She's A Maniac, Etymologically
TASTING NOTES:
2021 Cordant Winery Maniacal GSM - “Maniacal is our Southern Rhone inspired red blend, consisting of 50% Grenache, 26% Syrah, and 24% Mourvedre, all from the westside of Paso Robles. Our goal was to create a GSM with finesse, treating it closer to Pinot Noir than the big reds of Paso Robles. The wine is bristling with brambly blackberry and black cherry. Florals lend a soft edge, while spice and toast bring a warmth to the glass. On the palette, the fruits are unctuous and generous, while the fine tannins hold focus. The grapes were hand-harvested at optimal ripeness, after which they were then hand-sorted and destemmed. We cold-soaked the grapes for 5 days to extract color, and then fermentation kicked off spontaneously. Daily pump-overs and punch-downs were performed for cap management. When the fermentation was dry, the grapes were pressed and put into 30% new French oak barrels plus 70% neutral barrels (a mix of 228L barriques and 500L puncheons) to age. The wine was racked 5 months after harvest and then returned to barrel for another 15 months. The blend was then assembled prior to bottling. We bottled this wine in August of 2023, unfined and unfiltered.” (AbV 14.80%)
2022 Cordant Winery Maniacal GSM - “Maniacal is blended from mostly Paso Robles fruit with a bit of cooler-climate Monterey County and Santa Barbara fruit included for increased texture and complexity. The 2022 vintage was an anomaly of a year for California wine – delivering a warmer than usual winter without much rain, plus an incredibly hot summer and harvest. Though Maniacal has always been a GSM (in that order), we found that Mourvedre was the standout varietal from this vintage. This wine is proof that in a hot climate, blending is a must to craft the best wine possible. The grapes were handpicked, sorted, and fully destemmed. 3 to 5 days of cold maceration was then followed by 7 to 14 days of fermentation using wild yeasts and bacteria. Pump-overs and punch-downs were used for cap management. The wines were drained and pressed, then barreled down to neutral 500L puncheons. They aged for 4 months, and were then racked in the spring, where they aged an additional 16 months. Bottled unfined and unfiltered.” (AbV 14.4%)
BARRELS: Neutral 500L puncheons for 20 months
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Maniacal
There’s a great one-word rabbit hole hiding in this label, and it goes straight to a song you’ve definitely heard at a wedding. “Maniac,” the 1983 Michael Sembello track that soundtracks the training montage in Flashdance , wasn’t written for a movie about dancing. It started life as a song called “Man Hunt,” inspired by the 1980 slasher film Maniac — the one about a guy who scalps women and mounts the wigs on mannequins. Real cheerful source material. When Paramount wanted a theme for a scrappy welder-turned-dancer instead, the writers kept the title, kept the pulse-pounding chorus, and just swapped out “he’s stalking the streets” for “she’s a maniac, maniac on the floor” — same word, same intensity, completely different person having a worse or better night depending on the version.
I think about that a lot: how “maniac” can describe someone dangerous or someone just really, really committed to their craft, and the only difference is context. The word itself traces back to Greek mania , frenzy or madness, sharing a root with words for “mind” — so etymologically, going maniacal has always been framed as a mind problem, not a strength-of-feeling problem. Sembello’s version just picked a much better hobby for it.
PRODUCER PODCAST: Cordant Winery Maniacal GSM Blend (1:28)
