Purity Wine - 2013 Carignan, Evangelho Vineyard, Antioch,
Contra Costa County
In the mouth: soft, a
tad sweet, a mix of ripe and stewed fruit but balanced by being bright and
fresh. Simple and straightforward, it’s more California in the mouth than on
the nose. On my scale for natural wine
(1-10, with 10 being the funkiest), I’d give this a 3.
Let me first say that the reason I chose this bottle was
that I’ve never had wine made from grapes from Antioch, California. Just a bike ride away from where I live,
Antioch is known, if anything, for being part of the massive easterly East Bay
suburban sprawl. Suffice to say I’d
never seen vineyard in Antioch. So I
picked up this bottle almost laughing as I did so, but when I read the back
label it was clear that this winemaker is of the new school, and quite serious
about what he is doing. The label explains
the grapes came from 130 year old vines (!), carefully lays out the sulfite
levels - 30 ppm were added at bottling, for a total of 50 ppm - and explains in
more detail than I’ve seen on most other wine labels how the wine was made (the
grapes “were picked early in the a.m. of 9/7” . . . a third of the grapes were
“destemmed and returned to the whole to be trod by foot” and so on). Whoa, I thought, a natural wine from
Antioch! Live and learn.
I happened to meet the winemaker, Noel Diaz, several days
later at a natural wine fair in Oakland.
He wasn’t allowed to bring this Carignan, as the SO2 was too high to
qualify (I think the cutoff was 30 ppm), but he was pouring a wonderful pét-nat,
a rose, some kind of Cinsault-Granache blend, and a vat of an amazing
golden-hued white (Marsanne I think).
All of which were firmly in the funky, natural category but in a very
good way. By contrast, this Carignan
from Antioch might be categorized as a natural wine bike with training
wheels: fresh, simple, unmistakably
Californian, but with a little bit of lees-y bite.
- Reviewed by Sara Mann
Learn more about Purity Wines: http://www.puritywine.net/#!wines/c161y