Let's Just See What Happens
TASTING NOTES:
Columbia Valley - “Our Columbia Valley Grenache is always a blend of the vineyards we work with. The goal for this bottling is to showcase the results of combining multiple vineyard sites, and to be the wine that is our primary representation in the broader market. 2019 is the exception as it is 100% from French Creek Vineyard, but we blended the two blocks we sourced from to create our Columbia Valley bottling.” (AbV 14.2%, pH 3.66, TA 5.2 g/L)
French Creek Vineyard, Block 20, Columbia Valley - “French Creek vineyard is a gentle sloping south facing hill with soils of wind blown loess with a thin layer of caliche sitting on top of fractured basalt. Block 20 is all grenache clone 515, which was originally imported into the US in 1997. This clone tends to bring some savory baking spice notes to the finished wine.” (AbV 14.2%, pH 3.63, TA 5.7 g/L)
French Creek Vineyard, Block 11, Columbia Valley - “French Creek vineyard is a gentle sloping south facing hill with soils of wind blown loess with a thin layer of caliche sitting on top of fractured basalt. Block 11 is all grenache clone 3, which was originally imported into the US in the 1880s for a University of California test vineyard. This is also the clone of grenache that many of the vineyards in Washington have planted.” (AbV 14.2%, pH 3.63, TA 5.5 g/L)
VARIETALS: Grenache
BARRELS: 20 months in neutral French oak barrels
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Grenache clone 3, the variety planted in Block 11, which was originally imported into the US in the 1880s for a University of California test vineyard.
There’s something quietly wonderful about the idea of a university test vineyard. You picture white-coated researchers in wide-brimmed hats squinting seriously at grape clusters, scribbling in notebooks, arguing over soil pH at faculty meetings. But the 1880s UC agricultural experiment stations were genuinely wild operations — they were testing everything, from silkworms to eucalyptus trees, operating on the optimistic Victorian assumption that California could and should grow basically any crop that had ever existed anywhere on Earth. The state was new, the land was vast, and the scientific mood of the era was one of almost reckless enthusiasm. Let’s just try it. Let’s just see.
That spirit — throw the clone in the ground, keep meticulous notes, compare results across decades — is more or less exactly what Ocelli is doing right now, except with considerably better branding. Block 11 and Block 20 sit on the same south-facing hill, same loess and caliche and fractured basalt beneath, and yet clone 3 and clone 515 behave differently enough that they can be bottled separately and make the case for their own existence. The 1880s researchers probably would have loved this offer, actually. Four bottles of each, a quiet evening, a blank notebook. Science.
