Wine

Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009

The Grapevine: Villa Creek wines in Paso Robles get more polish

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When Cris Cherry started Villa Creek Cellars in 2001, it seemed like a natural move. He had already found success in the restaurant business with Villa Creek in Paso Robles, which he started with his wife, JoAnn, in 1998. And food and wine go hand-in-hand, right?

Well, sometimes. I find that some Paso Robles wines are so big that they are practically a meal in themselves. They aren’t really good companions for food. Cherry’s own wines have generally avoided that pitfall. As I look back on my tasting notes over the years, I’ve usually observed that the wines were big, but they had sufficient acidity and liveliness to keep them from being flabby and heavy.

Cherry thinks that big, luscious wines have their place, but he says his own tastes have evolved in recent years to where he’s drinking more elegant wines.

“We’re making wines more like the wines that we drink every day,” he says.

Or, to put it another way, “Elle Macpherson instead of Anna Nicole Smith.”

One technique he’s adopted to get more savory qualities and complexity into his wines is to include some stems when he ferments the ripe grapes. (In California, grapes are more commonly separated from the stems before fermentation.) Cherry says he particularly likes some stems in his grenache—where it “bumps the aromatics and softens the acidity” — and in his tempranillo.

The tweaked style has been well-received, he says, by his mailing list and other customers. It also gives his wines a point of difference in Paso Robles.

“I didn’t want to be chasing everybody here with the same style,” Cherry says.

For white wine drinkers, Villa Creek has a zippy blend of grenache blanc, roussanne and viognier called White. The 2008 ($24) is very fresh, with flavors of peach, pear and citrus. There’s also a crisp 2008 Pink ($12), which features bright berry fruit.

As for the reds, the 2007 Garnacha ($35) is lively and spicy, with strawberry fruit, a slight roasted note and good concentration. The 2007 Willow Creek Cuvée ($35), a grenache-syrahmourvedre blend, has a good balance of ripe black fruit, some savory notes and firm structure. And the tempranillo-dominant 2007 Mas de Maha ($35) is smoky and a little wild, with bright, spicy berry notes.

Fans of bigger, riper wine will still find some of those, like the 2006 Vulture’s Post ($40), a mostly mourvedre blend that is quite ripe yet still has some nice savory notes.

Villa Creek’s cellar master, Anthony Yount, also has a new project—his own label, called Kinero Cellars. Yount’s first wines — a pair of excellent whites—were released recently. The 2008 Kinero “Alice” Grenache Blanc ($16/500ml) is very fresh and zippy, with pear, citrus and white peach flavors. The 2008 Kinero “Rustler” Roussanne ($20/500ml), from James Berry Vineyard on the west side of Paso Robles, displays rich stone fruit accented by notes of honey and nuts. For the 2009 vintage, he plans to add a couple more whites to the lineup.