyone else in this state, and I honestly believe that’s there no reason why that shouldn’t stand tall compared to other countries’ traditions (be it Hunter semillon or autochtonous Georgian grapes fermented in clay amphorae). And when I come across something like this wine, I really do get excited at the possibility that someone, a pioneer, may be discovering (crafting?) something new, something specifically Texan, something that a hundred years from now will be as well known as, say, California Zinfandel, something that’s universally recognized as Texan.If so, this a damn good start.

Sandstone Cellars
Price: $40
Closure: Cork
Source: Retail