Behind The Bottle - No Chains Can Hold You

This is the first of two wines we made that feature Aglianico, which was the raison-d’etre for Stereophonic Wine in the first place.  But you’ll notice that Aglianico is blended here and maybe wonder why. 

First, let me say:  Blending is ridiculously difficult work!  It’s immensely frustrating and counterintuitive.  In the process of blending you can feel like the world’s biggest moron repeatedly, until you find something that’s 95% perfect!  Then, you simply apply the finishing touches and BOOM, now your wine tastes like some grapes found under a car tire.  HOW, you scream to cosmos that isn’t listening – how did that go so wrong?  And then you fit the puzzle together at last and realize you didn’t write down the exact percentages. 

So yeah, blending is an art.  Top wineries will retain doughy old winemaker emeritus types because they alone have the mojo that allows them to see how the tastes, textures and wine waves all fit together.  

We had two vineyards that gave us Aglianico in 2017.  One was flat-out amazing.  You’ll taste that a little bit later.   The other was tasty, but like, not very Aglianico-like.  We worried over this stuff because we still were thinking like we had to do what was expected because to do otherwise was to invite invalidation.   

But then we shook off the doubt and put on our thinking caps.  Eventually we remembered a wine called Montevetrano.  Controversial because it upset a very traditional region of Italy by introducing grapes of French origin into the blend.  If Montevetrano could blend Aglianico, then why couldn’t we?  So into the winery we went and out came the beakers.  Additions of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah did the exact opposite of what we expected them to.  And it turned out better and different.  One thing we have learned is that at some point you have to step aside and let the wine become.  We spend a bunch of time designing and planning to get wines to turn out a certain way, and then when it does its own thing, we support it, pay for its college degree and start asking about grandkids.

  No Chains Can Hold You turned out great.  It tastes like it never set foot in Paso Robles in its life.  Instead it tastes like it came from the alpine borderlands between France and Italy, with its rich but edgy, juicy, spicy style.  Lots of black fruits that flash into red and vice versa.  Red raspberry and kirsch and hints of plum, tea leaf and clove.  

Of all our wines, this is the one that is the most unabashedly EASY to drink, matching up with everything thanks to its snappy fruit.

One thing that I want to mention is that we do something fairly atypical for a California winery.  We hardly ever use new French oak barrels on our red wines.  We primarily use older barrels, meaning ones that have had wine in them once or thrice already.  The strong flavors and tannin that new barrels impart aren’t present in our wines.  This was not a popular choice with Aaron!  He was raised in a world where certain choices were dogmatic and automatic and that was one.   

I personally don’t like new oak taste that often but I love the aromatic and lively taste of reds in “seasoned oak.”  The euphemisms in wine are really out of control, and I blame the French for that.  But anyway, you’ll notice that our wines are immediately flavorful and smell good and they don’t smell like cigars or chocolate factories.  And that’s by design.