) and I stopped by the new "Outlands" tasting room in downtown Napa. `A very fine outlier in a sea of goopy alcoholic International Style wines, I will tell you. All three winemakers there are quite fine, ranging from veteran Tom Farella to newcomer Poe wines.We, however, chose to do the Forlorn Hope lineup. And a nice choice it was.
Matthew's Chenin Blanc had that delicious savory/lanolin??? fleshy yet bright character. A delicious version-I know we should just buy French Loire wines, but I am patriotic sometimes!
The Fafreluches Gewürztraminer is unique! Very rich and floral on the nose, the wine is sleek and bone dry on the palate. Almost peppery!
The highlight, though, was the 2015??? Les Deux Mathieus Petit Sirah. This was a revelatory wine as to what lightly handled Petit Sirah can be. (Also the last vintage!
) There was a plush tone of polished blue fruit here, with a wet stone??? note and earthy character. Perfectly ripe at 10.7% abv or something like that. Just wow....So juicy and flavorful and belies the claim that wine needs to be 15% abv to be ripe. All three participants in this tasting room make fine, and Braden, their new manager, does a bang up job enthusiastically showing the wines (he is definitely an IPOB guy) as well as being a cyclist and a surfer from San Diego!
A great addition to the downtown Napa scene.